National Affairs: Happy Ending

"Now I ask you, how would you like to be able to go home . . . only once ... in two years?" The question was thrown at the President of the U.S. by eleven-year-old Johnny Katz. Harry Truman had just promoted Johnny's father to succeed Averell Harriman as coordinator of all European operations of the Marshall Plan. Despite Johnny's letter from Paris—written without his father's knowledge—Milton Katz took the job and ably filled it. "It's a case where the democracies for once were not too late with too little," Katz says. "We have accomplished a four-year program in three years."

Last week the Katzes, young & old, were able to reflect at last that hard work, diligence, and long-suffering would be rewarded in the end. Katz finished out his year and received a warm letter of commendation from the President. Then, after resigning as ambassador, he took a job with the Ford Foundation, run by his friend Paul Hoffman. As a result, he would go right on being a European expert—but this time at home in Pasadena, Calif., center of year-round marbles, and a place where Johnny's three-year-old brother, Peter, could be cured of the un-American habit of speaking better French than English.