Buyers See Dollar Signs as Holiday Gifts Fill the Bill

--One clothing chain in Florida really cashes in when it comes to wrapping gifts. For $55, Maus & Hoffman will gift-wrap items purchased in its four stores in a sheet of 32 uncut $1 bills. “A lot of people don’t think it’s real until they touch it,” said Allen Wade, a sales manager at the chain’s Bal Harbour store. The uncut sheets of bills are purchased from the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing, said William H. Maus Jr., a vice president of the Fort Lauderdale-based chain. The store has been quietly draping Christmas and Hanukkah presents in money for five years, Maus said. “We decided to be more public about it this year, before somebody else gets the idea,” he said. The sheets are folded around the box and held in place with ribbon rather than tape, Wade said. “You can just take an iron and smooth out the wrinkles and frame it. You could also cut them apart and spend them, but you’d be losing money,” he said. Sheets of uncut bills are valuable as collectors’ items, he said.

--Retiring House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr. (D-Mass.) celebrated his 74th birthday with the unveiling of his official portrait. The portrait by Robert Vickrey of Orleans, Mass., will hang in the Speaker’s Lobby off the House chamber, along with paintings of O’Neill’s predecessors. The ceremony included farewells from Democrats and Republicans and the U.S. Marine Band. O’Neill was Speaker for 10 years and a House member for 34. “I leave with no rancor toward any individual. I pray the country will move on--the greatest nation in the world. We can always pull ourselves together,” O’Neill said. House Republican leader Robert H. Michel of Illinois said the portrait, which shows a seated O’Neill smiling and wearing a blue suit, should have had a golf course in the background, a card table with a pat hand of gin and a cigar. Golf, cards and cigars are among O’Neill’s favorite pleasures.

--Capt. John Testrake, the Trans World Airlines pilot hijacked and held hostage in 1985, is this year’s recipient of the Salvation Army’s Others Award. Testrake appeared at the Salvation Army’s annual civic dinner in Kansas City with Robert Peel of Hutchinson, Kan., who was with his family aboard the hijacked plane. “It took real leadership not to do something silly at 35,000 feet. He (Testrake) had to do what was best for his crew, and he had to be calm to take demands from the people who were directing him,” Peel said. On June 14, 1985, armed men hijacked Flight 847 and forced Testrake to fly back and forth between Beirut and Algiers for three days. The award honors those who help others.