ENGAGED. Nelle Nugent, 42, a top Broadway producer (Amadeus, Nicholas Nickleby, The Dresser); and Jolyon Fox Stern, 42, insurance company magnate; in New York City. The couple, who met 2 1/2 years ago when he sold her a policy, plan to be married in April.

DIED. Sam ("Lightnin") Hopkins, 69, black country-blues singer and guitarist whose funky, improvisational style was a major influence on rock musicians in the 1960s and 1970s; of cancer; in Houston. A contemporary and peer of such blues artists as Muddy Waters and B.B. King, Hopkins' high-pitched voice sang sardonically about pain, suffering and death while his fingers played a hard-driving bass in irregular rhythms. He recorded more than 100 singles and wrote about 600 songs.

DIED. Sue Carol Ladd, 72, actress and talent agent who launched the late actor Alan Ladd's career and married him; of a heart attack; in West Los Angeles.

DIED. Sally Stanford, 78, flamboyant San Francisco madam who once served as mayor of Sausalito, Calif; in Greenbrae, Calif. Her opulent Nob Hill bordello, which opened in 1942, featured rare antiques and a 9-ft. Roman bath. Stanford, who admitted to 17 arrests and at least five husbands, relocated to Sausalito, becoming first a restaurateur and then a city council member. The subject of a 1978 TV movie, she defended prostitution to the very end, saying: "If we had more of it, we wouldn't have so much trouble."

DIED. Stringfellow Barr, 85, distinguished author and educator who rocked the academic world in 1937 when, as the new president of St. John's College, he instituted a radical curriculum requiring the study of 100 classics; of pneumonia; in Alexandria, Va. Barr felt that colleges should scrap textbooks and introduce students to such authors as Plato, Darwin, Dante, Shakespeare and Marx.

DIED. Helen Merrell Lynd, 85, pioneering scholar and co-author of two sociological classics, Middletown: A Study in Contemporary American Culture (1929) and Middletown in Transition (1937); in Warren, Ohio. Lynd and her late husband Robert melded anthropological and psychological insights to research the daily lives of the residents of Muncie, Ind., the first such major study of a U.S. community.

DIED. Louis Marx Sr., 85, manufacturer and philanthropist; in White Plains, N.Y. The Henry Ford of toymaking, he relied on mass production, underpricing, and a shrewd adapter's eye. Among his discoveries was a Filipino folk toy that in 1928 became the yoyo. A collector of famous friends, notably President Dwight Eisenhower, he aided poor children with 1 million gift toys a year.

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