Divorced. By Phyllis Diller, 48, raucous-toned nightclub comedienne; Sherwood Diller, 52, her manager and longtime butt of onstage gibes; on grounds of incompatibility; after 25 years of marriage, five children; in St. Louis.

Died. Wendell Johnson, 59, longtime (since 1931) University of Iowa speech pathologist, himself a onetime tongue-tied stutterer, who could barely get his name out when he registered at Iowa's pioneer speech clinic in 1926, conquered his defect and went on to write a famed series of studies indicating that children stammer most often because of "conscientious but misunderstanding listeners, usually mothers," trying overly hard to cure what are only natural defects in early speech; of arteriosclerosis; in Iowa City.

Died. Paul ("Big Poison") Waner, 62, one of baseball's greatest hitters, a bat-boy-sized (153 Ibs.) lefthander who went for singles, not homers, and in 20 years in the majors, 15 with the Pittsburgh Pirates, sprayed out 3,152 hits for a .333 average, before retiring in 1945 to occasional coaching jobs--and a niche in the Hall of Fame; of pulmonary emphysema; in Sarasota, Fla. The Big Poison nickname was to distinguish him from his brother and fellow Pirate Lloyd ("Little Poison"), whom he outweighed by 3 Ibs.

Died. General Sir George Watkin Eben James Erskine, 66, armor-plated British tankman who won the D.S.O. after Nazi General Erwin Rommel's smashing defeat at El Alamein, later led the famed "Desert Rats" (7th Armored Division) in North Africa, Sicily and Normandy, in postwar years fought his last campaign (1953-55) against Kenya's Mau Mau; of heart disease; in South Cheriton, England.

Died. Francis Trounson Hearle, 78, co-founder and onetime chairman (1950-54) of Britain's vast De Havilland Aircraft Co., an ex-mechanic who helped Sir Geoffrey de Havilland build his first biplane in 1908, later masterminded D.H.'s massive World War II output, including 7,781 Mosquitoes, the famed twin-engined plywood bombers that could hit 404 m.p.h.; of a ruptured aorta; in Hertfordshire, England.

Died. Leonhard Felix Fuld, 82, wealthy Manhattan recluse and philanthropist, whose fortune from stocks and real estate topped $25 million at his death and whose abiding interest (he never explained why) was the health of student nurses, for which he gave hospitals some $10 million over the years, all the while living with a sister in one of his Harlem tenements, until she died of malnutrition in 1956; of arteriosclerosis; in Trenton, N.J.

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