PERSONAL FILE

sb Nattily turned out in a grey civilian suit complete with vest, former NATO Supreme Commander Lauris Norstad, 55, showed up in Manhattan to take on a new post: president of the international division of Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corp. Explained Norstad, who turned over command of NATO to Army General Lyman Lemnitzer this month: "I did not want to stay on the fringes of the military. You need the stimulation of a fresh challenge." Fresh challenges are sure to come at Owens-Corning (1961 earnings: $14,300,000 on sales of $226,900,000), which is eager to expand its overseas operations, previously limited to minority interests in seven overseas companies. Owens-Corning's next major international move: the opening next month of a branch office in Brussels, which the company hopes will eventually grow into a wholly owned subsidiary with its own Fiberglas plant in Europe.

sb Into the presidency of St. Louis' Brown Shoe Co. (1962 sales: $324 million) moved a man with just the name for the job. The new boss of the nation's second largest shoe manufacturer: Monte E. Shomaker (pronounced shoemaker). Shomaker, 57, has been one ever since he went to work in a Brown factory at 14. A no-nonsense production expert who specializes in cost cutting, he replaces Clark R. Gamble, 69, who will continue as chairman. The stickiest problem Shomaker faces is an antitrust ruling requiring Brown to sell the G. R. Kinney Corp., a 360 shoe-store chain that Brown acquired in 1956. Brown wants three years to accomplish the unstitching, but the trustbusters are pushing for a six-month deadline.

sb The order of succession at the nation's largest bank was spelled out last week when the directors of the Bank of America put Vice Chairman Rudolph Peterson, 58, in charge of general administration. This puts him in line to succeed President S. (for Seth) Clark Beise when Beise reaches 65 next October. Born in Sweden but educated in the U.S. (University of California, '25), Peterson started with the Bank of America in 1936, but his current tour there is less than two years old. Cut off from headquarters in 1952 when Bank of America was obliged to surrender control of Transamerica Corp. where he was then working, Peterson could not immediately return to Bank of America without touching off a talent war between the bank and Transamerica. So he retired to a neutral corner as president of the Bank of Hawaii, was finally called back to Bank of America in 1961.

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