Mrs. Parrett's Day

Last week, burbling Cinemactress Billie Burke was called into the studio to pick a name out of a fishbowl. The name happened to belong to Mrs. Edgar Parrett, 56, of Shiprock, N. Mex. That was how Mrs. Parrett became "Queen for a Day" and the winner of a staggering $35,000 assortment of prizes, the biggest, of course, in radio history--at least for a few weeks.*

Mrs. Parrett, who lives on a Navajo reservation, answered no questions, wrote no essay, did not even hear the broadcast that made her rich. She qualified because she is a mother-in-law, and she won (over 3,000,000 others nominated by listeners) because her name happened to be drawn.

Her prizes include: a house, a home freezer, an automobile and trailer, a Persian lamb coat, a diamond ring, a diamond watch, a trip to Manhattan, the Vermont mountains and Bermuda, a ten-piece wardrobe, an electric refrigerator, a pantryful of canned goods, a set of fine china and another of flat silverware, a coffee brewer, a carpet, a vacuum cleaner, an electric washing machine, a ten-piece mahogany bedroom set, a gas stove, an electric stove, a fitted calf handbag, an automatic ironer, four end tables, a kolinsky scarf, a pressure cooker, six pieces of leather luggage, a year's supply of bed linen, an electric mixer.

Mrs. Parrett, calm about the whole thing, said: "I was hoping."

*Another big winner last week was Mrs. Florence Hubbard, a 65-year-old widow who makes $30 a week as a checker in a Chicago department store. Mrs. Hubbard correctly named Jack Benny as the Walking Man (TIME, March 8) and collected $22,500 worth of prizes.

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