Careers Beginning & Ending

In other political developments:

> Robert Taft Jr., 48, who lost a bid in 1964 to follow his late father into the Senate, announced his candidacy for Congress from Ohio's First District. Taft had been Ohio's U.S. Representative-at-large before his defeat in the Democratic landslide, has since been practicing law in Cincinnati. The First District is traditionally Republican, but Taft faces a stiff fight from an energetic Democratic freshman incumbent, John Gilligan, 44, who was swept in by the same Democratic tide that beat Taft.

> Florida's Senator George Smathers, 52, secretary of the Senate Democratic Conference and the second-ranking Democratic member of the Finance Committee, announced that he will retire after his third term expires in January 1969, because of ill health. Smathers has been suffering from a stomach ulcer and a kidney ailment, but declines to specify the illness that is ending his congressional career. Before entering Georgetown University Hospital last week for tests, he described his condition as "serious, complex but not incurable."

> Maine's Senator Margaret Chase Smith, 68, announced from her home town of Skowhegan that "I am humbly seeking re-election" for a fourth term. Last June the U.S. Senate passed Resolution 116, marveling warmly that Senator Smith had just cast her 2,000th roll-call vote without a miss--a feat "unparalleled in the history of the Senate." Her only declared opposition so far in Maine comes from a Democratic state representative named Plato Truman. If Mrs. Smith can lick that combination, she will automatically become the ranking Republican on the powerful Armed Services Committee, now that Massachusetts Neighbor Leverett Saltonstall is retiring.

> Robert C. Henry, 44, a Negro undertaker, was elected mayor of Springfield, Ohio (pop. 83,500), by fellow members of the Springfield city commission. Other Negroes have served as mayors of towns and small cities, but Henry is the only Negro now serving in a community of Springfield's size. By custom, the commissioner who receives the greatest popular vote in the nonpartisan popular election is named to the largely honorary post of mayor. Henry, a Republican, was the top vote getter last November after the Springfield Sun editorialized that he "began public service as Springfield's first Negro city commissioner and long since proved himself everyone's commissioner."

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