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PEOPLE
"They started off with pretty good equipment, but man, it got better," says Packer publicist Chuck Lane of Mrs. Bart Starr (left) and Mrs. Zeke Bratkowski. "If they're any example, the whole world should be out there running." The Packer team has been out there running since February and is in good shape, too, but there's more interest around Green Bay in the shapes of Cherry Starr and M.E. (Mary Elizabeth) Bratkowski. The girls started last January, and are now up to two miles a day and down to clothes they haven't been able to wear for years. As Cherry explains, "Bart was running, and he felt so good and I felt so bad. And after we had been married about 14 years he started bringing these things home, like an exercise bike, and I figured he was trying to tell me something." At first Cherry ran a mile through the house—14 circuits from the mud area through the kitchen, the dinette, the den, Bart's study, the master bedroom, down the hall, through the living room, the formal dining room and back to the mud area. Spring brought decent weather and the Bratkowskis as neighbors, so Cherry and M.E. began running together every morning. "We talk," says M.E., "huffing and puffing, but we talk the whole way." Says Zeke, "That's ridiculous!" So what does he know? Are the Packers out there running of their own free will?
When word of Jackie Onassis' pseudo-judo exploits (judo senseis agree that whatever photographer Mel Finkelstein may have said she did to him, it wasn't judo) reached the newspapers, Bill MacFarland didn't waste a moment. The general manager and coach of the Western Hockey League's Seattle Totems dispatched the following telegram to Mrs. Onassis: THIS IS A FIRM OFFER FOR YOU TO SIGN WITH THE SEATTLE TOTEMS HOCKEY CLUB TO PLAY DEFENSE. PLEASE ADVISE YOUR INTEREST AND AVAILABILITY SOONEST. THE TOTEMS HOME SEASON OPENS SATURDAY, OCTOBER 11TH. WE ARE LOOKING FORWARD TO A POSITIVE REPLY. As it turned out, they got no reply, and without Jackie they dropped their first home game to the Portland Buckaroos by a score of 8-5.
In Madrid on the first lap of their European tour, Astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Mike Collins and Neil Armstrong were the first U.S. visitors to be welcomed with an open-car cavalcade since Eisenhower was so honored 11 years ago, and three of Spain's foremost matadors presented them each with a montera and a traje de luces—a formal bullfighter's hat and the traditional gorgeously embroidered suit of lights. Matadors Santiago Martin, Antonio Bienvenida and Paco Camino chose suits which had been worn upon an occasion of particular glory to offer America's heroes, who were depicted in full bullfighting regalia all over Spain upon posters which welcomed them as espadas (swordsmen) "new to this ring." The only hitch came when Camino, a slight fellow with a small head, attempted to place his montera on Collins" high, shiny forehead. With no hair to cling to and being several sizes too small, the hat kept falling off, until with a diplomatic "allow me," Collins managed to balance it long enough for the photographer to take the picture.
One of the founders of the Vietnam Moratorium Committee is a dove named Hawk—David Hawk, who in 1963. as a junior at Cornell, was the Eastern Seaboard diving champion and a member of the All-America swimming and diving team. "There were the Olympic trials to stay in shape for," he says, "but I decided not to do that." What he did decide to do was to become involved in politics (in 1968 he campaigned for Eugene McCarthy), and lately he has been putting in virtually a 24-hour day for the Moratorium Committee, but he misses diving. "Ever since junior high school, I've spent three or four hours a day working out," he says. "And diving isn't all that much work."
Last week Pat Nixon accepted a lifetime membership card in the Women's International Bowling Congress and revealed 1) that the President has bought personalized bowling balls for the whole family (the First Lady's is marbleized blue and has Pat N inscribed on it); 2) that she learned to bowl while teaching school in Whittier, Calif., when she "lived across the street from a bowling alley—center, excuse me"; 3) that her competitive spirit has been "really good" since the days when she won a second prize at a 4-H competition for hogs she fattened; and 4) that she hopes to "sneak over" to the White House bowling center to "do some practicing so I can beat Dick.... He's better than I am [but] he's so busy there is rarely time to play."
Erie Stanley Gardner has made one concession to his age (80)—he has put away his bow and arrows and taken to using a rifle to hunt meat on his frequent expeditions into the least accessible regions of the American Southwest. Otherwise it's business as usual, i.e., he had six secretaries working all summer to keep up with his correspondence, books and articles, as well as the Court of Last Resort. The Perry Mason TV series, based on his best-known detective fiction, is no longer being produced, but a new show is in the works and demanding his attention. All of which explains why Gardner, asked last week if he planned to watch the Series, replied, "Oh, I watch when there's a rerun, but we're filming the District Attorney stories now."
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