APPOINTMENTS: Two For the Roster

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President Eisenhower last week filled two longstanding, glaring vacancies on his official roster:

CJ To be Solicitor General of the U.S. (the Government's lawyer in cases before the Supreme Court), Simon Ernest Sobeloff, 59, Chief Judge of the Maryland Court of Appeals. A son of Russian-born Jewish parents. Judge Sobeloff is a liberal Republican whose accomplishments as Baltimore's city solicitor and Maryland's U.S. District Attorney have won bipartisan respect in his state. Eisenhower selected him for the job last October, but a factional feud with Governor Theodore Roosevelt McKeldin caused Maryland's Republican Senator Butler to block the appointment for three months. When Butler withdrew his opposition, the Administration was able to 1) get a good man, and 2) reward Teddy McKeldin, "the man who nominated Ike," with his first high-level Washington patronage.

¶To be Assistant Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Roswell Burchard ("Roddy") Perkins, 27, the youngest presidential appointee of the Eisenhower Administration. Perkins, who went to Washington from New York last fall as an adviser on social security matters to HEW Secretary Oveta Gulp Hobby, was spotted for a comer on his record in the 1952 campaign when he headed "Youth for Eisenhower" in four eastern states. At Harvard (Class of '47) "Roddy" Perkins played end on the football team, later edited the Harvard Law Review. He wrote in his class book: "I look upon the future with considerable optimism, as there seems to be only one direction for the future of Harvard football and the Republican Party to go."