Milestones, Feb. 7, 1944

Born. To Elmer Rice, 51, Pulitzer Prize playwright (Street Scene), and Actress Betty Field Rice, 27: their first daughter, second child; in Manhattan. Name: Judith. Weight: 7½ lb.

Engaged. Barbara Jean Douglas, 21, only daughter of Planemaker Donald Wills Douglas, and Lieut. William Bruce Arnold, 25, her childhood friend, second son of Army Air Forces chief General H. H. Arnold; in Los Angeles, Calif.

Died. Cathleen Vanderbilt Arostegui, 39, socialite fifth-generation descendant of the legendary Commodore; of a kidney ailment, in Havana, Cuba. In 1924 Mrs. Arostegui shared with her half sister Gloria Vanderbilt (now Mrs. Pasquale di Cicco) the bulk of an estimated $7,000,000 estate.

Died. William Thompson Dewart, 68, since 1925 president of the arch-Republican New York Sun; in Manhattan. One of eleven children of a Scotch economist and unsuccessful railroad promoter, Dewart rose to the general managership of the late Frank Munsey’s publishing enterprisesat the age of 28. When Munsey died, Dewart came into control of the Sun, mutualized its ownership. He originated “Don’t sell America short!”

Died. Frederick Van Nuys, 69, Democratic (Ind.) chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary; of a heart attack; in Vienna, Va. During his eleven years as a Senator the short, plumpish anti-New Dealer had sponsored an anti-lynching bill, opposed Supreme Court revamping and the Third Term. His successor will be Samuel Dillon Jackson (see p. 15).

Died. William Allen White, 75, most famed contemporary Kansan, independent Republican, main street philosopher, author of 15 books (including biographies of Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson, Coolidge); after long illness; in his native Emporia, where for 49 years he had edited the Gazette, making it the most quoted of all country newspapers. To his widow and son, William L. White, who succeeds him (TIME, Jan. 31), came a telegram from a frequent Gazette editorial target, Franklin Roosevelt: “He ennobled the profession of journalism . . . a real sense of personal loss . . . we had been the best of friends.” The U.S. had lost the last of its great personal editors, a friendly and forceful champion of freedom.

Died. Charles Haskins Townsend, 84, famed zoologist and arctichthyologist, for 35 years director of the New York Aquarium; in Miami, Fla. He was credited with having saved three varieties of rare “critters” (his invariable term) from extinction: the giant Galapagos tortoise, the Alaskan reindeer, the fur seal.