Vacation

The day was cold and the reporters wondered if the President had his "wool-ies" on. "Just what you see here," said Harry Truman, pulling back the lapels of his overcoat. "Maybe you should have worn them," admonished Bess Truman.

Bess was right. Sitting on the Army side of Philadelphia's Franklin Field, the President found his box definitely chilly.

The Army supplied only a plain blanket for the presidential lap (instead of the electric blanket furnished by the Navy last year), and the electric foot warmer did not work. But Harry Truman cheerfully hammed a few appropriate poses for photographers, oohed and aahed like any common citizen at the power of Army's football team (see SPORT). "I enjoyed it but it was a little one-sided," commented old artilleryman Truman before he left for home.

With time out for a relaxed Thanksgiving Day, Harry Truman had worked hard all week cleaning up his desk. But at week's end, he turned out with the rest of official Washington to hear Margaret Truman sing with the National Symphony Orchestra. From the presidential box, her father beamed down as she sang Mozart's Dove Sono and Glazunov's La Primavera. She was called back for three encores, sang one--Smilin' Through--directly at her parents. "I wept," said proud Harry Truman unabashedly. "I almost tore up two programs in the excitement."

The critics, like other critics during her 14-city tour, had mixed reactions. The Times-Herald found that "the fresh and brilliant luster of two years ago has been exchanged for a warmth and depth of tone that the music lovers found exciting." The Washington Post admitted some improvement but added tartly: "Miss Truman is too much of a vocal beginner to appear in public."

Next morning, having read the press notices, the President with wife, daughter, and staff, took off from Washington's national airport for the warm breezes and whispering palms of Key West. There he would have to do some work--on the State of the Union message, on the budget, on finding a replacement for retiring Atomic Energy Commission Chairman David Lilienthal (see The Administration). But Harry Truman planned to spend as much of his three weeks as he could just loafing.

Before leaving Washington, the President:

P: Finally found someone to fill the important job of chairman of the Munitions Board, a post for which the Senate had refused to accept Carl A. Ilgenfritz because he would not give up his $70,000 salary from U.S. Steel. The nominee: Hubert E. Howard, 60-year-old Chicago coal executive, who has been serving as personnel policy chief in the Defense Department.

P: Admitted that his reducing contest with Military Aide Harry Vaughan and Brigadier General Wallace Graham (TIME, Nov. 28) had ended in a draw: no one had lost any weight at all.

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