Fathers

Father (Frederick H.) Sill, founder and headmaster emeritus of Connecticut's Kent School, celebrated his 70th birthday reading congratulatory letters from alumni to their beloved "Pater," wore as usual the monastic habit (called by the schoolboys "the great white tent") of the Episcopal Order of the Holy Cross.

Frederick F. Bulkely, 77-year-old war worker of the Electric Boat Co. ("Elco" PTs), heard his 32-year-old son Lieut. Commander John Duncan Bulkely, probably the most decorated public hero of the war, give a speech at the Bayonne, N.J., plant. Father Fred then proudly mentioned his two other sons: Frederick, 54, and Douglas seven months.

Doctors

Sophie Tucker, last of the Red-Hot Mamas (see cut), emitted great waves of sexagenarian heat at Manhattan's Copacabana nightclub. A 179-lb. wraith of her former self, she wowed her audience with numbers from Some of These Days (which she introduced in 1909) to Mairzy Doats, rocked the club with a doubly meaningful closing act called "Dr. Tucker's Remedy." Said Miss Tucker: "Oldtime circuit vaudeville will never come back, but my show is the same as it has always been; favorites last. Everyone, everyone is so friendly, and as for my friend," she gestured across her dressing room, "Dr. Chung is a great-woman."

Dr. Margaret Chung (see cut), matriarch and "mother" to some 700 Allied pilots who wear the jade Buddha tiepins of the Organization of Bastards (because they are not her legitimate sons), to 400 Kiwis--good Bastard material, but non-flyers--(named after the kiwi, a bird which cannot fly), to 300-odd Golden Dolphins, a society of submariners, first became a "mother" to seven American aviators who tried to volunteer for service with the Chinese Air Force in 1931. A top-notch San Francisco surgeon, she has flown thousands of miles to give her medical skill to her "sons," makes her son-given home their rendezvous and trophy room, numbers among her Kiwi names Lily Pons, Carl Van Doren, Helen Hayes, Katharine Cornell. After her red-hot friend's show she smiled: "Sophie is a wonderful person."

Busts

Hitler, Goering & Goebbels made a drive for scarce metals, confiscated door handles, hinges, lamps and name plates, made of copper, nickel, bronze, tin and lead, exempted all busts of Hitler, Goering & Goebbels. Last Feb. 15 Joseph Goebbels invited his guests to dine at Berlin's Hotel Bristol. That night the British came, uninvited. A blockbuster crashed square on the hotel. Days later, hundreds of dead had been dug from the ruins. Joseph Goebbels was not among them--he had left on the dead run when the alarm first sounded.

Musician

Lionel Barrymore's pleasant symphonic Partita was played by Conductor Fabien Sevitzky and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, was well received by Indiana-politans. Said intense Russian Sevitzky (nephew of Boston's Serge Koussevitsky): "Barrymore has as much talent musically as he has dramatically." The actor started composing at 18, modeled his work after his idols Bach and Handel, in 1942 orchestrated McDowell's Sea Pieces (originally for piano). Said Barrymore of Sevitzky: "We don't know each other and yet are good friends. He sees me one day on the screen and I listen the next to his recordings and we understand each other."

Pinch

Congressman Robert Hale (Maine, R.) chatted with Lord Halifax at a British Embassy tea, felt himself pinched in the rear, turned gravely, found a woman who babbled that she had mistaken him for Justice Felix Frankfurter.

Presidents

President Manuel Quezon of the Philippines, continuing in Miami his two-year fight for health and homeland, appointed Colonel Carlos P. Romulo his Secretary of Information and Public Relations, gave him the Distinguished Service Star of the Philippines in the presence of Philippine Chief of Staff Major General Basilio J. Valdes; the President's aide, Colonel Manuel Nieto; the President's doctor, Major Benvenuto R. Dino; and U.S. Army Intelligence's Lieut. Colonel R. C. Hornsby, security officer for Quezon.

President Manuel Avila Camacho, in front of a group of his country's flyers, thought the time had come to speak in martial tones. Said he: "To the air forces falls the responsibility for carrying our national colors to the war fronts.. . . You have already shown you want to fight.* . . . I shall consider and determine the possibility that Mexico, in a valiant and virile manner, shall participate in the war--although actually it will only be a symbolic act to raise our flag on the battlefields."

* At least 12,000 Mexicans are serving in the U.S. armed forces

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