Soaring Ambition

When the wind is right, Herman Stiglmeier and Henry Myers get restless. They are twin brothers* with a twin ambition --to fly a glider longer than anyone else has.

On a blustery morning last week, they piled oranges, raisins, coffee into their two-place glider and took off, towed by a 1942 Chevrolet until their glider was 100 feet in the air. All day they swooped, soared and whirled above the hills of Palos Verdes, Calif, and out over the Pacific Ocean.

Sometimes they fell to a dangerous 200 ft., sometimes they soared as high as 6,000 ft. Once they nearly crashed. When darkness fell, they watched for flashlight signals on the ground.

Finally, at 9:45, the twins flashed the ground nine times to announce that they were going to land. Said Herman, "It wasn't very healthy up there in the dark in something that didn't have a motor in it." The brothers put their plane into a dive. At 10:05 -- twelve hours and 52 minutes after the take-off -- they glided to a landing. They had topped the American duration record by nearly three hours.

Other winners last week:

P: Walter Piekarski, a Chicago high-school boy, scored 91 points in one basketball game.

P: Promoter Sol Strauss won a victory of sorts. Jersey Joe Walcott reluctantly signed on Sol's terms (20% of the net gate, radio and television returns, 22 1/2% of the movie rights) instead of his own (30%) for a return bout with Joe Louis at Yankee Stadium on June 23.

P: Iron-grey, Argentine-bred Talon charged from last place to first to nose out On Trust in California's $102,500 Santa An ita Handicap, the world's richest race. In Florida's Flamingo Stakes, the horse that is supposed to have the inside track on the 1948 Kentucky Derby -- Citation --romped home by six lengths in near track-record time to win $43,500.

* Henry simplified his name.

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