Promise Fulfilled

For his first big ceremonial bill signing, President Eisenhower lined up three Lucite pens, each stamped "The President, the White House." Then, picking up one pen after the other, he squiggled his signature at the bottom of the Holland bill, which returns to the states the control of offshore oil lands within their historic limits. As the bill became law, one of Ike's cardinal campaign promises became fact. He swung around from his desk with a broad grin for the assembled group of Congressmen and Senators--mostly Southern and mostly Democrats--and asked where "Mr. Sam" was. Texas' Sam Rayburn stepped forward, shook hands warmly, and whispered something in the presidential ear which left Ike roaring.

Last week the President also:

P:Asked the White House News Photographers to forgo the traditional toast to the President at their annual dinner, and propose instead a substitute toast to the troops in Korea.

P:Shook the hand of plump Elizabeth Hess, 13, the national spelling champion, and confessed that, as a small boy he had been spelled down on "syzygy." The President further obliged Elizabeth with a definition: "Having to do with the orbit of the moon" (pretty close to Webster's "The point of an orbit, as of the moon, at which the planet is in conjunction or opposition").

P:Nominated Samuel C. Waugh, 63, a Lincoln, Neb. banker, to be Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, succeeding Harold F. Linder.

P:Lunched for the first time since he became President with Bernard Baruch, who told reporters he believed he had been lunching with Presidents since the days of Theodore Roosevelt, refused to tell what he and Ike talked about in their 90-minute discussion.

P:Disclosed to S. R. Burkholder, the trucking industry's "Driver of the Year," that he had been an enthusiastic hot-rodder in his youth, and as a young officer had owned a souped-up Ford, but admitted giving up driving altogether 15 years ago, because he had so many things on his mind and couldn't concentrate on the job of driving.

P:Released the text of his letter to Czech President Antonin Zapatocky, asking for the repatriation of Bill Oatis (see PRESS) as one way to ease the tensions between the two countries.

P:Took a trip to the presidential retreat in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains, which Franklin Roosevelt named Shangri-La and which Eisenhower renamed Camp David in honor of his five-year-old grandson and namesake.

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