Presidential Medal

In a gesture of his determination to put the partisan wars of the last four years behind him, President Clinton bestowed the nation's highest civilian honor on erstwhile political nemesis and presidential rival Bob Dole. But no sooner did Clinton drape the Presidential Medal of Freedom around Dole's neck than the flinty Kansas Republican infused the solemn White House ceremony with his trademark irreverence.

Edgar Wayburn, a San Francisco physician and longtime president of the Sierra Club who was credited with protecting more parks and wilderness areas than any other American, has died. He was 103. Wayburn died Friday at his home in San Francisco of natural causes, said his daughter, Cynthia. He was the impetus for the establishment of Redwood National Park and pushed to create the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Point Reyes National Seashore and the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, among others.

Dr. Arnall Patz, a Johns Hopkins University physician who discovered and eliminated a major cause of blindness in children, died Thursday of heart disease at his home in Pikesville, Md. He was 89. The director emeritus of the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins, he was considered a pivotal figure in the history of ophthalmology. His work won him a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004 and a Lasker Award for his research into the causes and prevention of blindness. As a young doctor training in Washington, D.C., after World War II, Patz observed that a new incubator, sealed to contain an inner climate, was enabling doctors to save premature babies "But something was wrong," Patz said in a 2004 Baltimore Sun profile.

Mario Obledo, who grew up on welfare and later ran the California agency that administered it when he became the state's highest-ranking Mexican American official, died Wednesday in Sacramento. He was 78. The cause was a heart attack, said his wife, Keda Alcala-Obledo. Obledo was appointed secretary of health and welfare in 1975 by Gov. Jerry Brown and served until 1982, when he made an unsuccessful run for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. He helped found a number of civil rights organizations, including the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the California Coalition of Hispanic Organizations.

Question: Since the 25th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination has just passed, I think many people would like to know the present value of Kennedy half dollars. How about an update?--J.F.P. Answer: The era of Camelot ended 25 years ago last month when John F. Kennedy was assassinated after having served not quite three years as President.

Acting Solicitor Gen. Neal Katyal, in an extraordinary admission of misconduct, took to task one of his predecessors for hiding evidence and deceiving the Supreme Court in two of the major cases in its history: the World War II rulings that upheld the detention of more than 110,000 Japanese Americans. Katyal said Tuesday that Charles Fahy, an appointee of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, deliberately hid from the court a report from the Office of Naval Intelligence that concluded the Japanese Americans on the West Coast did not pose a military threat.

President Clinton on Monday praised former President Carter as a man of peace who used his retirement from politics to help poor people at home and promote democracy abroad. Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, each received the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a ceremony at the Georgia headquarters of the Carter Center, a human rights organization that sends observers to monitor elections worldwide.