Drought Victims Serve Up Thanks to ‘Haylift’ Farmers

--A South Carolina farming couple taken with the idea that one good turn deserves another threw a feast for hundreds of Northern farmers who bailed out their Southern neighbors devastated by drought last summer. Tom and Brenda Trantham, who brought national attention to the Southern farmers in an appearance on network television, hosted “America’s Second Thanksgiving,” one day before the real thing, on their Pelzer dairy farm. About 500 farming folk dug into turkey and the fixings as schoolchildren paraded with flags from the 41 states involved in the four-month “haylift.” “This is what built America,” said Don Speerstra, a farmer from Mount Pleasant, Mich. “This is America at its best.”

--The birth of quadruplets is no longer that unusual, but quadruplets conceived without the use of fertility drugs are. And a Rockford, Ill., couple have beaten those 1 in 1.5 million odds with the birth of four girls. The four babies of Carmen and Steven Sunday--Jackie, Rachel, Kimberly and Janna--each weighing between 3 1/2 and 4 pounds, will join 20-month-old Erin at the Sunday home. “I thank God. The doctors did what they could, but it was God that took care of Carmen through it all,” Sunday said of his wife, whom he described as a “little bit of a thing.” The babies, delivered by Caesarean section, were reported in good condition. Although Carmen became pregnant without the use of fertility drugs, there is a history of multiple births in her family.

--The death of Queen Elizabeth’s grandfather, King George V, reportedly was hastened by his doctor, who administered injections of morphine and cocaine in an act of euthanasia. The king died on Jan. 20, 1936, officially of bronchial problems combined with a weak heart. But his doctor, Lord Dawson, wrote in memoirs disclosed for the first time that he hastened George’s death with the approval of the royal family and in part to time his death for release in the morning papers rather than the “less appropriate evening journals,” Independent Television News said. The television report is based on an article by Francis Watson, Dawson’s biographer, that is to appear in the December issue of the magazine History Today, due on the newsstands this week.

--Mark Harmon, who played the doctor who succumbs to AIDS on “St. Elsewhere,” and Pam Dawber, who was Mindy to Robin Williams’ Mork on their hit TV comedy show, are engaged to be married, a spokeswoman for the actor said. “They met last spring through a mutual friend,” said Heidi Schaeffer, publicist for Harmon.