You Don’t Wear Mink to a Soup Kitchen, Furrier Told

--Mysels Furs of Chicago celebrated seven decades in business by giving away $25,000 worth of coats, jackets and stoles to 30 senior citizens in South Park Baptist Church’s home for the elderly. “They never dreamed in their wildest dreams that something like this would happen,” said store owner Stewart Walowitz. “It was like winning the lottery.” “We decided that after 70 years in business, Chicago had been good to us. We decided we could give something back,” Walowitz, 29, said of the decision to stage the fur giveaway. But it’s not easy, giving away mink, fox, broadtail, lynx and raccoon to the needy. Walowitz and his father, Melvin, 57, and brother, Robert, 33, did not anticipate the problems, but social service agencies did and would not take part. “I was surprised,” Walowitz said. “I thought it would be a lot easier to find someone. Originally, the idea was to give the reconditioned furs to people at soup kitchens or on welfare. But we were told if we did that we’d probably run into problems because if someone came into a soup kitchen wearing a fur they might not get the soup, or they might be mugged,” Walowitz said.

--A marathoner from New Mexico won the annual Empire State Building run-up for the third straight year. Al Waquie, 33, of Jemez Pueblo, sprinted up the 86 floors to the observatory of the 101-story tower, covering 1,575 steps in 11 minutes and 42 seconds. Janine Aiello, 25, a San Francisco teacher, won the women’s race in 13:14. The record for the 8-year-old event is 10:59.7, set in 1981. Forty-nine runners completed the course, including a one-legged writer from Waterbury, Conn., three New York City policemen, two firefighters and the Empire State Building’s own chief elevator starter.

--More people are biting other people than ever before, and the number has risen about 10% each year since 1979, says Dr. Guy Catone, director of oral surgery at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh. There were 218 reported cases in the city in 1984, Catone said. In about 10 cases each year, the bites came from overenthusiastic affection. “Lovers want to do that--bite each other’s earlobe and that sort of thing,” he said. “I know that people think it’s humorous at first--I know I did. But it is a real problem. Somebody will bite somebody’s lip off, or a nose.” Most reported human biting, however, takes place in street fights or other violent attacks. And Catone said the victims may wish they’d been bitten by a dog, which typically has fewer germs in its mouth than a human being and therefore is less likely to cause infection in the bite wound.