Big & Strong (Cont'd)

At Albany last week, a short, trim schoolteacher pivoted daintily, smiled up at Frank Pierrepont Graves, New York State Commissioner of Education. Commissioner Graves blinked, recognized Rose

Freistater of The Bronx, whom the New York City Board of Education considered too fat for a permanent teaching job in the city schools (TIME, Dec. 9 et ante). Described by her father as "big and strong," Rose three months ago had weighed 182 lb., which was 32 Ib. over the Board's limit for 5 ft. 2 in. teachers. Last week, ready for a hearing before the State Commissioner, she weighed in at 154 lb., fully dressed. "She's down to 150 without her clothes," crowed her attorney.

How had she done it, the Commissioner wanted to know. Diet, exercise and massage, smiled Rose. First she had tried thyroid extract but doctors told her it was dangerous. Last summer she took up tennis, horseback riding, mountain climbing--still without dropping a pound. Finally she went to Manhattan's Dr. Gerald Schuman who put her on the successful diet. It was a hard, quiet campaign. Said her attorney: "She refused an offer of $5,000 to endorse a reducing salt."

Representatives of the New York City Board, taken aback, groused that Rose had taken four years to find the right diet, that it was now too late. And anyway, could she keep her new figure? Yes, said her attorney. "She is down to normal and she'll stay there." The Commissioner, interested, reserved decision.

From Dr. Schuman, the Press obtained the "basic diet" which had taken 32 lb. off Rose in three months.

Breakfast: fruit, one egg, two strips of bacon, half a slice of bread, coffee with cream & sugar. Lunch: fruit, vegetable salad, one slice of bread with butter, cake or a half portion of pie, coffee with cream but no sugar. Dinner: meat, two vegetables, one quarter of a potato, coffee with cream & sugar, cake or fruit. Rose walked for an hour and a half every day and once a week Dr. Schuman massaged her in "places where she needed to lose." Warning that the diet varied from day to day and might be harmful to anyone else, Dr. Schuman emphasized that it was no easy regimen. "Why," said he, "some patients weep when they leave my office."

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