Milestones

By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, Kristen Bolt, Janice M. Horowitz, Unmesh Kher, Kate Novack, David Robinson, Maggie Shnayerson And Molly Worthen Sunday, June 29, 2003
    • DIED. STROM THURMOND, 100, the longest-serving U.S. Senator in history; in Edgefield, S.C. Thurmond will be forever linked to his early, often hateful-sounding rhetoric opposing civil rights and racial integration. He made a failed bid for the White House in 1948 as nominee of the "Dixiecrat" States' Rights Party and initiated the "Southern Manifesto," calling for resistance to the 1954 Supreme Court ruling that integrated public schools. Over the course of his career Thurmond astutely shifted his views with the times. He was among the first Southern G.O.P. Senators to hire a black aide, he voted to extend the Voting Rights Act, and in 1983 he supported the creation of a federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr. The man who won his first election (as a county schools superintendent) in 1928 and finished his eighth and final Senate term in January 2003, said, "Times change and people change. And people who can't change don't stay in office long."

    CONVICTED. CHANTE MALLARD, 27, former nurse's aide accused of striking Gregory Glenn Biggs, a homeless man, with her car, continuing to drive with his body lodged in her windshield and leaving him stuck there to die in her garage; of murder; in Fort Worth, Texas. Mallard, who did not call for assistance after hitting Biggs, was sentenced to 50 years in prison for the murder charge. She previously received a 10-year sentence for tampering with evidence.


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    DIED. MAYNARD JACKSON JR., 65, who, after being elected Atlanta's first black mayor in 1973, battled resolutely with white business leaders to create economic opportunities for blacks, oversaw the expansion of what is now one of the nation's busiest airports and transformed Atlanta into a vital, progressive national hub; of cardiac arrest; in Arlington, Va. A towering figure at nearly 6 ft. 4 in., the great-grandson of slaves served three terms, in which he helped plan Atlanta's successful bid for the 1996 Olympics, drew corporate conventions to the city and upped the percentage of city contracts with minorities from below 1% to 39% in five years.

    DIED. GLADYS HELDMAN, 81, champion of women's tennis who played a key role in establishing the women's pro tour; in Santa Fe, N.M. In 1970, as editor of World Tennis magazine, she signed the country's top nine players, including Billie Jean King, to $1 contracts and held an all-female tournament in Houston. With help from Heldman's friend Joseph Cullman, then chairman of Philip Morris, who donated prize money and agreed to sponsor additional tournaments, the event evolved into the Virginia Slims Tour.

    DIED. PEANUTS HUCKO, 85, sparkling, fluid clarinetist and saxophonist whose ease in both swing and Dixieland landed him spots in Glenn Miller's orchestra during World War II and Louis Armstrong's All-Stars in the late '50s and as a regular on the Lawrence Welk Show in the 1970s; in Fort Worth, Texas.

    DIED. LESTER MADDOX, 87, flamboyant restaurant owner turned segregationist Georgia Governor; in Atlanta. Maddox, who as Governor was prone to stunts like riding on the hood of a car to announce a new stretch of highway, gained local notoriety by loudly refusing to serve three black Georgia Tech students in his Pickrick Restaurant in the wake of the newly signed Civil Rights Act — and by distributing ax handles to patrons as symbols of defiance. A frequent target of newspaper caricatures, the former soda jerk never apologized for his positions, saying in 2001, "I want my race preserved. I think forced racial integration is illegal and wrong."

    DIED. SIR DENIS THATCHER, 88, graceful, independent-minded husband of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher; in London. Often satirized as a comic, golf-obsessed gin swiller, the retired oil executive handled his job as the First Mate of Britain's first female Prime Minister with aplomb, happily trailing behind his wife in public yet privately acting as a loyal consort and critical influence. He was, he once said, the most "shadowy husband of all time."