Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, January 1, 1994                   TAG: 9401010010
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PEOPLE

"Doctors are quite impressed with Ms. Wynette's improvement, but caution that she is not out of the woods yet," said her spokeswoman, Evelyn Shriver. Wynette, 51, best known for her hits "Stand by Your Man" and "D-I-V-O-R-C-E," spent her fourth day at Baptist Hospital in Nashville, Tenn., where she was in the intensive-care section.

Doctors said the bile duct infection was apparently caused by scarring from previous surgery. In May 1992, Wynette underwent 14 hours of abdominal surgery to relieve a recurring inflammation of the bile duct.

Jose Luis Inciarte has twice beaten the odds.

Twenty-one years ago, he was one of 16 rugby players and fans who survived a plane crash and 70 days of freezing weather in the high Andes. Late Thursday, he told a radio station in Montevideo, Uruguay, he had won a $2.5 million New Year's lottery prize.

Inciarte's wife, Soledad, said on Friday that 11 family members who pitched in 1,500 pesos ($450) for lottery tickets will share the jackpot. Each will receive the equivalent of about $160,000 after taxes.

Inciarte was one of 45 rugby players and fans flying home from Chile in October 1972 aboard a Uruguayan Air Force plane that crashed in the Andes. Only 16 survived, staying alive by eating the flesh of those who had died.

The story was told in the 1993 film "Alive!" based on the book by Piers Paul Read.

Comic and actress Rosie O'Donnell gets her laughs wherever she can. Lately, that means tapping into her home computer.

O'Donnell, 31, parlayed a gig as host of "Stand-Up Spotlight" on cable television's VH-1 into roles in the movies "A League of Their Own" and "Sleepless in Seattle." Now she has discovered a new audience through the America On Line computer service.

"You hook up with your phone, and you plug in to somewhere in middle America," the January issue of W magazine quoted O'Donnell as saying.

"If you say something funny, they write LOL [laughing out loud] . . . I'm living for those LOLs."

Jimmy Stewart may be a national treasure, but the self-effacing 85-year-old balked at anyone creating a museum about him - until they picked a modest spot: the third floor of the library in his hometown, Indiana, Pa.

Now Stewart says he'll even donate his 1984 Academy Award for lifetime achievement.

"If you know Jim, he's not one for a lot of fuss," said Bill Moorhead, a friend who is on the board of the Stewart Museum Foundation. "He's very humble. What we have now is what he desires."