The Charlotte News

Wednesday, February 11, 1959

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Zürich, Switzerland, that Greece and Turkey had agreed this date on a proposed constitution for an independent Cyprus and prepared to ask Britain for its approval. The Prime Ministers of Greece and Turkey had met in the final session of a conference in Zürich, approving the draft prepared by their foreign ministers in the five days of bargaining. An end at last thus appeared in sight to the long and bitter dispute over the British island colony in the eastern Mediterranean, off the south coast of Turkey. The Turkish foreign minister said that the agreement would strengthen the Western alliance. He and the Greek foreign minister prepared to fly to London during the afternoon to submit the proposed constitution to British Foreign Minister Selwyn Lloyd. A Foreign Office spokesman in London said that Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's Government wholeheartedly welcomed the news. British officials would not comment further until they had studied the proposed constitution in detail. The British approval was considered certain, however, as Greece and Turkey had agreed and because the constitution guaranteed Britain certain large military bases which it had established on Cyprus. News of the agreement also heartened all other members of NATO, as Greece and Turkey, acting as NATO's eastern anchor, had been stymied in their cooperation by the fight over Cyprus for the previous several years. Britain had ruled Cyprus since 1879 and the island presently was the major British base in the eastern Mediterranean. Of its 500,000 people, 400,000 were of Greek descent and 100,000 of Turkish descent.

In Oslo, Norway, it was reported that Prime Minister Einar Gerhandsen had said this date that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev would be invited to visit Norway, Sweden and Denmark during the year.

In Washington, it was reported that a panel of 12 labor law experts this date had begun work on recommendations for revision of the Taft-Hartley Act.

In Chattanooga, Tenn., it was reported that a bandaged labor union organizer had charged the previous night that he had been roughed up and chased out of Franklin, N.C., the previous day. At Franklin, the sheriff said that he had talked to witnesses who said that the union representative had not been attacked. The allegations had been made by a man from Greensboro who was a representative of the American Federation of Hosiery Workers, AFL-CIO, indicating that he had gone to Franklin in an attempt to unionize a hosiery mill and had been accosted in his motel room the previous morning by four men who had beaten and kicked him, forcibly dressed him and ordered him to follow them out of town. He said that later, while about 50 threatening persons had followed in their cars, he had been escorted to the Georgia-North Carolina border by a sheriff's officer. The AFHW first vice-president of Chattanooga called the alleged incident an outrage and stated that the FBI had been notified. The union representative had been brought to Chattanooga by the first vice-president and another union official. After treatment by a physician, the union organizer was hospitalized and his condition was listed as fair the previous night. Hospital attendants said that he suffered from cuts and bruises. The sheriff of Macon County in North Carolina told the Chattanooga Times by telephone that he had heard that several persons had met with the union representative at the motel because the workers did not want to belong to a union. He denied the charges of the representative that officials at Franklin had refused to let him call either the mayor or the Highway Patrol. The sheriff said that the organizer wanted to be placed in jail and that they could not do that because he had not done anything wrong. The sheriff said that he knew nothing about a fight and that the union representative had accepted an offer of a police escort out of town.

In Fremont, O., it was reported that the ice-choked Sandusky River threatened the city and its 16,000 residents to the north and south this date, having been the hardest hit of Ohio's northern communities in new flooding which had struck for the second time in less than a month. Racing through the Fremont business section and a part of the residential area, the water had reached a depth of a little more than 18 feet early this date, and then had remained fairly steady. It was a foot deeper than the crest of the flood which had coursed through the town three weeks earlier. It was still in a state of emergency from the earlier disaster. An estimated 1,000 Fremont residents had been forced to evacuate their homes the previous day and early this date. Another 200 to 500 evacuees still were homeless from the first flood. The river was out of its banks for 3 miles through the city. A huge ice jam, piled up for weeks, clogged the Sandusky River to the north, where the water normally ran through marshy areas into Sandusky Bay on Lake Erie. Upstream to the south, there was another mass of ice, 5 feet thick in some places, behind the Ballville dam.

In St. Louis, it was reported that the number of dead from the tornado which had struck the city on Tuesday had reached 21, with another seven persons still missing and at least 70 more in hospitals. Only one of those hospitalized was on the critical list. Relief workers still were measuring the dimensions of the misery inflicted by the twister. The Red Cross estimated that 1,400 were homeless in St. Louis and the county. The Insurance Board of St. Louis said that 4,000 buildings had been damaged, with an estimated loss amounting to 12 million dollars.

In Snow Hill, N.C., a strike-boycott had closed Greene County black schools. Student drivers of 32 of the county's 34 black school buses refused to pick up pupils on their routes the previous day, appearing to be the core of a partial boycott which had resulted in all except 150 students out of the more than 2,300 enrolled attending classes. After an emergency session, the Board of Education had ordered all six of the county's black schools closed this date, and mechanics had gone to the homes of the bus drivers and driven the vehicles to the county garage. A Board spokesman said that no one from the boycotting drivers had outlined any specific complaints behind the strike, but it was understood that students and drivers alike had objected to the construction of a new $450,000 consolidated white high school. They claimed that the black central high school in Snow Hill needed a new gymnasium, a more adequate cafeteria, a library and more classrooms.

In Lillington, N.C., it was reported that a 12-year old girl had testified the previous day that she and her younger brother and sister had spent Christmas in chains. Their father, a farmer, was sentenced to six years in prison by the County Recorder's Court judge after being charged with willful neglect and assault. The children, 8, 10, and 12-years old, had been found in chains at the home the previous week. The father said that he had chained them to keep them from running loose. A woman, who lived in the same small house with her ten children, had been sentenced to two years for aiding and abetting the mistreatment of the youngsters. The children who had been chained were in the custody of the Welfare Department. A fairly well-known song would later be written about them.

Jerry Reece of The News reports that improved driving and traffic safety habits for the clock-puncher were the aims of a new program of the City Police Department's traffic division. A police captain had announced the beginning of the program this date and said that a full-time officer would handle the program, that he would visit plants, stores, shops, warehouses and other businesses to talk with employees about improving their driving habits and traffic safety. You have something to which to look forward.

Fred Hoffman of the Associated Press reports from Washington that because of an admiring little girl telling President Lincoln that he would look a great deal better with whiskers, he had grown the beard which had become so much a part of the image of him since. The letter had been received by him in the fall of 1860 in the closing days of the presidential campaign, waged in the shadow of the oncoming Civil War. It was an oft-told story, recalled this date on the eve of the 150th birthday anniversary of Mr. Lincoln. In upstate New York, the girl, Grace Hedell, had pondered a picture of Mr. Lincoln, brought to her by her father from a fair. After awhile, she sat down and wrote to Mr. Lincoln, saying that she wanted "you should be president of the United States very much. I have got four brothers and part of them will vote for you anyway." She promised that if he would let his whiskers grow, she would try to get the rest of them to vote for him. She said: "You would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be president." Mr. Lincoln had received the letter at his home in Springfield, Ill., and despite the heavy demands of the campaign, had replied at once, writing Grace that he had never worn whiskers and asking her in a gently humorous vein, "Do you not think people would call it a piece of silly affection if I were to begin now?" Nevertheless, he had begun growing the beard immediately and whether or not it had anything to do with his victory was not known. In February, 1861, Mr. Lincoln had begun his slow train trip to Washington, stopping along the way for rear platform talks to crowds which had turned out to see the President-elect. One stop had been at Westfield, N.Y., where Grace lived. Mr. Lincoln had not forgotten her letter and told her fellow townspeople about it, asking if she was in the audience. Bashfully, Grace had come through the crowd and Mr. Lincoln kissed her. Then the train pulled out and he headed for the great cares which awaited him, and his ultimate death from an assassination at the end of the war in April, 1865, a little over a month after the start of his second term.

In Harrisburg, Pa., it was reported that the state's campaign to eliminate fire hazards in public schools had run into a problem this date, regarding the potbellied stove in the one-room school house. The State Labor and Industry Department had recently ordered school officials to be sure to comply with fire safety regulations by enclosing heating plants with fire resistant material. The previous day, the supervising principal of seven one-room schools in Lancaster County, each with a potbellied stove in the middle of the room, had asked how they could surround a potbellied stove with heat resistant material and still get the room heated, or whether they should spend money building heating plants which would be bigger than each of the schools. The secretary of the Department had replied that he did not have the answer.

In the first of a series of 40 articles written for "Lenten Guideposts", to appear each day in the Lenten season, movie and television star, Robert Young, states that when his first daughter, presently 22, had been born, he and his wife, Betty, had prided themselves on being enlightened parents, hoping for a large family and deciding to be very modern, very intellectual with their children. They were to have something they called "Christian Standards", by which he supposed that they meant ethics and to project the children in the right direction. They decided that each would be christened in a non-sectarian church and that no church ties would be forced on them, allowing them to choose for themselves. He indicates that as a young married couple, he and his wife had attended church only at the fashionable times of the year, Christmas and Easter, feeling no need for constant church affiliation. But they wanted their children to have those Christian Standards. Thus, each of their four daughters, in order of their appearance, had been christened in a lovely ceremony in their living room by the minister of the Beverly Hills Community Church. It had been there that his ignorance had been showing, he confides, for had he entered the church proper, as he had since done, he would have observed on the bulletin board that the denomination was Presbyterian. But he and his wife had simply assumed that a Community Church was non-sectarian. Once their daughters had been christened, they followed the second part of their plan, with the parents trying to surround them with a closely knit, loving family atmosphere, hearing their prayers regularly, as they also prayed. He had told his daughter proudly that she was free to choose her own religion, but finds that he had been as foolish as he was wrong, as no real choice had been offered to them, with no habit of church-going having been developed. Fourteen years had elapsed before any one of the children had decided on anything or even mentioned a specific church. From boarding school, the oldest child had written them a letter as to whether they would mind if she inquired about joining the Episcopal Church, saying that it was not sudden and she had always held a tremendous respect for their chaplain, admitting that it was his faith which had made him what he was, and so she had begun studying the service, trying to understand the words and the symbolism, and now found that they held great meaning for her, that she loved the service and it gave her something which she needed. A few weeks later, he and his wife had attended her confirmation. During that summer vacation, each Sunday, while her parents and all of her younger sisters slept, the 15-year old daughter had risen quietly and gone to All Saints Church in Beverly Hills, and then, out of deference to her, the parents had begun attending with her. The younger girls, still free to make their choice, also chose to get up and go to church school. In one short summer, they had become a churchgoing family. Mr. Young says that at first, he felt strange, for he had not been to church in a long while. Their daughter's return to school left the parents and other siblings on their own and yet they still went to church because it had begun to seem important. Then one Sunday morning, an Adult Confirmation Class was announced and he and his wife had attended the class, beginning to learn things, to feel a part of the group, and when the instruction period ended, had gone right on into full church membership. Father knows best...

On the editorial page, "A Long-Range Benefit Worth Cheering" indicates that the balance of the new budget put forward by Governor Luther Hodges was precarious, being dependent on an anticipated 27.5 million dollar windfall from pay-as-you-go income tax deductions and bond issues totaling 38 million dollars for capital improvements. The Governor thus felt that he could forgo his plans to ask for a tax increase.