Monday, Mar. 27, 2000

Milestones

By Melissa August; Val Castronovo; Matthew Cooper; Lisa McLaughlin; Julie Rawe; Alain Sanders; Flora Tartakovsky; Chris Taylor and Josh Tyrangiel

RETIRED. DAN MARINO, 38, Miami Dolphins quarterback who holds NFL records for the most touchdown passes, passing yards and completions; after 17 years and six knee operations; in Davie, Fla. (see Appreciation below).

RETURNED. SEAN ELLIOTT, 32, two-time NBA All-Star and the first pro athlete competing in a major sport with a kidney transplant; to the court, seven months after the operation; in San Antonio, Texas.

CHARGED. JAMIL ABDULLAH AL-AMIN, 56, Muslim cleric and onetime Black Panther formerly known as H. Rap Brown; with murder and aggravated battery after he allegedly shot at two sheriff's deputies, one of whom died of his wounds; in Atlanta. The officers were trying to serve Al-Amin with an arrest warrant. He is being sought nationwide.

DIED. FRED KELLY, 83, Broadway dancer and choreographer who taught his brother Gene to tap dance, gave ballroom-dancing lessons to Queen Elizabeth and helped a young John Travolta learn how to swivel his hips and improve his strut; in Tucson, Ariz.

DIED. MORRIS ABRAM, 81, civil-rights lawyer, Jewish leader and former Brandeis University president who shepherded a landmark 1962 voting-rights case to the Supreme Court, which overturned a Georgia law that gave more weight to votes from mostly white rural areas; in Geneva, Switzerland. A former United Negro College Fund chairman, Abram served as the first general counsel of the Peace Corps and co-founded UN Watch to monitor the United Nations.

DIED. THOMAS FEREBEE, 81, Enola Gay bombardier who dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima in World War II; in Windermere, Fla. The colonel retired from the Air Force in 1970, after acting as an observer in Vietnam.

DIED. MACK ROBINSON, 85, silver medalist who finished a step behind Jesse Owens in the 1936 Olympics 200 m, but whose success was overshadowed by his brother, baseball legend Jackie; in Pasadena, Calif.

DIED. IGNATIUS KUNG, 98, exiled Shanghai bishop who spent 30 years in prison for promoting Roman Catholicism in communist China and who was secretly named a Cardinal in 1979 while jailed; in Stamford, Conn.