Children Toy With Fund Raising

--Using dolls, toys and other prized possessions as collateral, a third-grade class parlayed a $10 bank loan into a $255 profit to help the troubled National Cowboy Hall of Fame. It took the children two weeks to repay the loan out of the proceeds of their buying, packaging and selling bird seed, said Jeanne Yates, the teacher at the school in the small town of Wellston, Okla. A $225 check will be given to Hall of Fame receiver Henry Bellmon today. Banker Gerald Key arranged the $10 loan at 10 cents interest and the children came up with the collateral, Yates said. Key also allowed the children to take their collateral home at night. The project started when the class began making plans for a trip to the Cowboy Hall of Fame in nearby Oklahoma City, Yates said. The children had read about the financial distress it is in and decided to raise money and write letters of support. “The Hall of Fame is Oklahoma’s Statue of Liberty,” Bobby Higginbotham said in a letter to Bellmon. The children also are sending $30 to the Statue of Liberty Fund.

--Feminist writer Betty Friedan celebrated her 65th birthday Wednesday night at the Palladium in New York with several hundred friends and says she wants “another 20, maybe more” birthdays. Friedan is working on a new book, “The Fountain of Age,” and has a hunch it may touch off a new movement--elderly liberation.

--Prince Charles and Princess Diana of Wales arrived in Switzerland for a week of skiing. They flew to Zurich and then traveled to the Alpine resort of Klosters and held a brief photo session.

--The queen of a garlic festival is ready to defend her bulb-studded crown. Helen Lewin, a retired telephone operator, is among a half dozen contestants informally entered in the Miss Garlic competition, highlight of a three-day Garlic Fest at a Covington, Ky., restaurant. Lewin, 64, has written a song, “Me and My Garlic,” to go with her costume and enhance her chances of holding onto the title she won at the first Garlic Fest a year ago. “I’m making a green satin costume,” she said. “I’m going to have a few garlic bulbs on it, maybe one in my hair. I might have a satin garter with a garlic bulb.” There will be a garlic recipe cook-off, a garlic-peeling contest, a garlic jewelry competition, and then the Miss Garlic contest crowning the affair Saturday night. Miss Garlic will be chosen on the basis of personality, congeniality, talent, knowledge of garlic--and fragrance of breath.