The Charlotte News
Wednesday, March 13, 1957
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President had said at his press conference this date, in response to a request for comment on House passage the previous day of a resolution seeking that the President point out where the Administration's budget could be cut "substantially", that he would be as helpful as possible, but that it was up to Congress to determine how and whether the Administration's 71.8 billion dollar budget could be cut. The resolution had merely sought advice, not carrying any force of law. The President said that he would not object to re-examination of the budget and would try to be helpful in suggesting ways to cut it. He made a suggestion that the Congress move to eliminate the Post Office Department's deficit by providing for greater mail revenue. He also indicated that he had abandoned tentative plans to go to Florida for his health, instead planning to leave on a leisurely trip, probably the following night, for Bermuda by Navy cruiser, where he would begin talks with new British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan on March 21.
Before the Senate Select Committee investigating racketeering and organized crime influence within the Teamsters Union, Reginald Mikesell, secretary-treasurer of the Portland, Ore., joint Teamsters Council No. 37, had testified this date that most of the Council's financial records sought by the Committee, covering the period from mid-1954 to mid-1956, had been destroyed to make more room for office space. He said that the records from 1937 to 1954 remained available. He stated that the records had been destroyed on the orders of a female employee, whom he said was presently somewhere in Asia, prompting spectators in the room to laugh. The alleged attempt by Teamsters officials to "muscle in" on the Portland rackets had embraced the missing time period. James Elkins, who had testified the previous week, described by the Committee as the Portland "underworld king" and an admitted racketeer, had said that two Seattle gamblers, Tom Maloney and Joe McLaughlin, had been sent to Portland in connection with the alleged effort by the Teamsters to "muscle in" on the vice profits. The Committee wanted the financial records to check for any payments to either Mr. Maloney or Mr. McLaughlin. Mr. Elkins had testified that he was providing the information because he had been "double-crossed", prompting him to arrange to make secret recordings of some conversations which backed up his testimony. The same Washington attorney who had acted as counsel for Clyde Crosby, Teamsters Union Oregon boss, during his testimony the prior Friday and the previous day, was representing Mr. Mikesell. The Committee chairman, Senator John McClellan of Arkansas, had asked him whether he had order destruction of all of the Council's 1954 through 1956 financial records, as directed by the Committee's subpoena, prompting his statement that most had been destroyed. Senator McClellan had then held up a ledger book, which Mr. Mikesell identified as the Council's "Book of Entries", admitting that it was the only item produced in response to the subpoena. He said that the Council had switched banks, changed record-keeping systems and had otherwise altered office practices such that after he became the secretary-treasurer in 1954, he had ordered records destroyed after each annual audit, and that the records in question had been destroyed only after a certified public accountant had conducted an audit, with the copies of the audits having been furnished to the Committee. When Senator McClellan had asked him why he had not ordered the older records destroyed rather than the newer ones, to make space, he indicated that it was possible that he was wrong in his judgment. Committee counsel Robert F. Kennedy, pointing at the ledger book, stated to the witness that the destroyed records would have shown the accuracy of that book. Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, a member of the Committee, said that it appeared that the witness had only destroyed the records which would have some effect on the hearings, which Mr. Mikesell denied as his motive. Senator Goldwater stated that the destroyed records would have shown all of the money which had been paid out to Mr. Maloney. The Committee was expected to call Portland District Attorney William Langley as its next major witness this date, actually delayed until the following morning, Mr. Langley having been linked in prior testimony to an alleged plot to enable vice rackets in Multnomah County around Portland to function with impunity, as well as by Mr. Elkins to an allegedly retaliatory County indictment of him for making the secret recordings for the purpose of cooperation with authorities, charging him with illegal wiretapping.
Charles Kuralt of The News reports from Conway, S.C., that the Horry County legislative delegation was considering introduction of a bill to set up a County police department, removing law enforcement duties from the County sheriff's department, which had been under fire from editor Horace Carter and was under investigation by a County grand jury. A State Senator of Conway had told the News that he and three other South Carolina House members from the county had discussed such a change, but had reached no definite agreement on whether such a bill would be introduced. The grand jury had adjourned the previous day after hearing that a Federal grand jury would take up the trail of alleged corruption in Aiken on March 25. Some 24 witnesses were left in the hall as the County grand jury abruptly ended its investigation with no recommendations. Some 70 witnesses had been subpoenaed and nearly 50 had been heard. Among those who had not been called had been a pair of men who owned a jukebox company which was a rival to the Horry Music Co. Mr. Carter had alleged that some sheriff's deputies had been pressuring Myrtle Beach amusement operators to change jukebox companies, prompting the grand jury investigation. Those two uncalled witnesses had hired former FBI agent Melvin Purvis, known for having killed John Dillinger in Chicago in 1934, to conduct a private investigation into what was occurring along the Myrtle Beach strand, Mr. Purvis having now returned to his job in Florence, running a television station.
In Raleigh, legislation to reorganize the State Highway Commission had taken a major leap forward this date with final passage of the Senate-passed measure having been positively recommended by the House Roads Committee, the bill providing for a seven-member Commission instead of the present 15-member body, the measure probably to reach the full House the following day and possibly to be enacted by Friday should the Senate concur with minor amendments to the bill introduced by the House Committee. We shall await it with bated breath.
Julian Scheer of The News indicates that the board of directors of the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce had been scheduled to receive a report this date from a special Chamber committee which suggested adoption of the City Council's recommendations on the extension of the city limits, with the directors expected to act on the recommendations this date. Only the board of directors of the Chamber could express the Chamber's official position on the issue, with the report by the special committee having suggested that the Chamber approve the act to amend the City charter to provide for the annexation. The City Council had recommended extension of approximately 30 square miles of territory. The special committee's report had stated that it felt it was not advisable to recommend exceptions or exclusions.
Ann Sawyer of The News reports that County school officials had not carried out safety recommendations made in 1953 for Huntersville Junior High School, that contrary to the recommendations of the school consultants hired for the purpose, students continued to use a walkway across the roof of the boiler room to reach a common fire escape, continued to study on the second story of the main building with its wooden interior stairs, continued to use the balcony, the closure of which had been recommended in 1953, and that panic bolt hardware, to assure that doors would open in the event of an emergency, had not been installed in the old building. In 1953, the consultants had told the County School Board in its long-rage planning report that a program for provision of panic bolts should be a high priority in the maintenance and modernization program, though relatively costly in view of the deficiencies found, but saving lives on the basis of prior experience. The panic bolts had been installed in the modern new section of the school. The chief of the Huntersville Volunteer Fire Department had accompanied a News reporter and a photographer the previous day to the four schools serving Huntersville, stating that it worried him that the old main building, used by about 330 students in the fourth through ninth grades, remained deficient, stating that he did not think the people had ever seen anyone burned to death. He said that he had first inspected the buildings the previous October during Fire Prevention Week when firemen were asked to check equipment, finding use of potbellied stoves in a four-room frame primary building at a black school and in the agricultural building of the junior high school, as well as insufficient fire extinguishers in the four schools, plus the absence of panic bolts on all exterior doors in the modern, fire-resistant high school. He also found fault with new construction at the junior high school and at the black school, and that the classroom doors opened into the classroom instead of onto the corridors. The County School superintendent, J. W. Wilson, said that they thought they could move the second floor children when the new addition was built, but increased enrollment had prevented it, having been 441 in 1953, now increased to 520, according to the school's principal.
Mr. Wilson, after reading the report of the newspaper regarding conditions at the Huntersville Junior High School, had banned use of the auditorium balcony, having called the principal of the school and instructed him not to seat students there until further notice. He said that the school officials had been working on the safety program for 13 years, admitting that they had not solved the problems, though having solved a majority of them involving sanitation and safety prior to the 1953 report, which they did not regard as comprehensive or being the last word in recommending solutions. He said that they would seek the advice of an architect and insurance expert to study extant conditions at the schools and plan for the future. He also said that there was a difference of opinion as to whether locks which always could be opened from the inside or panic bolts were best for the schools, and that as far as he knew, there were few, if any, doors in the County schools which could not be opened from the inside when they were locked, adding that the students could not be locked up in the buildings. You better believe it, daddy-o. If otherwise, you are asking for an incipient revolution by the People.
In New York, Charles Van Doren, winner of $129,000 in his television quiz show appearances, was receiving a $100 per year salary increase as an instructor at Columbia University, effective July 1, bringing his annual salary to $4,500. Tax authorities estimated that he would be able to retain only about $28,795 of his combined winnings and salary, amounting to $104,605, from which he would owe the Federal Government $95,622 in taxes and the New York State Government, $8,893. As a bachelor, he could claim a single personal exemption of $600 and could deduct $1,000 as a standard deduction, in lieu of itemized deductions. Against his first $100,000, the Federal tax would be $67,320, and from the remainder, 89 percent, or $28,302. All of his subsequently discovered cheating in conjunction with the program "Twenty-One", would come, in the end, to little or naught.
On the editorial page, "Public Has a Duty To Be Concerned" finds that the parents of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County had been deeply distressed by the Flat Rock School fire in Mt. Airy two weeks earlier, which had resulted in the deaths of a teacher and a third-grade student, creating public anxiety regarding the safety of local school buildings.
It finds that anxiety fully justified and that there was a genuine need to determine whether reasonable standards of safety had been established and maintained. A group of parents had surveyed their area and discovered that precautions recommended in the 1953 Englehardt report had not been completely followed within the County school system. That had led educators and laymen alike to be concerned over safety in the schools throughout the area, which it finds a healthy manifestation of conscience on the part of citizens too apt to neglect such matters in ordinary times.
The school officials of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County did not take those responsibilities lightly, usually going beyond the call of duty, but in the end, if no strong public support were made manifest, the schools would likely falter in that regard, concerning not only safety but educational problems in general.
The safety issue had not been solved merely by making buildings fire-resistant, previously focused on saving the building but not necessarily its contents and occupants, with an old two-story "fire-proof" building possibly being the most dangerous for the children if they could not exit the building quickly and easily. Those and other aspects of safety, it finds, deserved close public scrutiny at present, as the future might be too late.
"Portrait of the Racist as a Young Man" recites some lines of doggerel, intended to be sung in song, obviously, to the tune of "The Ballad of Davy Crockett", even if missing a beat or two in time: "John Kasper was a young man,/ A young man were he/ Tall and twenty-six he grew/ In this 'homeland of the free'…/ My father's name is Truelove,/ My mother's name was Agee./ No jew Supreme Court Justice/ Gonna make my laws for me…/ John Kasper was a young man,/ A young man were he…/ When he went to fight the battle/ Of Clinton, Tennessee."
It had been distributed during Mr.
Kasper's trial for sedition and inciting a riot in Clinton
A Florida legislative committee had, the previous day, looked into the authenticity of Mr. Kasper, who was admittedly a veteran anti-Semite, but who, by his own claims, had been a Johnny-come-lately to the field of white supremacy, having associated with a black woman during the operation of a Greenwich Village bookstore used as a meeting place for the two races. He also said that he had attended mixed parties and danced with young black women, also worshiping fascist poet Ezra Pound.
It indicates that much of the background adduced by the committee in Florida had earlier been reported by James Rorty in a piece in Commentary, titled "Hate-Monger with Literary Trimmings", stating also that the bookstore had issued a list of books recommended for reading, including numerous anti-Semitic volumes and Hitler's Mein Kampf, that Mr. Kasper had published Mr. Pound's translation of The Unwobbling Pivot, The Great Digest, and The Analects by Confucius. He had once told a black artist: "If I were a strong Negro, I would lead a march on Washington. If I were a Negro, I would holler in front of the United Nations building until somebody noticed me. If I were you, I'd take one of my paintings and hang it in the Museum of Modern Art. All they could do would be to jail and fine you. And think of the publicity you'd get." Mr. Rorty had also reported that at that time, Mr. Kasper had been urging black friends to join the NAACP.
Two weeks following the riots in Clinton, which he had incited with his rhetoric after the attempted integration of the local high school, he had told an audience in Birmingham: "The people of Clinton needed a leader. I am a rabble-rouser, a trouble-maker. I'm not through up there. We want trouble. We want it now. We need lots of rabble-rousers. Some of us may die and I may die, too. It may mean going back to jail, but I'm going back to fight. We went as far as we could have gone legally. Now is the time to fight, even if it involves bloodshed."
It points out that none of the blood which had been shed in Clinton had been that of Mr. Kasper, finding that though he was a "young man" of 26, he was old enough to know that the "rabble" would shed the blood, while the "rouser" took up the money for expenses.
The pattern, we have to observe, is virtually identical to that of a certain group of people who follow with blind fealty a certain former occupant of the White House, presently facing numerous indictments, and yet... These people may not realize the locked footsteps in which they are following, that of a long tradition in the country of a small subset of people who are fascists in their political orientation, to the extent they understand political philosophy at all, though usually at least vaguely understood by their demagogic leaders who gin up their enthusiasm for this or that anti-government stance, always inevitably drawing paranoiac comparison to Big Brother in George Orwell's 1984. Our advice to them is to read, at least, some relatively recent history, spanning from roughly 1937 through the death of Senator McCarthy in 1957, and realize the implications of that history, ultimately serving the ends of Communist, fascist and other totalitarian propaganda throughout the world.
Also realize that when you watch and patronize such media as "Fox News" without a critical eye firmly placed on the propaganda spewed by such outlets, you effectively subsidize that form of thinking and countenance its continued impact on American society, long after the end of the Cold War. It is hardly anything "American" or "patriotic", quite the contrary. We do not label it "treason", however, as that is a specifically defined crime, accusations of which the people of whom we speak are wont to throw around with reckless abandon, oblivious to its actual legal meaning, as contained within the Constitution.
Such persons might try reading the document sometime rather than relying on liars to convey it to them second-hand, and, moreover, try understanding it, starting with the obvious notion, to anyone discerning of basic elementary logic, gleaned from the first two clauses of the First Amendment, that "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." providing, therefore, for the separation of church and state, based on the Founders' long negative experience with a State religion, the Church of England, with all of its horrible consequences in the colonies for over 100 years before the Founding. If the Federal Government, and, via the Fourteenth Amendment, state and local governments, cannot establish a religion, there is thereby separation of church and state. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is either as dumb as a fence-post or deliberately lying to you to try to earn a vote based on predisposed opinions born of ignorance or lack of thought, running a word-checker through the Constitution for "separation" rather than understanding the document and its implications. And that First Amendment idea does not change because some psychopaths have been elected to Congress from various places in the country, by people who are completely disloyal to the country and obviously know nothing of its actual history, other than what they gather from the back of corn flakes boxes and media representations, such as "Fox News", the spokespeople for latter-day fascism, merely for the sake of attracting a subset of the known audience, hungry for voices spewing simpatico hate packages, so that they can attract sponsors and continue to stay on the air, despite not being a news-gathering organization at all, that is with actual reporters in the field, save at the local level of their affiliates. Fox and most of their friends are networks of commentary devoted to corporatism, that is, fascism, as conceived by Il Duce, the modern exponent of which is Trump and his "America First" movement.
"Death Comes to an Unmarked Hero" tells of the reporter who had watched the miraculous takeoff from Roosevelt Field of the Spirit of St. Louis, piloted by Charles Lindbergh in 1927, headed for his solo trans-Atlantic crossing to Paris, the reporter recording that he had gone "into the brilliant light of history and to unimagined fame."
But, in fact, his prophecy came more
nearly true for another flier who stood on the runway at the time,
the runway having been lengthened for his use, straining for Mr.
Lindbergh to get off the ground, that flier having been Richard E.
Byrd
While the feat of Mr. Lindbergh had been the greater individual triumph, the "'unimagined fame'" which had come to him was diminished rapidly after the public had overindulged itself in hero worship, as Mr. Lindbergh entered the realm of politics, participating in and promoting the fascist-aligned "America First" movement, and receiving a medal at one point from Herr Hitler. Large segments of the public, in response, had come to distrust him.
But Admiral Byrd had been scarred only by arctic ice, with his name steadily becoming synonymous with high adventure and sterling courage, after his first conquest of the North Pole by air in 1926, continuing through 1956, when he had made his last trip to the South Pole, credited with charting about two million square miles of the earth's surface previously unseen by man, and seen by few since. While Mr. Lindbergh's glory had been solitary, Admiral Byrd was a brilliant leader of men who performed feats of individual courage fully equal to those of Mr. Lindbergh.
"The light of history will shine brightly on his achievements."
A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, titled "Dogs vs. Cats", tells of the plight of the suburbanite dog having recently been chronicled in the Daily News, now finding that the Louisville Courier-Journal viewed the plight of the subdivision dog as one of shots, collars, license tags and leashes, having no place to dig, no place to run, and even insulated from chasing cats. Even the dogs' last effort at self-expression, biting the ankles of the postman, was being denied, as scientists had perfected dog tranquilizers to cool the ardor of the canine for the sport.
Dr. William Glenney, president of the American Veterinary Radiology Society, had revealed the ravages of urban society on dogs, which were developing ulcers from fear of traffic on city streets, doubts about food and relation with other dogs, paralleling the concerns of their masters, touching dogs just as deeply. The dogs were developing inferiority complexes in their efforts to cope with urban life, such that to prove courage, they ran after cars or barked continuously at larger dogs next door.
But the Society had no record of cat ulcers, according to Dr. Glenney, finding that cats were immune to them, having the answer to modern living which had eluded dogs and humans, knowing how to relax, indicating: "Cats don't burn themselves out over matters that don't matter in the final analysis anyway."
It concludes that based on Dr. Glenney's analysis, everyone was going to the dogs, "except for the cats."
Drew Pearson indicates that the Joint Chiefs had been quietly called to the White House during the previous week and officially notified that their next chairman would be Air Force chief of staff General Nathan Twining, with the inside fact being that General Twining had recommended his deputy, General Thomas White, for the chairmanship, but that the President had persuaded General Twining to take the job, himself, rather than retire. General White probably would replace General Twining as Air Force chief of staff. Originally, Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson had wanted to reappoint Admiral Arthur Radford as chairman for a third term, but Congressman Carl Vinson of Georgia, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, had threatened to block Admiral Radford, having told Secretary Wilson that it was the turn of the Air Force to take the chairmanship and that the Admiral should therefore step down.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., had made a bid to return to politics, having approached Tammany Hall boss Carmine De Sapio, who was aloof to the idea.
As part of the President's multimillion dollar bomb-shelter program, the Atomic Energy Commission would test bomb shelters during the spring on the Nevada atomic bomb range.
The Polish Trade Mission had already won a promise from the Administration to sell Poland surplus food in return for local currency.
The official Soviet airline, Aeroflot, had opened offices in Cairo, and was ready to start a service from Moscow to Cairo with a stopover in Athens.
Representative Herbert Scudder of California had shown concern recently about a proposal of two Democratic Congressmen to have the Commission on Fine Arts approve all designs for Federal buildings, worried about "communistic" murals. He was reassured by Representative Henry Reuss of Wisconsin, cosponsor of the measure, but remained skeptical, stating that he hoped the planning would not seek artists who would do what they had done during the previous 20 years, decorating "the walls with murals which are very obnoxious to the people in the area," citing the Rincon Annex Post Office in San Francisco, where it was the policy, he said, to paint murals, which he had analyzed by a cartoonist, finding part of them definitely to be Communist propaganda. (It reminds us that we once had, just prior to Christmas many years ago, an encounter in that stately, art deco building, with a particularly obnoxious postal clerk, on a particularly nasty, windy and rainy late afternoon, needing to get something postmarked on that date, regarding a matter of which we have long since forgotten the detail, something about the long line having delayed presence at the window until after 5:00, the deadline for the date's postmark, leading us now, with this new knowledge of the murals therein, to believe that the person we encountered, given to citing Post Office "regulations" contrary to our experience and exigencies of that moment, may have been, in fact, a Communist, after all, perhaps having been subtly and unconsciously led to it over time by the images conveyed subliminally in the WPA-era wall murals. If we had only known of the complaint of Mr. Scudder, we could have referenced it from 1957, pointed out loudly the Communist-inspired murals on the walls, mumbled something about President Reagan and Charles Foster Kane, and blown their minds, wishing them a very Merry Christmas—as we think we did anyway—and departed in a brash huff, as we think we did anyway, nevertheless having gotten our mailing properly certified for the date in question after speaking with a non-Communist supervisor not hide-bound by "regulations" when technical violation thereof had occurred only by dint of the fortuity of holiday pedestrian traffic within the facility, not by any neglect of our own, other than exerting due caution in the rain getting there.)
Mr. Reuss had said in response that he was glad that Mr. Scudder had raised the question, indicating his assurance that the chairman of the Commission was David Finley, the lawyer for Andrew Mellon and the latter's confidential adviser for many years, who generally shared the political and social philosophy of Mr. Mellon, former Secretary of the Treasury under Presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover.
Senator McCarthy had not been the only lawmaker failing to attend the White House reception for Congress, having not been invited. Congressman Roy Wier of Minnesota had declined his invitation in favor of attending a conservation meeting.
Joseph Alsop, in Paris, indicates that his final impression from his sojourn through the Soviet Union recently could be summed up as the two sides in the great struggle which divided the world, presently engaged in a life and death race, the nature of which neither side fully understood, the race between the weakness of the West and the evolution of Soviet society. He finds the creatures in the race more oddly assorted than the fabular hare and tortoise, with each side backing the other's animal to win.
He imparts that while he was in Russia, he often felt grave doubts about the wisdom of Western hopes that Soviet society would change in a way which would make the division of the world more bearable and less dangerous. He finds doubts about Western hopes when he saw a presumably respectable American professor and alleged Russian expert proclaiming the weakness of the Soviet massive industry because of the professor's short visits to two antiquated textile factories, when it was in heavy industry where the Soviet Union had grown, not consumer industry. "In truth it is positively frightening to hear from Washington that the professor's claptrap has been taken seriously and is regarded as a great cause for optimism in the President's own circle. Nothing on earth could be more dangerous for the West than to underestimate Soviet military might and industrial strength." Everything he had seen indicated that the industrial strength was continuing to grow, albeit perhaps at a reduced rate.
But at the same time, the evolution of Soviet society gave ground for long-range hope in the West because of the interaction of the major Soviet success and a serious Soviet failure, the latter being the failure to produce, especially in the previous year, the much-touted "new Soviet man", as envisaged for long by Kremlin leaders. Men and women had not lost their desire to be free and to live their own lives, exercising their own individual judgments, with people still wanting to be people, not a higher form of an ant.
The Soviet success was the final attainment of the goal set much earlier, the creation of a high industrial society, technically complex and advanced, with a gross product second only to the U.S. But, as the Soviet rulers had discovered, running such a society and assuring its continued development and progress were different from constructing the society through exhortation and force. The development required a greater measure of freedom than the people had enjoyed in Soviet society for a long time, but as soon as that freedom was granted, as it now had been, the failure to produce the "new Soviet man" was leading to much trouble, with people saying and sometimes doing things which were not approved. That led to regression toward deprivation of freedom, presently taking place in Soviet intellectual life.
He indicates that one had to go to the Soviet Union to understand Plato's view that all poets were sinister subversives, with poets being regarded as highly subversive in the present Soviet society, explaining the current tendency toward deprivation of freedoms. But that regression could only go so far, could not venture as far as Stalinism and be safe. Thus, the process of evolution of the society would eventually begin again, though not evolving toward anything recognizable as democracy, but at least toward a modified communism in which there would be room for people to have some degree of freedom, permitting Communist society and Western democratic societies the possibility of some manner of reasonable coexistence, especially if Soviet national income continued upward.
But it would take a long time for that evolution to occur, and Western weaknesses within the Atlantic alliance, on which the Soviet leaders were betting, could potentially be mortally damaged by their dependence on the troubled former colonial regions of the Middle and Far East. If there were no way to cure that mortal weakness, the question was how long would it take before the weakness could take effect, with a deep fissure already existing within the Western alliance, and the potential for upsetting the world power balance.
"By this upset rather than by
war the Soviets expect to win the race
A letter writer wants related to the public the facts about teacher pay, when compared to other occupations, such as an office secretary downtown, a saleslady at a department store, a nurse, a receptionist, a used-car salesman, a bookkeeper or a furnishings salesman at a furniture store. He says that those who were contemplating quitting their jobs in teaching might not have investigated as far as they could with respect to other occupations or other regions of the country, if they sought to relocate as teachers. He points out that the cost of living in the North was much higher than in the South, impacting the higher rates of pay. He finds that if one toured around the City schools in Charlotte and the County schools in Mecklenburg, as well as in other counties, one would see the newest model cars, from Chevrolets to Cadillacs, parked in teacher parking lots, when people who considered themselves well prepared for life were not able to afford such automobiles. He advocates paying teachers more if in fact they were underpaid, but reminds also that they were playing on the taxpayers' sympathies.
He may have seen some Chevrolets, at least the stripped-down Biscaynes, as well as some equally basic Fords, Dodges and Plymouths, but, in our experience, we never saw a single Cadillac, Lincoln or Imperial parked in the teachers' parking lot at any of our schools. (There were plenty of two-tone Rollses, tan on white, but they were confined to the cafeteria.) Perhaps, he has confused the matter with the recent story that UNC basketball coach Frank McGuire had been awarded a new Cadillac convertible by admiring alumni for his team's stellar season. Mr. McGuire, while a teacher in the general sense, was not so in the actual sense of teaching academic subjects, and certainly not at the primary or secondary levels of public education. Let us not begin to compare anecdotal apples with oranges.
Speaking of basketball and coach McGuire, UNC, now 28-0 and number one in the nation, had taken the measure of Yale the previous night in Madison Square Garden, 90 to 74, on the strength of a 13-point advantage achieved in the final eight minutes of the first round of the Eastern Regional of the NCAA Tournament, even if somewhat beset by "Garden-itis", with the semifinals to take place Friday night in Philadelphia against number 25 Canisius, now 21-5, having topped West Virginia and its star, "Hot Rod" Hundley, 64 to 56. Follow Joe Harris and his predictions if you want the accurate skinny in advance, as he was nearly perfect in predicting not only the winners but the margins of victory in the first-round games. The Tar Heels had won one, had four to go, but we do not wish to jinx them. Things can change under alternate sets of facts when you least expect it. In some alternate universe, somewhere, we are certain that the 2024 Tar Heels won the national championship, even if your newspapers may have said something different.
A letter from State Representative Jack Love in Raleigh indicates surprise at an editorial referring to his "gimmick", sending out postcards to constituents in Mecklenburg County regarding the proposal for annexation. He says that the right to petition was not only part of the democracy but was also a two-way street, as it ought to be, finding that there was not enough petitioning, being one of the major problems. He says that three of the local political leaders had made blanket statements that the majority of the people were in favor of annexation, without actually knowing the facts. He had thus deemed it worthwhile to try to find out, not intending to conduct a poll on the matter, not his right to do. He had already expressed his view in opposition to annexation until such time as the City could provide the adequate services for the areas to be annexed, and wanted to determine whether the people involved agreed with him or how many did so. He finds that a large percentage of the people in the areas involved supported his position and that he would be governed accordingly. Sending out the postcards was an old technique, used, for instance, by the League of Women Voters. He indicates that the News had stated repeatedly that complete freedom of expression was the key to democracy. He finds, therefore, that there should be more postcards and more open expressions, which would deliver better government.
A letter write indicates that the City Council had proposed, endorsed and presented a plan for annexation of the city limits, sending it to the delegation to the Legislature. He finds it time that the Chamber of Commerce, the local newspapers and the citizenry also spoke up in favor of the annexation program, urging that it should not fail for lack of support.
A letter writer relates that after attending the performance of the Jaycees' "On the Square" the prior Saturday evening, she, as with many who had attended with her, felt pride in being an "adopted" Charlotte resident. She indicates that it was their fourth year and by far the best one in the presentation of the musical. She finds that the singing of Bud Coira was grand, that Carol Coleman had stolen the show, doing a terrific job, and that the talent presented had been beyond anyone's expectation, with people being so pleased that they were sure to return the following year.
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