Names make news. Last week these names made this news:
In Chicago, 250 newspapermen gathered in a hotel ballroom to sing "There is a tower in our town, in our town / And there the Colonel sits him down, sits him down . . ." The harmonizing was in honor of Colonel Robert R. McCormick, 73, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, who had been selected as the "Press Vet of 1953" by the Chicago Press Veterans' Association. Wearing a navy blue suit and black-ribboned slip-on pumps, the colonel sipped a Martini as old friends and enemies paid their respects, smiled for the first time when described as "Mr. Midwest American of our generation." The after-dinner treat: the showing of a special movie on the life of the colonel, acclaiming him as "the great Chicago fireball of 1953."
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Interviewed in New York, Earl Browder, 62, once head of the Communist Party in the U.S. (he was expelled in 1946 because he had zigged when the party line zagged), gave a hazy glimpse of his present place on the political scene: "I'm not very popular today. I never did fit in a pigeonhole. I was not a 100% doctrinaire Communist. Today, I am not a 100% anti-Communist." . . . At a polling place near Columbia University in Manhattan, one registrant for the Nov. 3 mayoralty election gave her age as 56, her voting address as 60 Morningside Drive. An election inspector filled out the rest of the form for her, writing "First Lady" for business connection and "Washington, D.C." for location of business. Mamie Eisenhower had flown up from Washington that morning (hitching a ride with Air Force Secretary Harold Talbott in his Constellation) and intended to go right back. She told newsmen she had signed in as a Republican but balked when asked how she was going to vote: "Oh, I'm not supposed to tell you that."
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At a furniture exhibition in Copenhagen, Denmark's brawny, tattooed King Frederik IX experimented with packing his six feet five inches into a deck chair. He found it comfortable, but not quite his size.
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Mrs. Oveta Gulp Hobby, Secretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, complained to Washington newsmen that the triple-jointed name of her department was just too long for comfort. She preferred "Department of the General Welfare," taken straight from the preamble to the Constitution (". . . provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare . . ."), and, in fact, had originally suggested it to Congress. It got a favorable reception at first, she said, until the matter came before the late Senator Robert Toft, foe of the welfare state. He didn't like the title one bit. She recalled his words: "That's what I've been trying to get away from." ---
Before flying to the U.S. to open the Metropolitan Opera season in Faust (Nov. 16), beefy Swedish Tenor Jussi Bj"ling was pictured at dinner giving a crayfish his undivided attention. Bj"ling, who began his career as a boy soprano in a family quartet, is celebrating his 2 5th anniversary as a tenor, his 35th as a singer. . . . At City College of New York, his alma mater (class of 1889), Elder Statesman Bernard Baruch sat in cap & gown at ceremonies renaming the School of Business the Bernard M. Baruch School of Business and Administration. After laudatory speeches, Baruch, now 83, stepped up to give his thanks. "As you know, I am quite deaf," he said, "and I did not hear all that was said . . . But I heard enough to make me blush." . . . Crooning in Birmingham, Dick Haymes was asked about his married life with Rita Hay worth, eagerly explained how things are: "We both think alike, we like the same things. The only difference between us is that I'm a man and she's a woman." . . .
In Chicago, Ellen Borden Stevenson, ex-wife of Adlai Stevenson, gave a hand to struggling poets. Chairman of the board of Poetry magazine (circ. 4,000) and a poetess of sorts herself, she threw open the big Borden mansion (recently a boarding house) on stylish Lake Shore Drive as a center for the arts and a shelter for Poetry, whose old home is to be demolished. "Poetry was being turned out after 40 years," Landlady Stevenson explained. "[We] hunted all over town. The rents were, just too high. Finally, in the middle of the night I said to myself, 'Why don't I have the gumption to rent my own house to myself?' So I did."
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Onetime Boxing Great Henry J. ("Hammering Henry") Armstrong, who became a Baptist preacher after slugging his way to three world titles at once (feather, light and welterweight) in 1938, swung into San Diego to raise some money for a Baptist Boystown near Los Angeles. The Rev. Henry, 40 and turning a little puffy, reported that he keeps running into old and shady pals from his pugilistic past: "They all say to me, 'Henry, next time you talk to the Lord, could you put in a word for an old chiseler?' And I tell 'em, 'I'll do what I can--considering the Lord's view of chiseling.
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