Milestones, Sep. 29, 1958

Born. To Cécile Dionne Langlois, 24, second of the four surviving Dionne quints to marry (the first: Annette), first to become a mother, and Television Technician Philippe Langlois, 27: a son, their first; in Montreal. Name: Claude. Weight: 7 Ibs. 4 oz.

Born. To Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, 46, multimillionaire sportsman, and third wife Jean Harvey Vanderbilt, 21: their first child (his fourth), a son; in Manhattan. Name: Nicholas Harvey. Weight: 10 Ibs. 1 oz.

Died. George (“Snuffy”) Stirnweiss, 38, American League batting champion in 1945 with a lowly .309 average, infielder (1943-51) for the New York Yankees, St. Louis Browns, Cleveland Indians; in the Jersey Central train wreck at Newark Bay (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS).

Died. John McPartland, 47, husky, bushy-haired chronicler of suburban sex foibles (No Down Payment), successful freelance journalist; of a heart attack; in Monterey, Calif. McPartland, who once wrote, “Sex is the great game itself.” lived as harum-scarum a life as any of his characters, had a legal wife and son at Mill Valley, Calif., a mistress at Monterey who bore him five children and who, as Mrs. Eleanor McPartland, was named the city’s 1956 “Mother of the Year.” Later, McPartland’s legal widow submitted the daughter of an unnamed third woman as one of the novelist’s rightful heirs.

Died. Phil Cook, 65, jaunty, guitar-strumming comedian of early radio, best known as the “Quaker Oats Man” who could play as many as 13 different parts on one show in a baffling variety of voices; after long illness; in Morristown, N.J.

Died. The Right Rev. Karl Morgan Block, 71, brisk, stately Protestant Episcopal Bishop of California; of a heart attack; in San Francisco. Bishop Block, who will be succeeded by his coadjutor, James Albert Pike, formerly dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan, collapsed at an ordination ceremony in Grace Cathedral, murmured to his assistant, “Bishop, will you continue?”, died in the sacristy moments later.

Died. Olaf Gulbransson, 85, snub-nosed, sybaritic cartoonist for Germany’s satirical weekly Simplicissimus since 1902 ; of a stroke; at his home overlooking Te-gernsee, West Germany. Eccentric (at work he often wore only a loincloth), Norwegian-born Gulbransson gained world repute for his boldly contoured caricatures. He continued to work for Simplicissimus even after (in 1933) it became a Nazi-run organ, once gave the political artist’s classic explanation: “I hate them as much as you do, but what’s the use fighting them?”