Change at General Dynamics

John Jay Hopkins, a handsome, debonair son of a Presbyterian minister, provided the push and brilliance that built General Dynamics Corp. (1956 sales: $1 billion) into one of the postwar era's biggest industrial combines. A lawyer, California-born John Hopkins joined Electric Boat, predecessor of General Dynamics, as a director in 1937, engineered the acquisition of Canadair Ltd., a Canadian aircraft manufacturing company, and then took over major corporations--manufacturing everything from telephone equipment to airplanes--until he had made the new complex the seventh largest defense contractor to the U.S. Government.

General Dynamics built the first atomic submarines, Nautilus and Seawolf, produced the Air Force's F-IO2A all-weather interceptor and the B58 Hustler supersonic bomber. It is now developing the Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile as well as commercial uses of atomic energy, one of Hopkins' greatest enthusiasms.

But while struggling tirelessly to construct a great industrial combine, John Hopkins was also undergoing another struggle--with cancer. He underwent an operation in 1954 for cancer, later vigorously resumed his duties in the hope that he had won out. The cancer persisted. Last week, recognizing the inevitable, Hopkins flew East from his home in California to preside over a directors' meeting. Its purpose was to name Executive Vice President Frank Pace Jr., 44, onetime Secretary of the Army, to be General Dynamics' new president. Hopkins never made the meeting. Instead, he entered Georgetown University Hospital. There last week, two days after the directors elected Pace president, John Jay Hopkins died at 63.

Pace is a lanky (6 ft. 1 in., 175 Ibs.), personable Arkansan who has been considered something of a boy wonder ever since he graduated from high school at 14. After Princeton ('33) and Harvard Law School, he became assistant district attorney in Arkansas and general counsel for the Arkansas department of revenue. In World War II he rose to major in the Army Air Corps, returned to work under the Attorney General and the Postmaster General in Washington. Harry Truman made him budget director in 1949, and Pace produced a healthy budget surplus ($3.5 billion). In 1950, at 37, Pace became Secretary of the Army, served until the Eisenhower Administration came in, when he joined General Dynamics. Independently wealthy, Pace is a skilled golfer (high 70s), champion tennis player and all-round athlete who works as hard as he plays.

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