He’s Polishing Up a Solid Friendship With America

--The son of Polish labor leader Lech Walesa apparently likes what he sees in America. “He’s impressed with the immensity of the tall buildings in every city we visit and by the automobiles. Every one is different from the next one,” said Jan Wydro, who helped arrange the trip by 15-year-old Slawek Walesa. Wydro of Oil City, Pa., is a volunteer with Americacares for Poland, a foundation that sends medicine to the Communist-ruled nation. He met the elder Walesa last year on one of his trips to Poland. The Solidarity leader and his wife declined Wydro’s invitation to visit the United States. Then Walesa said that his son was studying English. ‘575217780become proficient in English was to come to America to learn it,” Wydro said. The young Walesa is staying with Wydro’s daughter, her husband and their 17-year-old son in Cooperstown, Pa., and is picking up English “by osmosis,” Wydro said. Slawek is the second-oldest of Walesa’s eight children. He plans to attend a polka festival and a Pirates baseball game, both in Pittsburgh, during his summer visit.

--Maureen Reagan has written a book that is nothing like the kiss-and-tell books from other White House insiders, such as Michael K. Deaver and Donald T. Regan, her publisher said. “First Father, First Daughter” is due in February from Little, Brown & Co., which describes it as “a very human and endearing portrait of Ronald Reagan” and promises it will be “engagingly insightful and filled with amusing never-before-published anecdotes about the President.” It also will include 30 black-and-white photographs. Maureen Reagan’s co-author is Dorothy Herrmann, a former magazine editor and author of a biography of humorist S.J. Perelman.

--It’s Dr. McCartney from now on. Former Beatle Paul McCartney was presented with an honorary doctorate from the University of Sussex in Brighton, England. McCartney, 46, said he found the ceremony quite formal. “I kept feeling like I ought to run out into the middle of the stage and shout something, I felt naked without a guitar,” the singer-songwriter said. McCartney said he did not do too well at school, so it was “great to get this degree without having to (study) for it.” University spokesman Geoff Ivey said McCartney was given the award for “giving pleasure to millions” during his career. “He has also lived in our county for many years and we have come to think of him as an adopted son of Sussex,” Ivey added. McCartney, his wife, Linda, and their four children live on an estate near Rye, East Sussex.