The Week

THE PRESIDENCY

On the Sunday nearest George Washington's birthday, U.S. Presidents generally attend services at Christ Episcopal Church in Alexandria, Va., where Washington himself was a vestryman. John Kennedy was one exception, and for a while it appeared that Lyndon Johnson would be another: he informed the Rev. William Sydnor, rector of the 192-year-old church, that he would be unable to appear, then suddenly changed his mind.

Escorting the President into the church, Sydnor took him to Pew No. 60, which has been restored to its original condition, right down to a place for the heated bricks that Washington and his family used to warm their feet. Sydnor explained that Washington always sat in the far corner of the pew, so that with only a slight turn of his head he could see both the front of the church and the congregation and thus "have a command of the situation." Lyndon sat where Washington had, in full command.

During the services, Sydnor baptized a two-month-old girl, took the baby to the President, who rose, unfastened his gold "L.B.J. '64" tie clasp, attached it to the baby's dress. In his sermon, Sydnor said that "perhaps the greatest single need of our world is reconciliation --reconciliation between husband and wife, labor and management, race and race, nation and nation." Afterward, over coffee in the parish hall, the President told Mrs. Sydnor: "The rector must have written that sermon for me. That's the business I'm in, you know, the business of reconciliation."

Last week the President also:

> Flew to Lexington, Ky., received his 26th honorary degree, and told 12,000 University of Kentucky students: "If you wish a sheltered and uneventful life, you are living in the wrong generation. No one can promise you calm, or ease, or undisturbed comfort. But we can promise you this. We can promise enormous challenge and arduous struggle, hard labor and great danger. And with them we can promise you triumph over all the enemies of man."

>Announced the appointment of a 25-member National Council on the Arts, to be headed by Broadway Producer Roger Stevens. His action came just as New York's Republican Senator Jacob Javits was telling a joint Senate-House hearing on federal support for the arts that "the President should at least give us this council." Informed of Johnson's action, Javits quipped: "That was quick service."

> Greeted winners of the White House Photographers' Association photo contest in his office. Among them was Associated Press Photographer Charles Gorey, who won a plaque--and set off an outcry from dog lovers--with his picture of Johnson holding one of his beagles up by the ears. Said Johnson to Gorey with a small smile: "Did you get paid off?"

> Accompanied Vice President Hubert Humphrey to National Aeronautics and Space Administration headquarters for a progress report on the Mariner IV rocket, launched in November on an eight-month flight to Mars. To hear Humphrey talk, Johnson practically invented space flight. Cried the Vice President: "He has put his heart into it, his spirit into it, his hands and his mind into it. And the fact that he was the author of the space act, and not only authored it but shepherded it to success and then nourished it into fulfillment, is, I think, the real strength, the real underpinning of this program."

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