People, May 28, 1979

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That was no Red Headed Stranger standing in the Oval Office in braids and denim pants. That was outlaw Country Star Willie Nelson presenting President Carter with a Steuben bowl for the President's efforts on behalf of country music. The award was recently created to honor people who make unique contributions to country music, and when the votes for the first recipient were counted, Carter was told, "lo and behold, your name led all the rest." Considering some of the other polls the President has been reading lately, that was sweet music indeed.

She once claimed the White House sent her flowers bugged to record her hospital room conversations, but now she fights only the bugs in her vegetable garden. Dita Beard, who set off more than just a barnyard squabble eight years ago when she allegedly composed a memo hinting that her employer, ITT, had bribed the Republican Party, today has a small farm in West Virginia, complete with garden, two goats, three dogs and two cats. "In the beginning I went into farming in a big way," explains Beard. Then came the revelation: "An actual farmer I am not." The woman who suffered chest pains—and a visit from a red-wigged Howard Hunt—around the time she was called upon to testify about the memo still feels "lousy, more because of mileage than years." Having exchanged the world of cover-ups for that of coveralls, at 60 she passes her days "relaxing and getting fat," and presumably keeping her distance from the Dictaphone.

Whatever Jimmy Carter has done as President, it was not without Reason. Commander Joseph Paul Reason, U.S.N.. 38, that is, who as the President's naval aide has also been his bagman. Reason dogged Carter across the country and the world carrying a familiar black bag, a.k.a. "the football," stuffed with necessary signal codes and target information in case the President had to order instant retaliation for a nuclear attack. Reason, who at 6 ft. 3 in. is easily visible behind his 5-ft, 9½-in. fellow Annapolis graduate, had to scramble last month when Carter, vacationing in Plains, slipped away to go fishing alone without informing anyone. The bagman is tossing in his football because if Reason ever expects to make admiral, he needs more sea duty. He leaves the White House to become executive officer of the nuclear cruiser U.S.S. Mississippi.

Fereydoun Hoveida, 54, has taken the advice that personnel experts usually dish out to business executives who get the sack: Use your new free time doing something you have been wanting to do. Hoveida, fired as Iran's longtime United Nations ambassador by the revolutionary regime, is devoting his time to writing and art. The deposed diplomat, who in the past penned essays, film criticisms and six novels, has turned to nonfiction: the events that led to the downfall of the Shah and the execution of Hoveida's older brother, former Premier Amir Abbas Hoveida. Meanwhile, a Manhattan gallery is showing 37 examples of his Persian calligraphy, which consists of colorful, paper-on-paper abstractions. Eighteen have already been sold at prices ranging from $300 to $1,100.