The Sentiments Are ‘Always’ for Irving Berlin Fans

--”Sing softly with great love,” John Wallowitch told a group of about 75 people early this morning as they gathered outside the home of composer Irving Berlin to serenade him on his 100th birthday. Berlin planned to spend the day at his five-story Manhattan town house and will skip a star-studded tribute at Carnegie Hall, his secretary, Hilda Schneider, said. “His birthdays are always spent very quietly with family.” But shortly after midnight, his assembled fans sang “Happy Birthday,” dozens of his favorite songs and an original composition by neighbor, fan and fellow songwriter Wallowitch. “Over the years, through laughter and tears, while strolling down memory lane, we sang all the songs of Irving Berlin and we’ll sing them all over, again and again,” the group crooned. “It’s one of the few songs he doesn’t own the copyright to,” Wallowitch said.

--Proving that truth is stranger than fiction, a Jesuit priest who aided the exorcism that inspired the book and movie “The Exorcist” is talking about it after years of silence. Father Walter Halloran, assistant director of the alumni office at Creighton University in Omaha, helped with the exorcism of a 14-year-old boy in 1949. For years Halloran, a 26-year-old seminary student at the time, and others did not talk about the exorcism at St. Louis University “for the protection of the child,” he told Nebraska’s Lincoln Star. Halloran said he observed streaks and arrows and words like “hell” rise in red welts on the boy’s skin. He said that for three to five weeks he joined in prayers and held the boy down when he became violent. He stopped about five days before the exorcism ended. “They concluded that the exorcism had worked” and the boy went on to lead “a rather ordinary life,” he said. The movie based on the book “The Exorcist” by William Peter Blatty was fair but “was kind of glitzed up a little bit,” Halloran said.

--President Reagan awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to outgoing NATO Secretary General Lord Carrington. “Your efforts on behalf of us all during the past four years have set a new standard,” Reagan told Carrington, who will end his term in June. Other non-U.S. citizens who have received the award from Reagan include Anwar Sadat, the former president of Egypt, who was given the award posthumously; Joseph Luns, Carrington’s predecessor at NATO, and cellist Mstislav Rostropovich.