Of Bears & Bygones

Television on tape or film often suffers from loss of spontaneity, but it frequently makes up the loss with a quality of intimacy and awe. CBS last week ran off two such engaging programs:

Grizzly!, the first special in the National Geographic Society series, focused mostly on 51-year-old twin brothers, Frank and John Craighead, a pair of wildlife biologists who track, drug, tag, and record the habits of grizzlies in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. Best shot: a bear wakes with a roar from his drug-induced slumber and charges head-on into the side of the Craigheads' car. The Craigheads, though, are the real stars; urban viewers can only admire the intelligence and understanding with which they impart to their children a respect and fascination for natural life.

J.F.K.--The Childhood Years was an informal and warmly touching half-hour of reminiscences by Rose Kennedy, 77. Composed and strikingly attractive in a hot-pink dress, she was interviewed by CBS Newsman Harry Reasoner in the simple three-story frame house in Brookline, Mass., where President Kennedy and three of her other eight children were born. 'To give courage to other mothers because so many people are discouraged about their children," Mrs. Kennedy mused about her son's chronic tardiness and lack of discipline at boarding school. She told how "the President" heeded her motherly advice to wear a striped tie on TV because it looked chic, and to keep his hands out of his pockets. Throughout her recollections, she was at once a nostalgic mother and a gallant woman. As Reasoner summed up: "When you talk to Rose Kennedy now in the setting of this old house, which would put her in mind of the sadnesses of long life if anything would, what you hear is thankfulness for the opportunities life gave her and her family--not bitterness. This is the strength of the mother." It was, in short, a profile in courage.

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