He’ll Stay Young--by Degrees

--The secret to staying young, says former Pennsylvania governor and one-time presidential aspirant William W. Scranton, is to mingle with them. So the 70-year-old Scranton will abdicate from 17 corporate boards, where he has been serving since leaving public office, to take his seat in the classroom at the University of Scranton, in the Pennsylvania city bearing his family’s name. This fall Scranton, who ran for the GOP presidential nomination in the ‘60s, will enroll as a student of Latin and Italian, from which he plans to graduate to the study of the Italian Renaissance. Any sheepskin that Scranton will bear away from his return to the halls of learning will join the degree he earned in 1946 at Yale Law School and 35 honorary doctorate degrees he received while in office.

--Heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson is putting some muscle into the fight to aid crime victims, announcing that he will donate $50,000 for the college education of a 16-year-old rape victim. Tyson also announced plans at a New York news conference for a foundation for young crime victims, to be supported by an annual fund-raiser, possibly a boxing exhibition by Tyson. The champ left details to boxing promoter Don King, who promised to match the champion’s pledge of $50,000. The initial pledge will go toward the schooling of Tawana Brawley of Dutchess County, N.Y., who allegedly was assaulted, raped and smeared with racial epithets in December by six white men, one of whom reportedly flashed a police badge. The foundation “starts with her (Brawley), but it’s open to any kids that are abused,” Tyson said. “They need the necessities to make it in this world.”

--His audience numbered a meager three, but that failed to daunt Sen. Terry Sanford (D-N.C.), who joined a long line of legislators stretching back to 1896 in the traditional reading of George Washington’s Farewell Address to the Senate on the first President’s birthday. The first-term Democrat took 52 minutes to read the 7,641-word address, which is traditionally the sole item on the Senate’s agenda on the holiday. The fastest reading was 39 minutes by Sen. Jake Garn (R-Utah) in 1975, while the slowest was 1 hour and 8 minutes in 1962 by Sen. Jennings Randolph (D-W.Va.). The three senators present Monday were Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), John C. Stennis (D-Miss.) and John Melcher (D-Mont.). Washington’s Farewell Address, which includes his famous admonition against entangling alliances with Europe, was first published in the Philadelphia Daily American Advertiser on Sept. 19, 1796.