People, Dec. 21, 1936

PEOPLE

“Names make news.” Last week these names made this news:

Week after taking Governor Alf Landon on a Florida hunting & fishing trip, Guide Walter (“Red”) Welner was lost in the woods two days. Speeding through Missouri, the train bearing Governor Landon home to Topeka cut a 1,600-gal. oil truck in two, badly burned the driver.

To attend a trustees’ meeting of the Carnegie Institution, Herbert Hoover returned to Washington for the first time since March 4, 1933.

At Montclair, N. J. 300 Yalemen made merry at the first “Nick Roberts’ Old Yale Barn Party” staged since 1933 after the custom inaugurated by Yaleman Nicholas Roberts, onetime head of defunct S. W. Straus & Co., Manhattan bondhouse. The Yalemen cheered peptalks by Football Coach Raymond (“Ducky”) Pond, Captain Lawrence Morgan (“Larry”) Kelley and Captain-elect Clinton Frank, sang Boola, Boola under the direction of Radio Singer Lancelot (“Lanny”) Ross, 1927 Yale track captain. The Montclair Yale Bowl awarded annually to the Yaleman “who has made his Y in life,” first won in 1926 by Pennsylvania Railroad’s late President William Wallace Atterbury, went to President Frederick Ely Williamson of the New York Central Railroad, Yale ’98.

Long trounced at golf by President John J. Pelley of the Association of American Railroads have been White House Secretary Stephen Early, Mississippi’s Senator Pat Harrison, Ohio’s onetime Governor James Middleton Cox and Editor Merle Thorpe of Nation’s Business. At the Miami-Biltmore course the vacationing losers plotted to hoax the winner. To Golfer Pelley they introduced Paul Runyan, onetime Professional Golfers Association champion, as “Mr. Paul, a young businessman from Muncie, Ind., with a handicap of eight.” In the morning round Golfer “Paul” hooked his drives into the rough, flubbed his putts, shot occasional approaches ably enough to make a 75, win. Golfer Pelley magnanimously congratulated his opponent, promised to beat him that afternoon. The hoax was prematurely exposed at lunch when Paul Runyan was paged by a waiter.

Having voted since he was 21, joined the Reserve Officers Training Corps at Yale and run for New York State Senator in 1934, British-born Poloist Winston Frederick Churchill Guest was pronounced in the District of Columbia Supreme Court a U. S. citizen. Poloist Guest submitted that his mother and he had been repatriated following her separation from her British husband, a point which the U. S. Labor Department questioned.

In Princeton, N. J. Mrs. Elsa Einstein, wife of Physicist Albert Einstein, was stricken with a heart attack.

Over the signature of Alexander Woollcott was dispatched a heavily personalized form letter urging people to give Seagram’s Pedigree Whiskey for Christmas.

On his 75th birthday, at Yellow Springs, Ohio’s onetime Senator Simeon Davison Fess proudly showed newshawks a stack of firewood he had sawed, said he was still working on his four-volume history of Ohio. Exulted he: “I work every day, sleep like a deer, eat like a bear.”

Aviatrix Sophie Mary Peirce-Evans Williams, onetime holder of the women’s altitude record, divorced from Sir James Heath in 1930, was found drunk in a subway station by London police. Unable to furnish a $50 guaranty of six months’ good behavior, she was sentenced to 28 days in jail.

At Redwood City, Calif., where he is wintering, Infielder Tony (“Poosh ’em up”) Lazzeri of the New York Yankees filed suit for divorce, declared his wife Maye “no longer loved him,” few hours later called the suit “all a big mistake.”

The Women’s Committee of Philadelphia’s Library Company loudly clapped Pennsylvania’s onetime Senator George Wharton Pepper singing the role of Lord High Chancellor in Gilbert & Sullivan’s Iolanthe.

Learning of plans for an exhibition of Chilean products in Manhattan, Assistant Chilean Consul Miguel Padilla ordered some of his native palms and pines shipped to the U. S. Upon arrival in Manhattan they were quarantined by Department of Agriculture agents, sent on to Washington for inspection. From Washington last week, the Department of Agriculture ruled that Padilla must ship his exhibits back to Chile, the exhibition meanwhile having closed several weeks ago and the plants having died.