Junior Heflin

Aboard the S. S. Ancon from Panama, where a drinking spree had placed him in hospital, arrived in Manhattan last week James Thomas ("Tom Tom") Heflin Jr., 28, son of the resounding Alabama Senator who professes mortally to hate and fear alcohol and the Pope of Rome. With the young Heflin was Senator Tom Connally of Texas. Obviously befuddled by the Prohibition question, Junior Heflin gabbled convivially with ship newsgatherers until Senator Connally took him to his cabin and locked him in. Upon the pier Junior Heflin announced: "I want to see Al Smith. My father's got a bug. He's all wrong about Al Smith. . . . My old man will give me hell, but I can't be sticking by him all the time. . . . Papa is a two-gun man. . . ." Escaping Senator Connally's sober supervision, Junior set forth to inspect some of New York's 32,000 speakeasies.-- He came to no good, bringing up in a police station whence he had to be rescued by his father's secretary, J. L. Thornton, who bustled him to the capital. Senator Heflin awaited his boy's homecoming on the station platform. Instead of "hell," he, a fond parent, gave his prodigal a full-bosomed embrace and loving forgiveness. The reconciliation was interrupted when Senator Heflin demanded, but failed to obtain, the arrest of news cameramen who flashlighted the family group. Later, Heflin Senior issued his customary statement: his son's tippling was a Roman Catholic plot. Alone of U. S. news channels, the Associated Press closed its wires to the Junior Heflin story. A. P. Manager Kent Cooper's reason: Young Heflin is not nationally notable, was not arrested, hurt nobody.

* Estimate furnished by New York's Police Commissioner Grover Whalen.