CURRENT NOTES

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28183, 23 January 1957, Page 2

CURRENT NOTES

Mrs Patricia McCormick, winner of two gold medals for diving In the Melbourne Olympic Games, has been selected as the outstanding American woman athlete of 1956 in a poll of sports writers. She will be awarded the Babe Didrickson Zaharis trophy, given in memory of the famous woman athlete, who died last year.

After outfitting the Hungarian refugees, who arrived last Sunday, the stock of men’s clothing at the Red Cross depot is depleted. The Rod Cross will be pleased to receive men’s suits, sports coats, overcoats, raincoats, slacks, shorts, pullovers, cardigans and shoes. These should be clean and in good order. At the depot, women’s clothing is not required, as the Red Cross stock is sufficient to meet the requirements for the next few weeks. Men’s clothing will be gratefully received at the Red Cross headquarters, 33 Cashel street, before the end of this week as there will be more than 50 men arriving on Sunday.

A grey-haired farmer in a bright checked shirt hopes this is his last year as a dressmaker, says the Associated Press. But Martan of Chicago, designer of women’s clothes, is finding it hard to become plain Joseph Martan, fruit farmer with 83 acres of orchard to spray and care for. Martan closed his exclusive dress shop in Chicago two years ago {and retired to become a farmer. ! But he found that the customers for whom he had been making wardrobes since 1918 did not want him to stop. So when he is not working his farm, Martan is fashioning fine frocks with the touch that only he can give. In a day of clothing mass production, Martan’s skill is in demand by women who can afford his elegant styling.

Seventy-year-old Mrs Elizabeth Sinclair, of Santa Rosa (California), was faced with a problem when she left home for six months’ holiday in Australia—how to rent or store her home. “Home” to her does not mean a conventional brick building. It is’ a 29-foot caravan. “I decided to rent it in case I lost my parking site,” she said, when she arrived in Sydney to see her 76-year-old brother, Mr Thomas Collier, for the first time in 50 years. “Some trailers are two storeys high, up to 40 feet long and sometimes with three bedrooms,” she said. “Mine has air-conditioning, a living-room, kitchen, bedroom j and bathroom. It’s parked in a trailer camp. Each site has a small patio, a strip of lawn and sewerage, electricity and gas attachments.”