Heir to the Duke tobacco dynasty, Walker P. ("Skipper") Inman Jr., 10, is already one of the world's richest little boys—and potentially one of the wealthiest men of the late 20th century. An orphan since the age of six, Skipper, who lives with his uncle on a 2,000-acre farm in Brunson, S.C., will get $30 million from his father's estate when he reaches 21. Now, following the death of his grandmother Nanaline Holt Inman Duke, he will get another $35 million. All but passed over in the latest parceling was Skipper's Aunt Doris Duke—Nanaline's daughter—already worth an estimated $70 million, who was merely bequeathed some of her mother's jewelry.
"I was doing an altar of St Thérèse de Lisieux, my favorite saint, and I needed a model for the angel in one of the panels. Jack, with his curly hair and his youthful serenity of expression, was literally God-sent." So said Sculptress Irena Wiley of John F. Kennedy, who at the time in 1939 was spending a week or so of his summer vacation from Harvard visiting the sculptress and her diplomat husband in Europe. Carving the wooden altarpiece for a Belgian church, Mrs. Wiley portrayed the future U.S. President as a guardian angel hovering over the kneeling nun. By the time she had finished. Belgium was overrun by the Nazis, and the work was sent for safekeeping to the Vatican, which passed it on to one of the city's more than 400 churches.
His autobiography. Victory Over Myself, was completed, and World Heavyweight Champion Floyd Patterson, 27, felt a sudden urge to revisit the locale of one of his early chapters. Dragging along a passel of pals, the dusky boxer hustled them aboard a rush-hour "A" train to a subway station beneath Brooklyn's High Street station. Floyd scooted up a ladder to the dark cranny where 17 years ago. as a shy and unhappy ragamuffin, he spent his hours as a chronic hooky player from school. "Just like I remember it," said Floyd. "Crazy, man," said a trainer. Someone else had found Floyd's hideaway. Rummaging around, he found a pilfered wallet left behind by a pickpocket. Clambering down from the unlit alcove, the champ brushed off the soot and sighed. "Now I can get it off my mind."
Two years ago, an 8-lb. dumbbell used to prop a window screen slipped from a maid's frantic grasp and plummeted eight floors from the Ritz Tower Hotel to hit and fatally injure a vacationing Detroit financier walking up Manhattan's 57th Street toward Park Avenue with his wife. Ending a $500,000 suit against the apartment's owners. TV Star Arlene Francis and her husband, Producer Martin Gabel, the widow of Alvin Rodecker settled for $175,000 from the Gabels and $10,000 from the Ritz Tower, both insured for such public liability.
A quartet of mountain climbers stumbled hungry and tattered into a Nepalese village after surviving the blizzards and bitter cold of the Himalayas for 50 days with only 20 days' rations. Led by Tufts University Philosophy Professor Woodrow Wilson Sayre, 43, grandson of the late U.S. President, the amateur foursome—including a geology student, a Boston attorney, a Swiss schoolteacher—had cocksurely attempted to climb the unsealed 25,910-ft. Gyachung Kang peak without either oxygen or Sherpa guides.