Divorced. By Blanche Thebom, 40, Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano: Richard Metz, 47, Wall Street banker; after nine years of marriage, no children; in Juarez, Mexico.

Died. Richard Murray Simpson, 59. of Huntingdon, veteran (1937-60) Old Guard Republican Congressman from southern Pennsylvania's 18th district, who as senior Republican on the House Ways & Means Committee fought reciprocal trade with energy and cunning, was so disgruntled with President Eisenhower's free-trade policies and other indications of modern Republicanism that he urged Republican candidates to drop the President's coattails and campaign on their own principles; after brain surgery; in Washington.

Died. Lansing P. Shield, 63, president (from 1947) of Grand Union Co., onetime $20-a-week clerk for A. & P., who joined Grand Union in 1924, waged such a vigorous campaign to move the company's antiquated stores into the supermarket field that he won the top seat, where he boosted sales from $83 million to more than $600 million; of a heart attack; in Manhattan.

Died. Dudley Nichols, 64, onetime journalist (New York World) who brought care and skill to 30 years of writing and directing movies (The Informer, Stagecoach), adapted Mourning Becomes Electra for film and, at the insistence of his old friend, Eugene O'Neill, produced and directed it as well; of cancer; in Hollywood.

Died. Omer Carmichael, 66, Alabama cotton farmer's son and onetime backwoods teacher, who as superintendent (since 1945) of the Louisville, Ky. school system told his staff after the Supreme Court's decision against school segregation: "It will be my purpose to implement that decision with no effort to sidestep, no effort by subterfuge or sharp practices to defeat the purpose of the court," launched a campaign with such tact and perseverance that Louisville schools, from kindergarten through high school, were completely integrated in 1956 without a touch of violence; of a heart attack; in Louisville.

Died. Ivan Pavlovich Bardin, 76, vice president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, onetime (1910-11) worker in U.S. steel mills, who directed the construction (1929-32) of the mammoth Kuznetsk steel plant as a key part of the first five-year plan, helped boost Russia's annual steel output from 4,000,000 tons before World War I to its present 60 million, played a large part in the development of Sputnik; in Moscow.

Died. George Edmund Haynes, 79, principal founder of the quietly effective, interracial National Urban League, and a lifelong student of Negro-white relations, who emphasized that in a world where the colored races predominate, the U.S. would do well to give its Negroes equality; in Brooklyn.

Died. Victor Seastrom (Sjoestroem), 80, Swedish actor and director, who crowned a lifetime's devotion to movies of power and art (including a Hollywood stint in the '203, where he directed He Who Gets Slapped, The Scarlet Letter) with his winsome portrayal of the memory-haunted old doctor in Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries; after long illness; in Stockholm.

Died. Ada Everleigh, 93, regal co-madam (with her late sister, Minna) of Chicago's lavish turn-of-the-century bordello, the Everleigh Club, which boasted a bevy of demure girls, string music, perfume-squirting fountains and a 1,000-volume library at a price of $100 for a "mild evening," was finally closed by severe reformers in 1911, sending the millionaire sisters off to retirement in Manhattan with a golden piano and a few other mementos of the good old glittering days; in Chicago.

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