Milestones, Jul. 9, 1979

BORN. To E. Howard Hunt, 60, convicted Watergate burglar and author of 54 books, and his wife of 18 months, Laura Martin Hunt, 34, a former Spanish teacher: a son; in Miami. The child, named Austin Dairing, is her first and his fifth (four by his late first wife).

DIED. Philippe Cousteau, 39, younger son and chief collaborator of Jacques-Yves Cousteau in oceanographic studies and films; after the seaplane he was piloting sank upon landing near Alverca, Portugal. The M.I.T.-educated Cousteau, who donned his first wet suit as a toddler, directed the camerawork for his father's Emmy Award-winning TV series.

DIED. Philippe Halsman, 73, one of the world's best-known portrait photographers; after a brief illness; in New York City. Born to Jewish parents in Latvia, Halsman spent ten years as a successful fashion photographer in Paris before fleeing to the U.S. in 1940, one step ahead of the Nazis. In New York, he became a frequent contributor to Look, the Saturday Evening Post and LIFE, for which he did more covers (101) than any other photographer. Three of his portraits—of Albert Einstein, John Steinbeck and Adlai Stevenson—appeared on postage stamps. These and others of John Kennedy and Winston Churchill are so indelible that one critic noted, "The chances are, when we see [these figures] in our mind's eye, we are seeing the Halsman image."

DIED. Theodore M. Bernstein, 74, former assistant managing editor of the New York Times, who served as the paper's prose polisher and syntax surgeon for almost five decades, authoring seven popular texts on English usage and journalism; of cancer; in New York City. In a witty Times house organ called Winners & Sinners, the shirtsleeves vigilante caught solecists in the act and fended off such encroaching verbal vices as the politician's "windy-foggery," Madison Avenue's "addiction" and faddish "hot-rod writing."

DIED. Carleton Beals, 85, itinerant journalist and authority on Latin America; in Middletown, Conn. Arriving in Mexico City by wild burro in 1917, Beals went on to witness and report four Mexican rebellions, Mussolini's rise to power in Italy, and General Augusto Sandino's guerrilla uprising against U.S. occupation of Nicaragua in the late '20s.

DIED. Lessing Rosenwald, 88, former chairman of Sears, Roebuck, and collector of rare books, prints and drawings which he donated to the National Gallery of Art and the Library of Congress; in Jenkintown, Pa. Son of Julius Rosenwald, mail-order pioneer who preceded him as Sears chairman, Rosenwald retired from Sears at 48 to devote himself to philanthropy, various political interests and his lifelong passion, collecting.