MILESTONES

DIED. SHANNON HOON, 28, rock singer; of a drug overdose; in New Orleans. Hoon wailed his way to stardom fronting Blind Melon. A hit single, No Rain, took the group's eponymous 1992 album multiplatinum. But Hoon's drug use put a damper on success, leading to his arrests for urinating during a concert in Vancouver and for disrupting a 1994 awards show. Blind Melon was on tour when an unrevivable Hoon was found on the band bus.

DIED. HAMILTON HOLMES, 54, orthopedic surgeon who in 1961 defied hate and ostracism to become one of the first blacks admitted to the University of Georgia; after heart surgery; in Atlanta.

DIED. NANCY GRAVES, 54, sculptor; of cancer; in New York City. Graves emerged on the New York art scene in the late '60s with sculptures of a remarkably offbeat subject--camels. Ostensibly realistic, these works were decidedly abstract in their fascination with form. They presaged all that followed from Graves-witty postminimalist pieces with an almost scientific sense of nature and a painterly feel for color.

DIED. LINDA GOODMAN, 70, writer; from diabetes; in Colorado Springs. Entertaining prose and easy-on-the-intellect pop psychology made Goodman's 1968 Sun Signs the first astrology book to scale the New York Times best-seller list, creating the mass market for mysticism that haunts us still.

DIED. VIVECA LINDFORS, 74, actress; of complications from rheumatoid arthritis; in Uppsala, Sweden. Lindfors' neo-Garbo good looks graced a series of forgettable films before her 1954 breakthrough with a psychologically nuanced performance in the title role of Anastasia on Broadway. Lindfors' subsequent career continued to veer between high art onstage (Shakespeare, Brecht) and low on film (1973's The Way We Were and last year's Stargate).

DIED. BOBBY RIGGS, 77, tennis star; in San Diego. In 1939 Wimbledon-winning Riggs was the greatest tennis player on the planet. But his enduring legacy is surely the antics of his later life--most notoriously the 1973 "Battle of the Sexes" against women's tennis star Billie Jean King. King cleaned the court with the 55-year-old Riggs, who raised sexist posturing to self-parody--and inadvertently fueled the nation's growing interest in women's tennis.

DIED. MAXENE ANDREWS, 79, singer; in Hyannis, Massachusetts. Reduce World War II to three voices, and the choices are obvious: the rant of Hitler, the rumble of Churchill . and the single, seamless sound blended from the warble of the Andrews Sisters: Maxene, Patti and LaVerne. The trio first flew up the charts with 1937's bilingual Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen, a Yiddish ditty infused with the giddy, jivey spirit that followed G.I.s around the globe. Wartime hits included Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy (1941) and Rum and Coca-Cola (1944). The 1967 death of LaVerne ended the Andrews Sisters' career--but not Maxene's. She went solo, wrote a memoir and recently helped veterans celebrate the 50th anniversary of a war she and her sisters had made slightly easier for Americans to endure.

DIED. MARY WICKES, 79, character actress; in Burbank, California. Hard to name but easy to recognize, Wickes was the tart-tongued accent to 50 years of pop culture: stage work like The Man Who Came to Dinner and Oklahoma, TV turns from I Love Lucy to M*A*S*H and more than 50 films, including classics like Now Voyager and recent hits like Little Women and Sister Act.