So They Took the $17,000

One day last week Reginald Turner, 49, a tired, timid, Veterans Administration employee of Winston-Salem, N.C., arrived in Manhattan with his wife. They were whisked from the train into a dizzy whirlwind of broadcasts, playgoing, wining & dining. Soon, the Turners and their four sons would embark on a South American cruise. By selling the television sets and diamond rings that had been dumped in their laps, they would pay off a lot of old bills.

What had made life so new and different for the Turners? Last fortnight Mr. Turner, by naming a song that was being played on ABC's Stop the Music, won $17,000 worth of prizes.

In Honolulu last week, George McMillen, of Los Angeles, paused briefly on a junket to China. Among other assignments, McMillen would enter a Philippine jungle, shouting for Chloe. If she failed to answer, he was to bring home a boa constrictor. McMillen is a contest loser. He missed a $2,000 prize on NBC's Truth or Consequences. The consequence: his trip, paid for jointly by the radio show and Robert ("Believe It or Not") Ripley.

What becomes of the winners of radio contests? Are their lives permanently changed? Last week TIME looked up several of the recent big winners:

P: Mrs. Edgar Parrett, who was named Queen for a Day to the tune of $35,000 (TIME, March 15), is worried because "a lot of the junk I won hasn't been delivered yet." She doesn't know what to do with her trailer: "I haven't used it at. all, not even once. It's parked here in the yard." Her Persian lamb coat had to be sent back ("They did not have my size; I need a much larger one"). She has stored her stove and refrigerator, but likes to ride around the Navajo reservation, where she lives, in her shiny new Kaiser. The whole business was really too much bother, says Mrs. Parrett: "No more contests for me."

P: Mrs. William H. McCormick of Lock Haven, Pa. has taken up public life since winning the $17,590 Mrs. Hush (Clara Bow) contest. "A lot of civic groups asked me to make speeches. I ran for the school board and made it. If I hadn't won the contest the town never would have put a woman on the school board." At first Mrs. McCormick was a cynosure: "People arrived from hundreds of miles around, just to look at me. They made pilgrimages . . . If I didn't come to the door, they peered in the windows."

P: Richard Bartholomew, 25, who identified Mr. Hush (Jack Dempsey), got "an awful lot of letters, from people wanting me to do favors for them. A couple of women actually proposed . . . Lots of girls wrote in for a pair of nylons." But Bartholomew gave his nylons to his mother and his girl friend, distributed most of his prizes to his family. Then he went back to the University of Michigan, where he is working for a Ph.D. in chemical engineering. Last summer he got married, took a free honeymoon trip to Banff. "It was very beautiful, even more so than we'd expected. I guess it was the gift I appreciated most. It was the one we got the most use out of."

P: Mrs. Ruth Annette Subbie, of Fort Worth, who guessed Miss Hush (Martha Graham), has sold six of her 21 prizes, but she wrote an "enthusiastic letter" to every manufacturer who donated something. She exchanged the $1,500 beaver coat for three $500 coats--and gave each of her two daughters one. Her home has been transformed by the Venetian blinds, Bendix home laundry, Tappan range and television set. She has since won two $10 radio prizes and a radio console. But she is no professional, she insists; it's just her hobby.

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