PEOPLE

If Pro Golfers Mason Rudolph (below) and Barbara Romack do not care to talk golf the next time they meet they can chat about unscheduled trips to Cuba. Rudolph was aboard a TWA jet that was hijacked recently. Barbara Romack made the trip in February.

In ceremonies marking the 4-year-old Horse of the Year's retirement from racing, Dr. Fager received the key to the city of Ocala, Fla. and was elected an honorary life member of the chamber of commerce. The state agricultural commissioner presented him with a plaque describing him as Ocala's most publicized citizen. Cocktails were served at the stables and, more appropriately, Ray Graves and Jimmy Carnes, athletic director and track coach at the University of Florida, awarded him a varsity letter in track.
A group of more than 100 European and North American big-game hunters, wildlife scientists, conservationists and hunting guides gathers this week in Monte Carlo for a conference on methods to prevent the extinction of wildlife species. Among those expected to attend are the president of the Wildlife Management Institute, Dr. Ira Gabrielson, Baron Alain de Rothschild, French Olympic chief Count Jean de Beaumont, British Conservationist and Ornithologist Dr. E. M. Nicholson, Prince Von Auersperg of Austria, Mary Hemingway and Texas Governor John Connally. Governor Connally is the man who went on safari for a TV network last year and shot a lion, a Cape buffalo, a warthog, an impala, a sable, a gazelle, a topi, an oribi and an elephant.

In the same week, Joe Namath lost a beard and a lawyer. He parted with the beard of his own free will (for a reported $10,000 paid him by Schick), but the lawyer went at the wish of Richard Nixon, who named William Rogers Secretary of State. It is hard on Joe, but Rogers may find the affairs of the U.S. easier to handle than those of Joe Namath.

Mickey Owen, former catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers, is now sheriff of Greene County, Mo., where he has been breeding horses. In the course of trying to develop a new strain, Owen recently found himself with a lot of extra mares, all in foal to his walking horse stallion. He announced that he would give away a mare to the first 20 children in the area who asked, provided they would return the foal if it were a filly, and by noon the following day he had received 398 requests. They are still coming in, and the desperate sheriff has promised, "If anyone wants to donate a pony to a kid, I'll see that he gets it."

That six-ton, 15-foot concrete statue of Y. A. Tittle (SI, Jan. 29) seemed for a while to have finally found a home at Seacrest High School in Delray Beach, Fla. Y. A. had loomed as a permanent fixture in the backyard of Miami Sculptor Don Seiler when the cost of transporting him even across Miami to the Orange Bowl worked out to something like $1,500. But recently Seacrest High talked an alumnus into footing the bill to deliver the objet d'art to the school and erect it at the entrance of the stadium in time for the state championship district playoff game. Perhaps in this age of football injuries it was bound to happen—while the statue was being hoisted into place a cable snapped. So did Y. A.'s concrete legs when he hit the ground. Seacrest lost the football game, too.

While other children of incoming Cabinet members toured Washington and the White House, 15-year-old Kevin Finch, son of future Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Robert Finch, stayed home in California and went to basketball practice. Kevin's coach requires 20 laps around the gymnasium for every practice missed. A trip to the nation's capital would have taken a minimum of three days. Young Kevin decided that one lap around the White House was not worth 60 around the track.

British Olympic Marathoner Jim Alder, standing beneath a seat-reservations sign, had what was a reserved seat all right, but not one reserved for him. Buckingham Palace gave what was described by a palace spokesman as "a stand-up buffet lunch" for the entire British Olympic team. Stand-up it may have been, but in the presence of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, Princesses Margaret, Anne and Alexandra, Prince Charles, the Duchess of Gloucester, the Duke and Duchess of Beaufort and the Marquess of Exeter, Jim Alder sat down to eat his chicken. On the Queen's throne. Alder dropped out of the marathon two months before in Mexico City. Maybe he was still tired.

TWO PHOTOS