Milestones: Sep. 27, 1982

ENGAGED. David Stockman, 35, often embattled Director of the Office of Management and Budget; and Jennifer Blei, 28, IBM sales representative who met him three years ago while installing a computer in his congressional office.

MARRIED. Jimmy Breslin, 51, streetwise author and columnist; and Ronnie Eldridge, 51, assistant director for intergovernmental and community relations for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey; both for the second time; in New York City.

DIED. Bashir Gemayel, 34, President-elect of Lebanon; of injuries sustained in a bomb blast; in East Beirut (see WORLD).

DIED. Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, 46, Foreign Minister of Iran during the U.S. hostage crisis; by execution; in Tehran (see WORLD).

DIED. John Gardner, 49, prolific author of stylistically adventuresome fiction, enthusiastic teacher and, sometimes, messianic literary critic; of injuries sustained when he lost control of his motorcycle and crashed; near his home in Susquehanna, Pa., four days before he was to have married for the third time. A philosophical fabulist, Gardner wrote a dozen novels (among them, Grendel, 1971; The Sunlight Dialogues, 1972; October Light, 1976) in which he examined age-old questions like freedom vs. license through the prism of a gothic imagination that he said was set working by “the world of Walt Disney. I see those Disney images everywhere—in Dante, in Homer, above all in Chaucer.” In On Moral Fiction (1978) he argued fiercely for positive, inspiring writing and charged that, by contrast, “almost all modern art is tinny, commercial and immoral.” Head of the creative writing program at the State University of New York at Binghamton, he once said, “If I don’t teach and get my point of view across to younger writers, I will burn in hell for a thousand years.”

DIED. Grace Kelly, 52, Her Serene Highness of Monaco and Academy Award-winning actress; of a stroke and injuries sustained in a car accident; in Monte Carlo (.see NATION).

DIED. Leicester Hemingway, 67, author who wrote mostly about fishing and the outdoors in articles and six books, one of them an idolizing biography of his older (by 16 years) brother Ernest; by his own hand; in Miami Beach. His father and sister, as well as his brother, killed themselves in the face of deteriorating health. After five operations this year to stave off leg amputations from diabetes-induced circulatory problems, Leicester shot himself in the head. Two decades earlier he wrote of his brother’s suicide: “Like a samurai who felt dishonored by the word or deed of another, Ernest felt his own body had betrayed him.”

DIED. Duncan Norton-Taylor, 78, longtime writer and editor at TIME and managing editor of FORTUNE from 1959 to 1965; of a stroke; in Easton, Md. A World War II correspondent and sometime author of fiction, he viewed the editor’s role as one of “pushing, tugging, urging, restraining” and never got over the “suspicion that writing is more fun.”

DIED. Marcus Wallenberg, 82, head of the most powerful banking and industrial dynasty in Sweden and co-founder in 1972 of the Skandinaviska Enskilda Bank, now the most influential commercial bank in Sweden; of a viral infection; in Djurgården, Sweden. Part of the third generation of Wallenberg bankers who have been synonymous with Swedish business for more than a century, Marcus and his brother Jacob (who died two years ago) rebuilt Sweden’s industrial strength after the Kreuger crash in 1932. Eventually taking control of such multinational giants as Electrolux, L.M. Ericsson and Saab-Scania, Wallenberg also helped to establish the Scandinavian Airlines System in 1946 and controlled companies that employed one of every eight working Swedes. A national tennis champion as a young man, he shunned ostentation and once said of his estimable family: “We’re nothing special. We come from simple, ordinary stock, peasants, priests and a bishop. We just try to do what we can.”

DIED. Tubal Claude Ryan, 84, inventive aviation designer whose Ryan Airlines Inc. built Charles A. Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis in 60 days in 1927 for $15,000; in San Diego. A complete flying enthusiast, Ryan created and manufactured the first U.S. high-wing monoplane (the M-1), established the first regularly scheduled year-round passenger airline in the U.S., and ran an aeronautical school that trained more than 10,000 World War II pilots. During the Viet Nam War, he provided pilotless jet spy planes and pioneered the V/STOL, a vertical-and short-takeoff-and-landing plane. At his death, he was awaiting FAA certification of his newest project, the ST100 Cloudster, a 100-h.p., all-metal sailplane.

DIED. David Dubinsky, 90, visionary president of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union from 1932 to 1966; of complications following hip surgery; in New York City. A 1911 refugee from tsarist Poland, he took over the l.L.G.W.u. when it was nearly bankrupt and quickly built its strength until he was able to negotiate the first 35-hour work week and all but ban sweatshops in the garment industry. A volcanic anti-Communist liberal, he also established the first employer-financed workers’ vacations, the first health and welfare fund, the first workers’ retirement fund and the first severance pay. His credo: “You gotta operate a union with discipline, with logic—but also with a heart.”