Milestones Mar. 4, 2002

ARRESTED. DAVID WESTERFIELD, 49; in connection with the kidnapping of his 7-year-old neighbor Danielle van Dam, who was abducted from her bedroom three weeks ago; in San Diego.

SENTENCED. JOHN GEOGHAN, 66, defrocked Roman Catholic priest convicted last month of sexually molesting a 10-year-old boy; to the maximum of nine to 10 years in prison; in Cambridge, Mass.

RESIGNING. JEFFREY KOPLAN, 57, director since 1998 of the Centers for Disease Control; in Atlanta. He and his staff came under fire for not responding quickly enough to last year’s anthrax scare.

REVOKED. U.S. citizenship of JOHN DEMJANJUK, 81, retired autoworker long believed to be a former Nazi death-camp guard; for the second time in 21 years; in Cleveland, Ohio. His 1988 death sentence in Israel was eventually overturned, and he re-entered the U.S. in 1993. The evidence this time, said a federal judge, was “devastating.”

KILLED. JONAS SAVIMBI, 67, leader of UNITA, the Angolan rebel group that for 27 years fought the government in a civil war that killed some 500,000; in a firefight with the Angolan army; in Moxico. A U.S. ally in the cold war fight against Marxism in Africa, Savimbi later isolated himself from Western powers promoting democracy there when he kept up the war after losing a 1992 democratic presidential election.

DIED. WILLIE THROWER, 71, the first African-American quarterback in the National Football League; of a heart attack; in New Kensington, Pa. Thrower played his first and last NFL game for the Chicago Bears in 1953, when he relieved the starting QB in a 35-28 loss against the San Francisco 49ers.

DIED. HOWARD K. SMITH, 87, impassioned, combative news broadcaster for CBS and ABC; in Bethesda, Md. Smith, who in 1960 moderated the first-ever televised presidential debate (between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon), believed that journalists should take stands on some issues. He left CBS when CEO William Paley barred him from punctuating a 1961 documentary on racism in Birmingham, Ala., with the Edmund Burke quote “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

DIED. JOHN GARDNER, 89, influential Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under Lyndon Johnson who introduced Medicare and later founded the 200,000-member grass-roots citizens’ lobby Common Cause; of prostate cancer; in Palo Alto, Calif.

DIED. CHUCK JONES, 89, Oscar-winning animator who directed classic Warner Bros. cartoons; in Corona del Mar, Calif. (see Appreciation, page 80).