Hometown Honeymoon a Happy Ending to Hijacking

--Newlyweds Michael and Judy Brown of Miami have finally got their act together. They’re trying again to finish their honeymoon, after the first one was interrupted when TWA Flight 847, en route from Athens to Rome, was hijacked June 14. Judy, 25, was released the day after the hijacking, but Michael, 27, spent 17 days in Beirut, Lebanon. Now in happier environs, the couple checked into the Fountainbleu Hilton in Miami Beach, as guests of the hotel for the weekend. “It was a bizarre honeymoon,” Michael said of the first. “It was pretty difficult--just getting married and then being separated.” At a hotel news conference, the couple criticized a newspaper for revealing while Brown was a hostage that he is Jewish. “I was upset to find out my family went through unnecessary anguish because the Miami Herald printed my religion,” said Michael, adding that he was not mistreated by his captors. Brown said that the hostages were poorly guarded during most of their ordeal but did not try to escape because they feared that they would be killed. At one point, Brown said, a bewildered Amal militiaman ran into the room where some of the hostages were being held and asked in broken English: “Have you seen my gun? Where’s my gun? I can’t find it.”

--Whether the world is ready for another book about the Kennedys is beside the point because “Living With the Kennedys--The Joan Kennedy Story” will be rolling off the presses of Simon & Schuster in September. It is another of those unauthorized books that is already causing a stir. “A real breach of confidentiality” is how Joan Kennedy describes the work of Marcia Chellis, her former administrative assistant. The book’s publisher says that the book tells “what really happens when a beautiful, cloistered debutante from a Catholic college, insulated from life’s unpleasant realities, marries into America’s most relentlessly ambitious political clan.” Joan, the ex-wife of Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, says: “I tried to talk her out of it three years ago when she told me the notes she took on the 1980 (presidential) campaign would be used in a book. I told her I felt so betrayed.” The two women have not spoken for three years even though they live in the same Boston apartment building.

--First Lady Nancy Reagan celebrated her birthday Saturday at Camp David, Md., with the President and close friends. “We’re spending the day quietly but nicely,” Mrs. Reagan was quoted by her press secretary, Jennefer Austin Hirshberg, as saying. Hirshberg added that the red four-wheel-drive vehicle that the Reagans bought each other last Christmas was still serving as this year’s birthday present. Now, as to age, well, Mrs. Reagan’s biography says it’s number 64, but records at Smith College, her alma mater, list her as having been born in 1923. According to a recent television interview, Mrs. Reagan said that she hasn’t decided which age she wants to be.