Hot Dog!

One morning last week President Eisenhower strolled through the French doors of his office into the White House rose garden, and found himself hip-deep in schoolchildren. They were Negro and white members of the fifth grade at the

Nishuane Elementary School in Montclair, N.J., and the President had a personal, perhaps a vested, interest in them. After greeting the kids, the President spotted their Negro teacher. He strode over and shook hands. "Hello, Johnny, it's good to see you," he said to John H. Hunt, who was his mess sergeant in World War II.

Four months ago Hunt dropped a note to his old boss in which he said that his pupils would like to visit Washington, but had only five dollars in the class treasury. The President wrote him not to worry about the expenses, assigned his military aide, Lieut. Colonel Robert L. Schulz, to arrange a trip. Who paid the fare was a secret last week, but White House sources guessed that Ike himself had a share in paying it. After shaking hands with Mr. Hunt, the President asked the children where they had been. To the Washington Monument, they said--"up to the top!" Grinned the President: "Hot dog!"

At his press conference earlier in the week, the President was feeling chipper. In the face of gloomy news from Geneva and Dienbienphu, he was still hopefully optimistic, had nothing but complimentary words for John Foster Dulles. He was pleased to note an upturn in the nation's business, but cautioned the reporters against overoptimism.

On Mother's Day, Ike and Mamie made a pilgrimage to Virginia, where the President's mother was born and lived until she was a young woman. In a light drizzle, the presidential plane Columbine set down at Richmond's Byrd Airport. Governor Thomas Stanley and a score of Virginia dignitaries were on hand to meet the Eisenhowers and to escort them to St. Paul's Episcopal Church, where the Richmond Light Infantry Blues were lined up in full dress uniform with plumed shakos. The Blues, an ancient and aristocratic National Guard outfit, were celebrating their 165th anniversary, and Old Soldier Eisenhower had agreed to attend church services with them to mark the occasion.

After lunch at Virginia House, a handsome Tudor mansion on the banks of the James River, Ike and Mamie motored through intermittent rain and hail showers to Fredericksburg, where the President placed a pungent boxwood wreath on the monument to Mary Washington, mother of the first President. In Fredericksburg, Ike met two lively old ladies. Mrs. Julia Link Wine and her twin sister, Mrs. Martha Link Quick, 85, who had gone to school with Ike's mother and turned out to be his distant cousins. He had come to Fredericksburg, said the President, "to pay tribute to the state which gave Washington his mother and gave me mine." Then, with a parting smile for his newfound cousins, the President got back in his car and drove home to Washington in the rain.

Last week the President: P: Welcomed Canada's Governor General Vincent Massey on his three-day state visit to Washington.

P: Created a "sub-Cabinet," made up of the under secretaries or deputies of the ten Cabinet departments, to implement his team approach to government and give him a new sounding board for ideas and policies. The sub-Cabinet will meet fortnightly at the White House, with the President sitting in whenever possible.

P: Watched work begun on the White House grounds for a putting green, the gift of the U.S. Golf Association.

P: Spoke at the Washington convention of the Military Chaplains Association, and pulled a blooper in patriotic etiquette. When the Marine Band struck up The Star-Spangled Banner, the President and the chaplains to his left faced the music; the chaplains to his right faced the American flag. The President & friends were wrong: Public Law 829 stipulates that it is always proper to face the flag, if one is displayed, during the playing of the anthem.

P: Signed the $1.9 billion Federal Aid Highway Act, which provides for aid in constructing and improving 40,000 miles of highways.

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