Milestones

By Melissa August, Amanda Bower, Val Castronovo, Randy Hartwell, Daniel Levy, Ellin Martens, Julie Rawe, Chris Taylor and Josh Tyrangiel

APPOINTED. ROGER GREGORY, 47, to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, its first African-American judge; by President Clinton, marking the first time in 20 years a judicial opening has been filled during a congressional recess; in Richmond, Va. G.O.P. Senators had blocked Clinton's four previous black nominees to the circuit, which covers the largest black population of the appellate courts.

DIED. JOE GILLIAM, 49, one of the first black starting quarterbacks in the NFL, who received hate mail and death threats when he substituted for the Steelers' Terry Bradshaw for six games in 1974; of an apparent heart attack; in Nashville, Tenn. Forced off the team after two seasons because of drug problems, he pawned both of his Super Bowl rings and lived in a cardboard box before ending a two-decade struggle with substance abuse and becoming an addiction counselor.

DIED. JOHN RICE, 77, minister and former vice chancellor of the University of Denver, whose daughter, National Security Adviser-designate Condoleezza Rice, recounted at the Republican National Convention last year how he had joined the G.O.P. in 1952 in segregated Alabama after the Democrats refused to register him; in Palo Alto, Calif. A longtime community activist, Rice in recent years organized coaching and tutoring programs in the Bay Area.

DIED. BILLY BARTY, 76, diminutive entertainer who founded Little People of America, an advocacy group for dwarfs, in 1957; in Glendale, Calif. During his seven-decade career, the 3 ft. 9 in. actor appeared in some 60 films and was a regular on several TV series.

DIED. VICTOR BORGE, 91, hammy pianist and conductor whose one-man Broadway show, Comedy in Music, ran a record 849 performances; in Greenwich, Conn. Borge originally trained as a concert pianist in his native Denmark, but eventually began incorporating satire and sight gags into his act. A Jew, he fled Europe to escape the Nazis, arriving in the U.S. speaking no English but ultimately perfecting his act to gain worldwide acclaim.

DIED. JASON ROBARDS, 78, gritty stage and screen actor, renowned for his performances in Eugene O'Neill plays, who won back-to-back Oscars for All the President's Men and Julia; in Bridgeport, Conn. (see EULOGY, below).

DIED. WILLARD VAN ORMAN QUINE, 92, rumpled yet rigorous Harvard philosopher who developed a system of truth and knowledge, in the tradition of Berkeley and Hume, based on radical empiricism: that everything we can know about the world derives only from our sensory perceptions and that anything else we might think exists--ranging from physical objects to metaphysical beliefs--is merely a mental construct that may help predict our perceptions but cannot be known as objectively true; in Boston. His seminal 1951 essay "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" and 1960 book Word and Object built upon the works of such logical positivists as Rudolf Carnap and A.J. Ayer to place him just a notch below Wittgenstein in the pantheon of great 20th century analytic philosophers.