Scout Who Found It Better to Give, Now Receives Help

--Billy Joe Thomas, a 9-year-old Cub Scout who won national attention last June by giving away a trip to Disneyland, is getting his Christmas present from the Seattle Salvation Army. “We came to pick up a toy for Billy Joe,” Raymond Thomas, the father, explained after being spotted standing in line at the Salvation Army’s Christmas Toy ‘n Joy Store with hundreds of other needy people. The youngster’s father said he hasn’t been able to work for six years because of lung disease. His wife, Laura, is deaf and legally blind with only 10% sight in one eye. Billy Joe’s Scout uniform came from a yard sale. Billy Joe received national attention last summer after giving his trip to Disneyland--won by selling the most tickets for the Boy Scouts of America 75th Diamond Jubilee--to two sick youngsters. The Scout motto is “do your best,” Billy Joe said. Seattle Mayor Charles Royer declared “Billy Joe Thomas Day” and Billy Joe also got to go to Disneyland, thanks to an unknown benefactor, who paid for the trip for the youngster and his family. But things haven’t changed much. “I hope we can get toys for Billy Joe,” Thomas said.

--A Vietnamese refugee who finished in the top 10 of his U.S. Navy officer school class is three-tenths of an inch short of his dream of becoming a naval aviator. Hung Dinh Vu, 24, said he needs more padding in his seat--not the plane’s seat--and is confident he can correct the problem by eating and exercising. The Navy requires that pilots’ upper legs measure at least 21.9 inches from buttocks to knees to make sure they can reach rudder pedals. “I’m putting on the padding,” he said. Vu stands 5-foot-5 and weighs 140 pounds. The recent graduate of the Pensacola, Fla., Naval Air Station’s officer school and a naturalized citizen from Glen Ellyn, Ill., said: “I’m doing squatting exercises to push it all back.” He is to be measured again after Christmas.

--Britain’s Princess Anne, the president of the Save the Children Fund and mother of two, told American reporters in London of her true feelings about kids. “I don’t actually like children,” said Anne, who, nonetheless, travels the world in support of hungry infants. “But children ought to have as good a start as possible from the health and education point of view.” Something else she doesn’t like is the proliferation of famine aid agencies in Africa, which she feels is mucking up things. “There are too many now,” she says. “I get depressed by the sheer weight of numbers of agencies in Sudan. They are treading on each other’s toes.”