Ornaments on the Tree

Jack Kennedy last week hung some new ornaments on the Administration's family tree--and, incidentally, paid off a few political debts. Among his latest appointees: John Connolly, 43, Secretary of the Navy. In 1937, handsome, well-tailored John Connally was a wheeling-and-dealing law student at the University of Texas when he signed on as a campaign aide to a promising candidate for Congress named Lyndon Baines Johnson. Connally has been Johnson's man ever since. After a term as Johnson's secretary in Washington, Connally took up law practice in Austin and eventually struck it rich as a friend and confidant of Texas' Big Rich oilmen. (After he moved to Fort Worth in 1952, he did legal spadework for the late Sid Richardson and is co-executor of the multimillion-dollar Richardson estate.) In appointing Connally for Johnson's sake, the Kennedys had much to forgive: as Johnson's presidential campaign manager, Connally distinguished himself at the Los Angeles convention by calling a desperation press conference to suggest that Rival Candidate Kennedy was suffering from a serious case of Addison's disease. Smooth politico Connally has Navy credentials: as a naval officer during World War II, he served as a fighter plane director aboard the carriers Essex and Bennington, won the Bronze Star and Legion of Merit.

Eugene M. Zuckert, 49, Secretary of the Air Force. As personally close to Missouri's Senator Stuart Symington as Texas' Connally is to Lyndon Johnson, affable, golf-loving Democrat Zuckert knew many a political big name When. Manhattan-born, he roomed at Connecticut's Salisbury School with Michigan's G. Mennen Williams (new Assistant State Secretary for African Affairs), studied law at Yale under William O. Douglas, now a Supreme Court Justice. For four years (1940-44) Zuckert taught at Harvard's Graduate School of Business Administration (among his fellow teachers: his new boss and good friend, incoming Defense Secretary Robert McNamara). After the war, Zuckert became executive assistant to Surplus Property Administrator Stu Symington, followed Symington into the Pentagon E-Ring as an Assistant Secretary of the Air Force. Appointed to the Atomic Energy Commission in 1952 by Harry Truman, Zuckert signed the controversial majority decision in 1954 that barred Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer from access to classified material. The day after the decision was announced Zuckert's A EC term expired and he went into Washington law practice.

Archibald Cox, 48, Solicitor General. Ever present at Senator John Kennedy's side during the 1958-59 congressional battles over a labor reform bill was a trim, crew-cut law professor whom North Carolina's grumpy Graham Barden dubbed "that nit picker from Harvard." Shy, witty

Archie Cox served as clerk to famed Jurist Learned Hand after graduating from Harvard Law School, wandered between private practice and Government work (including tours as an attorney with the Justice and Labor Departments) before joining the Harvard faculty in 1945. A brilliant, ever-questioning teacher of labor law, Cox took time off in 1952 to serve as chairman of Harry Truman's Wage Stabilization Board but resigned in protest after four months when Truman overruled one of his wage recommendations. After the labor bill battle he became a Kennedy enthusiast, took leave from his Harvard chair (the Royall Professorship, oldest endowed chair in the law faculty) last July to serve full time as speechwriter and idea man on Kennedy's staff.

Rex Marion Whitton, 62, Federal Highway Administrator. Highwayman Whitton is among the oldest of the Kennedy appointees, but may well be one of the spryest. A graduate civil engineer, he started out surveying for the Missouri State Highway Department in 1920, rose to become its chief engineer and prime builder of 12,000 miles of state roads. Democrat Whitton has won nearly every top professional award his trade has to offer, was strongly recommended for his new job by outgoing Republican Administrator Bertram Tallamy.

Robert V. Roosa, 42, Under Secretary of the Treasury for Monetary Affairs. A Rhodes scholar who never went to Oxford (the war intervened), Michigan-born Banker Roosa (pronounced roe za) joined the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in 1946 as an economist, and rose to vice president in charge of research. He is widely respected in international banking circles for his sensible "sound money" views and for detailed knowledge of debt management problems--his chief area of responsibility as the Treasury's No. 3 man.

William Averell Harriman, 69. Ambassador at Large. Gaunt, grey Fair Dealer Harriman, ex-Governor of New York and twice a losing candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, has had more than his share of diplomatic experience. An F.D.R. favorite, Millionaire Harriman undertook special Presidential wartime missions to London and Moscow, later served three useful years (1943-46) as Ambassador to Russia. Harry Truman assigned him briefly to the Court of St. James's, later gave him a variety of international chores: Economic Cooperation Administrator in Europe with the rank of ambassador, Director of the Mutual Security Agency. Last fall, Harriman made a special fact-finding mission to West Africa on behalf of his new boss.

Robert C. Weaver, 53, administrator of the U.S. Housing and Home Finance Agency. At the age of 32, Harvard-educated Sociologist Weaver was a top strategist in the so-called Black Cabinet of the Roosevelt era--the able squad of Negro intellectuals who held administrative jobs in the New Deal. Since F.D.R.'s day, Weaver has been a teacher and writer (The Negro Ghetto, Negro Labor: a National Problem}, a highly regarded housing expert, and a spokesman on civil rights problems (he is board chairman of the N.A.A.C.P.). Kennedy plucked him from his $22,500-a-year job with New York City's Housing and Redevelopment Board to give him the highest federal post ever held by a U.S. Negro.

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