DIED. Kenneth P. O'Donnell, 53, former appointments secretary to President John F. Kennedy; of an undisclosed ailment; in Boston. Robert Kennedy's classmate at Harvard, O'Donnell helped manage J.F.K.'s 1952 and 1958 Senate campaigns and became a behind-the-scenes adviser at the White House. He made two unsuccessful bids for Massachusetts' Democratic gubernatorial nomination.

DIED. Zero Mostel, 62, comedian and actor best known for his poignant portrayal of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof; of a heart attack; in Philadelphia, where he was about to open in a new play. The son of a rabbi, Samuel Joel Mostel decided to be a painter, but supported himself with a number of odd jobs, including working as a $5-a-night stand-up comic at neighborhood parties. When he was 27, he made his professional acting debut with a series of impressions at a cafe and within the year was in Hollywood. Like the character he portrayed in Woody Allen's film The Front, Mostel was blacklisted during the McCarthy years. He made a triumphant return to the entertainment world, however, in the 1958 Broadway production of Ulysses in Nighttown, playing Leopold Bloom. In his varied roles onstage and in film--from the hapless movie entrepreneur in The Producers to the man turned beast in Ionesco's The Rhinoceros--Mostel was the master of paradoxes: a graceful fat man and a wise buffoon.

DIED. E.F. Schumacher, 66, German-born economist and author of the underground bestseller Small Is Beautiful; of a heart attack; while en route by train from Lausanne to Zurich, Switzerland. Schumacher, who immigrated to England before World War II, served as economic adviser to Britain's National Coal Board from 1950 to 1970. In his 1973 book, Schumacher maintained that continuous growth was not necessarily desirable; that small, energy-saving units of production could often best serve human needs.

DIED. Major General Wilton B. Persons, 81, amiable chief assistant to President Eisenhower (1958-61); in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. During World War II Persons was the Army's top lobbyist on Capitol Hill--a job he performed so well that Chief of Staff General George Marshall refused General Eisenhower's request for Persons' services in North Africa. Although Persons retired from the Army in 1949, Eisenhower persuaded him to return to active duty in 1951 to act as his go-between in Paris with foreign diplomats. He later served as Eisenhower's campaign adviser.

DIED. Clarence Daniel Batchelor, 89, Pulitzer-prizewinning cartoonist syndicated by the New York Daily News; in Deep River, Conn. Batchelor won his 1937 Pulitzer for a cartoon depicting war as a prostitute with a death's-head, saying to a European youth, "Come on in. I'll treat you right. I used to know your daddy."

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