Reagan is now
oldest president

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WASHINGTON (AP)-Ronald
Reagan today becomes the oldest
president the United States has ever
had.
No trumpets trumpeted, no gifts were
gifted, no toasts were toasted yesterday
as Reagan turned 70 years and 98
days-equaling the record set by
Dwight D. Eisenhower on the day he
left office in 1961.
REAGAN, BORN Feb. 6, 1911,
already held one presidential age
mark. He was the oldest man ever to be
sworn in as president. The previous
titlist, William Henry Harrison, 68
years and 23 days old on the day of his
inauguration, was overcome by it all
and died 31 days later.
On his 70th birthday party, Reagan
quipped, "This is the 31st anniversary
of my 39th birthday." It was a line, with
appropriately lower numbers, he had
used before.

He answered one question about hi;
age by saying: "I don't think the num-
ber of years are very important as long
as you retain your faculties, your
physical abilities and so forth. I think I
have."
He sought to diffuse the age issue by
promising to get regular checkups and
saying he would resign if be "had any
feeling at all that my capabilities had
been reduced."
Reagan's capabilities were put to the
test March 30 when he was shot in the
left lung. The president, whose athletic
pursuits encompass horseback riding
and wood splitting, got a splendid
medical report card.
"He is not like most other 70-year-old
men," said hospital spokesman Dennis
O'Leary, after surgeons removed the
bullet. "He is physiologically very
young."

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Pope recovers; accomplices sought
(Continued from Page 1 e irnitodOn. e n
clearly this criminal Agca) hss also had backed Agca in the attack. THE BODY OF Rev. John Jay rectory sod stood openly weepinj.
found support outside Turkey, perhaps AGCA, CONVICTED in Turkey last Jackson, 36, was found on the floor of a Parish bookeeper Bert Duffy found
in Frsnce, West Germany and in year of murdering a - Turkish reading room in the rectory at St. the body at 8:15 a.m. when Jackson, a
Italy" ' newspaper editor, was arrested Mary's School in Jackson, a West Ten- former newspaper reporter and Air
Agca insisted during interrogations moments after the pope was shot. He nesseed community about 100 miles Force pilot who was ordained just last
that he acted alone and got money from has been charged with attempted mur- northeast of Memphis. Anti-Catholic July, failed to appear at the school to
friends in Turkey but refused to der in the papal attack and could be literature has been turning up in the say morning mass.
elaborate. Police said they believed he sentenced to life in prison in Italy, town in recent weeks. Jackson had held a special mass
was alone when he fired three bullets which does not have the death penalty. When word of the shooting of the Wednesday to pray for the recovery of
into the pope at the start of a- general Meanwhile, in Tennessee a young popular young priest spread, students the pope.
audience, but did not exclude the Catholic priest was shot to death and spectators gathered outside the
possibility of accomplices. yesterday and an associate said the
Major Italian newspapers reported killer might have been "some kook" in- -
there were indications some kind of in- fluenced by the assassination attempt
ternational subversive organization on Pope John Paul II.

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AP Photo
THE MOTHER OF Mehmet Ali Agca, the man accused of shooting Pope John
Paul, is shown here at her home in the eastern Turkish city of Malatya. She
told reporters she was "praying to Allah for the Pope's recovery."
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