A poignant family memory was evoked last week at Washington's Kennedy Center. Ethel Kennedy, her 20-year-old son Bobby Jr., Senator Ted Kennedy, his wife Joan and sisters Eunice Shriver, Pat Lawford and Jean Smith, joined some 325 journalists and friends at the sixth annual presentation of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Journalism Awards, which honored reporting on minority-group problems. Then Ethel thanked CBS's Roger Mudd for his stint as awards chairman. "I would like to add one personal note," she began, only to come near tears as she recalled the tragedy in a kitchen passageway of Los Angeles' Ambassador Hotel on a night in June, 1968. "It was because of Roger, who led me through the crowd, that Bobby and I got to say goodbye to each other."

Recovering from surgery, Author Henry Miller, 82, likes to receive visitors-- particularly fellow writers--at his home in Pacific Palisades, Calif., where he lives in quiet, bourgeois comfort. Recently Lawrence Durrell, 62, author of The Alexandria Quartet, dropped in and lounged on Miller's bed, reminiscing. Miller, whose Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn shocked a generation some 40 years ago, said that while he had advanced ideas about sex, he does not approve of the even more radical notions of women's liberation. Denying that he is a misogynist, he said, "I really love women." In the next breath he said of sex equality, "I'm against it." Then he got onto a subject that cheered him up: Oriental women. "They're tender, loving, beautiful, gracious and thoroughly feminine."

To U.S. Immigration officials at Highgate Springs, Vt., it was another case of radical cheek. Sarah Cousins, 24, daughter of Saturday Review/World Editor Norman Cousins, was accused of smuggling a fugitive across the U.S.Canadian border. Under a coat in the back of her car was Israeli Rabbi Aharon Ron, 47, convicted in the U.S. for conspiring to sell $800,000 in stolen securities. Ron jumped bail to visit his family in Israel while his case was pending appeal. Sarah and he met 18 months ago when she was a dropout. "He has been a constructive force in her life," said Cousins, relating how Ron persuaded Sarah to go back to Columbia. Last week, however, as Ron began a ten-year sentence, Sarah found herself charged with bringing an illegal alien into the country, a crime that carries a maximum sentence of $2,000 and five years in jail. Cousins says: "She was taking Ron back to justice. I'm backing her 100%."

On Stage 5 at Hollywood's Samuel Goldwyn Studios, the children's show Sigmund was being shot. Then an electrical fire started, and flames soon surrounded set, actors and crew. In next to no time, Fireman Steve McQueen came to the rescue. Rehearsing for his role as fire chief in The Towering Inferno, McQueen had been training on another lot with Peter Lucarelli, battalion chief of the Los Angeles fire department. When Lucarelli sped off to the real fire, Steve tagged along, followed by Wife Ali McGraw. Donning helmet and coat, he joined firefighters and helped pull the hoses into line. "It's on-the-job training," said a proud but anxious Ali from a safe distance. As for Steve, he proved something of a distraction. One smoke-choked and begrimed L.A.F.D. member did a double take when he saw the new recruit. "My wife will never believe this," he said.

The foreign-affairs strategist from Nelson Rockefeller's Commission on Critical Choices was camouflaged last week--as the U.S. Secretary of State's consort. While Henry Kissinger shuttled round the Middle East, Nancy Maginnes Kissinger went sightseeing with statesmen's wives, including Mrs. Zaid Rifai, whose husband is Jordan's Prime Minister. King Hussein prevailed over Nancy's fear of helicopters and in his own chopper chauffeured Henry and Nancy to the Greco-Roman city of Jerash. In Egypt, Nancy took off with guides for Abu Simbel. Visiting the 3,200-year-old temple of Ramses II, she had to rest repeatedly because of the 100DEG heat. At one point in the hectic trip, a reporter offered to accompany Nancy on a tour of an Arab market. "Don't do it," said Henry with conjugal resignation. "You can't afford her."

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