Any mother would have been proud of five such fine boys sitting on the dais at Manhattan's Plaza Hotel, recipients of medals from the National Institute of Social Sciences "for their signal service" in all fields. There was Philanthropist John D. Ill, 61, who said that he was "the only one who was unemployed"; Nelson, 59, Governor of New York; Laurence, 57, who heads the brothers' charitable foundation; Winthrop, 55, Governor of Arkansas, and David, 52, president of the Chase Manhattan Bank. It was their first public get-together since 1960, and John D. Ill was prompted to question the wisdom of his longtime activities on behalf of population control. "Tonight's occasion makes me wonder," he said. "If my parents had been exposed to today's ideas of family planning. Win and David might not have made it."

They call Gary Beban "the Great One" at U.C.L.A., where in a three-year football career he ran for 1,271 yards, passed for 4,087 yards and scored 35 touchdowns in leading the Bruins to 22 victories and two ties in his 29 games. Even in U.C.L.A.'s 21-20 loss to Southern California, now the U.S.'s top-ranked team. Beban passed for 301 yards and two touchdowns, was told after the game by U.S.C.'s superb Halfback O. J. Simpson: "Gary, you're the greatest." Sportswriters and broadcasters agreed. By a slim margin over Simpson, Quarterback Beban, 21, was elected winner of the Heisman Trophy as college football's player of the year.

"All the news reports made us sound like fugitive lovers," laughed Amherst Sophomore David Eisenhower, 19, Ike's only grandson, commenting on the roundabout announcement of his engagement to Smith College Sophomore Julie Nixon, 19, Dick Nixon's younger daughter. The youngsters, who will not marry until after graduation, were only casual friends in Washington but have been seeing each other steadily since they found themselves at neighboring colleges; at Thanksgiving, David presented Julie with a diamond ring. Still, no announcement was made, Julie recalled, until her father "called me before he went on a TV show to find out what he should do if he was asked about the engagement. I told him he should just go ahead and say we were engaged--because we are."

Even after all these years, Eddie Rickenbacker, 77, the World War I flying ace, still has the itchiest trigger finger in the West. Latest target: hippies. "I love 'em like a rattlesnake," Cap'n Eddie said at a National Press Club luncheon in Washington. "If I had my way I'd give draft-card burners a good lashing and a good haircut; I would give beatniks the same, and get a good old-fashioned horse-curry brush and give 'em a good bang. I'd put these odds and ends out in front in Viet Nam to fight with the enemy in front and bayonets in back."

Ill lay: Comedian Garry Moore, 52, recuperating in Bermuda's King Edward VII Memorial Hospital after a "very mild heart attack" Evangelist Billy Graham, 49, recovering at West Virginia's Greenbrier hotel from a moderate case of virus pneumonia; New Jersey's Democratic Governor Richard J. Hughes, 58, resting at Philadelphia's University of Pennsylvania Medical Center after surgical removal of a cataract in his left eye; Comedian Bert Lahr, 72, rallying at Manhattan's Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center from severe pneumonia that put him in a coma; Communications Theorist Marshall McLuhan, 56, also convalescing at Columbia-Presbyterian after removal of a benign growth near the brain.

Blue eyes icy with concentration, Columbus Fats lined up the shot that would take it all from the Cleveland Kid. Then he caromed the eight ball off one bank and back into the near side pocket. The Cleveland Kid shrugged. "A real pro," he mumbled. Not quite, but Ohio's Republican Governor James A. Rhodes, 58, was good enough to win at eight ball against Cleveland's Democratic Mayor Carl B. Stokes, 40, who had once been billiards champion of the University of Minnesota. The epic confrontation occurred during a meeting in Columbus, when Rhodes suggested that he and Stokes might get better acquainted at the pool table in the gubernatorial mansion. "I want to play him again," said Stokes when it was all over.

It's another new hotel on Park Place for Howard Hughes, 61, the world's most indefatigable Monopoly player. Without emerging from his $250-a-day cave on the ninth floor of Las Vegas' Desert Inn, the phantom billionaire has concluded negotiations to take over the 650-room Frontier Hotel for a total of $9,000,000. Hughes's holdings in and around Las Vegas are now worth over $100 million, include the Desert Inn, Sands Hotel, Alamo Airways, 30,000 acres of land and the city airport.

Precocious was the polite word for Portland Mason, only daughter of Actor James Mason and ex-Wife Pamela. The girl gave up smoking at the age of eight and almost won a Brigitte Bardot look-alike contest at 12. Now 19, Portland has made her London acting debut in a revival of Oscar Wilde's A Woman of No Importance, playing--of all things--a puritanical little prig. The critics thought she was splendid, and so did Papa James, who announced that henceforth "my ambition is to be known as Portland's father."

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