PEOPLE
Miss Marianne Moore, Mrs. John F. Kennedy and Authors Terry Southern, Philip Roth, William Styron and Peter Matthiessen were among those present at the great moment when George Plimpton (below) finally succeeded in proving that he is not chicken. So he fought Archie Moore and played pro football with the Detroit Lions—last week he got married. The bride wore white. Hundreds of other women were inclined to choose black.
Olympic Decathlon Champion Rafer Johnson has temporarily disappeared from KNBC-TV screens in California pending a Federal Communications Commission's ruling on the implications of his membership in Senator Robert Kennedy's presidential delegation in that state. Not until—and if—Kennedy wins the California primary and the show hits the road to Chicago would Johnson's membership in his delegation seem to mean anything specific. NBC, to play it safe, however, has relieved him of his on-camera sportscasting duties for fear that his political commitment would be made grounds for invoking television's "equal time" ruling on behalf of other political organizations. The move seems far-fetched ("I would not have been mentioning anything political," Johnson observes), but until the FCC has ruled on it Johnson will continue at full salary behind the scenes at KNBC-TV sports, handling other newsroom chores and reporting assignments.
Roy Rogers is known to be a religious man, and readers of The Arizona Republic may have been taken aback recently to read that the pious cowboy "shoots craps and skis" to keep fit. The following day the paper was careful to carry Mr. Rogers' correction. He does not gamble, and he does not ski. What he said was, he shoots trap and skeet.
A group of Washington wives is reported to have given up jogging in favor of skipping rope, and one of them, Mrs. Mark Hatfield, wife of the Oregon Senator, has composed this stirring couplet for the girls: "Doves, eagles, hawks and owls/Jumping rope will get rid of your jowls!"
Opponents of Kent State Miler Sam Bair have caught up with him from time to time, but at least none of them ever bit him in the back. Recently Bair was out running his regular 10 miles when a German shepherd did catch up to him and then added the injury to the insult. "He sort of got his mouth around my waist," Bair says, "and just took a big chunk. My ribs are sore, awful sore." In the country around the Kent campus, Bair explains, almost everybody has a dog. The animals run loose and are a real training hazard to trackmen working out, chasing them the same way dogs chase cars. The boys, being somewhat more vulnerable than Fords, carry spray cans of stuff called Halt. "It's what a lot of mailmen carry," Bair says, adding ruefully that on this occasion his supply must have slipped from his belt. The shepherd was identified and proved to have had all his shots. And was the owner awfully sorry about the whole thing? "Well, no, I don't think you could say she was awfully sorry. You know how some dog owners are—their dog wouldn't bite anybody. I think she thought I teased it or something. I told her, 'Ma'am, I was just running by.' "
"She helped us with the gold drain by bringing back a gold medal," President Johnson observed of Olympic Skating Champion Peggy Fleming (above), and he augmented her collection of that metal by one pen and a charm bracelet bearing the presidential seal. Then he escorted her from his office to the rose garden, which was suffering a seasonal absence of roses but did offer a magnolia tree, from which Mr. Johnson picked a blossom to pin to Peggy's shoulder. Later someone asked Peggy if she were a Democrat, a difficult question for a young lady to answer while standing newly pinned with a Democratic President's magnolia, but Peggy neatly replied, "Not yet," and left it to her listeners to guess whether she simply meant that she was not yet 21.
While Washington women are jumping rope to get rid of their jowls (an anatomical improbability when you really give it some thought), a group of Washington men in the Government is preparing to keep fit a little more competitively. Former Honorary U.S. Davis Cup Captain C. Alphonso Smith has released his 1968 tennis rankings. Under Secretary of the Navy Charles Baird comes first, followed by William McChesney Martin Jr., Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; Walt Rostow, the President's special assistant; Paul R. Ignatius, Secretary of the Navy; Sargent Shriver, Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity; Harold Brown, Secretary of the Air Force; Stewart Udall, Secretary of the Interior; James Symington, former Chief of Protocol; Alexander B. Trowbridge, former Secretary of Commerce; and Robert McNamara, former Secretary of Defense. Rostow fell from first to third place this year, the Secretary of the Navy is fourth to his Under Secretary's first, and there Robert McNamara is, fetching up the rear. It may be handy to have a Chief of Protocol around.
TWO PHOTOS