Milestones Dec. 26, 2005

RESIGNED. MARSHA EVANS, 56, as president of the American Red Cross; after its response to Hurricane Katrina was widely criticized as disorganized and slow; in Washington. A onetime rear admiral in the U.S. Navy, Evans, like her predecessor, clashed with the agency's 50-member board, a group some observers blame for a long-term failure to address key structural problems at the agency.

ASSASSINATED. GEBRAN TUENI, 48, outspoken Lebanese journalist and legislator known for his relentless criticism of Syria's influence in Lebanon, where Syrian troops had been stationed for three decades until they were pressured to withdraw this year; in a car bomb attack, less than 24 hours after his return from Paris, where he had taken refuge after being told he was on a hit list; in Beirut. The latest in a series of attacks on anti-Syrian leaders in Lebanon, the bombing occurred hours before an interim U.N. report reinforced the widely held suspicion that Syria was behind the assassination of Lebanon's former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in February. In his last column as editor of the respected daily An Nahar, the dapper, optimistic Tueni wrote that Lebanon "never was and never will be part of Syria."

EXECUTED. STANLEY (TOOKIE) WILLIAMS, 51, co-founder of the Los Angeles gang the Crips, who while on death row for the murder of four people in 1979 became renowned for his antiviolence work, including a series of books he wrote urging children to stay away from gangs; by lethal injection; despite his claims of innocence and appeals for clemency, supported by such activists as Snoop Dogg and Joan Baez but denied by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the U.S. Supreme Court; in San Quentin, Calif.

DIED. JOHN SPENCER, 58, Emmy Award--winning actor best known as the savvy, tough White House chief of staff turned vice-presidential candidate Leo McGarry on TV's The West Wing; of a heart attack; in Los Angeles. The son of blue-collar parents, he got his break as Harrison Ford's cop sidekick in the 1990 film Presumed Innocent. That led to his big TV roles as L.A. Law's streetwise lawyer Tommy Mullaney and West Wing's top aide, who last season left his post after suffering a heart attack.

DIED. RODNEY WHITAKER, 74, best-selling author known to millions internationally as Trevanian, one of several of his pen names; of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; in England's West Country. His thrillers, notably The Eiger Sanction, which became a 1975 film starring Clint Eastwood, were translated into more than a dozen languages and prompted comparisons to such critically esteemed storytellers as Edgar Allan Poe and Chaucer.

DIED. JAMES INGO FREED, 75, soft-spoken New York architect who catapulted to international fame as the much hailed designer of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, above, in Washington; of complications of Parkinson's disease; in New York City. Freed, an émigré from Nazi Germany who became the longtime business partner of I.M. Pei, designed, among other things, Manhattan's sprawling Jacob K. Javits Convention Center and Washington's Ronald Reagan Building. Of the Holocaust Museum's hexagonal, skylighted Hall of Remembrance, he said, "Light is the only thing I know that heals. People at the camps said the sky was the only way out."