They're dimming the lights tonight on Broadway. Wendy Wasserstein, the playwright who chronicled the hopes and despairs of a generation of women, and in so doing won every top award the theatre has to offer, died yesterday at the age of 55. She had been battling lymphoma for a while, the obituaries say, yet that didn't stop her from shepherding her last play, Third, through its off-Broadway run at Lincoln Center. She first came to the attention of the theatrical world when the play she wrote as her college thesis -- Uncommon Women and Others -- was optioned and produced off-Broadway. After that came a succession of hits: Isn't It Romantic; An American Daughter; and the play that won her the Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize, The Heidi Chronicles. She also wrote for the screen, and at the time of her death was working on a musicalization of her chidren's book Pamela's First Musical. She leaves behind her body of work; her daughter, Lucy Jane, born when Wasserstein was 48; her surviving family members; and a Broadway that will surely, and sorely, miss all the plays she had still within her.

Coretta Scott King. Just saying the name evokes the image of the strong woman who endured her husband's assassination almost 40 years ago, raised their four children, made sure his legacy and his name would never be forgotten -- and in so doing, became the "first lady of the human rights movement". I will remember her as one of the few leaders of the black civil rights community who stood up and openly declared that gays and lesbians and bisexuals and the transgendered also had civil rights that had to be fought for. She put her reputation and her name on the line to support us time and again. Her loss leaves a hole almost as big -- no, I'll say bigger -- than that left at her husband's death.