(2 of 5)
The University of North Carolina's confident Joseph Wayne Grimsley, 25, is one of seven children of a Wilson county tenant farmer. He graduated near the top of his class with a B.A. in international studies. Though softspoken, Grimsley has no doubt of his future: "I say shoot big. I'm aiming for Secretary of State or something in that line." Born in a farmhouse, Grimsley enlisted in the Army after high school, got his taste for diplomacy while serving at the U.S. embassy in Rome. Using the G.I. bill, he became the first of his family to attend college. A campus politician, he headed everything from the athletic association to the interdormitory council. Last summer he worked hard to nominate Lyndon Johnson for President in Los Angeles, where he organized Johnson's uproarious airport welcome. This summer, Fulbright Scholar Grimsley heads for Bogota's University of the Andes to study Colombia's political system. His motto: "Not to make millions, but to make millions safe and happy."
Delbert LeRoy True, pride of the anthropology department at the University of California at Los Angeles, is a hard-handed man of 37. Son of a lumberyard foreman in Wilmington, Calif., True as a boy was a fascinated fossil hunter and "hooked on California Indians." But when he graduated from high school in 1941, he had no money for college ("My family has always figured the hell with education"). True worked in a shipyard, served as an aerial-gunnery instructor in World War II, acquired a small avocado ranch in the Pauma Valley. In 1953 some U.C.L.A. anthropologists interviewed local Indians, fired up True to publish archaeological papers in learned journals. In 1959 he sold part of his ranch for $10,000, let his wife and children run the rest, went off to enter U.C.L.A.'s "gifted students" program, wound up with a B.A. and a B+ average—enough to win a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship for a year's graduate study. Last week, skipping U.C.L.A.'s commencement, True was off to the University of Arizona to aim for a Ph.D. in anthropology by 1963 and a teaching job in a university. Said he, taking anthropology's long view: "I guess I'm the first member of my family to get a degree in a thousand generations."
Pilot-to-be John D. Sullivan Jr., 21, is top cadet in a class of 217 at the U.S. Air Academy. Son of a retired druggist in Worcester, Mass., Sullivan was appointed in 1957 by U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy. In four years he completed 205½ semester hours, compared with the national college average of 124. He was top man in basic sciences, electrical engineering, military studies, social sciences and overall academic achievement. Sullivan hopes to fly for SAC, then study science in graduate school and some day teach at the academy. Said he happily last week: "Today is the beginning."