To New Archbishop of Atlanta, It’s a Matter of Roots

--As a child in Biloxi, Miss., Eugene A. Marino remembers being kicked out of a Laundromat because he was black. But of his imminent return to the South, America’s first black Roman Catholic archbishop says he feels “personally very comfortable.” The 53-year-old Marino, an auxiliary bishop in the Washington, D.C., archdiocese since 1974, will be installed Thursday as archbishop of Atlanta, taking charge of a 69-county region of northern Georgia. Marino said the primary reason he feels comfortable about returning to his boyhood region is that he believes the South “has come of age. In many ways, the race question has been more effectively addressed in much of the South than it has been in the North,” he said. “I think I will be able as a black person to function better in a Southern situation, as a Southerner, than I might be able to function in some Northern situation.”

--In the ‘60s, the Soviet Union saw him as a Western pop music degenerate. But that’s all water under the glasnost bridge with the signing of British rock luminary Paul McCartney to a record contract with the Soviet recording company Melodiya. The former Beatle will reprise 13 rock ‘n’ roll classics from the 1950s and ‘60s on the album to be released exclusively in the Soviet Union, the Communist youth newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda reported. “The new spirit of friendship and openness that is coming from the Soviet Union inspired me to make a present to my fans in your country,” McCartney said in the interview.

--And back in the United States, at least one Cabinet member thinks the Reagan Administration could do with a little more rock ‘n’ roll. Secretary of Education William J. Bennett did a 15-minute guest spot on Washington rock radio station WASH-FM, spinning some Del Shannon, Elvis Presley, Shirelles and Buddy Holly tunes. Asked about other rockers in the Cabinet, Bennett replied: “I don’t think (there are any) in the Cabinet, I’m sorry to say, but there are some people around the White House.”

--It’s official. Burt Reynolds and Loni Anderson were married Friday, an occasion the Boston Herald had predicted after talking to an unnamed Reynolds friend. It was a traditional and very private ceremony at a chapel on the actor’s Jupiter, Fla., ranch. “We are both thrilled to be newlyweds,” Reynolds said through a spokeswoman. “I love being a newlywed at my age.” The marriage license issued March 2 said it was the second wedding for Reynolds, 52, and the third for Anderson, 41.