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Named vice-chairman was shrewd. 58-year-old, Carolina-born, W. (for William) Harllee Branch, a Washington news correspondent who, after 30 years in news paper work from typesetting to editing, became executive assistant to Postmaster General Farley in 1933. Only airline executive named to the Authority was 34-year-old Socialite George Grant Mason Jr., foreign representative of Pan American Airways in charge of Caribbean service. Iowa-born, New York-bred. Fourth Authority member is Mormon-born Democrat Robert Hinckley, assistant WPA administrator for Far Western States and supervisor of considerable WPA airport and airway project work. Fifty-year-old Indiana Republican Oswald Ryan, fifth member, has for six years been gen eral counsel to the Federal Power Com mission.
To the Air Safety Board, the President appointed two licensed transport pilots, dashing, mustached Texan Tom Oates Hardin, vice-president of the Airline Pilots' Association, veteran of 10,000 flying hours with American Airlines; and Alabama-born Lieut.-Colonel Sumpter Smith, War flier, aeronautical engineer, since 1936 director of the Division of Airways and Airports of the WPA. The third Safety Board member was not named. Among these appointments, peeled political eyes could discover no one recommended for appointment by dictator-fearing McCarran. But if Franklin Roosevelt gave the back of his hand to Rebel Pat McCarran, it was at the same time a helping hand to U. S. aviation.