Martha Stewart's Sister Dead at 59

Martha Stewart's younger sister, Laura Plimpton, died suddenly yesterday at age 59. "She woke up Monday morning at 5:30am, did her one hour of elliptical and treadmill, then showered and felt ill enough to call her husband, Randy, for help," Stewart, 73, says in a statement on her website. "She was rushed to the hospital where they said she had suffered a massive brain aneurysm." She was kept on life support until her children could say goodbye and organ donation could be prepped.

Plimpton had worked for Stewart for more than 25 years, and the conclusion of Stewart's statement offers a bit of a strange order: "Laura deserves the very best; she was an extraordinary employee, mother, wife, and sister." (More Martha Stewart stories.)