When Round Robin Comes Bobbin’ Around, It’s News

Mail call at Robert and Sally Yocom’s house in Columbus, Ohio, can yield a lot of family news. The couple help circulate a round-robin letter, which is actually several letters with news from 45 related families, that was started by Robert Yocom’s great-great-grandparents in 1854. Even though some of the news is as much as a year old, it is fresh to the Yocoms. They will remove the letter they wrote the last time the package was delivered to them, add their current letter and send it on to another family on the list. The round robin makes its way through 19 states. One recipient was a distant relative of President Richard M. Nixon’s mother, Hannah Milhous. Robert Yocom said the former President found the letters in his mother’s effects a year after her death in 1967 and forwarded it to someone on the list, along with an apology for keeping it out so long.

--Mr. Potato Head has finally kicked the smoking habit. The plastic potato toy will no longer include a pipe in his accessories, in honor of this week’s Great American Smokeout, the American Cancer Society announced. The society’s president, Dr. Harmon J. Eyre, applauded the decision by Playskool, a division of Hasbro Inc. “This toy is very popular with young children who learn both good and bad habits by example and imitation,” Eyre said. Mr. Potato Head, started 35 years ago, is a molded plastic toy that comes with a set of eyes, ears, nose, lips, teeth, hat, arms, shoes and eyeglasses. But from now on, no pipe. Thursday’s 11th annual Great American Smokeout is intended to encourage smokers to quit or cut down on smoking for the day.

--The daughter of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin says that despite reports that she is moving back to Britain, she has no intention of leaving the United States. “No, good gracious, I love it here,” said Svetlana Alliluyeva in a copyright report by WKOW-TV in Spring Green, Wis. Alliluyeva, who has lived in Spring Green since April, 1986, said financial trouble had prompted her to try to get a book published in England. The British Home Office gave the 61-year-old woman permission to live and work in Britain as a writer for 12 months. Then she would be eligible to apply for an extension. Alliluyeva said she has found a job translating material at home for a New York firm.