Milestones: Aug. 24, 1981

DIED. Alvin Feldman, 53, veteran airline executive who had headed Continental Airlines since last year; of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound; in Los Angeles. Feldman, whose wife Rosemily died of cancer in 1980, was losing a bitter fight to prevent a takeover of the company by Texas International Airlines (see ECONOMY & BUSINESS).

DIED. James Fisk, 70, physicist who played a leading role in the development of radar and went on to serve as president and chairman of Bell Telephone Laboratories; in Elizabethtown, N.Y. Joining Bell labs, the research division of the American Telephone and Telegraph Co., as a technician in 1939, Fisk was instrumental in the development of microwave magnetrons for high-frequency radar during World War II. As head of Bell labs from 1959 to 1973, he supervised pioneering research on transistors, superconductive metals and industrial lasers.

DIED. Joseph Curran, 75, booming-voiced founder and longtime president of the National Maritime Union of America; of cancer; in Boca Raton, Fla. Curran took to the sea at 16, got fired for leading his first strike in 1936 and founded the seamen’s union the next year. A rough-and-tumble organizer, he ruled the union from 1937 to 1973, building membership to 100,000 after World War II. Fewer than 20,000 active seamen are members today.

DIED. David Noyes, 83, Chicago journalist and businessman who for 30 years was a counselor to Harry Truman; of a heart attack; in Los Angeles. Noyes went to Washington to help organize the War Production Board under Franklin Roosevelt, served as an assistant to Truman at the White House until 1953 and remained a close friend and confidant until the former President’s death in 1972, helping with his memoirs. Noyes had a hand in such historic decisions as the building of the atom bomb, the firing of General Douglas MacArthur, the establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency and the launching of the Marshall Plan.

DIED. Karl Böhm, 86, august Austrian conductor celebrated for his lucid, authoritative interpretations, especially of Mozart, Wagner and his friend Richard Strauss; of a stroke; in Salzburg, Austria. Despite the international scope of his appearances and recordings, Bohm remained most closely associated with three great native institutions: the Vienna State Opera (at which he served two stints as director), the Salzburg Music Festival and the Vienna Philharmonic. A stickler for detail who shunned showmanship for clarity and fidelity to the score, he once said: “I bring to conducting my own enthusiasm for the music—and then there are things I know that perhaps others don’t.”