Hope for the Hirsute

The Beatles started it, the hippies spread it, and now long hair and beards are beginning to make it way downtown in Straight City. John Bal, a 24-year-old Manhattan patrolman, wears three commendations for heroism on his blue uniform--and brown hair that falls over the collar of his shirt. Bal's beat is now Central Park's Bethesda Fountain, where the kids in beads and tie-dyed jeans find him groovy. His superiors do not agree; last week he spent over two hours before a departmental hearing. "I like being a cop," Bal says. "But I've got to bust out and be me."

Two television broadcasters who have busted out with beards got mixed responses. Dave Marash of New York's WPIX, who has been sporting a full growth since September, reports that he gets regular "bearded weirdo" letters, "but most people seem quite willing to talk with me, I guess because they recognize me so quickly." When Bob Whitten of KCRA in Sacramento wore a vacation-grown beard his first day back on the tube, the vibrations were almost wholly negative. Says a station executive: "We got more telephone calls on Whitten's beard than anything since Robert Kennedy was shot."

There is hope for the hirsute, however. Evangelist Billy Graham, in New York City for a crusade at Shea Stadium, fingered his collar-length silver-blond curls and gave his blessing to the Age of Aquarius. "I don't object to long hair in any way," he insists. "I have nothing but love for those who wear it." Today Billy Graham, tomorrow the world.

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