The Charlotte News
Tuesday, February 17, 1959
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Cape Canaveral, Fla., that a Vanguard rocket, designed to put a weather eye in orbit about the earth, had been launched this date and that ten minutes after the launch, NASA said that all three rocket stages had fired and performed smoothly. Confirmation of a successful satellite orbit usually required about two hours from the time of the launch. The payload was a 21.5-pound sphere housing delicate instruments designed to report on the world's weather. An announcement was expected from Washington within 2 to 3 hours on whether the effort to put a sixth U.S. satellite in orbit had been successful.
In Washington, N.C., it was reported that one of two Navy blimps on a north-bound cruise had crashed and burned in a swamp before dawn this date. Four members of the seven-man crew had died in the crash or subsequent fire. The other three had been critically injured. Three farmers, awakened by an explosion in the wee hours of the morning, had waded into the swamp and brought out the three burned survivors. The farmers cut pine saplings, attached fabric from the wreckage and placed the injured on makeshift stretchers which they carried out to a dirt road, and from there, carried them on tractors to a paved highway where ambulances picked up the three and hurried them to a hospital in Washington. The farmers lived within 1.5 miles of the scene and had been aroused from their sleep by the sound of an explosion, made their way through knee-deep water to the burning blimp. They found two of the men lying nearby and a third running about deliriously. The ship, attached to Glencoe Naval Air Station near Brunswick, Ga., had been en route with a sister blimp to the Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey. Officers of Airship Squadron Two at Glencoe had described the accident as rare. The officer said that the blimp was in radio contact with the other only about 5 miles away but had given no sign of trouble. That led to the belief that the blimp had been flying at cruising speed and had gone directly to earth, a mishap almost unknown for that type of aircraft. After the crash, the sister ship hovered above the area relaying distress signals and marking the area before proceeding to Lakehurst. The nature of the injuries to the three hospitalized survivors indicated that the impact had not been great, but ruptured gasoline tanks had erupted in fire. The flat lands where the ship had struck were interlaced with bogs and swamps, and the timber was mostly pine. The night was chilly, cloudy and starless, as the two ships had moved toward Lakehurst.
In New York, it was reported that two women had been shot to death in a Madison Avenue office this date by a rifle-wielding man described as a former employee who had been discharged. Police had taken into custody a 27-year old man. The shooting had erupted in a fourth floor office and police said that the man had been grabbed and held after the shooting.
It is too bad that Detective Halloran
In Ventura, Calif., it was reported that a female defendant, smiling frequently, appeared calm and confident in court, standing trial on the charge that she had hired two men to kill her son's attractive bride, 30. The victim had been strangled. Attorneys had questioned other prospective jurors this date after eight of the first ten said that they believed the defendant was guilty of murder and so had been dismissed from the venire. The Superior Court judge again refused the previous day to move the trial to another county after defense attorneys contended that the defendant could not get a fair trial in Ventura County.
John Kilgo of The News reports that two brothers, one clutching a pistol in his right hand, had been found lying in a pool of blood in their house in Charlotte, both having been shot through the head, found in a downstairs bedroom, lying side by side. A captain of detectives said that he was not sure which brother had done the shooting but said he believed it definitely was a murder-suicide. In his opinion, both men had been dead since Saturday evening. There had been no struggle and the shooting had apparently occurred without a fight by either man. The bodies had been discovered by police after one of the brother's employer had become suspicious when he did not show up for work on Monday or this date. He marked the stock market board at a brokerage firm in the Johnston Building. The employer had called the house in the morning to inquire about the employee and when there was no answer, he notified police. A lieutenant and three uniformed officers had gone to the house during the morning, knocked on the door and got no answer, tried the doors but found all locked. All the lights were still burning. They kicked in the back door, searched the house and found the two bodies in the bedroom, which was dirty and untidy. The bed had clothes stacked high and other garments were lying over the floor. On the wall was a picture of FDR. Police said that the gun in the hand of one of the men had been a .35-caliber pistol. Police said no notes explaining the cause of the deaths had been found. The other brother had been employed as a grocery clerk at a store in Charlotte. The kitchen table had been covered with string beans, french fried potatoes and some candy drops. Pots and pans were unwashed in the kitchen sink. Crowds of people gathered outside the dingy houses as police went about their investigation, some of them knowing the brothers and others not knowing that they had died.
Bob Slough also reports on the same scene, that a box of groceries at the house bore mute testimony that death for the two brothers had come unexpectedly. The two were in the next room from where the groceries were situated, but would never be able to consume them, having purchased them probably on Saturday. Police officers filled the house and waited for the coroner, indicating that they would not move anything until he got there. They went from room to room searching for clues which might give them a motive for what had happened.
An accompanying photograph shows that at least some of the officers of the Charlotte Police Department were driving new 1959 Fords.
Jerry Reece of The News reports that a 43-year old woman had died during the morning this date after falling or jumping from a window on the seventh floor of Presbyterian Hospital about an hour earlier. A hospital spokesman had identified the woman, and an administrator said that she had been admitted on February 13 for possible surgery and psychiatric treatment. She had been seen just minutes before the fall walking down the hall, according to the administrator. The coroner's office had completed a preliminary investigation of the matter but had not determined yet whether the fall was accidental or a suicide.
Bob Slough, in the second of a series of articles on traffic accidents in Charlotte, reports that a car
carrying a lone driver on the open road had, in a split-second, left
the road and slammed into a tree, breaking the driver's body and
killing him instantly. Ambulance drivers saw what was left after the
sound of the crash had died away. They did not like to talk about it.
One driver had said: "I don't think there is any man that death
doesn't affect." The drivers took the accident calls and moved
quickly to a wreck, never knowing what to expect. Damage to the car
did not always indicate the tragic results of an accident. One
ambulance driver said that it was surprising, that one could see a
car sometimes which was a total loss and it looked like an accordion,
yet no one was hurt, and then another accident, which appeared
simple, had resulted in a fatality. One driver had responded to the
scene of an accident late one night and when he got there, found an
oil tanker had turned over down an embankment
The reporting of Ann Sawyer of The
News had been adjudged the best of any U.S. newspaper regarding
local educational issues. Ms. Sawyer was in Atlantic City this date
to receive a bronze plaque as the winner in one of three categories
of the contest sponsored by the Education Writers Association. Her
award for the best coverage "in a newspaper, wire service or
syndicate of local or state educational issues" had been
presented on the basis of her general reporting in the educational
field during 1958. Ruth Dunbar of the Chicago Sun-Times had
won the contest category on reporting on educational affairs of
national interest. In a third category, reporting of educational
affairs in a general circulation magazine, the winner had been George
B. Leonard, Jr., of Look Magazine. L. M. Wright, Jr., of the
Charlotte Observer, along with Mary Lou Werner of the
Washington Star and Erwin Knoll of the Washington Post and
Times-Herald, had won a special citation for reporting and
interpreting
Glenn D. Kittler, in the next in the
series of "Lenten Guideposts", one of 40 articles for each
day of the Lenten season, indicates that a little girl had a
temperature of 106 and at her bedside stood the doctor, gently
bathing her malaria-ridden body. All around him, the night was filled
with hospital sounds, familiar to the doctor as he heard them every
night as he made his last rounds. They were with him a few minutes
later as he walked through the black jungle night down the hill to
his house. He was very tired but did not mind as he was a happy man
there in the pits of the Haitian jungles where he had found the
purpose for himself. A dozen years earlier, William Mellon, Jr., was
happy in quite a different way, as he had everything he wanted, a
beautiful wife, four splendid children, a prosperous Arizona ranch,
all the money he needed and a successful background in the U.S.
diplomatic corps, plus various enterprises of the famous and wealthy
Mellon family. At 37, he had retired and the rest of his life, he
thought, would be spent at what was almost a hobby of breeding
cattle. Then one night, he read a magazine article which changed
everything, authored by Dr. Albert Schweitzer
In Salt Lake City, it was reported that Utah's Legislature had debated a Sunday closing law, as State Senator Clyde Miller of Salt Lake noted that it would close grocery stores but allow the sale of beer on Sundays. He suggested that an harassed father, crying baby in his arms and no food or milk in the house, might say on some Sunday: "Shut up and drink your beer!" The lawmakers had nevertheless passed the bill and the previous weekend, Mr. Miller's wife had given birth to a daughter. On Monday, sympathetic fellow Senators had taken steps to spare him distress by presenting him a gift box containing toys, diapers and an assortment of baby foods.
In Sacramento, a bill had been introduced in the California Legislature by State Senator Stanley Arnold of Susanville, providing that if a person shot another hunter, the person would have to file a written report within 48 hours to the Fish and Game Department. Similar reports would be required from any person who saw a hunter shoot another person.
On the editorial page, "New Constitution: A Touch of Timidity" indicates that the "model" state constitution unveiled for the 1959 Legislature the previous night might not answer all of the state's hopes and dreams but was nevertheless the work of worthy men who were genuinely concerned about the problems of political progress.
It finds that the adoption of a new state constitution was the most urgent business before the General Assembly as the current 1868 version was out of date and had to be replaced with something vastly better. The new document offered for the Legislature's scrutiny the previous night was rigorously conservative, despite the absurdly shrill outcries of the rural east regarding the reapportionment clause. Several opportunities for improvements in the executive department had been generally ignored. One looked it over in vain for truly earth-shaking reforms anywhere except in the judicial section, where the work of the State Bar Association committee, chaired by State Senator J. Spencer Bell, was evident. But the legislative planners would not go nearly as far as Senator Bell to guarantee improvements in the quality and efficiency of justice in the state. The additional authority granted the General Assembly in the proposed new document was curious and it wonders whether it was necessary.
Nevertheless, weeding had been done and some relatively minor changes here and there would likely touch off major controversies. But it finds that the issue before the state was too important to be treated as a handy punching bag for petty politicians. It indicates that the first reservations which it had would not be allowed to prejudice the final editorial judgment of the package, that it would study the proposals individually and collectively and urge its readers to do the same.
The new State Constitution would not be put forward and ratified until 1971 by a general referendum.
"Naming a Chief Is Council's Business" indicates that for six months, personnel problems in the City Police Department had the City Council "twirling like a weathercock in a whirlwind." First there had been the move in August to hasten the departure of former Chief Frank Littlejohn and then there had been the wrangle over his successor, ending months later with the selection of Acting Chief E. C. Selvey, and finally there had been a skirmish with Local 1492 of the police union, resulting in the union being disbanded.
Then there was a hearing before Superior Court Judge Susie Sharp—later North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice—the previous week. Readers of the newspaper had noted that a new ruckus affecting the Department was brewing out of Council member Herman Brown's plan to put the chief of police and also the fire chief under the civil service system. The union's appeal had been dismissed and Mr. Brown's idea was still alive.
It finds that civil service was an excellent institution, having cleansed all levels of government and made "merit" a meaningful word in the nation's political vocabulary, but was designed for the rank-and-file of government and not for the principal administrative and judicial officers. In Charlotte, the chief of police was not a clerk and his worth could not be measured by statistical standards. He was also an important administrative officer of the City government and was therefore responsible to the people. Since the people could not personally operate the government, they elected a City Council to do their bidding. The chief presently reported to the Council and it was the Council's responsibility to see that the chief did his duty on behalf of the public, and could fire him if he failed to do so. If the Council discharged its own responsibility poorly, its members could be removed from office, constituting the protection which the public had.
Under the present system, a rascal could not be named as chief of police any more than under a civil service system. Consequently, it indicates, it would no more suggest that the hiring and firing of police chiefs be placed in the hands of an appointive municipal commission, remote from public control, than it would suggest that Charlotte's city manager be named by the Cabinet in Washington. The Council was entrusted with the reins of government in the city and it should remain free to name the people it could trust to supervise day-to-day operations. It finds that notion held for the city manager, the chief of police, the fire chief and certain other key administrative officials and that any effort on the part of the Council to relieve itself of that important right and responsibility ought be resisted firmly.
"Dauntless, True Love Is Still with Us" indicates that even in the age of missiles, supersonic jets and 300-horsepower automobiles, if a man could not get to his sweetheart one way, he would find another.
In South Carolina, a 38-year old worker at odd jobs had met and wished to woo a 98-year old woman, but she lived 20 miles distant from him and he had no automobile and so rode the distance on his bicycle for a period of six or seven years until, in his words: "I finally got tired. I couldn't ride … every day, so I decided it would be best if we got married."
The previous Sunday, he had ridden his bicycle to his girlfriend's home with the question and she had accepted the proposal. The couple mounted his bicycle and rode back to the groom's home, though with great difficulty. The bride-to-be had nearly changed her mind before the trip was completed. As the man explained, "She had to ride on the handlebars all the way and it was sorta bouncy."
It says that it wished it could report a happy ending but could not, as at last report, some of the prospective bride's children had appeared on the scene and spirited her away. "We hope after all that effort, the couple will be allowed to pedal to the preacher."
A piece from the Washington Post, titled "Pear or Grapefruit?" tells of a ten-year old boy at the breakfast table viewing skeptically the latest scientific intelligence that the earth resembled a pear rather than a grapefruit by saying that the next thing they would be stating was that the earth was flat.
It indicates that it was prepared to accept the pear-shaped findings of NASA, which had been interpreting the data sent back to earth by the Vanguard satellite.
It finds it reassuring to learn that the scientists were convinced that a pear-shaped earth was stronger on the inside than a grapefruit-shaped sphere, although it confesses that it did not understand exactly why that would be. "The earth certainly can stand reinforcement in these atomic times."
"Nevertheless, we can't refrain
from observing that the earth may simply be taking on by osmosis or
some other mysterious process the pear-shaped tendencies
Drew Pearson indicates that just a stone's throw from the Lincoln Memorial were the headquarters of one of the most virulent and vitriolic hate-nests in the country, having had contact with those who had been investigated in connection with the bombing of the Atlanta synagogues, had received money from Arab sources and had even sent word of its activities to Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. On February 6, a registered letter had been mailed to Premier Nasser from George Lincoln Rockwell, the Arlington, Va., hate-monger who was circulating thousands of copies of petitions calling for the impeachment of Governor J. Lindsay Almond of Virginia. Simultaneously, Mr. Rockwell's picture had appeared on the front page of Premier Nasser's newspaper, though in denial of reports that Premier Nasser had anything to do with the American hate-nest. The group, which recently had assumed the name of "The Virginia Committee to Impeach Governor Almond", gave its mailing headquarters as a post office box in Arlington. The box had been rented on February 3 by Floyd Fleming, a grizzled old hate agitator and sidekick of rebel-rouser John Kasper. The Seaboard White Citizens Council had been built around them. Two of Mr. Fleming's henchmen, Eugene Colton and H. Cary Hansel, had also signed the rental papers for the post office box.
The group operated largely from Mr. Rockwell's home. Mr. Rockwell was the son of the prewar radio comedian and rocking-chair philosopher, "Old Doc" Rockwell, whose squeaky voice had once been familiar to millions of listeners. The younger Mr. Rockwell, whose philosophy had taken a bizarre twist from the horse sense preached by his famous father, had been a house guest the previous May in the home of Helen Lane, a member of the Arlington School Board. His baggage had included a printing press in which he printed hate propaganda in the basement of that home. Mr. Rockwell's letters to Wallace Allen, a crippled printing salesman, had been picked up by Atlanta police during their investigation of the synagogue bombing. Mr. Allen had been identified by police as one of the five men who had attended a strategy meeting at which the dynamiting had been discussed. Mr. Rockwell ended some letters to Mr. Allen with the Nazi phrase, "Sieg Heil". One of his letters referred cryptically to a "big blast", but Mr. Rockwell had insisted to the FBI that he meant a planned picketing and knew nothing of the subsequent bombing.
Omitted in the edited copy is the next statement: "One letter also spoke of a 'fatcat financier', who turned out to be Harold Noel Arrowsmith, Jr., son of the late canon of the Baltimore Episcopal Cathedral. Arrowsmith took offense at the 'fatcat' reference, apparently thinking Rockwell was ridculing his physical plumpness."
Mr. Rockwell had boasted to associates that "Ike the Kike" signs, used in picketing the White House, were presently in Cairo. What apparently had happened, however, was that snapshots of the picketing had been forwarded to Cairo. Mr. Rockwell also told associates that Mr. Arrowsmith had contacts in the Arab Secret Service.
Carl Sandburg presents a tribute to Abraham Lincoln on the occasion of the sesquicentennial of his birthday, as addressed the previous week on February 12 to a joint session of Congress, which we present verbatim:
Not often in the story of mankind does a man arrive on earth who is both steel and velvet, who is as hard as rock and soft as drifting fog, who holds in his heart and mind the paradox of terrible storm and peace unspeakable and perfect. Here and there across centuries come reports of men alleged to have these contrasts. And the incomparable Abraham Lincoln, born 150 years ago this day, is an approach if not a perfect realization of this character.
In the time of the April lilacs in the year 1865, on his death, the casket with his body was carried north and west a thousand miles: and the American people wept as never before; bells sobbed, cities wore crepe; people stood in tears and with hats off as the railroad burial car paused in the leading cities of seven states, ending its journey at Springfield, Ill., the home town.
During the four years he was President he at times, especially in the first three months, took to himself the powers of a dictator; he commanded the most powerful armies till then assembled in modern warfare; he enforced conscription of soldiers for the first time in American history; under imperative necessity he abolished the right of habeas corpus; he directed politically and spiritually the wild, massive, turbulent forces let loose in civil war.
He argued and pleaded for compensated emancipation of the slaves. The slaves were property, they were on the tax books along with horses and cattle, the valuation of each slave next to his name on the tax assessor's books. Failing to get action on compensated emancipation, as a Chief Executive having war powers he issued the paper by which he declared the slaves to be free under "military necessity." In the end nearly $4,000,000 worth of property was taken away from those who were legal owners of it, property confiscated, wiped out as by fire and turned to ashes, at his instigation and executive direction. Chattel property recognized and lawful for 300 years was expropriated, seized without payment.
In the month the war began he told his secretary, John Hay, "My policy is to have no policy." Three years later in a letter to a Kentucky friend made public, he confessed plainly, "I have been controlled by events." His words at Gettysburg were sacred, yet strange with a color of the familiar: "We cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far beyond our poor power to add or detract."
He could have said "the brave Union men." Did he have a purpose in omitting the word "Union?" Was he keeping himself and his utterance clear of the passion that would not be good to look at when the time came for peace and reconciliation? Did he mean to leave an implication that there were brave Union men and brave Confederate men, living and dead, who had struggled there? We do not know, of a certainty.
Was he thinking of the Kentucky father whose two sons died in battle, one in Union blue, the other in Confederate gray, the father inscribing on the stone over their double grave, "God knows which was right?" We do not know.
Lincoln's changing policies from time to time aimed at saving the Union. In the end his armies won and his nation became a world power immersed in international politics. In August of 1864 he wrote a memorandum that he expected to lose the next November election: sudden military victory brought the tide his way; the vote was 2,200,000 for him and 1,800,000 against him.
Among his bitter opponents were such figures as Samuel F. B. Morse, inventor of the telegraph, and Cyrus H. McCormick, inventor of the farm reaper. In all its essential propositions the Southern Confederacy had the moral support of powerful, respectable elements throughout the North, probably more than a million voters believing in the justice of the Southern cause.
While the war winds howled he insisted that the Mississippi was one river meant to belong to one country, that railroad connection from coast to coast must be pushed through and the Union Pacific Railroad made a reality. While the luck of war wavered and broke and came again, as generals failed and campaigns were lost, he held enough forces of the North together to raise new armies and supply them, until generals were found who made war as victorious war has always been made, with terror, frightfulness, destruction, and on both sides, North and South, valor and sacrifice past words of man to tell.
In the mixed shame and blame of the immense wrongs of two crashing civilizations, often with nothing to say, he said nothing, slept not at all, and on occasions he was seen to weep in a way that made weeping appropriate, decent, majestic.
As he rode alone on horseback near soldiers home on the edge of Washington one night his hat was shot off; a son he loved died as he watched at the bed; his wife was accused of betraying information to the enemy, until denials from him were necessary.
An Indiana man at the White House heard him say, "Voorhees, don't it seem strange to you that I, who could never so much as cut off the head of a chicken, should be elected, or selected, into the midst of all this blood?"
He tried to guide General Nathaniel Prentiss Banks, a Democrat, three times Governor of Massachusetts, in the governing of some seventeen of the forty-eight parishes of Louisiana controlled by the Union armies, an area holding a fourth of the slaves of Louisiana. He would like to see the state recognize the Emancipation Proclamation, "and while she is at it, I think it would not be objectionable for her to adopt some practical system by which the two races could gradually live themselves out of their old relation to each other, and both come out better prepared for the new. Education for the young blacks should be included in the plan."
To Governor Michel Hahn, elected in 1864 by a majority of the 11,000 white male voters who had taken the oath of allegiance to the Union, Lincoln wrote:
"Now you are about to have a convention which, among other things will probably define the elective franchise, I barely suggest for your private consideration, whether some of the colored people may not be let in—as for instance, the very intelligent and especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks."
Among the million words in the Lincoln utterance record, he interprets himself with a more keen precision than someone else offering to explain him. His simple opening of the House Divided speech in 1858 serves for today:
"If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending we could better judge what to do, and how to do it."
To his Kentucky friend, Joshua F. Speed, he wrote in 1855:
"Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal, except Negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'All men are created equal except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.' When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty."
Infinitely tender was his word from a White House balcony to a crowd on the White House lawn, "I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom," or to a military governor, "I shall do nothing through malice; what I deal with is too vast for malice."
He wrote for Congress to read on Dec. 1, 1862:
"In times like the present men would utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and eternity."
Like an ancient psalmist he warned Congress:
"Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation."
Wanting Congress to break and forget past traditions his words came keen and flashing. "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate for the stormy present. We must think anew, we must act anew, we must disenthrall ourselves." They are the sort of words that actuated the mind and will of the men who created and navigated that marvel of the sea, the Nautilus, and her voyage from Pearl Harbor and under the North Pole icecap.
The people of many other countries take Lincoln now for their own. He belongs to them. He stands for decency, honest dealing, plain talk, and funny stories. "Look where he came from—don't he know all us strugglers and wasn't he a kind of tough struggler all his life right up to the finish?" Something like that you can hear in any near-by neighborhood and across the seas.
Millions there are who take him as a personal treasure. He had something they would like to see spread everywhere over the world. Democracy? We can't find words to say exactly what it is, but he had it. In his blood and bones he carried it. In the breath of his speeches and writings it is there. Popular government? Republican institutions? Government where the people have the say-so, one way or another telling their elected leaders what they want? He had the idea. It's there in the lights and shadows of his personality, a mystery that can be lived but never fully spoken in words.
Our good friend the poet and playwright Mark Van Doren tells us:
"To me, Lincoln seems, in some ways, the most interesting man who ever lived. He was gentle, but his gentleness was combined with a terrific toughness, an iron strength."
How did Lincoln say he would like to be remembered? His beloved friend, Representative Owen Lovejoy of Illinois, had died in May of 1864 and friends wrote to Lincoln and he replied that the pressure of duties kept him from joining them in efforts for a marble monument to Lovejoy, the last sentence of his letter saying, "Let him have the marble monument along with the well-assured and more enduring one in the hearts of those who love liberty, unselfishly, for all men."
So perhaps we may say that the well assured and most enduring memorial to Lincoln is invisibly there, today, tomorrow and for a long time yet to come in the hearts of lovers of liberty, men and women who understand that wherever there is freedom there have been those who fought, toiled and sacrificed for it.
A letter from a local veterinarian advocates for the establishment of a zoo in Charlotte and sets forth his reasons.
The North Carolina Zoo, located in Asheboro, below Greensboro, would be established in 1974, but no zoo has ever been established in Charlotte, save the Airport Park Zoo made famous internationally in September, 1955 when Vicki the elephant escaped into the jungle surrounding the airport for a few days.
Framed Edition
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