Honor Without Profit

Some of the other men who served under John Kennedy left Washington years ago, iridescent with the celebrity of Camelot, and found a measure of fortune. Dean Rusk stayed on to work for Lyndon Johnson. Rusk was never exactly part of the New Frontier's clan anyway; he was taciturn, stubborn, spartan, undeniably intelligent, distrustful of personal publicity, given to seven-day work weeks at the State Department.

Some even thought that his self-abnegation was a pose of some kind. But after L.B.J.'s presidency was capsized, Rusk withdrew further into his privacy. To have been Secretary of State was, for him, an honor without profit. Almost none of the bountiful lecturer's fees and foundation posts that have rewarded other public servants descended on him. His checkbook was almost depleted when he left the State Department, and it is probably thinner now. When a Rockefeller Foundation grant he received last year ran out, Rusk accepted a new job as professor of international law at the University of Georgia.

Some in Washington who served with the Johnson Administration are unaware that Rusk is even leaving town. This week, with a few very private farewells and no interviews, Rusk is closing his house in Washington and departing for his native Georgia. In some sense, he goes as a victim of the unpopular war that he so doggedly and conscientiously defended.

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