GEORGIA: November Vacation

The man in the brown pullover sweater and gabardine slacks had lost the Presidency just two weeks ago. Now, like any other carefree vacationer, he spent his mornings playing better-than-duffer’s golf at Georgia’s famed luxurious Sea Island. He whipped long drives across the watery 13th, cracked out iron shots with careful deliberation. As he had said he would be, Tom Dewey was “deaf, dumb and blind” to politics.

His golfing partners were old friends: Carl Hogan, Manhattan antique dealer and Pawling neighbor; husky Secretary Paul Lockwood. Their lunch— sandwiches and hot soup—came by station wagon from the hotel, six miles away.

In the afternoons the Governor, his wife and two sons swam in the Atlantic surf and sunned on the deck beside the Casino swimming pool. When it was time for a change, they put on sports clothes and ate dinner in the big, patio-styled Cloister. They retired early to their $40-a-day suite, to be ready in the morning for traditional Southern breakfasts—ham & eggs, grits, hot biscuits—and another day’s relaxation. While the Governor golfed, his wife usually went for walks; son John, 8, learned to ride a bicycle on the alabaster-white beach, harassed by his brother, Tom, 12, on a motor scooter.

Both the sun and Georgia’s Governor beamed a welcome on the visitors. A telegraphed greeting arrived from Georgia’s affable Democrat Ellis Gibbs Arnall.

Rumblings at Home. But while the game of golf went on in Georgia, the game of politics went on in New York. Big, heavy-jowled Ed Jaeckle, the Boss of Buffalo and the “forgotten man” of the Republican campaign, resigned suddenly as New York State G.O.P. chairman. He was obviously piqued; he announced his resignation in a terse, 21-word statement, without consulting anyone. Friends said he had been shunted aside in the campaign: he was not even invited to introduce Tom Dewey in Buffalo, as he always had before. His resignation meant that a major overhaul of New York State Republican machinery would be necessary before the gubernatorial election of 1946.

The departure of Big Ed was by no means catastrophic, but its echo would penetrate to the moss-covered oaks and tropical palms of Sea Island. Tom Dewey, staying on at Sea Island for another ten days, could be blind and dumb to politics, but he could no longer be deaf.