Public Servants

Flying west, he was grounded at Denver. He got a seat in another plane, but halfway to Salt Lake City the weather ahead forced the ship to return to its field. He took a third ship-and that was grounded for four hours at Albuquerque. Thus, at Los Angeles, at last, 16 hours, 5 minutes behind schedule, arrived Joseph Bartlett Eastman, Director of the Office of Defense Transportation.

The pastor in a Salem, Ore. church announced just before the sermon that a car had been left outside with its motor running. "Here is an opportunity for the owner to demonstrate his patriotism and conserve gasoline," he observed pleasantly, and read the license number. Governor Charles Arthur Sprague hustled out and turned off his motor.

Song & Dance

For charity, opera's Tenor Jan Kiepura, Contralto Coe Glade, Basso Douglas Beattie pulled Salvation Army caps down over their identities, stood on a busy Chicago street corner for ten minutes and gave out with song. (Kiepura hummed in somewhat uncharitable economy of his voice.) The melody was golden, but the take was only $2. "It wasn't bad," said Beattie afterwards, "considering the fact that people walking by on the street are intent on other things."

The A.S.P.C.A. finally captured the "wild dog" for whom ex-Opera Star Frieda Hempel has daily been leaving food in Manhattan's Central Park for the past five years. (Suspicious neighbors who thought she was getting rid of hot loot got her investigated by police last February.) The diva decided to take the animal home, install it in temperature-controlled luxury. For a wild dog the molasses-colored mongrel had an even disposition, a splendid coat. Likely cause for these genteel qualities was the Hempel diet: good beef, carrots, melba toast, cod-liver oil, and sometimes mineral oil.

Denials came on the heels of reports that Scorchdancer Josephine Baker, longtime toast of the Paris stage, had" died in Casablanca. New word was that the American-born colored comedienne was lounging in the native quarter of Morocco's isolated Marrakech in "solitary Arabian splendor."

It Takes Two

After a series of brief sittings that totaled only 15 hours Jo Davidson finished a bust of 81-year-old Senator George W. Morris. To a word of praise the photogenic sculptor responded: "It takes two to make a bust." To a query, later, on who was paying for the sculpture and where it would stand, sculpable Statesman Norris exclaimed: "I never thought of asking Davidson."

Crouching Style

Out of the ring four years, hard little Barney Ross, 32, was still all right in defense and attack, and his footwork was wonderful. He was a Marine private on Guadalcanal. In the jungle at about sundown, Private Ross looked up and beheld an advance guard of Japs approaching. "They got no more than ten yards away," he said later, "and everybody started firing and scattering." Ross got two wounded men into a shell hole and dived into a six-foot crater. Three other men joined him, one of them wounded in the knee. The prize fighter started throwing grenades.

Every time he lifted his head machine-gun bullets whanged his helmet: before the night was over there were 30 creases in it. The Japs never stopped firing all night. Ross emptied his rifle at a gun nest and then grabbed another rifle; the other men reloaded and he fired. He figured he threw about 300 lead punches. Out of ammunition, the men in the crater crouched and prayed. At dawn the prize fighter jumped out under cover of a cloud of smoke and, "half crawling and half walking," helped get the wounded to the rear. His purse: shell shock, malaria, minor shrapnel wounds, a corporal's rank, recommendation for a distinguished service award. His only complaint: "No referee to break the clinches."

Plush to Scrap

Turned over to Chicago's war scrap pile were three and, a quarter tons of armored limousine--the rolling fortress in which once rode Utilitycoon Samuel Insull. To Philadelphia's scrap collection Mrs. Edward T. Stotesbury, wealthy widow of the Morgan partner, gave a high-grade steel fence that ringed the Stotesbury Whitemarsh Hall estate. Height of the fence: eight feet. Length: nearly two miles. Content: enough steel for some 18,000 machine guns.

Johnny, Joe, Bob

Day before enlistments were banned by the President, Dodger Outfielder Johnny Rizzo enlisted in the Navy as a seaman first class.

Joe DiMaggio's wife Dorothy (exActress Dorothy Arnold) went to Reno for the second time in eight months. Last time Joe explained she was "just visiting friends." This time she was visaing a lawyer.

Ready to marry were Bob Feller, chief specialist in the Navy, and Virginia Winther, a clerk at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Chicago.

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