People: Aug. 26, 1966

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The night temperature dropped below freezing, and 14,000-ft. Mount Rainier loomed above like a grim shadow. But not even a badly bruised ankle could keep Defense Secretary Robert McNamara down. So he pulled on his sturdy wool knickers, taped his ankle, kissed his wife Margaret goodbye, and set out from the 10,000-ft.-high base camp an hour after midnight. There were eleven in the party, including 16-year-old Son Craig and 22-year-old Daughter Kathleen. By dawn they were on the peak, admiring the panorama of Washington's Cascade Range stretched out below. "For a man who spends his life behind a desk, it was a splendid performance," said Mount Everest Hero Jim Whittaker. "If he hadn't injured his ankle, we would have had trouble keeping up with him."

His grandfather was West Point, class of '15, his dad, class of '44; now David Eisenhower, 18, is putting a hitch in the family's military pitch. An honor graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy, Ike's only grandson will enter Amherst College this fall, instead of the Military Academy. "His parents felt that the decision should be David's alone," said Grandma Mamie in a McCall's interview. "And it was."

"On formal occasions she wears hatty hats, motherly dressmaker suits, and for a handbag—a majestic holdall." The pussycats of London's fashion press were helping Britain's Princess Anne celebrate her 16th birthday with some swipes at her clothes. "All those conventions of British royal dress have been decanted on her," complained the London Sunday Express's writer, though conceding that Anne does have "the young idea when she's off duty." Well, did that mean miniskirts? Not at all. In Jamaica with Prince Charles for the Commonwealth Games, she made the scene in a pair of good-looking hip-huggers and a Dutch-boy cap. What's more, says Anne, after boarding school she wants to go to Sussex University, one of Britain's new non-snob colleges.

To borrow a cricket term, it was a very sticky wicket. There was the visiting Westhampton (L.I.) Mallet Club, unrivaled at home, ignominiously defeated eight straight times by London's Hurlingham Croquet Club. "Do you need a coach?" inquired the British captain. "We need a coach-and-four," groaned a U.S. player. But the colonials have just begun to fight. Back home, plans were already afoot to form a kind of U.S. Olympic team of malleteers, including all the croquet greats: Composer Richard Rodgers, Actors David Wayne and Gig Young, and as spiritual leader, a man described as "a living croquet legend in his lifetime," Ambassador W. Averell Harriman.

She's been deskbound in Washington for years, but now Career Girl Carol Laise, 48, is outward bound. L.B.J. tapped her last week to be U.S. Ambassador to Nepal. And it wasn't a political sop either. Carol has spent eleven years in the Foreign Service and is one of the State Department's top Asia experts. More than that, she's made four trips to the remote, Himalayan-crowned kingdom. Which makes just about everybody happy: the Nepalese because they get a plenipotentiary who knows their problems, and Carol because, as she said, "I won't have to do my own cooking any more."