Changes of the Week

P: Louis J. Hector, 43, most outspoken and independent thinker on the five-man Civil Aeronautics Board, resigned last week after 2 1/2 years of taking strong objection to the board's performance. A former Rhodes scholar and Miami lawyer, Democrat Hector sent a 72-page memo to President Eisenhower with his resignation, urged a sweeping reorganization of the functions of the nation's regulatory agencies to rid them of detail and give them more independence. He also suggested less CAB control of the airlines, more freedom to make their own decisions on strictly business matters. Wrote Hector: "The agencies are long on judicial form and short on judicial substance." He advised transferring the CAB's policy-making functions to an executive department and setting up a court of experts with the powers of adjudication to decide major cases and hear appeals from administrative decisions. Concluding his valedictory, Hector warned that the basic policies of federal economic control "can no longer be left to a group of agencies each operating independently of the other and independent of any executive coordination or control."

P: William Bruhn, 59, was elected president of Valspar Corp. (paints, varnishes) following the surprise resignation of Leslie B. Hartnett. Born in Kiel, Germany, Bruhn worked for German chemical firms before coming to the U.S. in 1926. To learn English, he worked as a vitamin-pill salesman, joined Valspar in 1929, became Chicago manager in 1933, was Western sales manager when he was picked for the presidency.

P: Harvey Gaylord, 55, became president and chief executive officer of Bell Aircraft Corp., succeeding Leston P. Faneuf, president since 1956, who will spend his time laying down broad policy. Buffalo-born Gaylord graduated from Princeton and the American Institute of Banking, left the investment business in 1941 to join Bell as assistant to the president, quickly rose to take over as president of Bell's helicopter subsidiary in Fort Worth in 1951. As president, Gaylord will divide his time between Fort Worth and Buffalo, regroup the company's defense operations in an effort to stem sagging sales ($182,887,229 in 1958 v. $202,252,534 in 1957).

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