Conscientious Hero Goes by Book

It is not likely that Henry Gamroth, retired police chief in Independence, Wis., will ever forget Desmond Doss, a conscientious objector who served as a medic on the Island of Okinawa in World War II. Doss won the Medal of Honor for carrying nearly 100 wounded soldiers to safety, Gamroth among them. So, it came as a pleasant surprise when Gamroth, 68, read in a newspaper how this medic named Doss had dodged fire to save a soldier who had fallen from a cliff. “That was me,” said Gamroth, who had not seen Doss, 67, since the day he was rescued. Gamroth, who won the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star, placed a call to Doss’ home in Rising Fawn, Ga., but he could not speak with him because Doss has been deaf for 11 years. “I can’t figure that guy out,” Gamroth said. “The lead was flying. He was bending over and treating the wounded.” He said that when Doss, a Seventh-day Adventist, “wasn’t treating the wounded, he’d pull a Bible out of his pocket and start to read it.” Their paths may yet cross again, since the two are expected to attend a veterans’ reunion this month in South Carolina.

--Let’s face it, Arlene Gardner’s porch freezer holds a very special attraction. And about 2,000 people who have seen it at Gardner’s Estill Springs, Tenn., house trailer agree. Some insist that the shadowy image cast on the freezer by neighbor Katherine Partin’s porch light resembles Jesus; others, including the Rev. John Parton Jr., say it is Willie Nelson. Whatever, John Gaul, mayor of the community, thinks it is a big nuisance. “All this has given us (the last two weeks) is a traffic problem, really,” he said. To Gardner, 66, the two-foot-long, foot-wide profile of a bearded man “is the work of God. I was told that in the dream. Praise the Lord.” But Bob Mankin of Tullahoma, Tenn., has another opinion. “When the good Lord comes, he won’t come on a major appliance . . . he would have a vastly better means.” Meanwhile, Partin said: “ . . . God is not the author of confusion, and this is confusion.”

--It has been 52 years since Vladimir Horowitz, 82, performed in Vienna. But on Sunday, the piano virtuoso took the Austrian capital by storm, receiving a 12-minute standing ovation from 1,700 enraptured fans in the Vienna Musikverein concert hall. The Russian-born Horowitz played Mozart, Schubert, Liszt, Schumann and Chopin.

--Comedian Jackie Gleason, it will surprise no one, was joking with visitors in his hospital room in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Gleason, 71, who is reported in stable condition, is undergoing tests after experiencing adverse reaction from emphysema and diabetes medication.