"Names make news." Last week these names made this news:

Paroled from the North Carolina State Penitentiary after serving 23 months of a six-to-ten year sentence for his part in the $17,000,000 failure of the Asheville Central Bank & Trust Co. in 1930 was Colonel Luke Lea, 57, onetime (1911-17) U. S. Senator, long a potent Tennessee publisher & politician. With Son Luke Lea Jr., who spent 79 days in jail after a similar conviction, he scurried off to Nashville by automobile.

There citizens read newspaper extras announcing Lea's parole, ran wild, yowled: "Praise the Lord! Luke's out! Glory, Hallelujah!" At Lebanon, 40 miles out side Nashville, a crowd accompanied by an American Legion band gathered to greet Colonel Lea, who, as an A. E. F. artilleryman, tried to kidnap the Kaiser after the Armistice.

Next night 300 Lea admirers gathered in Nashville's Noel Hotel to pay tribute to the ex-convict. Said Colonel Lea: "I have been through the Garden of Gethsemane. I have been confronted with the problem of whether to go on or stop living. I had a large amount of insurance on my life . . . which I could mature and thus provide security for my wife and the dearest children who ever lived. I decided to face life and each day to pray to be worthy of the love of my family and the confidence of my friends."

Mayor Hilary E. Howse quavered: "Colonel Lea hasn't lost a friend. By the spirit of 'Old Hickory' Jackson, by the Eternal, he has made new friends."

In Kansas City, preparing for a good will junket to Japan, Commander-in-Chief James E. Van Zandt of the Veterans of Foreign Wars was called to the trans-pacific telephone for a $132 conversation with a Tokyo newshawk named Osoba. Commander Van Zandt said he had a message for Japanese veterans.

Newshawk: The message?

Commander: I have the message here.

Newshawk: The message?

Commander: I'll read it. Are you ready?

Newshawk: The message?

Into the telephone Commander Van Zandt screamed a message of goodwill, asked: "Did you get it?"

"Repeat the message," said Newshawk Osoba.

Commander Van Zandt did so.

"Have you had dinner?" asked Newshawk Osoba. "What time is it in America? Night or morning?"

Asked if she were really Matilda Wutzki, a Russian-born Jewess who married Paul Wilson in West Newton, Mass. in 1910, Madam Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins (Mrs. Paul Wilson) laid a long-lived rumor by declaring that her ancestors were all Protestants, had settled in New England before 1680, that her name had always been Frances Perkins, that "this appeal to racial prejudice and the attempt at political propaganda by unworthy innuendo must be repugnant to all honorable men and women." Said she: "There are no Jews in my ancestry. If I were a Jew, I would make no secret of it. On the contrary I would be proud to acknowledge it."

Townfolk of Huntington, L. L, seeking to purchase as a shrine the modest house where Poet Walt Whitman was born, frothed when Owner John D. Watson demanded $30,000, frothed even more when Owner Watson advertised that its location was ideally suited for a roadside saloon.

Addressed as Mrs. Putnam by an Iowa City interviewer, Amelia Earhart Putnam snapped: "Call me Miss Earhart, please. I am still Miss Earhart professionally and my husband himself has never introduced me as Mrs. Putnam."

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