Their Best

"I'm delighted," the President said warmly to the four top college students who marched into his White House office last week. Ike was pleased not just with their extraordinary academic records. Each of the students is bright, talented, spirited--and blind. Ike handed them $500 checks signed by Manhattan's Recording for the Blind Inc., which supplies the blind scholars (and 750 others in some 300 colleges) with free textbooks on 16 1/2-r.p.m. records, made by 1,200 volunteers in every walk of life. The four prizewinners:

P: James R. Slagle, 25, of Brooklyn, has been blind since his freshman year in high school. A graduate of St. John's University, he is close to a doctor's degree in advanced mathematics at M.I.T., where his grades average 4.9 out of a possible 5. In his spare time Student Slagle works as a staff mathematician at M.I.T.'s famed Lincoln Laboratory. P: Robert J. Winn Jr., 23, of Dallas, began to lose his vision at the age of six. He is about to receive a B.S. at North Texas State College, has had eleven A's and one B in the last three semesters. Winn is president of the 7,000-member student body, also wrestles, swims, plays golf, and runs the 100-yd. dash. P: Mrs. Bianca C. Stewart, 22, of New York City, has been blind for twelve years. A dean's list and Phi Beta Kappa Senior at Queens College, she majors in English and plans to get an M.A. at Columbia University for an eventual teaching career.

P: Richard O. Cowan, 25, of Salt Lake City, has been blind for 22 years. A Phi Bete graduate of Occidental College in Los Angeles, he was a Mormon missionary for three years. He entered Stanford University last year as a history graduate student, where he has a straight-A record.

"Because we are blind," Student Cowan told the President, "we feel that we must try to do our best." Said Ike, in wonder: "I'll tell you, you are doing your best."

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