People: Apr. 28, 1967

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The birds were singing, the trees were budding, and the floriated rhetoric of Senate Minority Leader Everett McKinley Dirksen, 71, was in full bloom. "It is as sprightly as the daffodil, as colorful as the rose, as resolute as the zinnia, as delicate as the carnation, as aggressive as the petunia, as ubiquitous as the violet and as stately as the snapdragon," hymned Evin his Hammond Organ voice. "It beguiles the senses and ennobles the spirit of man." With that he continued his perennial crusade by presenting to the Senate his annual resolution asking that the marigold be designated the U.S. national flower.

For a quarter of a century under the command of the late Henri Soulé, Manhattan's Le Pavilion was the shrine of haute cuisine in the U.S. Hélas, since Restaurateur Soulé's death last year, the eatery has slipped a bit—at least to the palate of the New York Times's fastidious Gastronome Craig Claiborne, who dropped in a few times to see how the fare was faring under the new management of sometime Hotelman Claude Philippe. Aside from the prices ($173.90 for a relatively modest dinner for six) Claiborne sadly reported that "Le Pavilion does not exist in all its former grandeur." For one thing, he wrote, "the shrimp were tough, and so was the lobster in the bouillabaisse. The maitre d'hótel walked around with a red pencil sticking out of his breast pocket." And, invraisemblablement: "On a recent evening, the rolls were stale."

When she died in 1960 at the age of 72, Tobacco Heiress Mary Duke Biddle left an estate of $60.6 million to be divided between her family and various charities. Last week in New York's Westchester County Surrogate Court, her lawyers filed papers stating that the fortune has now dwindled by 58%, with $34.6 million going to pay off inheritance taxes, and $1,100,000 for legal and executor fees.