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A passionate physical-fitness buff, Volpe has needed all the strength he could muster to overcome heavily weighted political odds. In his first try for elective office, Volpe won the Massachusetts governorship in 1960 even as John Kennedy was defeating every other Republican on the ballot. Beaten in 1962, he regained the governorship in 1964 against the Johnson landslide. His fight for more roads as Eisenhower's federal highway administrator, and the 227 miles laid in Massachusetts during his six years in office, have led critics to predict that Volpe will turn the country into a vast cloverleaf. In fact, his first and most urgent concerns will be highspeed train systems, airport congestion and the vexed future of the supersonic transport.
Interior
Walter Hickel, 49, is Alaska's most celebrated entrepreneur. Born on a Kansas tenant farm, the third of ten children, Hickel left home at 19 and wound up in Alaska, where his first job was washing dishes. He started building homes in 1946, then housing developments, then hotels.
As Alaska's second Governor, Hickel took giant steps to develop the state's adolescent economy, insisting that a share of the petroleum extracted from Alaska be refined in the state. By applying pressure in Washington, he won more stringent regulation of foreign boats fishing off Alaska's shoreline. He was successful in attracting new industry and kicking off negotiations with the Federal Government to extend the Alaska Railroad into the mineral-rich Arctic region. He has battled for the economic and civil rights of Alaska's grievously disadvantaged Indians.
Agriculture
The day after University of Nebraska Chancellor Clifford Hardin, 53, was named to Nixon's Cabinet, the college newspaper ran his picture and asked: "Would you buy a used tractor from this man?" Student humor aside, even the farmers gathered in Kansas City, Mo., for the American Farm Bureau convention last week wondered aloud about Indiana-born Hardin and his credentials.
If Hardin is hardly a down-on-the-farm type, his administrative talents are impressive. When hired by Nebraska 14 years ago, he was the youngest chancellor in the university's history. Under him, enrollment has climbed from 7,197 to 29,800, and faculty salaries have soared.
His style is that of a banker; he is, in fact, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City, Mo.
Besides his ability to handle money and people, Hardin brings to Washington a doctorate from Purdue in agricultural economics, and a deep concern for the threat of famine, spelled out in a new book, Overcoming World Hunger, which he edited. Introducing his new Secretary, Nixon said that he had searched for a man who, "instead of speaking for the President to the farmers, would recognize that it was his responsibility to speak for the farmers to the President."
Commerce