Milestones

By Daniel Eisenberg, Tam Gray, Glenn Kaplan, Declan McCullagh, Jodie Morse, Michele Orecklin, Alain Sanders, Susan Veitch

PLEADED NO CONTEST. TOMMY LEE, 35, temperamental Motley Crue drummer; to a felony charge of beating his estranged wife, Baywatch icon Pamela Anderson Lee; in Malibu, Calif.

RETIRED. MARCUS ALLEN, 38, nimble NFL running back whose career records--123 rushing touchdowns and 587 receptions--were as peerless as his professionalism; to be a commentator for CBS; in Kansas City, Mo.

DIED. ROB PILATUS, 32, half of the famously seen-but-not-heard Europop duo Milli Vanilli, which had to relinquish its 1989 Grammy after it was revealed that the pretty boys had lip-synched their album; after reportedly overdosing on drugs and alcohol; near Frankfurt, Germany. Pilatus never really recovered from the humiliation: the following year he tried to commit suicide and later spent time in rehab after pleading no contest to assault charges.

DIED. WENDY O. WILLIAMS, 48, radically raunchy star of the '80s punk band the Plasmatics who shocked fans with her onstage shenanigans (chain-sawing guitars sometimes clad in little more than strategically placed electrical tape); of a self-inflicted gunshot wound; in Storrs, Conn.

DIED. TAMMY WYNETTE, 55, country music's down-home diva; of a blood clot; in Nashville, Tenn. A beautician turned songstress, she performed often plaintive ballads that imitated her life story: five marriages, bankruptcy, a painkiller addiction and a kidnapping. Her iconic anthem, Stand by Your Man, made feminists wince--Hillary Clinton among them--but Wynette stood by her twangy tunes through more than 50 albums and 20 No. 1 hits. (See EULOGY below.)

DIED. ARCHBISHOP SERAPHIM, 84, stormy head of the Greek Orthodox Church since 1974 who boldly crusaded against the state in the 1980s, excommunicating seven government officials for trying to expropriate the church's vast land holdings; in Athens.