Born. To John D. Rockefeller IV, 33, West Virginia secretary of state, and Sharon Rockefeller, 26, daughter of Illinois Senator Charles Percy: their second child, a girl; in Charleston, W. Va. Name: Valerie Blanchette.

Born. To Strom Thurmond, 68, South Carolina's Republican Senator, and Nancy Moore Thurmond, 24, former Miss South Carolina (1966): their first child, a girl; in Greenwood, S.C. Name: Nancy Moore. Watching her perform noisily in her crib, Thurmond quipped: "I believe she's staging a filibuster."

Died. Joseph Valachi, 66, professional criminal turned informer; of a heart attack; at a federal prison near El Paso, Texas, where he was serving a life sentence for murder. During public hearings before a Senate subcommittee in 1963, Valachi revealed details of the operations and membership of the crime syndicate popularly called the Mafia. He argued that the organization was actually called "La Cosa Nostra" (Our Thing), a fact that some insiders doubted, but Valachi's testimony gave currency to the term and stimulated the Government's campaign against organized crime.

Died. Sherman Mills Fairchild, 74, inventor and industrialist; in Manhattan. A college dropout (Harvard, University of Arizona, Columbia), Fairchild turned a knack for tinkering into an aviation and photographic empire. While at Harvard he invented a primitive flash camera; by 1918 he had developed one of the first between-the-lens shutters for aerial cameras. The need for an aircraft to use his cameras for aerial mapping led him into plane building, and in 1926 the fledgling Fairchild Aviation Corp. introduced the first enclosed-cabin monoplane. During World War II, Fairchild turned out thousands of PT-19 trainers and developed the C-119 "Flying Boxcar" transport. At his death, he was one of the largest stockholders in IBM and chairman of both Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp. and Fairchild Hiller Corp.

Died. Charles A. Cannon, 78, chairman of Cannon Mills Co.; of a stroke; in Kannapolis, N.C. Son of the company's founder, Cannon initiated a number of industry advances, including pastel colors for towels and matching towel sets, that helped to make Cannon Mills one of the largest textile companies in the nation (1970 sales, $306 million). Yet he was also the last of the oldtime textile barons. He owned and ran the company town of Kannapolis. Though his company was a publicly held corporation, he once refused to send proxy material to outside stockholders because the New York Stock Exchange "established a new set of rules, and we disagree with some of them."

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