Pearl Is a Gem in Train Wreck

--There Pearl Bailey stood beside the railroad tracks in her nightgown, robe and sneakers, talking through a bullhorn provided by a rescue worker. “This is Pearl, honey,” she said as she calmed down fellow passengers aboard Amtrak’s Broadway Limited. Fifteen of the train’s 19 cars derailed in Mansfield, Ohio, early Monday after the locomotive rammed a truck stalled on the tracks. At least 53 of the more than 400 persons aboard were injured, none seriously, officials said. “Probably one of the most stabilizing factors was Pearl Bailey,” said Richland County Sheriff Richard Petty. “She got on the PA system and urged them to take it easy and not to panic.” Passenger Joan DeMoss of Chicago said: “She held my baby. She was beautiful.” The entertainer, who was not hurt, was en route with her husband, Louis Bellson, from Los Angeles to New York for an appearance as chairman of the American Lung Assn. Bailey said she prefers the train to flying because she likes to watch the countryside. “I’m the Amtrak rider of all time. The railroad’s the backbone of America,” she said. Then, pausing for effect, she added: “It’s not easy to say that this morning, baby.”

--Bernardine Dohrn, a former leader of the radical Weather Underground who was charged with bombings and other crimes during the 1960s anti-war movement and was fined and placed on probation, now wants to be a member of the New York Bar Assn. Dohrn, 43, passed the bar exam a year ago and is an associate at Sidley & Austin, a “conservative, Establishment” law firm based in Chicago. But now Dohrn wants to become a member of the New York bar and must be found of “good moral character” by an association panel, her attorney, Don Reuben, explained. Dohrn is a changed woman from her radical days, even “dull,” Reuben said. “She’s conservative in her thinking,” Reuben said. “She’s a yuppie. She has evolved from revolutionary to square.”

--Jane Muskie, wife of former Secretary of State Edmund S. Muskie, and Abigail McCarthy, wife of former Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy, have teamed up to write a spy novel. The authors “have concocted a political thriller centering on the drugging-kidnaping of the vice president’s wife,” according to Publisher’s Weekly. The book, “One Woman Lost,” is to be published next spring.

--It took 40 years, but Inger-Johanne Gerwig has finally found the American soldier who jumped into the ocean and saved her life in 1945. “All my life I wondered who he was. Finally, I found him,” the University of Colorado professor said of rescuer Oddvar Nass. Gerwig said she was just 10 years old and could not swim when she fell in while reaching for a starfish near Oslo, Norway. Gerwig did remember that her rescuer had been assigned to the 99th Infantry Battalion. And, when she heard that the group was holding its 40th reunion in Denver, she arranged to appear before the veterans to tell her story and see if anyone remembered her. Nass, 61, from Portland, Ore., nudged his wife and said he was the rescuer. “It was really nothing,” Nass said. “I wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t been there,” Gerwig said.