The Des Moines Register from Des Moines, Iowa • Page 13

The Des Moines Register Tuesday, April 29, 1980 Iowa memories keep tar Poted PHOTO BY JOAN I. ZUG By CLARENCE ANDREWS SncM Th Rnlittr IOWA CITY, IA. "The ultimate goal of medical science," says Dr. Cory SerVaas, "is to bring our society to a state where medical practitioners are no longer needed." And Cory SerVaas is in a unique position to help bring that goal about. For SerVaas, physician, editor and publisher, is directing the fortunes of a grand old American magazine, the Saturday Evening Post, from Indianapolis, where she now lives.

But she's an Iowan. She was born in 1924, not far from Pella (though her birthplace is now under the Red Rock Reservoir) and there's no doubt that the Pella community played a strong role in forming the beliefs SerVaas brings to publishing. "Pella was a pleasant place to live generation the next century," she said. She recognizes that as a monthly the magazine cannot be as timely as it used to be. Her goal is to create a family-oriented magazine, one that will make families stronger through emphasis on good living patterns, good nutrition and good health.

"The traditional family is the best way to go," she said. "We're going to emphasize this ideal with a series of stories on great American families. Not the families of celebrities, but good, solid families of accomplishment." Accomplishment fits the facts of the SerVaas family. She and her husband, Beurt, a publisher and industrialist, and their five children "America is not doomed. We can make these times better if we bestir ourselves and quit depending on others.

I expect a lot of myself. Time is so short, and there are so many things to do and learn. Calling Dr. Hackenbush The Marx Brothers' estate has filed suit to bar Thursday's opening of a Broadway play, alleging it is an illegal attempt to "recreate" a Marx Brothers comedy. The copyright infringement suit was filed late Friday in Manhattan against producer Alexander Cohen and the musical, "A Day in Hollywood, A Night in the Ukraine." The play had been staged in London last fall and tried out in Baltimore.

Susan Marx, widow ot Harpo Marx, was a plaintiff as trustee of Groucho Marx Productions the estate which owns and licenses rights for Marx Brothers material. She claimed the play uses "material embodying the names, likenesses and characters of Groucho, Chico and Harpo Marx" without authorization. The show was described in a complaint as "an attempt to recreate a Marx Brothers comedy, replete with all the elements, facets, styles, personalities, gags, jokes and situations which have come to symbolize and constitute the essence of the characters Groucho, Chico and Harpo, individually and as a team, The Marx Brothers." Skinheads attack Lord Chalfont, a former Foreign Office minister, was attacked this weekend by young hooligans called "skinheads," shortly before appearing on an ABC-TV program on Iran. Chalfont, 60, who suffered facial cuts and bruises, was the second prominent peer to be attacked in London streets recently. Lord Home, a former Conservative Party prime minister, said he was punched by skinheads in a subway station last week.

The 76-year-old peer is recovering at his country estate near Coldstream on the Scottish border. apartment, soaking the plastic tubes in the bathtub. They sold well, so she patented the idea and formed a corporation to make and sell hoops. The project made her financially Independent. "It's meant I've been able to do pretty much what I wanted to," she said.

Medical School That included earning a medical degree at the University of Indiana in 1969. In the meantime her husband was developing what Time magazine once described as a "misb-mash mini-empire" of forging plants, a chemical company, an employment agency, a business college and a publishing firm. The publishing firm ultimately bought all the assets of the storied Curtis Publishing except the Ladies' Home Journal. That included the Post. Also in the meantime, the SerVaases had five children.

Asked about reconciling a busy career with family obligations, Cory SerVaas said, "The answer is to do more for the children by setting good examples." The parents, for example, did their college or business homework right alongside their children. While she was in medical school, the children were in elementary school. She managed her schedules to be home when they got back from school. As an intern, she often took one of her children when she was on call. Besides editing and publishing the Post, SerVaas writes medical columns for the Post and Country Gentleman (another Curtis-SerVaas magazine).

A co-worker said that on the job, "Cory talks in telegrams and she's always three telegrams ahead of everyone else." American Culture Cory SerVaas wants again to bring Post readers an appreciation for the potential of American life and culture. "I want to make rural Americans proud of their rural culture," she said. "America is not doomed. We can make these times better if we bestir ourselves and quit depending on others. I expect a lot of myself.

Time is so short, and there are so many things to do and learn." r.y when I was a child," she recalled here recently. "It had good, solid leadership." Church Influence The Influences of her church, the Reformed Church of America, were strong. "We never went to movies. Dancing was not permitted. No farm work was done on Sundays, no matter how desperate the ieldwork situation may have been.

But we did cook Sunday dinner." She laughed warmly when she recalled that, "When I first started dating, I went with a young man who owned a Model Ford. But on Sundays, if we went out riding, we didn't dare drive by the Dominies' minister's home!" It's that background she brings to the Post, once a dominating factor in American life, upholding the virtues of small-town America memorialized on hundreds of Norman Rockwell covers. But the Post fell on evil times, and suspended publishing. Now it's alive again, though no longer a weekly. SerVaas doesn't see the Post as ever regaining its stature as a magazine with a broad, national readership.

"However, I want to plummet the Post right into the next were featured recently on the Donahue television program in a discussion of workaholics. Cory SerVaas admits that she got where she is today because she believes both in the work ethic and in continuing education. She can still sing a song from her Pella years: Work for the night is coming When man's work is done. "I believe in the dignity of work," she said. But it's more than that.

The doctor in her says, "work Is the best therapy. Hard physical labor is good for personal health. Lying around in bed wears more people out than work does." For her, work and learning started early, never stopped. She was graduated from Pella High School at 15 and enrolled at Central College. "It was a marvelous educational experience.

The emphasis on science was strong." But other possibilities opened to her: the family farm, religious education. Hickenlooper Campaign After two years at Central, though, she found something else. She worked in Bourke Hickenlooper's 1942 gubernatorial campaign, which he won. Then she took a secretarial job in his Statehouse office, but, not content Outstanding Cory SerVaas with that, she enroled in Drake University night c' jsses in journalism. Newspapcring appealed to her, so she enrolled in journalism at the University of Iowa, earning her degree in 1946.

But she didn't work for a newspaper. She went to New York, where she worked for Lionel Corp. (the toy train makers), editing the company magazine and writing a book, "The Magic of Chemistry." And she attended night classes at- Columbia University. She met Beurt SerVaas at church, just returned from a tour as a CIA agent in China and then vice president of construction for Vestar Corp. At that time Cory was helping the church women raise money.

They were making aprons to sell and Cory invented a plastic "apron hoop" which would adapt to various waists and hold a one-piece apron in place. She made the hoops in her Playboy magazine publisher Hugh Hefner has been named "outstanding citizen of the year" by the Hollywood (Calif.) Chamber of Commerce because of his "personal and financial commitments to improve the Hollywood community." Civil War 'Greybeard's' grave untended when he received a disability discharge. He died in July 1863 and was buried at Williams cemetery near Chillicothe about eight miles northwest of here. J. The whole cemetery has about 20 graves, many of them of Civil War veterans, and is on Rock Island railroad property, Trucano said.

It oiten is overgrown with weeds. Mrs. Wavne Hines of Woodstock. a former Ottumwan, said in a phone interview that she and her daughters. Beverlv McCabe and Wilma Henry, were able to locate By NICK LAMBERTO RxttMr SMI Writ OTTUMWA, IA.

Vernon Trucano of Ottumwa and a lot of his relatives would like the grave of his great-great-grandfather near here memorialized by state and national historical societies and by Civil War history buffs. Trucano's ancestor was Curtis King of Ottumwa, believed to be oldest man ever to enlist in the Army. Today his grave and those of several other Civil War men nearby are neglected and weed-grown. King was born in Culpeper County, the son of an American Indian mother and an Irish immigrant father, Trucano said, and his mother was of the same tribe as Pocahontas. King farmed in Wapello County near Chillicothe before enlisting in the Union Army at Albia and being mustered into service at Muscatine Nov.

9, 1862. Joined Graybeards King was 80 when he enlisted for Civil War service as a member of one of the strangest groups of soldiers in military history the Iowa Gray-beards, or 37th Iowa Infantry, which was composed mainly of grandfathers, and a few great-grandfathers. The men were in their 50s, 60s and 70s. The average age was 57. King served until March 20, 1863, Mi i Curtis King gravemarker At 80, enlisted for Civil War iung grave 1973 alter a two-week search of old records.

Besides Henry, Lois Hampshire and Dolores Sissel also are King relatives in the Ottumwa area, Hines said. Hines also said that King, her great-grandfather, had three wives and 21 children, "though we can only account for 17 12 sons and five daughters." Trucano, 42, district manager for a seed corn firm at Monroe, said King farmed in the Chillicothe and Kirkville, areas. A grandson. Clay Valentine King, 90, lives at Indianapolis, with his son, Earl. "Some of us have been wondering if it would be possible to get Curtis King's gravesite memorialized by the state historical society," said Trucano's mother, Gladys, who lives in Hastings, Neb.

Special Honor "He should have some special honor or recognition since he was the oldest to serve in the Civil War." The Trucanos said their Interest in recognition for Curtis King was renewed by a Register story last December about 1,000 granddads serving in the Civil War. One relative said: "We hope someone will take up the crusade to clear the cemetery area. He King deserves more than a weed patch and a flag on Memorial Day if someone happens to remember." Guindon table talk 1980 Los Angeles Times Syndicate save 40.95 on each wood table -now, that's worth talking about Tell your friends, your neighbors, even your uncle up in Mar-shalltown about the savings you've found on all wood occasional tables at Brandeis. Beautiful medium brown finish and tastefully styled to meet almost any lifestyle. Also tell them they're made by Mission, a name that means quality.

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179.95 $139 Furniture: Valley West or to order by phone, call 223-2426. Outsrafe Iowa, coll ioll free 1-800-228-9358. Shakespeare in 30 hours? Aye, there's the rub AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS (AP) The English-speaking theater of Amsterdam is claiming a new world record of 30 hours flat for the fastest dramatic reading of the entire works of Shakespeare, theater administrator Jill van der Aa said Monday. The reading, by a team of 10 English and New Zealand actors and actresses bver the weekend, cut 5 hours and 53 minutes from a yet to be ratified record set by a drama college in Wakefield, England, several months ago. we care about you ,1 IS valley wil (hop Sunday 124:10.

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