Died. Robert V. Moss Jr., 54, president of the 1.8 million-member United Church of Christ since 1969, and a leading advocate of liberal causes; of cancer; in Montclair, N.J. A native North Carolinian, Moss became one of the country's youngest divinity-school presidents when he took over the Lancaster (Pa.) Theological Seminary at the age of 35. He supported full participation by women in the ministry and, though one of his sons was wounded in Viet Nam, amnesty for war resisters.

Died. Candace Mossler Garrison, 56, the hard-bitten blonde who was acquitted with her nephew-boy friend in 1966 of murdering her husband, Millionaire Jacques Mossier; from a drug overdose; in Miami Beach. One of twelve children of a Georgia farmer, Candy married Mossier, 23 years her senior, in 1948. He was found stabbed to death in their Key Biscayne apartment in 1964. Candy and her 24-year-old lover, Melvin Lane Powers, were defended by Superlawyer Percy Foreman in a lurid, seven-week trial. They parted a few years later. She was subsequently married briefly to Barnett Garrison, a Houston electrical contractor.

Died. Richard Leibert, 70, who played the "Mighty Wurlitzer" in New York City's Radio City Music Hall for 39 years; of a heart attack; in Fort Myers, Fla. Leibert became Radio City's first organist in 1932; auditioning last, he beat out other aspirants by playing a medley of the melodies they had just performed.

Died. Raymond Queneau, 73, influential avant-garde author whose linguistic pyrotechnics on everyday themes helped transform modern French fiction; in Paris. Trained in logic, psychoanalysis, mathematics and philosophy, Queneau wrote scores of poems and novels, including Zazie dans le Metro, a 1959 bestseller about the Rabelaisian exploits of an eleven-year-old nymph.

Died. Mrs. George Herman ("Babe") Ruth, 76, widow of the Sultan of Swat, baseball's greatest player; of cancer; in Manhattan. A Broadway dancer from Georgia, Claire Hodgson was unimpressed when she first met Ruth in 1923. "His face and his stomach were fat, his legs like a chorus girl's," she wrote in her 1959 memoir The Babe and I. As his second wife, she helped curb the Bambino's bacchanalian excesses during their 19-year marriage. After his death, she became the custodian of his legend. Though the Babe's home-run records (60 in a season, 714 in his career) were surpassed, she maintained, rightly, that "everyone will remember the Babe as the first."

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