NAMES IN THE NEWS : Bush Praises Yosemite Climbers

President Bush today told a paraplegic National Parks Service ranger that he had “captured the imagination of the whole country” by hauling himself up a 3,200-foot rock face in California’s Yosemite National Park.

Mark Wellman, 29, a naturalist for the Parks Service, presented the President with the American flag that he and fellow climber Mike Corbett carried in a backpack to the top of El Capitan, one of Yosemite’s most famous features.

Bush praised the feat in an Oval Office meeting with the two. “This is great,” he said. “You certainly captured the imagination of the whole country.”