Stay Tuned In--It May Be the Great Communicator

When former President Ronald Reagan left office last month, he ended his weekly radio addresses to the nation. Since then, several broadcasters have invited Reagan to return to the airwaves. One of the most recent offers came from a contemporary Christian music radio station in Dallas, which proposed a job as host of a weekly talk program. In a letter dated Feb. 16, Mark Rodriguez, president of KOJO-FM, said he offered the former President $200,000 to do the 35-minute to 45-minute show each week for a year. Reagan’s spokesman, Mark Weinberg, would not say if Reagan is considering any of the radio offers. “All I can say is that each invitation will be responded to individually,” Weinberg said. As a young man, Reagan was a sports broadcaster in Iowa.

--Former U. S. Sen. J. William Fulbright was awarded the 1989 Onassis Prize “for man and mankind” for his contribution to world education, the Onassis Foundation announced in Athens. Fulbright earned the $100,000 prize by “establishing this century’s largest international study fellowship program of academic and cultural exchanges,” the citation said. The foundation is dedicated to the memory of the late shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis’ only son, Alexander Onassis, who died in an air crash in 1973. The American physicist Amory Lovins, founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado, won the Onassis prize for “man and environment” for his work on protecting the environment and finding alternative solutions to energy problems. Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou is to present the awards in Athens on April 20.

--The world’s oldest woman--who adores chocolate and port wine and has been known to smoke an occasional cigarette--turned 114 at the nursing home in Arles, France, where she has lived the past five years. Jeanne Calment, born Feb. 21, 1875, and named in the Guinness Book of World Records, remembers when artist Vincent Van Gogh used to come to her uncle’s store in Arles to buy canvases. Her eyesight is failing, but she still gets around on her own feet and takes pride in her complexion. Her skin is free of deep wrinkles thanks to daily olive oil facials, she says.