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MEMO from the publisher

Last Saturday a flotilla of ocean racers, including the unusual Nam Sang (SI, July 6), left California for Honolulu. Across the continent an argosy of somewhat smaller craft celebrated the Fourth by racing in home waters off Long Island, N.Y. Enthusiastically attached to the tiller of Slipper, one of the competing Tech dinghies which are the mainstay of the Cedarhurst Yacht Club's fleet, was Roger S. Hewlett, her owner, rear commodore of the club and, for the duration of that holiday race, I suspect, only incidentally an Associate Editor of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED.

On working days, however, there is nothing incidental about Hewlett's relationship to this magazine. Unless you are a careful reader of the masthead his name may be unfamiliar, but chances are you have met the product of his thought and judgment many times. He is a regular and prolific contributor to traditionally anonymous EVENTS & DISCOVERIES, which perhaps of all departments in these pages most often presents SPORTS ILLUSTRATED'S reflections, opinion and philosophy.

As a boy, Hewlett spent his summers swimming and sailing among the bays, clam flats and surf of Long Island's south shore, in and around the town of Hewlett, to which his pre-Revolutionary forebears gave their name. Football, hockey and baseball in season occupied his free hours at prep school in New England, while the administrative aspect of sport filled much of his time at Harvard, where he served as an assistant in the management of both track and football.

Active also in the Hasty Pudding Club, upon graduation from Harvard in 1933 Hewlett took a seven-year fling at the theater, most often found himself working for George Abbott as actor or stage manager in such" productions as Brother Rat, Boy Meets Girl and Best Foot Forward.

After a stint of free-lance writing, Hewlett joined TIME in 1944, and two years ago came to SPORTS ILLUSTRATED. Of his current writing he says, "If it's just an amplification of the sports page, it's no good."

In the Dec. 22 issue he wrote, "In sport's challenges and rewards, in its vital but not mortal climaxes, in its heady stimuli and clean exhaustion, modern man has found a wellspring of strength and eagerness to cope with the uncertainties that lie in wait for him on other fronts."

That seems to me, Commodore Hewlett, more than good enough.

PHOTO

"SLIPPER'S" COMMODORE HEWLETT