Milestones, Jun. 8, 1959

Died. Elliot Ettelson Cohen. 60, editor of the monthly Commentary since its founding in 1945; by suffocation (a plastic bag over his head); in Manhattan. Though he addressed his magazine to a Jewish audience and filled it with Jewish lore and scholarship, Cohen included political and cultural articles of such vitality and penetration that he won a broad, loyal readership.

Died. Ludlow Griscom, 68, a leading U.S. field ornithologist who used to go bird watching with Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II; after long illness; in Cambridge. Mass.

Died. Charles Alien Ward, 72, two-fisted Minnesota advertising executive (president of St. Paul’s Brown & Bige-low); of a heart attack; in Beverly Hills, Calif. An adventurer in his youth. Ward roamed the waterfronts in China, prospected for gold in Alaska, ended up in Leavenworth in 1919 on a narcotics conviction. His cellmate turned out to be H. H. Bigelow. then the penny-pinching president of Brown & Bigelow, in prison for income tax evasion. After both were freed, Bigelow offered Ward a job. helped him rise through the ranks of Brown & Bigelow. Ward took over the company in 1933, saw sales of the firm’s advertising specialty items (notably calendars) climb to $50 million in 1958. Convinced that rehabilitation must take place outside prison, outgoing, kindly Charlie Ward hired some 200 ex-convicts at Brown & Bigelow, wrote and sent cash to thousands of others.

Died. Emory D. Alvord, 73, Utah-born Congregational missionary who brought “the Gospel of the Plow” to Southern Rhodesia, revolutionized agricultural methods in central Africa; of a heart attack; in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia.

Died. Edward A. Walsh, 78, one of baseball’s great pitchers, whose dazzling spitball won 40 games in 1908; of cancer; in Pompano Beach, Fla. Walsh won an average of 24 games a season during his peak years (1906-12) with the Chicago White Sox, pitched a record total of 464 innings in one season, but was so overworked that he faded fast in his early 303. He never made more than $6,500 a year, and although elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame in 1946, had to eke out a living on a pittance of a pension.

Died. John Cromwell Lincoln, 92, founder (1893) of Lincoln Electric Co., one of the world’s largest welding-equipment manufacturers, inventor who took out more than 50 patents for electrical devices, owner of a real estate empire reputed to be worth $100 million, pamphleteer who promoted the single-tax ideas of Henry George and ran for U.S. Vice President in 1924 on the single-tax platform of the Commonwealth Land Party; in Scottsdale. Ariz.