The Charlotte News

Thursday, March 5, 1959

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from London that the Soviet Union this date had sharply protested the U.S. naval boarding of a Soviet trawler suspected of cutting a trans-Atlantic cable off Newfoundland. Moscow radio said that a note handed to U.S. Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson in Moscow had described reports that the trawler had damaged the cables as "a complete invention". The boarding had taken place off Newfoundland on February 26. The officer who had headed the American search party said later that the fishing boat "probably quite likely" had something to do with the break in the cables, but did not know whether it was accidental or intentional. The Moscow broadcast said that the note pointed out that the incident involved detention of the Soviet trawler, undertaken "with provocative aims in mind". It said that the Soviet Government expected the U.S. Government "to take all necessary measures to prevent the recurrence of such unwarranted actions toward the Soviet fishing trawlers engaged in fishing in the open seas." It said that the trawler did not cause any damage to underwater telegraph or telephone trans-Atlantic cables. The State Department had notified Moscow immediately with an explanation that the boarding had been carried out under the terms of an 1884 treaty, originally signed by the czarist regime in Russia but later subscribed by the Soviet Communist Government, permitting inspection of documents of ships suspected of damaging oceanic cables willfully or through culpable negligence.

In Leipzig, East Germany, it was reported that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had said this date that he was prepared to postpone the May 27 deadline on Berlin, provided that fruitful East-West negotiations were underway by that point. He said that the deadline might be postponed until June 27 or perhaps July 27, that they were in no hurry. He cited an old Russian saying: "Never count your chickens until autumn." He had made his remarks in an impromptu speech at a luncheon given by the mayor of Leipzig. He had come to the city for the trade fair.

In Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican Republic, it was reported that dictator Rafael Trujillo's Government said that it was arming a "foreign legion" to defend neighboring Haiti, its traditional blood enemy, against the threat of invasion. Both Haiti's President Francois Duvalier and Sr. Trujillo's dictatorship were reported marked for overthrow by forces plotting under the benevolent revolutionary regimes in Cuba and Venezuela. Haiti and the Dominican Republic shared the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean.

In Herbriggen, Switzerland, it was reported that a million-ton rock slide threatening the nearly deserted Alpine village had moved 22 inches in two days, but the Government said there was no immediate cause for alarm.

In Hazleton, Pa., a hotel fire had claimed the lives of three persons, with two unaccounted for and two more critically injured. At least 24 persons had been taken to hospitals for treatment of burns, cuts, smoke poisoning and shock. The register of the 100-room, 75-year old hotel in the business district showed a listing of 61 persons. Two of the dead had been removed soon after the fire had erupted and a third body was subsequently discovered. The entire front wall of the hotel had collapsed into heaps of rubble and it was thought that the two missing persons might be found dead in that wreckage. Victims fled from the flaming building with their nightclothes ablaze while others stood and sat dazed in the street as 100 firemen from four companies fought the fire for more than two hours. The room clerk said that the fire had started at the bottom of the elevator shaft and had mushroomed through the building. The hotel reportedly catered to elderly residents.

In Little Rock, Ark., it was reported that a fire had roared through a locked dormitory at the State Training School for Delinquent Negro Boys at nearby Wrightsville early this date, killing at least 21 youths, with fire officials fearing that others might have perished. The blaze had erupted before dawn and destroyed the structure which housed 68 inmates. Survivors had escaped by kicking out windows which had been covered with heavy-gauge, double-screens designed to prevent escapes. Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, who had gone to the scene as soon as he heard about the fire, said that the doors should not have been barred and that there should have been an adult within the building. He said that an investigation would be made. The origin of the fire could not be determined immediately, though the Governor indicated that he had been told that there was an electrical storm at the time. The Governor appeared grim as he surveyed the glowing rubble, saying that he had inspected the school a year earlier and found it safe, that it was the first time anything like it had happened at such an institution in Arkansas. The first reports had said that 21 boys were missing, but the figure had been revised after a roll call was taken. The dazed survivors, ranging in age between 14 and 17, wandered about as firemen, sheriff's officers and prisoners from a nearby penal farm sought to quench the smoldering ruins of the dormitory. A fire captain said that he had seen eight bodies in a pile and nine other bodies had been taken from the charred ruins of the 20-year old building. A vocational teacher who normally slept in the building was in the hospital at the time of the fire. A survivor said that he had heard screaming and hollering and that there was smoke all over, that he could not see anything and found a window through which to escape.

In Chicago, the recovery of more than a million dollars in $100 bogus bills and the arrests of 25 members of a nationwide counterfeit ring had been announced this date by the Secret Service. The head of the Chicago Secret Service office said that the counterfeit notes had been recovered in 22 states, indicating that 25 persons had been arrested since the prior November, as agents had worked quietly to stamp out the counterfeiting network. He said that the operation had been finished on Wednesday night with the arrest of two Chicago men whom he said were the ringleaders.

In Henderson, N.C., it was reported that tension had failed to materialize this date along picket lines of the cotton mill strike, despite trouble having been anticipated following union delegates having walked out of a mediation meeting the previous day. Only about 25 strikers had appeared at the South Henderson plant of the Harriet-Henderson Textile Mills, with a crowd having formed of about 100 at the company's North Henderson plant. Both crowds had been orderly in the face of a special force of 140 Highway Patrolmen deployed to the two plants. The Vance County sheriff had said that about a third more workers had reported to work at the North Henderson plant, indicating that they appeared to be out-of-town workers and not strikers returning to work. Between 200 and 300 workers out of a force of 1,200 were presently back on the job. Meanwhile, union representatives had walked out of a negotiating session on Wednesday, indicating a breakdown in efforts to reach a settlement in the 16-week strike at the mills. Boyd Payton, Carolinas representative of the Textile Workers Union of America, said that the union committee "apparently felt nothing was being accomplished by continuing the discussions." He said that arbitration, the key issue in the strike, had not been discussed. The mediation team, led by a Federal mediator, had informed the union and management representatives that they should stand by for further calls. Meanwhile, 14 strikers were to be heard in Superior Court during the afternoon regarding charges of violating a restraining order prohibiting demonstrations around the plant gates. The judge had found the 14 strikers guilty on Wednesday of contempt for allegedly violating the restraining order and said he would withhold sentencing until the others could be heard.

In Fredericksburg, Va., it was reported that hopes for the safety of a missing Louisa County family of four had flickered this date as authorities pushed for positive identification of two bodies found on Wednesday in a field near Fredericksburg, with indications that there might be a third body. State police said that it was reasonable to assume that the bodies visible atop a tangle of brush were those of the missing feed truck driver and one of his two daughters. A police captain said that there were indications that a second child's body might be beneath the body of the man. The bodies had been found by two Fredericksburg men near a mound of sawdust 2 miles west of Fredericksburg. The family of four had vanished on January 11 as they had driven home from a visit with relatives. Authorities said that clothing worn by the man and the girl resembled that worn by members of the family. Authorities had made no effort to move the bodies after their discovery shortly before nightfall under a pile of dead branches and leaves at the side of a dirt road, and State police had guarded the area all night. There was no immediate speculation as to the cause of death of the man and the child, there having been unconfirmed reports that the man's body had a bullet wound in the back. Authorities said that his hands were bound with a necktie and that the little girl lay beneath him. The family's car had been found on January 12, 8 miles from their home and about 40 miles from where the bodies had been found. The keys were still in the ignition. The car appeared to have been forced to the side of the road and abandoned hastily. The medical examiner of Spotsylvania County, in which the bodies had been found, said that one body was that of a large man and the other that of a child less than two years old. One of the missing children was one and a half. The other had been five.

In Raleigh, a fast-spreading fire had destroyed a large bowling center and several adjacent businesses the previous night, with unofficial damage estimates ranging to $200,000. A crowd estimated by police at more than 10,000, had watched the blaze, which posed a threat for awhile to the West Raleigh Presbyterian Church and nearby homes. The bowling center, located across from the N.C. State campus, had been destroyed and the fire had also swept through a shoe store, tavern, beauty shop and a barbershop. Nearly 100 firemen and seven firefighting units had battled the blaze for 90 minutes before getting it under control. The night manager of the bowling center said that the fire had first been discovered by an unidentified little boy who said that he smelled smoke. About 200 people in the bowling center had been able to get out of the building quickly. Many of the spectators had been students at N.C. State. The cause of the blaze had not been determined.

In Charlotte, it was reported that the sixth traffic fatality of the year had occurred early this date when a 63-year old man from Spindale had died at Memorial Hospital after having been the driver of a car involved in a wreck the previous afternoon in Charlotte. He had received head injuries in the wreck and two other occupants of his car had been injured, a three-year old having suffered lip and back injuries, and a 68-year old woman having suffered ear and eye injuries. The other car had been driven by a 49-year old man from Charlotte. Witnesses said that the car driven by the dead man had run a stop sign and had moved into the path of the other car, with the impact of the crash knocking the dead man's car about 36 feet, according to a patrolman. The latter car had been a total loss and $500 of damage had been done to the other car. Police had charged the deceased with running a stop sign. The intersection was in a residential area.

Emery Wister of The News reports that a fire, which had been caused by the crash of a gasoline tanker into an office building on Independence Boulevard on Saturday morning, January 3, had set back the proposed expansion of the city's airport terminal by a full year. City Manager Henry Yancey said that plans for the $200,000 expansion were in the Civil Aeronautics Administration office in the building and had been destroyed by the blaze. He said that although the architect could prepare new plans and specifications, new application for U.S. funding would have to be made. He said that the earliest the project could be underway was now early 1960. As proposed, the airport terminal's north wing would be extended about 35 feet, thus giving more space to Eastern and Delta Air Lines. The project was originally set to start in the spring as the first phase of a building expansion which would have provided more space for the coffee shop on the first floor, a drugstore and other facilities. The building into which the gasoline tanker had crashed was new and the CAA had just moved into its offices. The driver of the tanker had been killed in the fire, which had caused an estimated $50,000 worth of damages.

Professor Pitrim Sorokin, head of the Harvard University Research Center in Creative Altruism, offers this date's edition of "Lenten Guideposts", indicating that he had lived through two of the harshest periods in history, one being before the Revolution in Russia and the other having been the era after the Revolution, when men had lived with hatred. "Would it seem strange if I said that the thing I remember most about those days was love? But that would be the truth." He indicates that he was born in a little village in northern Russia at about the turn of the century. His father was an itinerant painter who gilded the icons in the simple Russian Orthodox churches of that area. His work had required him to be away from home most of the time. His mother was too frail for the rigors of the life they were forced to lead. One December morning, she had laid down and could not get up again, dying when he was four years old. After her death, his peasant aunt had come to him and said that he could live in their home if he liked. Her scanty larder and her hearth had been open to him at a time when she did not have enough for herself. He found it miraculous what she had done with love alone. When he was 11, he was caught miles from home in one of Russia's winter blizzards and by the time he reached his aunt's hut, he had contracted pneumonia so badly that he could not stand. Pneumonia in those times was almost always fatal, and yet his aunt had gone to work to try to pull him through, working day and night, sitting beside his bed, praying and wiping the perspiration from his brow. He had gotten well, primarily through the love of his aunt, as she had nothing else with which to work. Sometime later, he experienced the power of love in an even stranger place, having begun attendance of school in a nearby village, walking to the school through the snow, his toes showing through the holes in his boots. The teacher was a gaunt young man and he was a stranger to him. But he had looked at his shoes and, without a word, had gone to the closet and taken out his second pair of boots. He had asked his teacher what he would wear, and his response was that there was no reason for him to have two pairs when he had none. "Love stronger than the cold of a Russian winter is a force to reckon with." Then, the Revolution had come and a virile hatred was turned loose in Russia. One night, a Communist order had gone out for his arrest and his head, with a price on it. He had fled. It had been death for anyone who concealed him. Yet, he was hidden and fed by several peasants who had taken the risk for him. He had been a total stranger to them and yet repeatedly they had taken him in simply because he was cold and ragged and because he had asked. Shortly after the Revolution, he had been married at a time when food was scarce. Part of the time, he and his wife were allowed a daily ration of one ounce of "bad bread" between them. They were always hungry and yet he always had to watch his wife, for she would always seek to divide their morsel of bad bread by cutting it at an uneven length to give him the larger piece. The remainder is on an inside page.

Incidentally, some investigative journalist might wish to divine the real story out of Chapel Hill these days and follow the priniciple of cui bono to discover what private interests would benefit from moving the basketball arena to the site of the old Horace Williams airport on Airport Road, leading into Chapel Hill, a horrible location for many reasons, which are obvious to anyone who has ever lived in and around the town. Who benefits? Are any of them business interests associated with members of the Board of Governors or the board of trustees, with the chancellor, himself? These are the inevitable and quite appropriate questions when too many business interests start stirring the pot at the University in ways that are plainly not in the University's or its students' best interests, but stand to make some group of people a great pyle of money, the traditions of the University be damned. Disposable arenas might work for Charlotte and other pro sports towns, but it does not work at the college level.

On the editorial page, "A Single Metropolitan Government Should Be County's Long-Range Goal" finds that more than one visiting legislator to the city for the special session of the Legislature the previous day had adapted an ancient theological principle to Charlotte's problems, that being that the General Assembly only helped those who helped themselves.