Back Home, It’s ‘We Love Lucy’

--Jamestown, N.Y., has created an annual comedy festival to be held at the old Palace Theater where its favorite daughter saw her first vaudeville show and decided to become an actress. Mayor Steven Carlson announced the creation of the Lucille Ball Festival of New Comedy at the moment when the comedian had been scheduled to receive the key to the city. Lucy, who was born in Jamestown on Aug. 6, 1911, died on April 26. Carlson said: “This memorial to Lucy, unlike a building bearing her name, has a future as lively as she was.” Misty Sorenson, a spokeswoman for Chautauqua County’s Arts Council, said the first festival should be in 1991 at the Palace, which has been renovated as a civic center named for local philanthropist Reg Lenna. Plans call for a yearly three- to four-week performance season of new comedies chosen in a competition among professional playwrights. At the 30-minute ceremony, the Jamestown High School band played the theme from the “I Love Lucy” show as youngsters in sequined clothes performed song and dance routines originally planned for Lucy’s visit. Five giant photos of the beloved comedian were displayed, and the ceremony ended with her voice from a taped interview: “I had no idea how much home means, and how much home cares . . . . Goodby and God bless you.”

--John F. Kennedy Jr. got his diploma from New York University Law School and posed for pictures with his mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and sister, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, after the graduation ceremony at Madison Square Garden. The son of assassinated President John F. Kennedy has joined the staff of Manhattan Dist. Atty. Robert Morgenthau. Kennedy, who was graduated from Brown University in 1983, said: “I’m looking forward to taking the bar this summer and following in my sister’s footsteps.” Schlossberg passed the bar exam earlier this year and works for a New York law firm.

--Detroit Mayor Coleman Young, who turns 71 this week, said he will negotiate child support payments for the 6-year-old son of a former city employee because blood tests have convinced him that he is the boy’s father. A suit seeking child support was filed in January by the boy’s mother, Annivory Calvert, 34, who is now director of public works in Fontana, Calif. “I said when this paternity suit first came into the news that I did not believe that I was the father of Joel Loving,” Young said. “Well, the results of the blood tests have caused me to painfully reappraise my position, and . . . I am fully prepared to fulfill my full responsibilities in that regard.”