‘He’s a Darling,’ Say Chums at Mother’s Retirement Home

Supreme Court nominee David H. Souter is a favorite at the retirement home where he visits his mother weekly.

“He’s a darling,” said Mickie Carson, a close friend of Helen Souter and a fellow resident of Heritage Heights. “Everyone knows David is very special.”

Mrs. Souter, 82, appeared pleased but composed at her home just hours after the announcement was made Monday. She said her only child’s telephone call to her with the news touched her.

“I think a teardrop fell,” she said of her reaction.

Souter, 50, has never married. He still lives at the Weare, N.H., farm where his family settled when he was 11. He has left only for college, law school and to be a Rhodes Scholar in England.

Mrs. Souter said her son was very close to his father, Joseph, who died in 1982.

Carson added that although Mrs. Souter is proud, she was already thinking Monday that his confirmation would mean he’d move to Washington and might not be able to continue his visits.