DIED. Ruth Carter Stapleton, 54, evangelist and practitioner of "inner healing," who was instrumental in the 1966 spiritual rebirth of her elder brother, former President Jimmy Carter; of pancreatic cancer; in Fayetteville, N.C. A self-described "catalyst for God," the ebullient, unordained born-again Christian minister suffered a severe depression in the late '50s after the births of her four children and a car accident. Crediting her recovery to God, she mixed prayer with psychology to heal troubled or afflicted believers. After she learned of her terminal disease five months ago, Stapleton refused conventional medical treatment, saying, "I have seen so many miracles. I want now to put all my faith in God."
DIED. Harold K. Johnson, 71, stoic, tenacious Army Chief of Staff (1964-68); of cancer; in Washington. A survivor of the infamous Bataan death march, in which 8,150 prisoners of war perished on the Japanese-held Philippine island of Luzon during World War II, and a much decorated infantry commander in the Korean War,
Johnson was chosen for the Army's top post over 43 generals of higher seniority. He oversaw the greatest peacetime military buildup in U.S. history and consistently urged more aggressive bombing of Viet Nam.
DIED. Wilfred Burchett, 72, Australian journalist whose pro-Communist sympathies undercut the credibility of his many newspaper dispatches and books written behind the Iron Curtain in Europe and Asia, including wartime reports from North Korea and later North Viet Nam; of complications from a liver ailment; in Sofia, Bulgaria, where he had lived for the past year.
DIED. Alan Moorehead, 73, Australian-born author of some 20 historical books, most notably The White Nile (1960) and The Blue Nile (1962), bestselling, detailed accounts of the exploration of the river's two parts that read like carefully crafted adventure novels; of a stroke; in London.
DIED. Roscoe Drummond, 81, journalist and author who for half a century chronicled power and politics in Washington; in a nursing home in Princeton, N.J. Starting out in 1924 as a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor, the witty, diminutive (under 5 ft.) Drummond rose to executive editor and during the 1940s ran the paper's Washington bureau. There he covered eleven U.S. Presidents, largely in his thrice-weekly "State of the Nation" column, which was syndicated in 150 newspapers after he joined the New York Herald Tribune in 1953.
DIED. Leopold III, King of the Belgians, 81; of a heart attack; in Brussels. In 1940, instead of fleeing to set up a government in exile, the urbane, willful monarch surrendered to Hitler's invading army and was held prisoner during World War II. Self-exiled after the war because of Belgian bitterness about his surrender and disapproval of his second marriage to a commoner, Leopold returned in 1951, but violent riots broke out, persuading him to abdicate to his son, the bashful, 20-year-old Baudouin, who has since presided over a stable, prosperous Belgium.