Milestones, Jun. 26, 1944

Born. To Ernest Tener Weir. 69, chairman of National Steel Corp. (No. 6 U.S. producer) ; and Mary Hayward Weir, 28, his third wife, onetime secretary in his New York office: their first child, a son; in Manhattan. Name: David Manson. Weight: 7 lbs. 6 oz.

Born. To Marine Major Joseph Jacob Foss, 29, fighter-pilot ace (26 Jap planes. Congressional Medal of Honor) ; and June Foss, 24: their first child, a daughter, in Santa Barbara, Calif. Name: Cheryl June. Weight : 6 lbs.

Married. Mimi Chandler, 17, torch-singing Hollywood starlet (And the Angels Sing), daughter of Kentucky’s Senator A. B. (“Happy”) Chandler; and Army Ferry Command Major John Cabell, 27, cousin of Novelist (James) Branch Cabell; in Los Angeles.

Died. Georges Barrère, 67, famed flutist (TIME, Jan. 3); after a stroke; in Kingston, N.Y. Alumnus of the orchestra of Paris’ Folies Bergères, Flutist Barrère spent nearly 40 years in the U.S., playing in Walter Damrosch’s New York Symphony, touring with the Barrere Little Symphony, and teaching a whole generation of younger U.S. flutists. He affected an imperial beard, fawn-colored trousers, a Prince Albert and an assortment of exotic flutes made of silver, gold and platinum, valued as high as $3,000 apiece.

Died. Lady Decies, 72, prominent socialite of the prewar Paris-New York set; of coronary thrombosis; in Manhattan. The daughter of Philadelphia Banker Joseph William Drexel, wealthy “Bessie” was a widow at 27, at 29 married Harry Symes Lehr, the Mauve Decade’s “court jester” to U.S. Society. Under his tutelage she became the lush favorite of the Four Hundred, told much if not all in a bitter book (“King Lehr” and the Gilded Age) written after his death in 1929. Among the book’s revelations: Lehr was a homosexual and had consented to marry only after she offered him $25,000 a year and expenses. When she was 64, she decided she wanted to “attend the coronation,” married Lord Decies (and outlived him by four months). Quitting Paris for the U.S. when the Nazis invaded, Lady Decies continued her society shenanigans, to the edification of provincial Americans. Her bejeweled presence kept society reporters scratching for phrases to surpass the brash New York Daily News’s report of her wearing a tiara “the size of a nail keg.”

Killed in Action. Army Air Forces Captain Jefferson Davis Dickson, 47, one-time “Tex Rickard of Europe” who won fame and fortune when he built big, bumbling Primo Camera into an international attraction; in an air battle over France last July (not announced until last week).