Yippie Delegates Finally Get In

--”It took quite a while to get here, but here we are,” ex-Yippie Abbie Hoffman told about 400 people attending the seminar over the weekend at Chicago’s International Amphitheater, site of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. They came to commemorate the 20th anniversary of those violent protests in which hundreds of demonstrators clashed with police in downtown Grant Park after then-Mayor Richard J. Daley had barred them from the convention. Eight of the leaders of the protest--known as the Chicago Seven because Bobby Seale was tried separately--were indicted on charges of conspiracy to incite violence. Among the seminar participants were former Students for a Democratic Society President Carl Oglesby and former Chicago Seven defendants Hoffman and David Dellinger plus Seale. “I think we had a tremendous impact in sticking up for the right to protest,” said Hoffman, 51, who refers to himself as “an American dissident.”

--Anthony Martin was handcuffed, chained, locked inside a freight box and thrown from an airplane at 13,500 feet. But he freed himself and parachuted to safety with 7,500 feet to spare. “Most people thought I was going to die on this one . . . but the whole thing went picture perfect,” the Sheboygan, Wis., escape artist said. As about 500 people watched, he landed as planned in a field outside Sandwich, Ill. Martin, 22, wore his parachute and had an altimeter inside the box to keep track as he plunged. A neck noose of chains was attached to the box’s top, and his hands were cuffed to the sides of the box, which was closed with a jail cell-type lock. When the box was pushed out, Roger Nelson and another sky diver also jumped “to keep the box from tumbling like crazy and knocking him out,” Nelson said. “I wouldn’t do it myself,” Nelson said of the stunt. “I told him yesterday that he could be killed.”

--”Few people realize an ambition I had in my youth was to be a sports reporter,” said Frank Sinatra, who will serve as honorary chairman of a banquet and roast in a testimonial to Chicago Cubs announcer Harry Caray. The affair, scheduled for Nov. 19 at Bally’s Casino Resort in Las Vegas, will benefit Caray’s favorite charity, the Maryville City of Youth Academy, a child care agency in Illinois. “Listening to Harry do his rendition of ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame’ during the seventh inning stretch of Cub games, I assume Harry’s childhood dream was to be a singer,” Sinatra said.