Pilot Skips Part of White House Menu

WASHINGTON — Air Force pilot Scott F. O’Grady, still insisting he did nothing heroic, got a hero’s welcome at the White House on Monday--but couldn’t quite eat everything on the menu.

Capt. O’Grady, who survived by eating ants and grass for nearly six days after his F-16 was shot down June 2 over Bosnia-Herzegovina, was President Clinton’s guest of honor at an elegant lunch of lamb chops with shiitake mushrooms.

But when waiters served a side dish of spring greens, O’Grady looked glumly at his plate. “Mr. President, you’ll understand if I don’t eat my salad,” he said, according to an official who was present.

That was the only visible sign of O’Grady’s ordeal, though. After a good night’s sleep at his father’s house in nearby Alexandria, Va., the 29-year-old pilot looked fit, rested and cheerful in his blue service dress uniform.

He took 14 relatives and friends to the White House to meet the President, including his father and mother, his mother’s second husband, his sister and brother and both maternal grandparents.

In a half-hour meeting in the Oval Office, O’Grady recounted the story of his survival to Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and others--”a hair-raising tale,” White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said.

O’Grady said Bosnian Serb search parties came within a few feet of his hiding place almost every day, one official said. “They were as close to me as the vice president is now,” O’Grady said, pointing at Gore, who sat on a couch no more than 10 feet away.

At the White House, O’Grady was the object of admiring attention from dozens of presidential staffers, who clustered at windows to applaud and catch a glimpse.

After lunch, at an official “welcome home” ceremony at the Pentagon, he was surrounded by a flock of beaming generals, all eager to pump the young captain’s hand.

“He gave us something more precious than we can ever give him: a reminder of what is very best about our country,” Clinton said.

As before, O’Grady said he did not deserve all the attention.

“I just cannot believe this response,” he said. “It’s overwhelming and it’s still unreal in my mind that I’m getting this.

“But if you’ll allow me the honor to accept all this fanfare in the honor of those men and women who deserved it more and didn’t get it . . . those men and women who suffered a lot more than I went through; those who are POWs; those who gave the ultimate sacrifice . . . then I’ll accept all this,” he said.