People: Aug. 23, 1968

Between his white football shoes and natty street clothes, Joe Namath, 25, swinging quarterback of the New York Jets pro-football team, cuts a striking figure. Come fall, he will be positively dazzling. Seems a New York furrier and Jets fan has whipped up a $5,000 double-breasted mink coat for sale to the passer. His left knee hurts too much for play these days, but he managed to sweat out the final fitting in 85° temperature at the Jets training field.

Since her husband left for Viet Nam in March, Lynda Bird Robb has filled her days writing for McCall's, visiting Houston's Astro-World, playgoing in New York and gallery-hopping in Washington. This month she nipped off to Newport for a weekend of yachting with Socialite Topsy Taylor and other friends. But such activity for Mrs. Robb, who expects her first child in October, will come to a screeching halt. So says L.B.J. By paternal/presidential command, Lynda has been told she must stop traveling in September.

Like many a senior citizen, Nikita Khrushchev was puzzled about what to do with his time. He tried photography, shooting the countryside around his dacha, outside Moscow. Then he tried teaching a jackdaw to talk. Now he has zeroed in on another hobby: hydroponics, the science of growing plants without soil, using pebbles and nutrient-loaded water. He has marked off some pebbled lots, built a system of pipes, and is growing tomatoes with a vengeance.

When the fall term rolls around, that familiar face with its impish grin will not be seen at Saint David's School in Manhattan. Instead, John F. Kennedy Jr. will attend Collegiate School. No reason was given by Jacqueline Kennedy for the switch from Saint David's, run by Catholic laymen, to Collegiate, a nondenominational school traditionally linked to the Dutch Reformed Church. One report says she balked at a recommendation that John be kept in second grade another year until he matures a bit; according to that story, he was often restless and inattentive in class. Others insist she was influenced by Leonard Bernstein, whose son Alexander is at Collegiate.

Most people in the village of Unterlengenhart, West Germany, where she has been living, know her as Anna Anderson. But for 31 years she has been trying to prove she is the Grand Duchess Anastasia, youngest daughter of Russia's murdered Czar Nicholas II and Czarina Alexandra. On a visit to the U.S. last week, she found an important backer: Maria Rasputin, 69, daughter of the "mad monk" who held dark dominance over the Czarina. Soon after the two women met in Charlottesville, Va., they began reminiscing. Twice Anna called Maria by her pet name, "Mara." No matter what others may think, Maria says she is convinced that Anna is the real Anastasia. If Anna can eventually convince the German courts, she stands to inherit some $12.5 million of the Romanov fortune.