Milestones, Sep. 19, 1955

Married. Conrad Nagel, 58, oldtime cinemactor (Stage Struck) turned TV star; and Micheal Coulson Smith, 32; he for the third time, she for the second; in Rumson, NJ.

Died. Stuart David Engstrand, 50, best-selling novelist who probed dark psychological themes (The Sling and the Arrow, the story of a marriage ruined by the husband’s homosexuality; Beyond the Forest, a tale of a vengeful wife); by drowning, when he walked fully clothed into a lake in Los Angeles’ MacArthur Park.

Died. Howard Kramer (“Howdie”) Gray, 54, famed Mayo Clinic abdominal surgeon, who operated on James Roosevelt in 1938, professor of surgery at the University of Minnesota, one of Princeton University’s athletic greats as end on the undefeated football “team of destiny” in 1922; by drowning as he swam to retrieve a dinghy; in Lake Pepin, Minn.

Died. Frank T. Tobey, 64, mayor of Memphis since 1953, spearhead of the campaign in the South against the proposed Dixon-Yates power project; of coronary thrombosis; in Memphis.

Died. Graham Edgar, 67, chemist and longtime (1932-52) vice president of Ethyl Corp., developer of the octane scale for measurement of the antiknock quality of motor fuels, pioneer in research that led to the production of 100-octane (high efficiency) gasoline; of leukemia; in Greenwich, Conn.

Died. Johannes Cardinal de Jong, 69, Archbishop of Utrecht, courageous anti-Nazi during World War II as chief Catholic prelate in The Netherlands, author of the classic Handbook of Church History; after long illness; in Amersfoort, The Netherlands. Ailing on the date of the Consistory in 1946 when he was to have been elevated to cardinal, Archbishop de Jong received the red hat of office from Pope Pius XII in a special ceremony at Pope Pius’ summer residence eight months later, was the first resident cardinal in The Netherlands since the Reformation.

Died. Aline Bernstein, 72, longtime top Broadway scene and costume designer (Reunion in Vienna in 1931, The Happy Time in 1949), longtime friend and confidante of the late Novelist Thomas Wolfe, model for Stage Designer Esther Jack in his novels The Web and the Rock and You Can’t Go Home Again; after a long illness; in Manhattan.

Died. Gerardus Post Herrick, 83, research engineer, inventor of the convertiplane, an aircraft (successfully tested in 1937) able to take off and land like an autogyro, convert in the air to normal high-speed flight, ancestor of current U.S. military experimental convertiplanes; in Manhattan.