In the face of heavy ground fire, Lieut. Colonel James Robinson Risner, 40 (TIME cover, April 23), led his Fighting Cock squadron and 90 other jets into North Viet Nam early last month, and hammered at the critical rail and highway bridge near Thanhhoa until finally it was destroyed. His F-105 was heavily damaged by antiaircraft fire, but he refused to be diverted from his mission. For such "extraordinary heroism," Air Force Chief of Staff General J. P. McConnell last week brought Robbie Risner back from Viet Nam, awarded him the Air Force Cross, second in rank only to the nation's highest decoration, the Congressional Medal of Honor.

The son of Dr. Peter Marshall, U.S. Senate chaplain who became famous in his wife's biography (A Man Called Peter) and the film made from it, was only nine when his father died of a heart attack. Later, as a Yale undergraduate, the boy had "no real commitment to Christ," majored in political science. Then a post-graduation summer spent with a clergyman and his family in California showed him that "a minister lives a life of service," prompted him to enroll in Princeton Theological Seminary. Now the man called John Peter Marshall, 25, has been ordained into the Presbyterian ministry and appointed assistant pastor of the Westminster Presbyterian Church in West Hartford, Conn. Mindful that his father's divine call came on a misty Scottish moor, young Marshall is humble about his own future. "In the ministry you go where God leads you," he says. "It's a real adventure."

"Don't ever become a general," the gentleman advised the young Army Reserve lieutenant standing guard at the World's Fair. "If you become a general you just plain have too much to worry about." Coming from Dwight D. Eisenhower, 74, that was certainly something to think about. Next day the old soldier's worry list lengthened unexpectedly. While he was in Washington for a physical checkup, thieves broke into his parked Lincoln Continental and found the secret button inside the glove compartment that unlocked the trunk. Though they left several suitcases of clothes, they heisted the car's spare tire, a $170 portable radio, a $10 box of candy, and the oxygen kit Ike uses when he gets short of breath.

An alert airlines agent tipped off reporters that the Isabel Martinez de Peron, 32, on the manifest was exiled Argentine Dictator Juan Peron's comely blonde wife, and when she landed from Spain at New York's Kennedy airport, the newshounds had her surrounded. She was just changing planes, she cooed, and was on her way for a three-week "vacation" in Asuncion, Paraguay. Since sun-scorched little Paraguay is hardly a jet-set spa, rumors buzzed that she was preparing yet another Peron attempt at El Retorno. Peronistas in the group, chastened by December's fiasco, when Peron was air expressed back to Spain, claimed to know better. According to their gossip, Juan, 69, simply wanted a separate table for a while.

Some folks say his worst accident was in 1943 when a taxi knocked him down and broke his leg. Others insist that it was the day in 1962 when he was made manager of the New York Mets. Now, baseball's noblest showman Casey Stengel, 74, has a fractured right wrist. It cracked when he fell on a concrete ramp just before his Mets played an exhibition game against the cadets at West Point. While the Mets were winning, 8-0, surgeons cased Case in plaster and a green sling. Then he returned home, waved his still-solid southpaw, and showed off the durable presence that makes him the most valuable exhibit of all. "If they had a red carpet up there for me like I thought," he winked, "the accident wouldna' happened."

"I'm flat broke," she told a Los Angeles court. It was a little hard to believe coming from the woman who dined ecstatically off solid-gold plates during her heyday. Just the same, Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler Mandl Markey Loder Stauffer Lee Boies, better known as Hedy Lamarr, 50, insists that it is true. And so she is asking $3,510 temporary monthly alimony in a divorce suit she has filed against her sixth husband, Los Angeles Attorney Lewis W. Boies Jr., 44. Her daughter, Denise Hedy Lee, 20, hopes for a different kind of life. A sophomore at the University of California, Denise announced plans for a July marriage to College Mate Lawrence Colton, 23, a 1964 graduate now pitching for the Philadelphia Phillies' farm team in Eugene, Ore. She plans to travel with him during the season. She does not want to be an actress.

For over 30 years he was constantly on stage, playing Liszt, Rachmaninoff and Chopin so often that he could no longer hear the notes, even while his fingers gave virtuoso performances. He grew ever more fearful of the audiences that forever insisted he encore with his tour-de-force arrangement of Stars and Stripes Forever. Pianist Vladimir Horowitz began to feel like a stunt man, and even worse, to doubt his own artistic integrity. In 1953, aged 48, he stopped performing. Last week, after twelve years of deeply melancholic self-exile, Horowitz returned to Manhattan's Carnegie Hall. A supremely simple Chopin Ballade and Etude, a crystal fairy palace of Schumann's C-Major Fantasy, a mystical Dostoevskian Scriabin Sonata and Poem--all rolled from his fin gers with the orchestral technique of old, now tempered with a new inner repose. Obviously, he enjoyed himself. His courage clearly was restored.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.