National Affairs: NEW AIR FORCE BOSS

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Personality & Private Life. Despite his decades in the East, Quarles still has a slight Arkansas drawl. Greying, blue-eyed, slight, he never smokes, eats sparsely, almost never drinks. He likes to cook his own morning oatmeal, sometimes drinks plain hot water instead of coffee or tea. In Washington he and his second wife Rosina (his first marriage ended in divorce) live quietly in their own home near Chevy Chase; to avoid the capital rounds, they consulted a protocol expert for advice on invitations they could properly skip. He enjoys dancing, good music, golf and—"through force of habit," he says wryly—dishwashing. He plays the guitar, likes chess and a careful game of bridge. He writes weekly to his children (two daughters and one son, a senior I.B.M. mathematician), sends postcards to his six grandchildren. Scrupulous about the ethics of high office, he never lets his wife take his Government-furnished limousine for her own use. When he was vice president of Bell Laboratories, which makes most U.S. telephones, he refused to use any influence to get his son a phone out of turn, let young Quarles wait 15 months for an instrument. In short, this was a man as different as possible from his predecessor.

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