People: Apr. 29, 1966

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After seven months of silence and uncertainty, the family in Oklahoma City had happy news. In an envelope bearing North Vietnamese stamps, Air Force Lieut. Colonel James Robinson Risner, 41, (TIME cover, April 23, 1965), sent word to his wife Kathleen and their five children: "I am in perfect health and excellent spirits. All my needs are supplied." Listed as missing in action since his F-105 Thunderchief was blasted down by ground fire near the North Vietnamese town of Thanh Hoa, Robbie Risner didn't indicate where he was being held prisoner, but he did write that at least he can now receive and send one letter a month.

The three girls had all trooped over to the Manhattan boutique of Designer Arnold Scaasi to replenish their spring and summer wardrobes. Mama Anne McDonnell Ford, 46, picked an evening outfit of bright pink sequins, but her girls, Anne Ford Uzielli, 23, who expects her baby in December, and Charlotte Ford Niarchos, 25, whose child is due this summer, bought loose-fitting, quieter frocks of black lacquered lace and peau de soie. Since Charlotte and Anne are both beatified on the Best Dressed list and Mrs. Ford is canonized in the Fashion Hall of Fame, the New York Herald Tribune's Eugenia Sheppard became curious about the new glad rags and sent a photographer over to Mrs. Ford's apartment to make a formal portrait. It was all quite formal indeed, until Mrs. Ford elegantly flopped her legs over the arm of a chair. "Stay that way," said the photographer. "It's sorta cute."

Two of the nation's most durable churchmen were feeling introspective and weary. Boston's salty Richard Cardinal Gushing, 70, nearing the 45th anniversary of his ordination, told the students at St. John's Seminary: "I have reached with weary steps and a heavy heart the evening of my life. I pray that with God's help I shall be able to finish the journey in accordance with his divine will." Going on 50 years in the priesthood, New York's Francis Cardinal Spellman, 76, felt tired as well. "I don't know if I can keep going on much longer," he said at a Catholic charities communion breakfast. But then he laughed: "I will keep going as long as I can, even if I need a derrick to get me out of my car."

As the Fool informed King Lear on the heath: "Prithee, nuncle, be contented; 'tis a naughty night to swim in. Now a little fire . . ." Russia's new Lear, Nilcita Khrushchev, passed his 72nd birthday on the heath outside his dacha near Moscow. His family held a pleasant little party all right, but alack, the palace-controlled Soviet press had neither poetry nor prose to mark the event. To them, the king is dead. And when the old dictator lit a bonfire to celebrate, the heavens opened and the rains doused Nikita's flame.