Milestones

DIED. Henry Beetle Hough, 88, journalist, author and environmental conscience who owned, edited and published the Vineyard Gazette, one of America's best country weeklies, from 1920 to 1968 and continued as its editor almost until his death; in Edgartown, Mass., on the offshore island of Martha's Vineyard. Hough's often poetic descriptions of everyday island events and the passing seasons, and his fervent quest to protect the Vineyard from mindless development, brought a steady growth in readership, while his popular book Country Editor (1940), followed by 21 novels, histories, children's tales and collected pieces, spread his fame beyond New England.