Yeltsin Displays Bedside Humor

Soviet political maverick Boris Yeltsin, in the midst of a speaking tour of the United States, paid a special get-well call to former President Ronald Reagan, during which the pair agreed, among other things, that Soviets and Americans have a similar sense of humor. Yeltsin, a member of the Soviet parliament who was ousted as Moscow’s Communist Party chief in 1987, caught Reagan on the eve of his departure from St. Marys hospital in Rochester, Minn., a week after surgery to drain excess fluid from his brain. Afterward, Yeltsin said that he and Reagan “discussed life in the United States, we also discussed the situation with perestroika (Soviet economic and political restructuring) and the Soviet Union. We discussed the American Revolution, the Soviet revolution, we discussed the American people and the Soviet people. We mentioned the fact that, although there are differences between them, we have the same kind of sense of humor.” Details of Reagan’s departure today are secret, but he was to fly directly to Los Angeles and continue to his Bel-Air home, said Reagan spokesman Mark Weinberg.

--Family resemblance aside, who better to play the role of Maria von Trapp in “The Sound of Music” than her granddaughter, who learned the tale of her grandmother’s flight from the Nazis as a baby on her knee. Elizabeth von Trapp makes her debut as Maria in a Hyde Park, Vt., theater production of the story made famous by the 1965 movie in which Julie Andrews portrayed Maria von Trapp, who died two years ago at 82. “I grew up listening to the album with my cousins, and we’d all take parts,” said Elizabeth, who is 35. Trapp, who has sung professionally at the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, Vt., for three years, also shares the stage with her 8-year-old cousin Kiersten von Trapp, cast as one of Maria’s children. “I’ve seen the movie 5 zillion times,” said Kiersten. “Until I was 7, I thought it was just about nuns.”

--Fearful that young people will never know the contributions of slain black civil rights leader Medgar Evers, a fund-raising group has announced plans to unveil a statue to Evers next year in Jackson, Miss. “Many of our young people know nothing about Medgar Evers. I think a special concerted effort should be made so these young people will know that we are wading in the blood and standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before us,” said Bettye Hunt, a board member of the Medgar Evers Statue Fund Inc. Byron de la Beckwith was tried twice in Evers’ shotgun slaying outside his home, but each time the case ended in a hung jury. Evers was the first field secretary in Mississippi for the NAACP.