Died. Herbert Chitepo, 51, chairman of the Zimbabwe African National Union, a black Rhodesian freedom movement; in a land mine explosion as he backed out of his garage; in Lusaka, Zambia. In 1954 Chitepo became Rhodesia's first black lawyer (a special law was required to allow him to occupy chambers with white colleagues). An organizer of the Rhodesian African Nationalist movement, Chitepo went into exile after the movement was banned. His murder shadows efforts toward black-white detente in southern Africa.

qed

Died. Theodore Schocken, 60, president of Schocken Books, Inc.; after a long illness; in White Plains, N.Y. A Jew, Schocken took over his father's Berlin publishing house in 1934 at the age of 19, issued a collection of Franz Kafka, including the corrosively antitotalitarian novel The Trial. Publication was soon halted by the Gestapo. Driven into exile in 1938, Schocken fought with the U.S. Army against the Nazis, later established his own publishing house in New York, bringing out translations of Kafka's once verboten works.

qed

Died. Joe ("Ducky") Medwick, 63, hardhitting Hall of Fame outfielder; of an apparent heart attack; in St. Petersburg, Fla. A charter member of the St. Louis Cardinals' rambunctious "gas house gang" of the 1930s, the muscular Medwick, one of baseball's best bad-ball batters, dredged ankle-high pitches out of the dust and sent balls headed for his ear screaming over the wall. His lifetime average: .324. Short-fused Ducky was as quick with his fists as his bat. Running out a triple for his eleventh hit of the series in the seventh game of the 1934 championship between St. Louis and Detroit, Medwick was spiked by the Tiger third baseman and responded in kind, provoking a legendary riot. At inning's end, Tiger fans peppered left fielder Ducky with so many pies, vegetables and candied apples that he had to be yanked from the game. -

Died. Don Jaime Borbon y Battenberg, 66, pretender to the Spanish throne; following a stroke; in St. Gallen, Switzerland. Son of Spain's last monarch, the syphilitic Alfonso XIII, Don Jaime was born a deaf-mute. He eventually learned to speak four languages, led a sybaritic life, mostly in Italy, after his father was forced to abdicate in 1931. Don Jamie renounced his claim to the Spanish throne in 1934, but began having second thoughts in the '50s as aging Caudillo Francisco Franco vacillated between Borbon claimants who he hoped would restore the monarchy. Don Jaime was bested in the regal jockeying by his handsome nephew Juan Carlos de Borbon y Borbon.

Died. Clarence L. ("Biggie") Munn, 66, football coach at Michigan State University from 1947 to 1953; of a stroke; in East Lansing, Mich. When "the Big Man" was hired in 1947, M.S.U.'s team was foundering. In the first game that Biggie coached, his Spartans were obliterated 55-0 by scornful rivals from the University of Michigan. Munn rallied, recruited his "brawn trust" and trained them so skillfully that they won 54 games, lost only nine and tied two in his six years as coach.

qed

Died. Vincent Sheean, 75, Odyssean foreign correspondent and author; following treatment for lung cancer; in Arola, Italy. Sheean covered many of the century's key events: the rise to power of Mussolini and Hitler, the Chinese revolution of 1927, the Spanish Civil War, the London Blitz and the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. Charing at the shibboleth of objectivity, he adopted a personal, partisan, generally leftist tone, though his fervor cooled after the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939. After the war he turned to biography, writing about Gandhi, Verdi, and his friends Sinclair Lewis and Dorothy Thompson. But his best work is his own Personal History (1935), a minor classic on his first years as a swashbuckling, trench-coated correspondent.

qed

Died. Perle Mesta, 85, capital society's "hostess with the mostes' "; of an apparent heart attack; in Oklahoma City. Famed as "Two-Party Perle" for her bipartisan hospitality, Mesta assembled Senators and Congressmen, celebrities, showpeople and occasionally Presidents for elaborately calibrated soirees over three decades. Perle's gaiety, feigned naughtiness and passion for scandalous secrets charmed a generation of guests. Heiress to fortunes from her father and her husband, a Pittsburgh steel magnate, she mastered machine-tool manufacturing, invested in cattle ranching, campaigned for an equal-rights amendment for women in the 1930s, and buttonholed Southwestern oil barons for contributions to her "hero" Harry Truman during his come-from-behind campaign in 1948. Truman reciprocated in 1949 by creating for her the post of Minister to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, where her fetes for the duchess and footloose G.I.s inspired Irving Berlin's 1950 musical Call Me Madam. Her reign as Washington's leading hostess was resumed in 1954 and continued till 1972 with a brief interregnum during the Kennedy years (she backed Nixon in 1960), though she gradually shaded into the role of dowager. Ailing from a hip injury, Mesta left Washington last year without fanfare to be close to her brother, who was holding her hand when she died.

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