People, May 31, 1937

“Names make news.” Last week these names made this news: Maryland’s Governor Harry Whinna Nice planned to enter a Manhattan hospital for an operation to remove his right eye, injured in a fall three years ago.

The University of Wisconsin accepted 101 Russian paintings—all but 20 by Soviet State artists—from U. S. Ambassador to Russia Joseph Edward Davies (Wisconsin ’98).

At a Philadelphia Council hearing, Mayor S. Davis Wilson asked Board Chairman Samuel Matthews Vauclain of the Municipal Gas Corporation to support his campaign to reduce Philadelphia’s gas rate from 90¢ to 50 per 1,000 cubic ft. Replied wealthy Octogenarian Vauclain. also board chairman of Baldwin Locomotive Works: “Fifty-cent gas is no more possible than my going to Heaven when I die.”

The American Committee for Spanish Relief opened a drive for $500,000 with a pageant, “Democracy Imperiled,” presented in Manhattan’s Madison Square Garden. To dramatize the plight of Rightist Spanish civilian sufferers, hundreds of Catholic school children marched in tatters and red-smeared bandages. To represent “Spain” Socialite Mrs. S. Stanwood Menken, whose Son Arthur was wounded last October while filming Spanish battle scenes, appeared in one of the spangled costumes in which she annually dazzles the Beaux-Arts Ball.

In San Pedro, Calif., Scot Comedian Sir Harry Lauder, 66, disembarked from a Pacific cruise financed, he chortled, by 10¢ pieces saved up during his career.

The “Sam Smith” of Van Hornesville, N. Y. whose herd of 60 registered Hoi-steins has twice ranked highest in New York State monthly milk production tests was revealed to be Board Chairman Owen D. Young of General Electric Co. Said his dairy manager: “Mr. Young knows the cows by name.”

In the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, Democrat Leo V. Tumelty of Philadelphia introduced a resolution to “remove or rip the statue of Boies Penrose from the lawn of the Capitol and offer it to either Maine or Vermont.” The memorial to Pennsylvania’s late Republican Boss, declared he, “appears to be sneering.”

Crooner Hubert Prior (“Rudy”) Vallee was reported engaged to Valene Woodward, brunette model of Apple Creek, Ohio. In Manhattan exploded she: “It’s terrible, it’s wicked, it’s ridiculous. … I must have some terrible enemies, to spread stories like that.”

To the reunion of descendants of Confederate and Union veterans of the 47-day siege of Vicksburg, Miss., went Colonel Ulysses Simpson Grant III U.S.A. and Manhattan Lawyer John Clifford Pernberton III, grandsons respectively of Vicksburg’s Union besieger and Confederate defender. Said Grandson Grant, shaking hands: “Two good Generals and a great fight.” Said Grandson Pemberton: “Yes, but they paid off on your grand-daddy.”

Robert Wadlow, 19, of Alton, Ill. agreed to promote Valspar varnish, by pouring, in advertisements, a teakettle of boiling water from his height of 8 ft. 7 in. upon a shining Valsparred table.

At Royal Oak, Mich. Radiopriest Charles Edward Coughlin opened a gasoline filling station across the street from his $1,000,000 Shrine of the Little Flower.

Speeding through Cicero, Ill., his family’s old hangout, Matthew Capone, 29, youngest brother of imprisoned Public Enemy Al Capone, lost control of his new sedan, careened through a fence, somersaulted four times, smashed into a brick porch. He cracked his skull, gashed his face, broke his right wrist, nearly sliced off his left ear. Following a visit by Brother Ralph Capone to the hospital his name was recorded by the Cicero police as ‘”Matthew Raeoli, automobile salesman.”

President Heber Jedediah Grant, 80, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, went to Manhattan to inspect the recently acquired skyscraper chapel of his Eastern States Mission and preside over a quarterly conference. Chuckled he: “We think everybody should join the Mormon Church.”