The Charlotte News

Friday, February 13, 1959

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Secretary of State Dulles had undergone a successful operation at the Army's Walter Reed Medical Center for hernia this date, according to the State Department press secretary, Lincoln White, who said also that tissue and fluid had been removed during the operation "for microscopical examination". That examination would determine whether there was any cancerous condition. Mr. White said that Mr. Dulles was on the operating table for less than an hour and that the results of the examination of tissues and fluids had not yet been received. The hospital's commandant, the surgeon who performed the operation, said that it was relatively simple, a bit more complicated that an adenoid operation, for example.

At Fort Bragg, N.C., General George C. Marshall remained in satisfactory condition in the hospital, according to a medical report this date. He had suffered a stroke on January 15.

Huge ice jams and more rains were potential danger marks this date in flood-menaced sections of Indiana, as flooding in northern Ohio subsided. Wet weather dampened the two states as well as most other sections in the Eastern half of the nation. The major flood peril appeared ended on the upper Wabash River above Delphi, Ind., after forcing thousands of persons from their homes. But downstream towns were threatened, with West Terre Haute in line as the next major target of flooding.

In Richmond, Va., a quick series of decisions on Monday would determine whether Warren County would integrate its white high school the following week and under what circumstances. Talk of a possible boycott of the school by some students and the unsettled status of the teachers had contributed to the haze which hung over the Warren County situation. Unless Chief Judge Simon Sobeloff of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday granted the county a delay of integration until the following fall, the Warren County High School at Front Royal would have to be reopened the following Wednesday to its former students and to 22 black students. If that occurred, Warren County would be the fourth locality in the state to integrate public schools during the month. Thirty black students were now attending ten integrated schools in Norfolk, Arlington and Alexandria. The integration, accepted by Virginia only after the state was stripped of all legal defenses, was proceeding without incident.

In New York, it was reported that police commissioner Stephen P. Kennedy had demoted four top officers of his department, which had been hit by a new gambling scandal. A deputy chief inspector, two inspectors and a deputy inspector had been reduced in rank the previous day to that of captain, the lowest rank which the commissioner could give them under civil service rules. A patrolman had been fired from the force hours before his scheduled retirement at midnight. The demotions and the firing, all in Manhattan, had come a few hours after a deputy inspector and two plainclothes patrolman, members of the Brooklyn morals squad, had been arrested in a scandal in Brooklyn involving police officers receiving payments to cover for bookmakers. After disclosure of the alleged bookie shakedown in Brooklyn, Mr. Kennedy had summoned 150 top police officials to his office for a lecture. Visibly angry, he ordered his commanders to "root out corruption in any manner, shape or form." He told them to be severe with any gamblers. The three officers demoted in Manhattan had been attached to the Tenth Police Division in Harlem the previous March when the commissioner's confidential squad had smashed a large numbers racket there. They had been transferred to non-command duties at police headquarters. Mr. Kennedy declined to explain why he had demoted the three men and said that he did not want to reflect on their integrity, adding: "The administration of the police department has left something to be desired."

In Raleigh, it was reported that agitation over the organization of the State Highway Commission had resulted this date in a resolution before the Legislature calling for a study of the state highway set-up. A State Representative in the House had proposed the resolution, which called for appointment of a nine-member legislative commission to "study and make recommendations with respect to the organization and function of the State Highway Commission."

In New York, it was reported that a 74-year old man had completed law school, not to obtain prestige but to pay back $43,000 he did not legally owe. The man, of Peekskill, had been an official court reporter for many years and at one time had been a member of the board of trustees of a girls school which had closed without paying all of its creditors. The man took an accelerated course at NYU Law School and wanted to be a lawyer so that he could step up his earnings and repay the $43,000. He said that the girls school, which he would not name, legally had done all it could before shutting down, but creditors still had outstanding bills for food and other things. Morally, he said the previous day, he felt that the money ought be paid and had decided that since no one else would pay the debt, he would try to do so. Asked if he thought he could get enough clients to pay off the self-imposed debt, he replied: "I have a lot of friends and even more faith in God."

Elaine St. Johns, author and housewife, in the third of 40 installments daily for 40 days during Lent, as part of the "Lenten Guideposts" series, indicates that she had grown up on the Ninth Commandment, literally. It was the Eighth Commandment, she notes parenthetically, in the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches. She says that when she was seven, without anyone's permission, she had "borrowed" her mother's jade earrings to play dress-up, and had lost them. When they turned up missing, she insisted that she had seen her younger brother take them from her mother's jewelry box. Her brother said that he did not do it, but she said he did and her brother had received a licking. When she heard him yell, she beat her fists against the locked bathroom door and sobbed her admission that she had done it. Her father, understanding her very real love for her little brother, did not believe her, and thought that she was merely trying to take the blame. Her mother, "with that eighth sense mothers have", knew that she was telling the truth. With the wisdom of Solomon, her mother had denied her the purgative pain of a worse licking. Instead, she let her feel her younger brother's pain and accusing eyes, and forced her to try to win back his trust and respect the best way she could. She says that she had never since told a deliberate falsehood against her neighbor. When she was very young as a married woman, she lived on a block with a lot of other young married women, and one elderly spinster. The latter was the only different thing in the neighborhood. She had worn high-button shoes to church and when she went shopping, she carried an oversized, old-fashioned reticule and was always accompanied by her ginger cat on a leash. The others did not resent her as she was a "sweet old thing, quiet and timid. We just thought her odd and had fun building up her eccentricities." The stories had grown as time had gone on and there were reports that she only weeded her petunias by the full moon, that she fed her old dog, Red, on tenderloin steaks, twice ground, and that the ginger cat was fed minced clams. One day, the question had arisen as to how she could keep her animals in steaks and clams, given prices, and one of the girls had giggled that she thought she might be a shoplifter. She had known that the old woman had once owned all the land on which their houses stood and could have fed her pets caviar if she had wished, but she did not want to spoil the fun of the others as she considered it harmless, amusing prattle which they all had enjoyed. A week later, at a neighborhood boy's birthday party, she was stunned when one of the mothers informed her, authoritatively, that the old woman was a known shoplifter with a prison record. The fact that half a dozen little boys immediately pricked up their ears had not helped. Ms. St. Johns demurred and said she was sure that it was not the case, intending to defend the old woman with the truth about her financial position, when another woman had cut her off by saying: "I don't think she's a thief. I think Miss Coote's plain crazy." Immediately, the boys had begun to chant: "Crazy Coote! Crazy Coote!" The next time she heard the chant, she had seen three boys standing before the old woman's house, pounding on the pavement with sticks. You will have to turn to the inside page to find out what happened.

In Monroe, La., it was reported that an individual had been enrolled two weeks earlier as a general business student at Northeast State College, but that a number of things had tripped up his continued enrollment. The most obvious had been that his registration forms were not in proper order, his admission fee had not been paid and the certificate from a high school principal required under Louisiana's segregation statutes could not be found. The director of admissions had examined the registration card further to find that under special talents and hobbies had been listed: "Bone burying, flea scratching, sleeping, swimming bayou." Club affiliations included: "Member Northeast Student Center 4 years, honorary member Feline Chasers of America, president of Dog Lovers Society." The head of the journalism department had remembered the name from a local feature story about three weeks earlier, that story having told of the student in question having swum Bayou Desiard each day and generally had the run of the campus as unofficial school mascot. A professor, head of the commerce department, had called the student's name in class the first day and was told that he was hit by a car and could not attend. It had been true that he had been bumped by a car, but was not injured. An accounting instructor had complained of excessive absences by the student and dropped him from his class roll and sent his class card back to the registration office. The student had the run of the campus, except for the cafeteria, and was somewhat better known. School officials had not solved the mystery of who had enrolled him. It turned out that the student, Fritz Hans Fredericks, Jr., was a boxer dog.

It sounds a bit like something Dennis the Menace might cook up, bothering Mr. Wilson next door, who was now his father, while Kookie met the bear who was killed by the hunter, which Dennis saw through his telescope across the way in the hospital.

In Detroit, it was reported that a man had rung the doorbell to ask for funds for the Salvation Army, but it was the wrong doorbell, that of the Salvation Army captain, who invited the man in and called police after he had noticed that the man was dressed in a fake uniform.

John Kilgo of The News reports that a ministerial student had entered County Recorder's Court this date and had received change for $10 the hard way. The student had previously mailed 1,000 pennies to the court in payment of a traffic fine. He was summoned to court by the judge in response and given two choices, to pay the fine in paper money and take back his pennies or to go into the clerk's office and count the pennies and exchange them at the bank for paper money. The boy handed over $9.50 in folding money and took the jar and left the courtroom. He said afterward: "This whole thing got a little messed up. You see I was driving this car and the patrolman gave me the ticket for improper license. But I did not own the car. The boy that was riding with me owned it and he wanted the ticket." He said that it was his friend's idea to send the pennies. He had been receiving letters and signing the fined boy's name to them, which the latter knew but did not realize he was going to get into trouble with the judge. He said that his friend was a card and that the pennies were his. His friend said that he thought that he should have been given the ticket rather than his friend, but the patrolman had said he could not do that. He was deciding what to do and when he returned to school, he unrolled $10 worth of pennies and put them into the fruit jar. The fined boy said that he thought it was a pretty funny trick, but then read about it in the newspaper and that night, the patrolman had come to his house and told him to be in court this date. That was when it had quit being funny. He called his friend and told him and he had put up the $100 bond, telling him that he had gotten him into the mess and he would get him out of it. The friend, appearing in court during the morning also, said that the judge had indicated that he would pull their legs, but they had hoped he would not pull them off, though he had done so. "We've had our fun out of this thing, though. And we saved 50 cents by coming to court. That's a pretty good deal. I think we'll take these 50 pennies and invest them in the Charlotte gas war so we can get back to school."

A piece indicates that now that "King Elvis" was in the Army in Germany, other young and handsome singers were rocking and rolling their way to the top, that some of the teenagers' top idols in the new Spotlight Series beginning in The News on Monday, titled "Teen-agers' Disc Idols", would be profiled. Included would be Frankie Avalon, Conway Twitty, Ricky Nelson, Jimmie Rogers and Johnny Mathis. (Johnny Mathis as a rocker?) The series was written by Martin Abramson, a freelance contributor to many of the top national magazines. A former reporter for the New York Herald Tribune, he had been the co-author of the Barney Ross autobiography, No Man Stands Alone. Still no mention, sentimentally fogged, of any day recently when "the music died".

On the editorial page, "Mecklenburg's a Country Boy at Heart" indicates that when the General Assembly would meet in Charlotte on March 4, residents could be relatively assured that they were gentlemen who feared God, despised the devil and held motherhood, flag and tobacco farmers in appropriate awe. "There's nothing to fear; nothing whatever."