"I'll be back," he hallooed from the launch that whisked him off to federal pen on Washington's McNeil Island in 1962. Last week, 41 Ibs. lighter, erstwhile Teamster Boss Dave Beck completed 30 months of his five-year term for faking tax returns and put-putted back to civilization. Obviously he had taken McNeil's Eng. Lit. course, "I have returned," pronounced Beck, who plans to indulge his old fancy for real estate and possibly write his memoirs to vindicate his minority view that he is "not guilty, and I hope that if what I'm saying is not the truth, my mother that died since I left, I hope she goes to hell and stays there into eternity." This side of eternity, Dave will draw a $50,000 annual pension, courtesy of his ever-loving union.

When PT-109 was rammed by a Japanese destroyer, two members of Lieut, (j.g.) John F. Kennedy's crew lost their lives. The skipper wrote to relatives of both men, praising their heroism, and to the widow of Torpedoman Second Class Jack Kirksey Kennedy wrote four letters. "If a captain is fortunate," said the first, "he finds one man in his crew who contributes more than his share. Jack Kirksey was that man." Last week the letters brought $9,500 in Manhattan, highest price yet paid at auction for a memento of the late President.

Midst laurels stood: General Curtis LeMay, 58, U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff and World War II Bomber Command boss, whose B-29s helped devastate Japan, decorated with Japan's Order of the Grand Cordon of the Rising Sun for his role in building up the country's postwar defenses; U.S. Steel Chairman Roger Blough, 60, given the New York City U.S.O.'s gold medal "as one who symbolizes the support of U.S.O. by major industries of America"; Vinoba Bhave, 69, Gandhian holy man whose pilgrimages across India have netted 5,000,000 acres of "land for the landless," given a medal by President Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan from Pope Paul VI; Sculptor Alexander Colder, 66, Critic Malcolm Cowley, 66, and Poet Allen Tote, 65, named to the American Academy of Arts and Letters; John N. Heiskell, 92, publisher of the Arkansas Gazette, winner of Arizona University's John Peter Zenger Award for his support of integration in the 1957 Little Rock controversy, which cost the Gazette $2,000,000 in circulation and advertising revenues.

The coming-out party, marking the end of Jacqueline Kennedy's formal year of mourning, was to have been a hospital benefit with Hollywood glitterbugs. Instead, Jackie, 35, chose an occasion that in more than one way seemed closer to home. Escorted by U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson, and dressed in a one-shouldered black crepe gown with an ermine jacket, she attended a U.N. concert commemorating the 16th anniversary of the adoption of its Declaration of Human Rights.

There was only one candle on the cake when U.S. Socialism's perennial Presidential Hopeful Norman Thomas celebrated his 80th birthday last week. So he had plenty of breath left to sound off for 2,000 admirers at Manhattan's Hotel Astor. Thomas, who campaigned for the Democrats last fall with the slogan "Most of the way with L.B.J.," blasted the Administration's anti-poverty program ("to talk of victory is nonsense"), called for a cease-fire in South Viet Nam, opened telegrams of congratulations from Hubert Humphrey and Earl Warren. Best reading of all was a birthday check for $17,500, raised by the dwindling Socialist faithful. Thomas said he would divvy up the money among his favorite left-wing causes: "It won't last long, because every organization I'm connected with is going bankrupt."

Musicomedy Star Barbra Streisand, 22, is big for feather boas and faded satin negligees from the thrift shop. Funny girl. She also has a weakness for $1,200 South American skunk furs, for man-tailored suits that she designs herself, and other Barbrous whatsits that make fashion's top camp followers whinny for joy. As a walking encyclopaedia of haute kook, she was nominated for the Encyclopaedia Britannica's 1964 Book of the Year by Fashion Consultant Eleanor Lambert, who called her the embodiment of "the nonconformist spirit." In Los Angeles, though, a couturier who calls himself Mr. Blackwell ungallantly volunteered that Streisand looks more like "an unsuccessful hitchhiker."

What more to say, but that I dearly wait

Commanding Death's tense whisper at the gate.

So speaks a character in his latest collection of poems. But Death had better not try to gatecrash Britain's John Masefield, who at 86 has plenty more to say and intends to say it. In London to accept a $7,000 prize from the National Book League, Britain's poet laureate (official salary: $272 per annum) allowed in a tense shout: "I am still writing, and I hope to write better some day. At 86, some of the cobwebs have been knocked away, and the scene becomes grander. Much more majestic are those fables that await retelling."

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