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They conversed, it seems, mainly about the weather. Still, Prince Charles "made me feel at ease," said Laura Jo Watkins, 20. She was describing how she first met Charles when his frigate H.M.S. Jupiter visited San Diego last March. At an official reception, blonde and voluptuous Laura Jo stood in for her father, Rear Admiral James Watkins, U.S.N., and his wife Sheila. Last week she found herself listening to some more of Charles' talk. As his guest, she sat in the Strangers' Galleries at the House of Lords when he made his maiden speech, 16 minutes on the need for recreational facilities for young people. Charles and Laura Jo were having their own problems about recreational facilities. A secretarial student at San Diego's Kelsey-Jenney College, Laura Jo was invited on Charles' suggestion to attend retiring U.S. Ambassador Walter Annenberg's farewell party. He had to cancel out because of the death of his great-uncle, the Duke of Gloucester. Instead, Laura Jo visited Charles privately at Kensington Palace. Her mother professed astonishment: "Surely he must have lots of English girl friends." Chagrined mums round England took comfort from the fact that since Laura Jo is Roman Catholic, Charles is forbidden by law to marry her. Anyway, in an interview Charles gave to the London Observer Charles stuck to his previous statement that he would marry someone more or less of his own rank. "Marriage," he said, "isn't an 'up' or 'down' issue. It's a side-by-side one."
Very old grizzlies in Yellowstone National Park last week must have thought that their eyes were deceiving them. There, tramping the trails, was Ranger Jack Ford, 22, the spitting image of his dad Jerry, who spent a summer as a Yellowstone ranger in 1936. Jack, a senior at Utah State University majoring in forestry, looks forward to his summer, particularly since the Vice President is so enthusiastic. "I rode shotgun for a garbage truck. I had a great time holding a gun on the bears as they feasted on garbage," recalls Jerry. "And I never fired a shot."
"Up there in my civvies, staring at all those black and red costumes, I kept wondering if everything was hanging right," said Beverly Sills, confessing to stage fright. On an unfamiliar stage last week, the Brooklyn-born soprano became an honorary doctor of music in Harvard Yard, along with Mstislav Rostropovich, the Russian cellist. "It was much more nerve-racking than any performance," said Beverly. "Maybe I should have sung instead." Doctor Beverly joshed Husband and Harvard Alumnus Peter Greenough saying, "I'm a Harvard man just like the other Greenoughs." Then she referred to her son Bucky who is mentally retarded: "I hoped my little boy would go to Harvard too one day. But he never will, so I'll just have to pick up a degree for him."