Milestones Dec. 13, 2004

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RESIGNING. TOM RIDGE, 59, as the country's first Secretary of Homeland Security; TOMMY THOMPSON, 63, as Secretary of Health and Human Services; and JOHN DANFORTH, 68, as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Ridge's nominated replacement is BERNARD KERIK, 49, the brusque and blunt former New York City police commissioner who won praise for his calm crisis management in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

INJURED. DICK EBERSOL, 57, chairman of NBC Sports; after a chartered plane carrying him and two of his sons, Teddy, 14, and Charlie, 21, crashed on takeoff; in Montrose, Colo. Teddy, Ebersol's youngest son with his wife, actress Susan St. James, was thrown from the jet and killed on impact when it landed on him. The pilot and a crew member were also killed. Charlie was hospitalized along with his father, whom he dragged from the plane to safety. Both are expected to recover.

DIED. ED PASCHKE, 65, provocative Chicago painter whose clashing neon colors and freakish-looking subjects invigorated Pop Art; of heart failure; in Chicago. Basing much of his work on photographs and TV images, he created layered portraits of strippers, professional wrestlers and other, less easily categorized specimens, and later painted simulated electronic images of Elvis Presley and Abraham Lincoln. Jeff Koons, one of his students, likened Paschke's paintings to drugs, saying, "They affect you neurologically."

DIED. PHILIPPE DE BROCA, 71, director of frenetic film comedies of France's New Wave; in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. A onetime assistant to François Truffaut, he made dozens of films over five decades but gained most acclaim in the 1960s with the spy spoof That Man from Rio, which followed Jean-Paul Belmondo on a global search for a statuette, and the antiwar satire King of Hearts, starring a young Alan Bates as a disillusioned World War I soldier, a flop in France but a longtime art-house cult hit in the U.S.

DIED. JOHN DREW BARRYMORE, 72, sporadically employed actor who never lived up to the reputations of his estranged, more famous family members, including his father John and his daughter Drew Barrymore; of undisclosed causes; in Los Angeles. He started acting at 17, landing roles in westerns like The Sundowners and High Lonesome, and appearing in a string of low-budget films in the U.S. and abroad. But he abused drugs and alcohol, frequently got into fights and was jailed several times for drunkenness and domestic violence. By the late 1960s his career had fizzled, and he spent his later years largely as a recluse.

DIED. BILLY JAMES HARGIS, 79, anticommunist "bawl and jump" televangelist; in Tulsa, Okla. He first won attention in 1953 when he released 100,000 balloons with biblical quotations into the Soviet Union, and at his peak he was carried on more than 500 radio and 250 TV stations. But his popularity faltered in the 1970s after his organization, Christian Crusade, was beset by a series of troubles, culminating in allegations--which he denied and which were not proved--that he had been sexually involved with students of both sexes.

DIED. GUNDER HAGG, 85, Swedish runner who held the world record--4:01.4--for running the mile, from 1945 until 1954, when Roger Bannister, with his 3:59.4 time, ran the world's first mile in less than four minutes; in Malmo, Sweden.