Died. Norman Eric Kirk, 51, thunder-voiced politician who ended the New Zealand Labor Party's twelve-year exile from power and became Prime Minister after a 1972 electoral sweep; of a heart attack; in Wellington. A onetime manual laborer, 6-ft. 1-in., 250-lb.

"Big Norm " first went to Parliament in 1957 and climbed rapidly, rising to Labor Party chief when he was 42. As Prime Minister and also Foreign Minister, Kirk favored developing unindustrialized regions in his country's southern island, recalled New Zealand's troops from Southeast Asia and vociferously opposed French nuclear testing in the Pacific.

Died. General Creighton Abrams, 59, commander of U.S. forces in South Viet Nam from 1968 to 1972 and Army Chief of Staff (see THE NATION).

Died. Joseph Anthony Beirne, 63, president of the 500,000-member Communications Workers of America from its founding in 1947 until last June; of cancer; in Washington, D.C. When he was 18, Beirne (pronounced Burn) went to work as a telephone repairman earning 320 an hour; in 1937 he became president of a local affiliate of the National Federation of Telephone Workers; six years later he headed the N.F.T.W., and helped transform it into the C.W.A.

Beirne was a restless, philosophical leader; he called three strikes against the Bell System in 1947, 1968 and 1971, but acknowledged that automation would dull the cutting edge of his union's major weapon. A member of the executive council of the CIO (later, AFL-CIO) since 1949, Beirne was one of the few labor leaders to support George McGovern's presidential campaign in 1972.

Died. Harry Partch, 73, far-out American composer and instrument maker; of a heart attack; in San Diego.

Feeling hemmed in by tradition, Partch added 31 tones to the twelve possible in the existing octave, then built entire orchestras out of cloud chambers, shell casings and auto exhaust pipes. With casually carpentered but poetically named instruments (the Boo, Whang Gun and Surrogate Kithara), Partch played compositions bearing such provocative titles as Visions Fill the Eyes of a Defeated Basketball Team in the Shower Room.

Died. Moses Soyer, 74, Russian-born painter given largely to creating moody, sympathetic portraits in a traditional romantic-realistic style; in Manhattan. Soyer, whose twin brother Raphael and younger brother Isaac are also artists, came to the U.S. with his family when he was twelve. He received much of his early formal art training on Manhattan's Lower East Side, where rough-hewn street people served as his models. A diminutive man with large gentle eyes, Soyer was well known for his portrait of Fellow Artist Jack Levine and for The Green Room, a painting of three women. He resisted the pull of abstraction that drew many of his contemporaries, and stuck doggedly with the human form in his attempts to define "mankind through man or woman."

Died. Otto Kruger, 89, durable actor who mastered the art of portraying complex, almost amiable villains; following a series of strokes; in Los Angeles. Kruger spent the first part of his long career as a Broadway matinee idol.

But he was best as an invariably gray-haired, dignified but somehow decadent man: he played a sympathetic Nazi in Steinbeck's The Moon Is Down (1942), a gracious saboteur in Alfred Hitchcock's movie of the same name (1942).

He also appeared in High Noon (1952) and Magnificent Obsession (1954).

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