Old School Tie

William Ramsey Laird III, West Virginia's new Senator, is a husky six-footer with prematurely grey hair and a leaning toward liberalism, "if liberal means one who is for the common good." At 39 he is the third youngest Senator (younger: Louisiana's Long, 37; Massachusetts' Kennedy, 38).

Laird and his wife Clara have three children: Mary Ella, 15, Elizabeth

McNeil, 4, and William Ramsey IV, 3. Because Washington is "an experience they'll always remember," the family temporarily will leave a comfortable eight-room house in Fayetteville, W. Va., for a furnished apartment in the capital while Laird is in the Senate.

Laird is a trial lawyer who has argued "many, many" cases of first degree murder charges and has had only one client hanged. Laird's parents left West Virginia for Keswick, Calif., where he was born. They died when he was five; Laird returned to Fayette County to be reared by his grandmother, aunt and uncle. The uncle, Dr. William R. Laird, adopted him. He attended Greenbrier Military School, King College in Bristol, Tenn., and West Virginia University, where he received a law degree in 1944 and made friends with a fellow student, Bill Marland. Marland, now 37 and governor of West Virginia. chose Laird to fill in after Senator Harley M. Kilgore died last month.

Marland appointed Laird to the state board of education, where he faced the segregation problem, came to a personal conclusion that "the Supreme Court's opinions are the law of the land." (West Virginia has moved as rapidly toward integration as any border state.) Later Marland switched Laird to the state tax commission. The new Senator is a Presbyterian, a Lion, a Mason and an American Legionnaire (eligibility: a six-month Navy hitch in World War II during which he rose to seaman second class before receiving a medical discharge).

While Laird was being sworn into the Senate (and parrying questions about any intention of remaining there), Democrats at home jockeyed for election to the Kilgore term, which runs until Jan. 3, 1959. Among the contestants: ex-Classmate William C. Marland.

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