DIED. Thomas Schippers, 47, a top American conductor who had a special reverence for the romantic repertory and a knack for reviving neglected works; of lung cancer; in New York City. Schippers was fond of saying that he wished he had been born a century earlier, but he made up for lost time. He started playing the piano at four. At 20 he was chosen to conduct the world premiere of Gian Carlo Menotti's opera The Consul. He became Menotti's favorite conductor, a regular on the podium at New York's Metropolitan Opera, and in 1970 he was named music director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

DIED. S.L.A. Marshall, 77, a towering military historian who analyzed all the wars of modern America; after a long illness; in El Paso, Texas. "Slam" Marshall was seldom far from the sound of gunfire. After growing up in El Paso, he became a combat infantry officer in World War I. He covered the Spanish Civil War, and during World War II, he became the chief combat historian in the Central Pacific and Europe. Out of his experiences in the Korean War came his most esteemed books, The River and the Gauntlet and Pork Chop Hill. His writing was distinguished by narrative drive, a gritty attention to the details of combat and a plain-spoken sympathy for the men who suffered and triumphed on the front lines. He could not agree with people, he said, who thought that "war is a game in which the soul of man no longer counts."

DIED. Dr. Alvan Leroy Barach, 82, developer of the first effective oxygen tent; at New York City's Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, where from 1922 to 1965 he had researched and treated respiratory disease. He searched for ways to allow his patients to lead normal lives, developing, among other devices, a portable oxygen dispenser mounted in a walking stick.

DIED. Baroness Spencer-Churchill of Chartwell, 92, Winston Churchill's "darling Clementine"; of a heart attack; while eating lunch at her London home. An aristocratic beauty, she was married at 23 to Churchill, ten years her senior and already a Member of Parliament and a Cabinet minister, amid great predictions that their marriage would last six months. It lasted for 57 years, and Winston called it "the most fortunate and joyous event" of his life. During his long exile in the political wilderness, her intelligence, her tact and her faith in him made her the perfect foil for his tempestuous outbursts and black depressions. The mother of five (only two survive: Actress Sarah Churchill and Mary Soames, wife of Diplomat Christopher Soames), she accompanied her husband on wartime missions abroad, even on late-night inspections of London during the blitz. Last February, to meet expenses, she began selling off family heirlooms and Sir Winston's paintings, but rejected any offer of public assistance.

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