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Died. Kathleen Norris, 85, grandmother of the American sentimental novel (Passion Flower, Heartbroken Melody), widow of Author Charles G. Norris (Salt) and sister-in-law of the late social novelist Frank Norris (McTeague), a feminist and pacifist who in nearly half a century turned out 81 relentlessly wholesome books (10,000,000 copies sold), plus reportage and innumerable short stories for women's magazines; following a stroke; in San Francisco. "I write," she once said, "for people with simple needs, like myself," and her books played endless variations on a single theme: "Get a girl in all kinds of trouble and then get her out."

Died. The Rev. George Clair St. John, 88, longtime (1908-47) headmaster of Choate, who turned a tiny Connecticut establishment of 35 students into one of the U.S.'s foremost prep schools with an enrollment of 600 and the highest of academic rankings; of cancer; in Hobe Sound, Fla. "The Old Head," as his boys called him, forged Choate in his image; strongly Episcopal in his insistence on compulsory chapel, staunchly ethical in his devotion to the honor system, fresh and human in his habit of occasionally dismissing classes for a hike in the mountains. John F. Kennedy was one of the graduates who remembered his frequent exhortation: "Ask not what your school can do for you, but what you can do for your school."

Died. Arthur Sears Henning, 89, dean of Washington's press corps, the Chicago Tribune's softspoken, acid-penned bureau chief from 1914 to 1949 and close associate of the late Publisher Robert McCormick, whose high-cholered, ultraconservative views he usually reflected; of pneumonia; in Washington Henning knew every President since Theodore Roosevelt, classified him a "outstanding," Woodrow Wilson as "irascible" and Calvin Coolidge, extraordinarily enough, as a man who in private "would talk your arm off if you gave him a chance."