Milestones

By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, Elizabeth L. Bland, Janice M. Horowitz And Unmesh Kher Sunday, July 13, 2003
    • DIED. LADAN and LALEH BIJANI, 29, conjoined twins from Iran who underwent risky surgery, never before performed on adults, in their determination to be separated; after more than 50 hours on the operating table; in Singapore. The twins, who studied law at Tehran University and said they were willing to take a chance on the operation rather than go on fused together, died from loss of blood after doctors separated their brains.

    DIED. CHARLES KINDLEBERGER, 92, economic historian whose theories — most notably his idea that global markets cannot always police themselves and need steering from select nations — were enhanced by a decade of practical experience in Federal Government; in Cambridge, Mass. He served in the U.S. Office of Strategic Services and after World War II helped determine how to carry out the Marshall Plan.

    DIED. WINSTON GRAHAM, 93, author of 12 novels about the Poldark clan, which — as embodied in the hit BBC adaptation — made landowner-banker feuding in 18th century Cornwall seem sexy. Graham also wrote 28 other books, including Marnie, which became a Hitchcock thriller.

    DIED. JOSEPHINE JACOBSEN, 94, poet and short-story writer; in Cockeysville, Md. With spare, precise language, her poems explored the anxieties of being human and led to her selection, in 1971, as consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress — the position now called U.S. poet laureate.

    DIED. BUDDY EBSEN, 95, gangly dancer turned TV star; in Torrance, Calif. Ebsen danced with his sister Vilma on Broadway and later on his own in MGM musicals like Captain January, with Shirley Temple. He was originally cast as the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz before his allergy to the metallic makeup forced him to give up the role to Jack Haley. From 1962 to 1971 he played Jed Clampett, the nouveau riche patriarch of a trans-planted mountain clan, in the popular sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies. He followed that up with yet another long-running TV role, as folksy private eye Barnaby Jones, on CBS from 1973 to 1980.

    DIED. HARTLEY SHAWCROSS, 101, Britain's chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Nazi war-crime trials; in Cowbeech, England. Known as Lord Shawcross after his 1959 appointment to the House of Lords, he served as Britain's Attorney General from 1945 to 1951, prosecuting traitors like William Joyce, a.k.a. Lord Haw-Haw, who broadcast Nazi propaganda from Germany. Of his work before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, he said, "There comes a point when a man must refuse to answer to his leader if he is also to answer to his conscience."