NATIONAL COUNCIL'S NEW PRESIDENT

Elected to a two-year term as president of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.: Bishop William C. (for Clyde) Martin, of Dallas.

Background: Born at Randolph, Tenn. on July 28, 1893, the son of a timber contractor. His mother died when he was young, and he spent most of his early years on his grandfather's farm in western Tennessee. Educated at the University of Arkansas and Hendrix College in Conway, Ark. (B.A. 1918). Served overseas in World War I as an Army Medical Corpsman. After studying in Scotland at the University of Aberdeen, received a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Southern Methodist University in 1921, later got his first D.D. (honoris causa) at Hendrix.

Family: When his father remarried, an Arkansas girl named Sally Katherine Beene became his stepsister. He married her in 1918. They have three children, four grandchildren.

Church Career: Ordained in the Methodist Episcopal Church (South) in 1921. He held city pastorates in Texas and Arkansas for 17 years, was once pastor of Dallas' roomy First Methodist Church (membership: 5,200). Elected a bishop in 1938, he presided over the Pacific Area (1939), then the Kansas-Nebraska Area (1939-48) of the Methodist Church. Since 1948 has been resident bishop of the Dallas-Fort Worth Area, a stronghold of U.S. Methodism. Already a vice president of the Methodist Council of Bishops, he is also scheduled to become presiding bishop of the Methodist Church next year.

Hobbies: A high-school and college football player and once an energetic hunter and fisherman, he has lately cut athletics, now gets most of his exercise walking. ("I'm a member of the Dallas Athletic Club, but my activities are largely confined to the table.") Favorite reading: biography.

Personality: A hefty six-footer with a rather severe mien--a compound of close-cropped grey hair, an affinity for black suits and ties, and a habit of looking people straight in the eye--he is, however, a friendly man with a well-used sense of humor. (His disclaimer, when asked whether he avoids smokers and drinkers: "You'd sure have to do a lot of detouring in America today.") He is an able and unruffled administrator who sets a fast pace. On a recent Sunday, he preached twice in the morning at a church in Fort Worth and once each at two churches in nearby Arlington that afternoon and evening.

Outlook: A strong believer in the proposition that ecumenical cooperation, now functioning well at the top level, should be extended to the grass roots. He told the assembly: "We've been concerned here with the overhead of cooperation. We've been on dress parade . . . I am concerned in bringing the services of the council into closer relationship with the local community . . . This overhead fellowship is delightful and enriching, but there should be elimination of the sense of futility that grows out of the overlapping and duplication of denominational programs on the local parish level."

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