Dear TIME-Reader:

AFTER his marathon coverage of Washington's Governor Langlie for this week's cover story, Seattle Bureau Chief Robert Schulman had the uneasy feeling that he had just about become a member of the Langlie household. So did the governor. "One day last week." Schulman told me, "Governor Langlie mused out loud: 'Should I look into adoption procedures?' "

The marathon started early in July, when Schulman met the governor, his wife and their daughter Carrie Ellen in Seattle. "We talked about everything from Langlie's newly announced keynote-speech assignment at the Republican Convention to his golf handicap," Schulman recalled. At the end the governor had two requests: 1) for the first draft of his keynote speech he wanted a copy of Schulman's notes on his political philosophy, which, Langlie felt, he had just expressed as cogently as he could remember, and 2) could their next meeting be purely social? "On any other basis, you've got enough on me now to hold you for a year," he said patiently.

Within two weeks Schulman caught up with Langlie again as the governor was having a 7:15 a.m. breakfast in Olympia's Governor Hotel. With him Schulman had Contributing Editor Spencer L. Davidson, who wrote the Langlie cover story. Davidson was out to see the state for himself and meet its governor in person. "Oh, no--not again!" cried Langlie as he saw the newsmen. They stayed with him all day, winding up in the study of the governor's mansion, chuckling over album pictures of Langlie as a high-school student and baseball player.

Before he saw Langlie again, Schulman had a session with daughter Carrie Ellen over Cokes in Seattle. "She told me," the governor said later, "that you had asked her the darndest questions. I told her not to worry, that it was TIME'S way of trying to cover all the angles." Then he gave our reporter a pointed look and added: "Well, now, at least, you've covered all the bases."

By that time he should have known better. When the governor and his wife boarded a plane for the flight to the San Francisco convention, they discovered Schulman had arranged to be a fellow passenger. Patiently and kindly, Mrs. Langlie rose and moved to another seat to let the reporter sit beside the governor for another quiz program.

Schulman's last lengthy interview ended at 1 a.m. on the day the governor made the Republican Convention keynote speech. Dressed in pajamas, Langlie looked at Schulman and sighed: "It's hard to believe that TIME comes out only once a week."

Cordially yours,

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