Milestones Sep. 22, 1997

DIED. RICHIE ASHBURN, 70, a.k.a. Whitey, wisecracking baseball Hall of Famer who flayed the competition at the bat and on the mike; of a heart attack; in New York City. A Philly Whiz Kid in the 1950s, Ashburn was a sight in the outfield--a blond streak of pure energy. He won two batting titles, tied a major league record in putouts and later, as a Philadelphia commentator, set another in putdowns as he groused at umpires in his broad Nebraska twang.

DIED. LEON EDEL, 89, the reigning authority on Henry James, who vividly detailed the author's life in a five-volume, Pulitzer-prizewinning biography; in Honolulu. In Edel's energetic and engrossing work, James emerged not as the passionless scholar of previous interpretations but as an artist of great spirit as well as mind, roiled by psychic conflict.

DIED. BURGESS MEREDITH, 89, chameleon-like actor who performed the highbrow and lowbrow with equal enthusiasm and success; in Malibu, Calif. His Mio in Winterset (1936) simmered with earnest indignation; his Penguin in TV's Batman was gloriously over the top. He played the gentle George in Of Mice and Men, the careworn coach in Rocky and even did a gravelly voice-over for Skippy peanut butter. Meredith defended his quirky choices, saying, "I'm a man moved by the rhythms of his time, so I'll just take amusement at being a paradox."

DIED. MOBUTU SESE SEKO, 66, African strongman and kleptocrat whose 32-year rule of Zaire finally ended last May; of prostate cancer; in Rabat, Morocco. In the cold war theater that was Africa, Mobutu profitably played the anticommunist, earning an ally in the U.S. and seizing power in what was then the Belgian Congo in a 1965 coup. He ordered the nation to discard Western dress in the name of African authenticity and touted nationalization and other economic reforms. But he spent the following decades looting his resource-rich country, leaving it bankrupt and impoverished.