Milestones: May 10, 1963

Born. To Dennis Day (real name: Eugene Patrick McNulty), 46, longtime Irish tenor sidekick of Comedian Jack Benny, and Peggy Almquist McNulty, 38, his wife of 15 years: their ninth child, sixth son; in Los Angeles.

Married. Virginia Leftwich (“Gigi”) Graham, 17, eldest of Evangelist Billy Graham’s five children; and Stephan Tchividjian, 23, son of Millionaire Financier Ara Tchividjian, the Baptist minister’s most active Swiss supporter; in a religious ceremony (which followed by six days the mandatory Swiss civil ceremony) that was presided over by Graham, who also gave the bride away; in Montreux, Switzerland.

Died. Gordon Rufus Clapp, 57, chairman from 1946 to 1954 of the Tennessee Valley Authority and from 1955 president of the Development and Resources Corp., a consulting firm engaged in the Khuzistan project, Iran’s version of the TVA; of a heart attack; in Manhattan.

Died. Kenneth Macgowan, 74, lifelong devotee of the dramatic arts, who in 1925 abandoned a career as a drama critic to produce many of the plays of his close friend Eugene O’Neill, first in their own, early off-Broadway theater and then on Broadway—and after 45 films in Hollywood finally became a teacher, founding U.C.L.A.’s respected theater arts department in 1946; of cancer; in Los Angeles.

Died. Van Wyck Brooks, 77, critic, literary historian and elder statesman of American letters, a deeply reflective, painfully slow writer who is best known for his massive, five-volume Makers and Finders; A History of the Writer in America, 1800-1915, which took him 20 years to write and spans American literature from Washington Irving to William Faulkner; of cancer; in Bridgewater, Conn. As a critic of his culture, Brooks argued that much of American writing was second rate, that U.S. materialism thwarted genius, and that the true fulfillment of America is yet to come. That it would come, he was certain. The American belief, wrote Brooks, “is that men could be trusted to set things right in time . . . Nothing could be lost and much was to be gained if . . . one placed one’s bet on the faith rather than the doubt.”

Died. Edward Samuel Corwin, 85, Princeton’s McCormick professor of jurisprudence from 1918 to 1946, a distinguished and vocal authority on the U.S. Constitution (The Constitution and What It Means Today, 1920) and the presidency (The President: Office and Powers, 1940), who bluntly informed the Supreme Court that it should have its “nose well tweaked” for invading legislative and executive competence in three 1956-57 decisions; of cancer; in Princeton, N.J.