Milestones: Apr. 16, 1984

DIVORCED. Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 64, Canada’s retiring (in June) Prime Minister; and Margaret Trudeau, 35, former jet-setter; after a 13-year marriage (they separated in 1977), three children; in Toronto.

DIED. Elmo Patrick Sonnier, 35, convicted along with his brother of killing a teenage couple in 1977; by electrocution, witnessed by the victims’ fathers; in Angola, La. Six hours later in Starke, Fla., Arthur F. Goode III, 30, condemned for the 1976 homosexual murder of a nine-year-old boy, also died in the electric chair. It was the first two-execution day since restoration of the death penalty in 1976.

DIED. Marvin Gaye, 44, sensual, mellow-voiced soul singer who helped create the distinctive Motown sound of the 1960s; of two gunshot wounds inflicted by his father, a retired minister (a quarrel about a missing insurance letter smoldered overnight, reignited into yelling and shoving, after which the elder Gaye allegedly shot his son at pointblank range with a .38 handgun); in Los Angeles. It was in his father’s church in Washington, D.C., that Gaye began singing, at age three. Signed in 1962 by Motown Records, he turned out such hit singles as Pride and Joy, How Sweet It Is to Be Loved by You and / Heard It Through the Grapevine. Gaye broke out of the Motown mold with a successful social-protest album, What’s Going On, in 1971, but later suffered personal and financial problems that drove him from the limelight. He staged a comeback in 1982 when his hit single Sexual Healing won two Grammy awards. Motown Stars Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder were among the eulogists at his funeral.

DIED. Frank Church, 59, former U.S. Senator from Idaho (1957-81), who sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976; of pancreatic cancer; in Bethesda, Md. The grandson of Idaho pioneers, he championed civil rights, aid to the aged, and environmental issues, and was an early foe of the Viet Nam War. Of U.S. policy in Latin America he said, “Somehow, some day, this country has got to learn to live with revolution in the Third World.”

DIED. Arthur T. (“Bomber”) Harris, 91, hard-nosed marshal of the Royal Air Force, who directed Britain’s saturation bombing of Germany during World War II; in Goring-on-Thames, England. His strategy of mass night bombing, which inflicted heavy civilian casualties, culminated in the killer raids that destroyed Dresden in early 1945.