Dry pool player
Sir: As one of the 'millions of hicks' who has voted for Ronald Reagan — indeed as an Ur-hick, having supported him since he first ran for governor of California — may I be permitted a word in defence, not of the President, who can defend himself, but of George Gipp, whom Ferdinand Mount (Books, 6 February) has grievously tra- duced. (That's the way we hicks talk.) George Gipp died of streptococcal hemolytic septeropyemia. His severe throat infection would, today, be cured by penicillin. He did not drink himself to death, as Mr Mount has it. (Gipp's weak- ness was not the bottle but pool.) Plagued with bad tonsils all his life, Gipp had been sick and running a fever for some weeks before he was hospitalised.
R. A. Hutchinson
7465 Caminito Rialto, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA
Previous page
