The Charlotte News
Thursday, June 13, 1957
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Bridgeport, Conn., a lawyer claimed this date that at least a dozen soldiers who had worked on a top secret wartime experiment were either sterile or had fathered deformed children as a result. The attorney, Raymond Lyddy, represented four Connecticut soldiers, one of whom was sterile, and the wives of the other three had suffered six miscarriages, three deformed children and had two apparently normal children. He said that 100 or so members of the tank ordnance company which had worked on the project had been warned that exposure to rays from the equipment could make them sterile, indicating that he had information on only about 30 of the soldiers, about half of whom had reported some trouble. The New York Daily News had reported the story and Army Secretary Wilber Brucker had been asked by the former company commander to conduct a full investigation. According to the article, the experiment had consisted of mounting brilliant arc lights on tanks to blind gunners, carried out in the 9th Armored Division, which had been fighting along the Rhine. About 456 of the tanks had been sent into action, according to the story, but they had only limited success in combat and the idea of the lights was dropped. The story indicated that there was a strong reason to believe that something more than carbon arc had been involved in the 13-million-candlepower lamps. The Army said that no complaints of the type had officially been brought to the attention of the Army but would be fully investigated when made. The wife of one of the men had three miscarriages and then delivered a child with a cleft palate. They had had no other children. Another man's wife had one child with a club foot and one miscarriage. The wife of a third man had two miscarriages, a child with a cleft palate and a hare lip, then two apparently normal children. The fourth man had found out in 1950 from his doctor that he was sterile. He had twice applied to the Veterans Administration for compensation but was turned down. He and his wife had adopted a son two years earlier.
In London, it was reported by the Daily Telegraph this date that Britain could now produce a one megaton hydrogen bomb per month, and probably several ordinary atomic bombs each week.
In Atlanta, former Senator Walter George of Georgia and presently the President's special ambassador to NATO, was officially listed as being in serious condition in the hospital, suffering from "coronary atherosclerosis, or hardening of the coronary artery which nourishes the heart."
In Detroit, a six-year old girl had been found slain this date in a dump two miles from her home in the city's downriver area, with her head almost severed and her hands tied behind her back. A resident of the neighborhood had found the unclad body when he had gone to the dump to throw out a basket of rubbish. Police had roped off the area, hoping to keep it clear until they could search for footprints and tire tracks. Searchers had been looking for the little girl overnight, accompanied by 1,000 volunteers, after she had gone missing from her home the previous late afternoon. Police said that she had apparently been killed at the scene. Her mother said that she had been missing from home for three hours the previous week and as a punishment, she had been restricted to her backyard until the previous day.
In Hickory, N.C., Federal agents had found a woman, the mother of several children, dressed in a man's Army clothing and working near the site of a liquor still, arresting her for illegal production of liquor. Agents of the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Unit, who had raided the still in Burke County on Tuesday, said that when they arrived, she was bringing in fruit jars along a path leading to the still, which was in a secluded swampy area beside a small branch, nearby which were 200-gallon fermentor boxes. The agents had destroyed three gallons of non-tax paid whiskey, 80 gallons of mash and two cases of fruit jars. The woman lived about a mile from the still and had made no effort to escape. She was arrested along with two other men. The woman was released on a $400 bond, and the two males had bond set at $500.
Dick Young of The News reports that definite action to use television for teaching in Charlotte City schools had been taken by the City School Board this date, approving the summertime employment of a Central High School radio production instructor to assist in coordinating studies of a possible educational television experiment, with financial help coming from the Ford Foundation. The Board had also ordered revision in architectural plans of a proposed elementary school to provide large television classrooms, and heard reports of the possibility of using the television facilities of UNC in teaching at least four hours daily in the Charlotte schools starting the following September.
J. A. Daly of The News reports that the Louise textile mill of Charlotte, employing several hundred workers, would soon be closed by Amerotron Corp. because of adverse textile markets. Employment at the mill was probably between 300 and 400 persons, though the actual figure was not presently available. The anticipated closure date was July 3. The mill management would host again the Independence Day barbecue dinner for employees. Then, out the door they go... Gut luck...
News sportswriter Max
Muhleman, in the second of two articles on automobile racing and its
dangers to spectators, tells of Piero Taruffi, something of a hero in
Italy as the latest representative of a long generation in a racing
family, though having never been a world champion or even close, as
he valued more time at home than most drivers got. He only ran in the
Grand Prix in the vicinity of Italy. Early in May, there had been a
road race
In Charlotte, the temperature had reached 93 the previous day, and 96 this date, with more of the same expected the following day, causing the youth of the city to flock to the parks while some of the older citizens sizzled in town and at home. The temperature of the date was not a record, with it having reached 100 degrees 15 times during June since 1921. The Weather Bureau predicted that the temperature would fall to the low 90's by the weekend. No rain was in sight, but some scattered thundershowers were anticipated by the weekend. To date in June, the area had received 1.03 inches of excess rain over the average. Normal rainfall for the entire month was 3.51 inches and thus far, 2.25 inches had been recorded. For the year, the area had an excess of 2.8 inches of rain over the average. The low temperature for the night was expected to be 68 and probably 70 the following night. It's even hotter at the racetrack, hot as hell.
On the editorial page, "Now Is the Time To Lay the Bricks" indicates that an ability to find many locations for the proposed $666,000 City-County Health Center was a time-blessed talent of the City Council, but not so the ability to agree on a location for it.
The previous day, the Council had wound up where many thought it had started, on the Memorial Hospital grounds, with still no unanimity on the choice for a site. But there was now apparently a majority in agreement that the Center would be located on the land of the existing hospital, at the rear of the Spastics Hospital.
It finds it a logical location, away from the bustle of downtown where parking areas would have to be provided on expensive business property, easily accessible by bus and within easy reach of other important health facilities.
"Congress Must Answer the Question" finds that after the President's upset stomach had passed, there remained a question as to who was supposed to run the Government should the President suffer a more serious illness and become disabled for a long period of time. The Constitution did not spell out what constituted a disability and who would determine when it began and ended, whether the Vice-President would take over the duties of the President during the disability or for the remainder of the term.
The President had underscored the question in submitting to Congress a proposed amendment on the subject, but Congress was trying to forget the whole matter, and had been doing well at it until the President had eaten the bad blueberry pie which upset his stomach.
It finds that in an electronic age, it was no longer possible to ignore the question, as only the President could decide when nuclear weapons could be used, rendering even short breakdowns in the functioning of the Presidency a distinct danger to the nation and to other allied nations. It thus urges Congress to face the question of a presidential disability.
As indicated, the 25th Amendment would be proposed in 1965 and ratified in 1967.
"Let U.S. Get Equal Time from Moscow" indicates that Washington's reaction to Nikita Khrushchev's pitch to U.S. television viewers on "Face the Nation" on June 2 had appeared to be that in ignorance of what the Russian was doing there was some bliss and great virtue.
House Minority Leader Joseph Martin had informed the press that he had avoided watching the Secretary of the Communist Party, and the President had chided CBS for interviewing him, indicating that the network had sought unfair commercial gain at the risk of misleading the public as to what Mr. Khrushchev was really like off camera. As days had passed, the Administration's first reaction had become final, desiring that the appearance be ignored, with the hope that it would not occur again and that no attempt would be made to have an American official broadcast to the Russians.
It finds it a stodgy and unimaginative response to a daring challenge from the Kremlin and the war of ideas, that Moscow was chortling over Mr. Khrushchev's skillful propaganda coup and doubtless congratulating itself over the fact that Washington had not sought equal time.
It was significant that Mr. Khrushchev's remarks on the program had been censored before they were printed in the Russian press.
It suggests that the opportunity remained for the U.S. to give Mr. Khrushchev a taste of his own medicine by demanding time on Russian radio and television for American spokesmen to make the U.S. case to the Russian people. It suggests that Mr. Khrushchev was bound to lose either way, as truth about the U.S. ought be a powerful stimulant to political unrest in Russia, and should the Kremlin refuse the demand, it would prove that its professed desire for relaxation of tensions was false and that it was afraid of the free flow of information.
Senator Lyndon Johnson's proposed "open curtain" policy of exchange of radio and television time between Russia and the U.S. deserved careful consideration by the Administration.
It finds that Mr. Khrushchev had been up to no good in agreeing to come before U.S. cameras and while it was easy to detest him and to wish for the destruction of what he represented, it was neither safe nor wise to ignore him.
Robert Mason, in the Sanford Herald, in a piece titled "One Man's Breakfast", tells of being among the early risers who cooked their own breakfasts and departed before other members of the household began to stir, having disadvantages in that the kitchen was cold, often with neglected glasses and plates being present from a late night snack by a junior member of the family. Pans rattled with startling sharpness and the cat jumped onto the window sill and looked with amusement upon the melancholy scene.
He goes on in an elaborate description of the large breakfast he would like to have, dreaming of times past, until...
"The reverie ends as the bacon begins to burn. An egg is broken, flipped, done. Toast pops up. Coffee is poured to the rim of a cup that holds an even pint.
"The day and reality have begun."
He probably also dragged a comb
across his head, made the bus in seconds flat
Drew Pearson tells of Senator Lyndon Johnson's statesmanlike proposal that there would be an exchange of television and other cultural projects with Russia, focusing attention on whether Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev was right or wrong about an American "iron curtain", a comment which he had made two weeks earlier on "Face the Nation" on CBS, contending that the U.S. had blocked cultural exchanges and calling for widespread cultural exchange to lift the "American iron curtain".
The official policy of the U.S., as announced by the President at the Big Four Geneva summit conference of July, 1955, had been people-to-people friendship behind the Iron Curtain, but that policy was not being put into effect and those responsible were partly the State Department and partly Congress for erecting red tape, especially fingerprinting. Within a month after the President had announced the friendship policy in 1955, the Hutchinson (Kans.) News proposed an exchange of wheat farmers with Russia, similar to the exchange of Russian-American farmers, but it was nixed by the State Department. In 1956, Rumania, an Iron Curtain country, asked to send an agricultural delegation to the U.S., but the State Department admitted only one Rumanian farm expert, who wanted to stay for 90 days, and the Department had limited him to 60 days. The chief obstacle had been fingerprinting, as the Russians had refused to come to the U.S. if they were to be fingerprinted, suggesting it was a sign of a police state. But Congress required fingerprinting, and although the State Department had asked Congress to change that law, key Congressman Francis Walter of Pennsylvania had vigorously opposed the change. According to State Department officials, the FBI had been cooperative and did not oppose cultural exchange between Russia and the U.S. as a danger to U.S. security.
Fingerprinting had blocked the Moscow Ballet from visiting the U.S., as well as the Moiseyev Ensemble, a group of folk dancers.
State Department figures showed that practically no students had been exchanged between the U.S. and Russia, whereas about 17,000 students had visited Russia from Europe and Asia the previous year, and about 100,000 tourists had visited Russia the previous summer. "Porgy and Bess" had toured Russia from the U.S. and had been widely acclaimed everywhere. The Russian Iron Curtain had been partly lowered but the American curtain was much harder to penetrate.
The doctors who had warned the public the previous June that the President's ileitis was likely to recur had been Dr. David Rutstein, head of the Harvard Medical School department of preventive medicine, Dr. Samuel Gaines of the Polyclinic Hospital in New York, and several studies published to that effect by the Mayo Clinic and the New England Medical Journal. Dr. Ward Van Patter of Mayo had written "recurrence is found to be as high as 65 percent."
Stewart Alsop indicates that by the time the piece was printed, the President would likely be in fine fettle again, but suggests that the illness served to remind everyone he was mortal, leading to the question as to what kind of a president Richard Nixon would make.
He suggests that all men changed but
that Vice-President Nixon had changed more than most since his entry
into politics in 1946 by answering a newspaper advertisement for
young Republican candidates for Congress. He had become a politician,
as another young war veteran might have become an advertising man or
an automobile salesman—the advertising man part of it perhaps being
predictive of the role which H. R. "Bob" Haldeman would
play for Mr. Nixon, starting at least by 1964. (The automobile
salesman part was more in line with Mr. Nixon, himself
"As a professional politician Nixon quickly developed a real talent for selling his product—in this case himself. He also developed a fine instinct for lunging for the political jugular of his opponents. And he got ahead very fast indeed." He finds that he was still a professional politician and that politics was his favorite subject of private conversation. But his prolonged exposure to the responsibilities of the White House had taught him that politics was more than just a means of getting ahead.
When he had entered politics, he was very much to the right politically, endearing him to a group of rich California Republicans who had given him his start. His experience had taught him that the strictly orthodox form of Republicanism was, however, at the national level, bad politics. The previous Sunday, he had warned against using the abuses of the Dave Beck-type union leader as an excuse for punitive labor legislation, different from the man of ten years earlier. It would be surprising if there were any sharp turn to the right in domestic affairs in a Nixon presidency, and, he suggests, any shift in domestic policy might be in the opposite direction, that is more to the left of the Eisenhower Administration.
His exposure to the realities of the world situation had also made a great impression on him as Vice-President. In internal debates within the Administration on defense and foreign aid spending, he had nearly always been on the side of security first, and economy second. He had also been consistently on the side of bold action abroad. It was now generally forgotten that in 1954, he had publicly advocated sending U.S. forces to Indochina if necessary to save Southeast Asia from the Communists, a position which could not have been politically motivated as it was politically dangerous in the extreme. Thus, he suggests, a Nixon foreign policy would be considerably more adventurous than that of President Eisenhower.
Mr. Nixon had always been an essentially lonely man, and with the possible exception of Jack Drown of California, he had really no close personal friends. His friendship with Deputy Attorney General William Rogers, who would succeed Attorney General Herbert Brownell the following October and would become President Nixon's first Secretary of State from 1969 through 1973, was more professional than personal as Mr. Rogers shared his political attitudes and his nearly obsessive interest in political matters. (Never forget Bebe Rebozo.)
"Indeed, in one way at least, Nixon is not a typical politician at all. He lacks the instinctive gregariousness of most politicians—the small talk which is the necessary small change of political life is a painful effort to him. He is, in fact, an oddly impersonal man, and a Nixon Cabinet would certainly be chosen, not on the basis of personal relationships, but with a cool eye to both ability and political advantage." He finds him to have great drive and first-class intelligence, with his partisanship of the younger days now muted. "Even among those who know him well and admire him, there is, nevertheless, still a kernel of doubt about the man, left over from the days when Nixon saw politics as a means of getting ahead, and did not care very much about how he went about it. Yet it is not possible, after all, for a politician to get further ahead than the presidency; and to a president the judgment of history tends suddenly to become a lot more interesting than partisan political advantage."
Unfortunately, the obtaining of the power of the Presidency would be too much of a beckoning call to acquire even more power to the point where the press found it a "royal Presidency", the likes of which most of the press corps had never seen in Washington, even before the scandal of Watergate erupted and brought down his Presidency and disgraced him before history. His obsession with leaving his place in history was the seed for his installation of the secret taping machine in the White House which, ironically, proved to be his final undoing, leading to his becoming an "unindicted co-conspirator" in the cover-up of the Watergate burglars' ties to the White House and CREEP, and also serving as the basis for the principal article of impeachment voted against him in July, 1974 by the House Judiciary Committee, for obstruction of justice by having his assistants, Messrs. Haldeman and Ehrlichman, communicate to CIA director Richard Helms to get him to ask acting FBI director L. Patrick Gray to stand aside from the investigation into Watergate, as leading back to the "Bay of Pigs thing".
But in 1957, we were all still young and none of that had yet transpired.
Incidentally, as an aside of note, insofar as Bay Shore Chrysler-Plymouth, once upon a fine spring day, while driving a new 1976 Plymouth Duster, assigned to us by the driving school at which we taught for a few months out of San Bruno, we realized, gradually, that the car, with about 5,000 miles on the odometer, was not living up to the manufacturer's promises prior to Mr. Iacocca's reign to straighten out the crags and crannies, as so many American manufacturers, losing trade by the day to the foreign makes in those times, even to the grannies, failed to do, having an increasingly dancing steering wheel, shimmying the hula without any doll hanging from the mirror to inspire it so, which, during a driving lesson for the callow vis-à-vis the viscissitudinous traffic darters practiced at the in-and-out, could have proved quite problematic, especially as the driving school for which we worked for a quarter or so, temporally and financially, had no passenger side steering wheel, only an auxiliary brake, and so, on instruction from the driving school, after we perspicaciously called to find out what to do anent this condition in which we found the new Duster, were directed to Bay Shore for remedial treatment. Therein, we were instructed that it was quite fortuitous, indeed, that we diagnosed the need for correction of the squirrelly thing in time, as the steering pinion on the new 1976 Duster was about to drop out completely, which would have been, as indicated, cause for pops, pows and fluster, out-mustered bum fleetly. Thus, we probably owe our lives, all nine of them, to both our perspicacity, having been derived out of retained sensate data gleaned from another, earlier experience with our 1962 Rambler American in early 1971 on two occasions when either front wheel, three months apart, broke off the car, once across Robin Hood at Avalon and the other to the side of Fries a block from the high school to which we were going, arriving on time nevertheless, plus the tenacity, of course, of Bay Shore to diagnose the issue promptly to save us from calamity along the High Road at the Bay shore rather than provide to us a rosy prospectus by wishing, with undue optimism, that every road ought rise to meet us, as surely one would have soon enough had the loose nuts from the factory not been promptly tightened down, before Mr. Iacocca ever got to them.
Doris Fleeson indicates that the involved prose of the President had provided reporters interpreting it a considerable private amusement, with their pastime having been made public through a widely circulated composition in the White House press room, titled "The Gettysburg Address As It Would Have Been Written by President Eisenhower", reading:
"I haven't checked these
figures, but 87 years ago, I think it was, a number of individuals
organized a governmental setup here in this country. I believe it
covered certain Eastern areas, with this idea they were following up
based on a sort of national independence arrangement and the program
that every individual is just as good as every other individual.
"Well, now, of course, we're dealing with this big difference of opinion, civil disturbance you might say, although I don't like to appear to take sides or name any individuals, and the point is naturally to check up, by actual experience in the field, see whether any governmental setup with a basis like the one I was mentioning has any validity, whether that dedication you might say by those early individuals has any lasting values.
"Well, here we are, you might put it that way, all together at the scene where one of these disturbances between different sides got going. We want to pay our tribute to those loved ones, those departed individuals who made the supreme sacrifice here on the basis of their opinions about how this setup ought to be handled. It is absolutely in order and 100 percent O. K. to do this.
"But if you look at the overall picture of this, we can't pay any tribute—we can't sanctify this area—we can't hallow, according to whatever individual creeds or faiths or sort of religious outlooks are involved, like I said about this particular area. It was those individuals themselves, including the enlisted men, very brave individuals, who have given this religious character to the area. The way I see it, the rest of the world will not remember any statements issued here, but it will never forget how these men put their shoulders to the wheel and carried this idea down the fairway.
"Our job, the living individuals' job here is to pick up the burden and sink the putt they made these big efforts here for. It is our job to get on with the assignment and from these deceased fine individuals to take extra inspiration, you could call it, for the same theories about which they did such a lot.
"We have to make up our minds right here and now, as I see it, they didn't put out all that blood, perspiration and—well—that they didn't just make a dry run here, that all of us, under God that is, the God of our choice, shall beef up this idea about freedom and liberty and those kind of arrangements and that government of all individuals, by all individuals and for the individuals shall not pass out of the world picture."
Ms. Fleeson indicates that appreciation of the work of art might suffer from the fact that few newspapers had the space to carry the full transcript of the President's press conferences or his off-the-cuff speeches. She also finds that, as was true of President Truman, Americans sometimes loved their Presidents as much or more for their human failings and their lack of elegance as for their noble virtues.
Robert C. Ruark tells of eight doctors trying to save "Big Freddy's" life, whose criminal charges would keep him in jail until the year 2022 were he to serve out his "past performance rap". "But somehow he come loose, see, and somehow he come on strong to what the cops think is another murder, a kidnaping, and an armed robbery of a supermarket. How come he come loose, when he was already doing a sixty for shooting a cop? Why ain't this felon in The Hole instead of being loose enough to be suspected accurately of murder, kidnaping and armed robbery? Why don't they dance this lad off to keep the innocents free of him?"
His real name was Fred Hartjen, age 46, and his defiant attitude had caused him to be "real shot up" recently when he made a break from detectives who were transferring him from New York to New Jersey to face new charges, among them murder. "Big Freddy elbowed four dicks and took off down the corridor in the New York Criminal Courts building and the cops fired the usual ha-ha warning shots and then laid seven good ones into Big Freddy and some innocent bystanders, including another cop, as well. Big Freddy isn't, or was not expected, to live, which is real nice, but the outlook is hopeful for the innocent bystanders."
He had been paroled from Dannemora Prison on August 22, 1956, after serving 20 years of a 20 to 60 year sentence for shooting a policeman during a robbery. He had been arrested the prior May 8 on a New Jersey extradition warrant and refused to waive extradition. New Jersey wanted him for the fatal stabbing of a 47-year old man during a fight outside a Union City tavern. He also faced kidnaping and robbery charges in the holdup of a supermarket, during which the manager had been taken as a hostage. If he were to pull through, he would face life imprisonment in both New Jersey and New York, or potentially the death penalty in New Jersey. He said that if he lived, he would try to escape again.
Mr. Ruark suggests that if he were to live, he would also kill another man in a brawl, shoot another cop in a holdup, kidnap another supermarket manager, and possibly deal in narcotics, prostitution or anything else he could do to earn a criminal buck.
He finds that he was so lonesome outside jail that he had to commit crimes to alleviate his boredom, that he would refuse the presidency of a bank for the right to stick it up. He wonders what he was doing on parole, apart from the charges against him, and why they had paroled him with 40 years remaining on his sentence. "And eight doctors to save a life that the state will take undoubtedly unless another fix is in? Charity, I should say, begins at home."
A letter writer says that he had watched the Charlotte Symphony grow and apparently fall through lack of leadership. Lamar Stringfield, he finds, had been a conductor who had the qualifications to do so with imagination, musical ability and national prestige, but he had been ignored by the current board of directors in their search for a new conductor. He favors Mr. Stringfield.
A letter writer says that she had taken notice of Frank Lloyd Wright regarding his view of the type of education offered schoolchildren, indicating that they were being taught not to have respect for the law and the Constitution, but rather were taught to be a party to bigotry and to conform to that type of education to maintain their job security. She suggests that to safeguard the younger generation, the basic foundation of the country, it would be better to close all the colleges and schools teaching them to defy and violate the law and the Constitution, and "to carry on their bigotry of greed and discrimination."
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