Pupils Successfully Search Out the Secrets of Success

--A group of eighth-graders at Roosevelt Middle School in Decatur, Ill., was curious about the secrets of success and decided to ask those who would find it no mystery. “To me, what makes someone successful is managing a healthy combination of wishing and doing,” Fred Rogers, of “Mr. Rogers” television fame, wrote to the class. Chrysler Corp. Chairman Lee A. Iacocca’s contribution: “I have found that, in order to become successful, you must determine what you want, and then be willing to work tirelessly to reach your goal.” Decatur native James B. Parsons, the first black federal judge, advised students that they should always have “a readiness to grasp and hold on to the hand of someone stronger, a hand held out to help (you).” Copies of the responses and excerpts from interviews conducted by the class were distributed to all Roosevelt eighth-graders in a booklet titled “Successfully Yours.”

--Latest returns are in on rankings for America’s most revered President, and results are something of an upset. A poll of visitors to the Herbert Hoover Library-Museum at West Branch, Iowa, is being taken in an old fashioned, lever-style voting booth. It started April 24 and will end Oct. 30. No. 1 is Abraham Lincoln with 452 votes. “For a lot of school kids, Lincoln is the one President they recognize,” library-museum director Richard Norton Smith said. John F. Kennedy has 354 votes and then, the big surprise, Herbert Hoover, who was born in West Branch and was the only Iowa-born chief executive, ranks third with 269 votes. “Maybe a lot of those people haven’t read the history books,” Smith said. “I think a lot of his popularity is a combination of home-state pride. We also get a lot of older people who come in here from time to time to say they think Hoover was misunderstood.” More surprises: Richard M. Nixon ranks No. 7, with 154 votes, ahead of Ronald Reagan, No. 8, with 130.

--Before sunrise, on this Friday the 13th, at a secret location somewhere in Britain, the new king of the world’s witches is expected to be named. The Council of Witches was reported by Reuters to be meeting to chose a successor to High Priest Vervias, also known as Alex Sanders, who died recently after a 25-year-reign.