* Katherine Oettinger; Expert on Raising Retarded Children

Katherine Oettinger, 94, an expert on raising retarded children. She served several presidential administrations. President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Oettinger chief of the Children’s Bureau in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in 1957. When the bureau was abolished in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson named her deputy assistant secretary for family planning and population. She retired from the government in 1970, when the Nixon administration abolished the post, and traveled the world as a population control and family planning expert. In an era when retarded children were often sent to institutions, Oettinger believed that they often could and should be cared for at home. Before working for the government, she was director of community services in the Pennsylvania welfare department, and became the dean of the School of Social Work at Boston University in 1954. In Carmel, Calif., on Oct. 3.

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Grigory Pushkin; Last Descendant of Russian Poet Alexander Pushkin

Grigory Pushkin, 83, the great-grandson and last direct descendant of Alexander Pushkin, Russia’s greatest poet. Grigory Pushkin, a highly decorated veteran of World War II, became a police officer after the war and later went to work for the Pravda publishing house, where he helped collect his famous ancestor’s work. Alexander Pushkin is perhaps the most beloved of all Russian literary figures, and nearly every Russian can recite some of his poems by heart. Among his best-known works are the epic poem “Eugene Onegin” and the play “Boris Godunov.” Grigory Pushkin organized festivals of Pushkin poetry and toured the country, delivering lectures about the Pushkin family. On Friday in Moscow.