Illinois Candidate Makes Best of Being Among Worst

Republican leaders in Illinois were so pleased with a brochure pointing out that Democratic state Sen. LeRoy Lemke was voted one of the 10 worst legislators in the state that they were ready to run out and congratulate whoever had conceived of the campaign. That, they soon discovered with amusement, would have led them right to the door of the legislator in question. “I guess when you get a lemon you try to make lemonade,” state Republican Chairman Don Adams said of Lemke’s preemptive strike. “And he’s got a big lemon.” The brochure carries out front, in big letters, the question: “Who says LeRoy Lemke is one of the 10 worst Illinois legislators?” Inside it reads, in Lemke’s words: “politicians, Springfield fix-it artists and lobbyists.” The campaign manager for Lemke’s challenger, Robert Raica, was quite taken with the brochure. “When I first saw it,” Stan Nykiel said, “I thought it was an outstanding piece because I thought we’d put it out. . . . It’s helped us tremendously because that’s the message we want out there.” Lemke, 51, of Chicago, was named the worst state legislator last year in a Chicago Sun-Times poll of his colleagues. He was named one of the 10 worst in a similar 1977 poll.

--A horrified wedding party in New Britain, Conn., could only stand by helplessly and watch after a member of their party dropped one of the wedding rings and it rolled into a storm sewer. The wedding went on, but the groom’s father, Peter Grip, was back soon afterward with three city employees who helped him drain the eight-foot sewer, remove all the mud, and search for the ring. After 6 1/2 hours of sifting through the muck, an elated public works employee had the ring in hand. Grip was determined to recover the ring, he said, because it had been cast from the melted-down wedding bands of his mother and father.

--The family of the late author Ernest Hemingway has obtained trademark protection for his name and plans to market items under it. Jack Hemingway, the author’s son and a writer living in Ketchum, Ida., said a Michigan marketing firm has been hired to handle the enterprise. “When anybody who is a writer does this, it’s something that people question, but nobody raises an eyebrow when it’s a Ford or Calvin Klein or somebody like that,” Hemingway said. “If somebody’s going to capitalize on it, why not have it be the family?” Hemingway said his father’s name would likely be used to market outdoor clothing, but “there may be a number of different things done as well.”