Milestones

By Harriet Barovick, Gilbert Cruz, Elisabeth Salemme, Carolyn Sayre, Tiffany Sharples, Alexandra Silver, Kate Stinchfield

DIED Cancer took the eyesight of Grammy-nominated rocker Jeff Healey before he turned 1. So at 3 he started playing the guitar on his lap, a style that became his trademark. As a teen, he gigged in Toronto clubs before starting his best-known group, the Jeff Healey Band. The blues-rock trio, who got a boost from their role in the Patrick Swayze film Road House, made it big with the achy, affecting 1989 hit Angel Eyes. On the side, Healey played jazz and deejayed a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. radio show drawing on his collection of 25,000 old 78-r.p.m. jazz records. Healey, who battled cancer all his life, was 41.

Instead of caving in to pressure from her archaeologist father to enter academia, Guinean-born Katoucha (born Katoucha Niane) became one of the world's first African supermodels, hitting the runway for the likes of Christian Lacroix and Yves Saint Laurent and starting her own label. Postfashion, the gracious celebrity used her fame and her horrific experience as a 9-year-old to write a book and speak out against female genital mutilation. Katoucha, who apparently fell from the houseboat she owned in Paris, had been missing since January. Her body was found in the Seine. She was 47.

Before he was dubbed the "Stradivarius of car-building," Boyd Coddington, the guru familiar to fans from his cable reality show American Hot Rod, fixed cars at Disneyland. Then wealthy clients began to notice his hobby. Coddington designed everything from scratch on his stylish, award-winning reinterpretations of early Chevys, Fords and Caddies. Among his masterpieces: the CheZoom and the sleek CadZZilla, built for musician Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top. The cause of Coddington's death was not disclosed. He was 63.

Brit Pop is still going strong, but to many, its heyday was the '60s--not just because of the Beatles but also because of stars like Mike Smith, the telegenic lead singer of the Dave Clark Five. The charismatic original British invader co-wrote some of the Five's biggest hits (Bits and Pieces; Glad All Over) and helped the group earn 12 appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, more than any other British act. Paralyzed in a 2003 accident, Smith died of complications from a chest infection. He was 64.

The game of make-believe took on an entirely new dimension in 1974 after E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson created the cultish, fantasy-role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. In the mythic game--an immediate obsession for smart, geeky teenage boys everywhere--players adhere to complex rules while pretending to be wizards, warriors, elves and other medieval-era oddballs. The still popular D & D spawned TV shows, films and countless face-to-face and online imitators. Gygax, who had been in poor health, was 69.

Her 1969 book, The Doctors' Case Against the Pill, is widely credited with sparking the women's-health movement of the '70s. Pioneering author-activist Barbara Seaman began to research the high-estrogen birth-control pill after readers of her magazine column complained of painful symptoms. Seaman's book, which exposed side effects, including stroke, heart attack and depression, led to highly publicized Senate hearings and ultimately to mandated warning labels and patient-information inserts. She was 72 and had lung cancer.

Many will never quite understand the definition of quality control--which is why it's fortunate that management trailblazer Joseph Juran devoted his life to the concept. His theories, notably the Pareto Principle, or 80-20 rule, were widely adopted by companies around the world that aimed to be more efficient. The rule, which asserts that 80% of effects arise from 20% of causes, is now applied to countless concepts, ranging from purchasing (20% of customers buy 80% of products) to management strategy (80% of production snafus stem from 20% of workers). Juran was 103.