Milestones Feb. 24, 2003

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DIED. WALT ROSTOW, 86, easygoing yet hawkish adviser to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson whose unfailing optimism about U.S. involvement in Vietnam helped propel the war; in Austin, Texas. The son of a Socialist, he coined Kennedy's campaign slogan, Let's Get This Country Moving Again. The onetime M.I.T. economics professor saw the war primarily as a means of ensuring modernization and development in Southeast Asia. He never publicly regretted his position, saying in 1986, "I'm not obsessed with Vietnam, and I never was. I don't spend much time worrying about that period."

--DIED. KEMMONS WILSON, 90, founder of the Holiday Inn chain whom TIME once called "the Man with 300,000 Beds"; in Memphis, Tenn. Irate at shoddy accommodations during a family vacation, Wilson built the first Holiday Inn in Memphis in 1952 with the goal of offering customers something novel: comfortable, child-friendly, inexpensive lodging. Fueled by a growth in American families traveling the new interstate highway system, the chain expanded from 100 in 1959 to 1,700 in 1975. There are now some 3,000 motels worldwide bearing the Holiday Inn name.