THE CAPITAL: Virtue’s Reward

Since last year’s Senate inquiry into his habits of dispensing various favors in return for an occasional home-freeze unit, Major General Harry Hawkins Vaughan, court jester and military aide to the President, has led a relatively quiet life. He has also curbed his old habit of making such public observations as “Winston Churchill is a garrulous old gentleman.” Last week, just as people were beginning to ask “Whatever became of Harry Vaughan?”, he reappeared briefly upon the scene.

For obvious reasons, General Vaughan was a leading candidate for elimination from the Social List of Washington, D.C. In last week’s new edition, sure enough, the name of Harry Vaughan did not appear.* For General Vaughan, a noisily gregarious man but no socialite, this was nothing. Said he: “I didn’t even know I was in it.”

Besides, he had pleasanter things to think about. Out of the blue appeared the Regular Veterans Association (membership: 78,000), bearing a gold medal to add to the fruit salad splashed across the bulky Vaughan chest. The medal, said the citation, was “for meritorious services to the Armed Services and the veterans of the United States.”

“Harry Vaughan never fails the veterans,” explained a member of the presentation party. “Why, the other day a colored [veteran] lost his shoes in a crap game. When General Vaughan learned of this man’s plight, he called in his secretary and said, ‘Nora, you take this $20 and you go get this man a pair of shoes . . .’ That’s why we gave Harry Vaughan the Distinguished Service Medal.”

“These gold medals,” Vaughan confessed, “are hard to turn down. They have real hock value . . . In times of adversity a gold medal can be a man’s best friend.”

*Others who were dropped: Ex-Defense Secretary Louis Johnson, ex-Chief of Naval Operations Louis Denfeld.