Hijacked Pilot Gets High Honor

--Capt. John L. Testrake, the pilot of the Trans World Airways jetliner hijacked and held in Beirut in June, arrived to receive a distinguished conduct award from the lord mayor of London. Lord Mayor Alan Traill was to present Testrake, 57, with the British Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators’ gold medal award for distinguished conduct at a gala dinner at his Mansion House residence. Testrake, who flew in from Chicago with his wife, Phyllis, said the 17-day hijacking ordeal at the hands of Shia Muslim extremists was “sliding into the past now.” One passenger, Robert Dean Stethem, 23, of Waldorf, Md., was killed during the incident. Shia Muslims held 39 Americans, including Testrake, hostage for 17 days before releasing them July 1. Testrake is currently flying wide-bodied L-1011 Tristar jets on domestic U.S. flights. But, “I’m trying to get back on international routes,” he said.

--The wife of Soviet dissident Anatoly Shcharansky stood in a wooden cage across from the United Nations on the eve of Jewish Day of Atonement and begged the Soviet Union to free her husband. Avital Shcharansky made her plea at the Isaiah Peace Wall and Shcharansky Steps as Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze addressed the U.N. General Assembly. Shcharansky, 37, a Jewish mathematician, was arrested in 1977 and sentenced a year later to 13 years in prison for being a spy. Friends say his only crime was to request a visa to go to Israel.

--Ground breaking is scheduled to begin this week for country star Dolly Parton’s theme park in the Smoky Mountain county in Tennessee where she was born, the star said. Commissioners in Pigeon Forge, not far from her birthplace, have unanimously approved $3.1 million in improvements to pave the way for “Dollywood,” which Parton is building with owners of an existing theme park. “I couldn’t ask to be born and raised with a better bunch of people in a better part of the country,” she said after the 6-0 vote.

--The City Council in Tangent, Ore., wanted to convert a 70-year-old empty farmhouse into its new City Hall. But first they had to ask Kitty Cat. The 10-year-old feline inherited a $100,000 estate--including the farmhouse--in December, 1983, when its owner, tavern keeper John Bass, died at the age of 82. When mixed-breed Cat dies, the farmhouse will go to the city. At a council meeting last week, Cat’s attorney, Roger Reid, allowed as how Cat would have no objection to the city taking over the ground floor now. The move won’t bother Cat, who lives with Dale Clark, a longtime friend of Bass, who has a mobile home on the property. Just don’t disturb the litter box.