BORN. To Jane Pauley, 33, bright-eyed, bushy-maned co-host of NBC's Today Show; and her husband Garry Trudeau, 35, Pulitzer-prizewinning cartoonist whose musical adaptation of his Doonesbury comic strip is currently on Broadway; their first children, twins, a boy and a girl; in New York City.

CHARGED. Maury Wills, 51, former base-stealing (104 in 1962) shortstop of the Los Angeles Dodgers and manager of the Seattle Mariners (1980-81); with felony possession of cocaine after police spotted him driving an Audi 4000 that had been reported stolen; in Los Angeles. Though the car turned out to have been borrowed from a friend, officers found a vial containing a small amount of cocaine.

DIED. Dennis Wilson, 39, boisterous, handsome drummer, keyboardist and singer of California's enduring rock-'n'-roll band the Beach Boys; of accidental drowning when he dived off a boat slip into 12 ft. of water; in Marina Del Rey, Calif. Wilson, the Beach Boys' only genuine surfer, named the upbeat, harmonizing quintet that since 1961 has glorified the sea, the sun, teen love and cars in such hits as Good Vibrations, California Girls and Surfin' U.S.A. Although Wilson often feuded with other group members, he was on board for the satisfying moment last summer when President and Mrs. Reagan overruled Interior Secretary James Watt's tone-deaf putdown of the Beach Boys as "unwholesome."

DIED. William J. Abernathy, 50, Harvard Business School professor and auto-industry expert who in 1980 co-wrote the influential book Managing Our Way to Economic Decline, which contended that the principal causes of America's industrial-production ills were poor corporate management and technological sluggishness; of cancer; in Boston.

DIED. Jimmy Demaret, 73, fun-loving golfer who was the first man to win three Masters titles ('40, '47, '50); apparently of a heart attack; in Houston. The Professional Golfers' Association's top money winner in 1947 (his total: a now laughable $27,936), Demaret often sported garish garb that scandalized sartorially conservative fellow athletes but blazed the fairway trail for today's multihued golfers. Said an admiring Sam Snead of his hard-partying contemporary: "No telling what Jimmy would have done if he'd toed the line and gone to bed at a decent hour."

DIED. William Demarest, 91, vaudevillian and screen actor best known as the cantankerous, sweet-hearted, sourpussed Uncle Charley from 1965 to 1972 on TV's My Three Sons; apparently of a heart attack; in Palm Springs, Calif. He developed his sputtering, comic tough-guy persona in more than 100 films, notably including half a dozen Preston Sturges comedies.