When President William Vacanarat Shadrach Tubman wanted his Executive Mansion refurbished for last week's 100th anniversary of Liberian independence, he applied to a Manhattan department store, R. H. Macy's. "We went and got," said Macy's Decorator in Chief Betty Gallagher Ormsby, "everything." That included bedspreads, crystal goblets, hand-cut chandeliers, a merry-go-round, toothpick frills, a steak masticator, a fish refrigerator, a headboard of pale café-au-lait satin for President Tubman's bed. From Monrovia, capital of Africa's only Negro republic, Macy's was flooded by radiograms: "Engraved glassware imperative;" "Ship constitutional range" (that was supposed to mean "institutional," i.e., big enough...
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