The Charlotte News

Thursday, April 4, 1957

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that more tornadoes had hit Tennessee, Kentucky and Mississippi the previous night, after the destructive tornado which had ripped through west Dallas, Tex., and hit other parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas on Tuesday into early Wednesday. At least one person had been killed in the most recent tornadoes, in the black community of Sylvarena, Miss., and scores of people had been injured, with dozens of buildings wrecked. Two communities in west Tennessee, Selmer and Chesterfield, had been hit early this date, and eight houses had been destroyed at Selmer and two at Chesterfield. The Tennessee Highway Patrol said that roads were covered by torrential rains, which had halted traffic and disrupted communications. Exactly one year earlier, a tornado had hit Lexington, Tenn., 50 miles from Selmer, killing five people. Three children and an adult had been injured the previous night by a tornado hitting a section of Nashville and suburban Belle Meade and trees had been uprooted and windows smashed. Heavy winds and rains had blown across Chattanooga and wrecked some power lines. A tornado had hit wide areas of western Kentucky in the Bowling Green area. The stormy weather had harassed broad areas in the Eastern half of the nation while snow was falling on the plains states, and sleet and freezing rain had hit Illinois and Indiana. Twenty-one persons had been killed earlier in the week in the first round of tornadoes.

In Jackson, Miss., it was reported that a tornado had struck the Mississippi State Sanatorium for Tuberculars early this date, injuring between 50 and 75 patients, with three in serious condition, affecting primarily the black infirmary, housing about 200 patients. A doctor said that about 40 of those patients had been children, that many had been hurt and were in pain, but he had never heard a cry or whimper. He said that they had to evacuate the top floor because rain had blown in and damaged the walls and ceiling. He had been treating injured patients from about 2:00 a.m. to 8:30, indicating that the twister had practically taken the roof off the service building for the white hospital and had damaged several cottages of employees. He estimated damage at around $250,000. The Pearl River at Jackson was five feet above flood stage and firemen, police and volunteers had worked to evacuate residents in stalled cars from inundated areas.

The Weather Bureau in South Carolina issued a tornado watch for the western part of the state during the afternoon, covering 19 counties, indicating that an area of active thundershowers had developed in northern Georgia and was headed eastward across the western part of the state.

General Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command, this date was appointed by the President to become the vice-chief of staff of the Air Force, succeeding General Thomas White, who was being promoted to chief of staff. It was expected that General LeMay would take over his new position sometime after July 1, although no date had been mentioned in the announcement, also making no mention of his successor at SAC. The Defense Department also announced that General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, presently commander in chief of the U.N. forces in Korea, would become vice-chief of staff of the Army, effective July 1, to be succeeded in his U.N. forces capacity by General George Decker, presently deputy commander of U.S. forces in Europe. The Far East Command, which General Lemnitzer had also headed, was to be abolished, with its forces to come under the general direction of the commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, presently Admiral Felix Stump. General Williston Palmer, presently the Army's vice-chief of staff, would become deputy commander of U.S. forces in Europe, succeeding General Decker. General Isaac White, presently commander of the 8th Army in the Far East, would become commander in chief of U.S. Army forces in the Pacific.

Dr. Siegfried Gerathewohl of the School of Aviation Medicine at Randolph Field, Tex., told the American Rocket Society in Washington about experiments testing reaction to the weightlessness of space, indicating that some would find it uncomfortable, even nauseating, while others would find space travel exhilarating. The piece compares the feeling to the sudden descent of an express elevator or going over the top in a roller coaster, no longer subject to the pull of earth's gravity. In a spaceship, unless the person were belted down or perhaps attached to the floor by magnetized shoes, the individual would float around inside the cabin, as would anything else not pinned down. Dr. Gerathewohl told of experiments in which 47 persons had been exposed to weightlessness under conditions duplicating for 10 to 40 seconds what would be faced by space travelers for days, weeks or perhaps years. He said that about half the subjects enjoyed the experience to the point of exhilaration and that 11 others had found the sensation "neither unduly pleasant nor exactly comfortable", while the remainder had a rough time, some suffering from extreme motion sickness, including vomiting, though a few of those subjects had been nervous before the start of the experiment. Some of the tests had been conducted in a jet plane at the moment it reached its apogee, when its acceleration was at zero, resulting in the combined pull of the plane and gravity being exactly balanced. Longer exposures to weightlessness had been achieved through a human centrifuge in which weightlessness could be induced by whirling a subject to the point where centrifugal force matched the pull of gravity. Other scientists reported to the press that the military services were using tests of both types to assess the physical and psychological effects of weightlessness and to obtain some gauge as to their duration, to establish standards for men best suited to cope with the condition and perhaps develop protective clothing and equipment to facilitate movement aboard a spaceship without floating around.

Julian Scheer of The News reports that 10th District Representative Charles Jonas had told the newspaper this date that he would oppose, both in committee and on the floor, any attempt to curtail current mail deliveries and the closure of post offices on Saturdays, that to assure continuation of services, he would be in favor of granting the Post Office Department's requests for supplemental funds, provided that a full investigation revealed that the money could not be cut from other parts of the service. He was commenting by telephone on statements made by Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield that cuts in service were contemplated, effective the following Saturday, were extra funds not granted until the end of the fiscal year. Mr. Summerfield had told a House Appropriations subcommittee that the necessary cuts would include discontinuance of city carrier delivery of all classes of mail on Saturdays, closing of post offices on Saturday and discontinuance of rural delivery of all classes of mail, discontinuance of money orders, reduction of deliveries to business districts to once per day, implementation of an embargo on the acceptance of third-class mail except for merchandise, suspension of employee leaves until after July 1, suspension of the purchase of uniforms until after that date and stoppage of purchases of sorting cases, conveyors, lightweight vehicles and other equipment and supply items.

In Charlotte, approximately 55 substitute workers at the Post Office might be laid off if drastic cuts were made by Postmaster General Summerfield. The local postmaster was on vacation and other officials at the Post Office had indicated they had received no information from Washington, but that it was an open secret that substitute workers would be those first to feel a funding cut. Most workers at the post office were employed as "substitutes" and work schedules varied until they received appointments and were assigned to regular hours. The president of the union local of the National Association of Letter Carriers said that it looked like it would cost a lot of money, while the president of the local of the Post Office Clerks said that it would affect about the third of their force who were substitutes. He said that the law would not allow the Post Office to lay off a regular employee. A postal worker in Charlotte defended Mr. Summerfield, saying that he could not spend what he did not have, but another said that he had spent money on equipment and expansions and that they had more equipment now in Charlotte than they needed. If the cuts were implemented by Mr. Summerfield, the Charlotte Post Office would operate on Saturdays based on a Sunday schedule, meaning that the building would be open for those who wished to mail letters or retrieve mail from post office boxes, but that the stamp, parcel post and other windows would not be open. Officials said that classified or branch post office stations would in all probability remain closed most of the day, opening for an hour or so to permit persons to take mail from their boxes. It sounds like it's calling for a Revolution.

Charles Kuralt of The News, in the third of a series of articles on parks in Mecklenburg County, reports that west side residents, who had been turned down again in their quest for a park, would likely be asking what had occurred to the park budget surplus, after they had been told the previous day by the Park & Recreation Commission that all the money had already been allocated or spent, despite the fact that a year earlier, the newspapers had front page stories about a $243,000 surplus which the Commission had been unaware it had. The people of the west side were only asking for $18,000 to have a site purchased by the City for a park. But the problem was the phenomenal growth of the community, such that $243,000 did not last long when about 250,000 people needed it. There were park projects throughout the community in need of attention and the Commission was once again short of funds. Mr. Kuralt suggests that it appeared unreasonable to ask the west side residents to purchase their own park land, even if the Commission was promising thereafter to develop the land into a park. But only twice in recent years had the Commission offered to purchase any land, having bought the Veterans Park site and preparing to purchase property at Bryant Park, which the Commission discovered a couple of years earlier it did not own. Otherwise, the purchase of the land was dependent on donations. The superintendent of parks said that there could be plenty of sites owned by the City, but then no money would be left to develop parks. Mr. Kuralt provides an itemization of where the $243,000 surplus had been spent, including $76,000 for operating expenses and retention of $37,000 as a reserve fund, as tax revenue came in sporadically, necessitating an emergency operating cushion. Other projects underway would use funding from the million dollar park bond issue, one such project being a park for black residents and another the 18-acre Veterans Park, which was being developed into a recreation spot and showplace second only to Freedom Park, according to the superintendent. Based on the last audit, the Commission had left $170,497.45, which would last until July, when a new operating budget of about $475,000 would begin. The report explains on an inside page how that new budget would be allocated. It is becoming increasingly evident as to why Mr. Kuralt decided to join CBS late in the year and eventually went "on the road", far away from his hometown of Charlotte.

In St. Petersburg, Fla., a French war hero, Maurice Chavigny, 44, of Paris, was charged with shooting to death the previous night retired Brig. General Wilbur McReynolds, 64, and his wife, 61, in their luxurious home. He had been shot five times and his wife, twice, in the living room in their home in an exclusive residential area. A detective lieutenant said that the shooting had followed an argument with the arrested suspect, who had been a guest of the couple since Thanksgiving. He was arrested driving the car belonging to the couple after a three-mile chase, in which two shots from police had hit the car. He verbally admitted to police the shooting, indicating that he wanted to leave and planned to purchase a bicycle and a gun, ride off and kill himself, that he had bought the gun and bicycle following an argument the previous day, returning to the McReynolds home, where he donned his U.N. Forces uniform and told Mrs. McReynolds that he was leaving, whereupon she argued with him and he then shot her, at which point General McReynolds had come after him and he then shot the General, got into the car and drove away. General McReynolds had developed the C and K rations used by the armed forces during World War II. He had been an artist and had majored in education at Ohio State University, before joining the Army in 1917 and serving in France during World War I with the 10th Division, thereafter being a machine-gun specialist for 17 years before transferring to the Quartermaster Corps in 1934, then becoming director of training for the Corps in 1940. The suspect had been orphaned during World War I and had served in various parts of Europe before and during World War II, receiving many decorations, including the French Croix de Guerre. After being discharged in France, he had volunteered to return to Korea, and en route, had met Mrs. McReynolds, who was on her way to join her husband in Saigon.

In Columbia, S.C., the South Carolina General Assembly heard a proposal this date for compulsory chivalry from male bus and train riders, with a representative of Union, John Hart, introducing a bill to require a male passenger to obtain permission from a female passenger on any public conveyance before he could occupy a seat next to her, with the sponsor of the bill indicating that it was aimed at preventing "violence that would certainly result" should the courts order integration on public carriers in the state. Under the bill, a black man could sit next to a white woman only if he had her permission, and if she objected, regardless of the race of the rider, he would have to remain standing. Mr. Hart was an outspoken segregationist, but pointed out that the bill made no reference to race, suggesting that if the Federal courts ruled such a law unconstitutional, "the next step would be for them to require men and women to use the same restrooms and eliminate segregation of all kinds." The penalty for violation of the proposed law would be a fine of up to $100 and/or 30 days in jail.

In New York, an 18-year old male was sentenced by a Brooklyn judge to up to five years in prison for mugging a Brooklyn woman. The defendant stated: "This kills my lifelong ambition to become a cop. I was taking a course in police science at Brooklyn College." Well, never give up. We feel confident that there are worse among New York's finest, and then there is always the suburbs. Remember that there are 8 million stories...

On the editorial page, "Assembly Dodge: New Styling, No Motor" finds that those in the General Assembly, as part of their latest delaying tactic on legislative reapportionment, had to be credited with a rare showing of ingenuity, having developed a new dodge with a "dreamcar design", proposing to remodel the General Assembly along the lines of the U.S. Congress, making one body representative of area alone and the other based on population alone.