The Charlotte News

Tuesday, October 28, 1958

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Vatican City that Angelo Cardinal Roncalli, 76, was chosen by the College of Cardinals as the new Pope this date, choosing the name John XXIII. He succeeded Pope Pius XXII, who had died after over 19 years as Pontiff, one of the longest reigns in the history of the Catholic Church. The Pope, whom Catholics regarded as being in direct succession to St. Peter, had the titles Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Patriarch of the West, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Province of Rome and Sovereign of the State of Vatican City. The new Pope had been one of the most popular prelates in Italy and had many friends abroad, particularly in France, where he had spent eight years as papal nuncio. He was in good health and was an untiring worker. His affable manner and quick-witted conversation had made him a well-known figure at many diplomatic receptions. He had been born the son of a farmhand in a small village in the province of Bergamo. The people of that region were known to be good-humored and easy-going, and as a young man, the new Pope had lived up to that reputation. After graduating from the Roman Pontifical Seminary in 1904, he had become personal secretary of the Bishop of Bergamo, Msgr. Radini-Tedeschi, a post he held until the Bishop's death in 1914 and in which he had acquired an early knowledge of the administrative structure of the Church and also had devoted himself to historical studies. During World War I, he had served first as a sergeant in the medical corps and later had become an Army chaplain. A three-year term as a lecturer on theology and church history in the province of Bergamo had followed. In 1921, Pope Benedict XI had called him to Rome and entrusted him with the task of reorganizing the church's missionary work in the congregation propaganda fide. Pope Pius XI, who had succeeded Pope Benedict in 1922, had also taken a strong interest in the missionary work and Roncalli had kept his post for four years, traveling to many foreign centers.

Secretary of State Dulles accused this date Communist China of "promiscuous killing", primarily of civilians, with its sporadic shelling of Quemoy Island.

At the Atomic Test Site in Nevada, the final phase of a series of atomic tests which had begun 13 years earlier, was set for this date, with two tower shots and two in tunnels scheduled prior to the Friday one-year test ban deadline set by the President, contingent on the Soviets continuing their test ban which they had begun the prior March.

In New York, it was reported that the President would meet in Washington the following day with the NASA Council which he headed.

In Algiers, it was reported that French Army units had pursued local operations against the Nationalist rebels in Algeria this date, hitting particularly hard at the Grande Kabylie mountain area.

The President this date carried his campaign in the midterm elections to New York after a renewed attack on Democrats, whom he described as spendthrifts, visionaries and boondogglers. But with the elections only a week away, former President Truman said that Democratic prospects appeared "almost too good to be true." Commenting on a Gallup poll prediction of possibly sweeping Democratic gains in Congress, the former President told newsmen in St. Louis: "They said the same thing about the Republicans in 1948, you remember." Vice-President Nixon alluded to the same thing in a campaign talk in Flint, Mich., but whereas Mr. Truman had been cautioning Democrats against overconfidence, Mr. Nixon was challenging the current accuracy of polls. He told a cheering crowd of 3,000: "In the last two weeks of this campaign something is happening. I'm unable to appraise it but when you have big crowds like this, something is happening… We can give them the licking of their lives." The Vice-President had flown back to Washington this date for a few days of rest after a week of arduous campaigning in the East and Midwest. He would be back on the trail heading westward on Thursday and Friday, toward a three-day speaking tour of Alaska during the weekend. (He would also finish his 1960 presidential campaign in Alaska, fulfilling a pledge to visit all 50 states.) The President had flown to New York City on Monday night after ripping into the Democrats anew in an 18-state television address in Pittsburgh. He said that the Democrats were a divided party which could promise only feuding, and futile, deadlocked government. Rainy weather had been blamed for smaller audiences than local Republican leaders had forecast for the President's appearances in both Pittsburgh and Charleston, W. Va.

The Treasury disclosed this date that the total national debt had reached a new all-time high of 280.851 billion dollars the previous Thursday. Prior to that point, the highest debt had been recorded on December 31, 1955, when it had reached 280.821 billion. The largest chunk of the direct and guaranteed debt was 280.739 billion owed directly by the Treasury, with the remaining 112 million being in securities sold by the Federal Housing Administration which the Treasury had to pay in the unlikely event of FHA defaults. The direct debt was still about 29 million dollars less than the record high at the end of 1955.

In Moscow, it was reported that Nobel Prize winning novelist Boris Pasternak had been accused of treacherous behavior and expelled from the Soviet writers' union.

In Lincoln, Neb., it was reported that the strain of watching his 15-year-old daughter, Caril Ann Fugate, stand trial for murder had so unnerved William Fugate that he had not been able to work. He said that his daughter was taking it better than he was. "The difference is—I don't know what happened. She knows. I don't." He declined to speculate on the outcome of her first-degree murder trial which had begun with initial jury selection the previous day. She had been the companion of Charles Starkweather, who had been convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death the prior May. The two were accused of having been companions, with Caril as aider and abettor, during a killing spree which involved the murders of ten persons in a three-day span in late January in Lincoln and Bennet, Neb., and concluding near Douglas, Wyo., where Caril surrendered to law enforcement after the last murder of a traveling salesman on the side of the road, shortly after which, following a high-speed car chase, Charles was caught. The trial specifically charged Caril with being an accomplice in the murder of Robert Jensen, 17, of Bennet, after he and his 16-year old girlfriend, Carol King, had picked up the couple as they were walking along a road, after which Charles allegedly had forced both at gunpoint to accompany him to an abandoned storm cellar where he shot and killed both. Caril was alleged to have held a shotgun on both while Mr. Jensen was driving to the location. Mr. Fugate said that his daughter thought too much of her three-year old half-sister to have had anything to do with either her death or that of her mother, Mr. Fugate's former wife, and her stepfather, who were also among the ten victims in January. He said that she used to put her half-sister up on the table and have her jump off into Caril's arms and that Caril would cuddle her like a kitten. Mr. Fugate was a public school custodian at the time of the killings in January. Recently, he had been working as a painter, but the impending trial had so unnerved him that he had not been able to work for the previous two weeks. He said that he would stay with the trial as long as it lasted. The trial was expected to be shorter than that of Charles, as Charles had been pleaded by his attorneys, against his will, not guilty by reason of insanity, causing his trial to last about three weeks; the jury rejected the plea, as, Charles, himself, said that he was not insane, a claim substantiated by his mother. (The bad guy who was one of eight million stories, the hired strangler, had a bottle of Seaforth cologne on his dresser, as we know by the fact of Seaforth having come into our household at Christmas, 1958 or 1959, one of the two, although having nothing to do with a strangler. It just came to mind when we saw the little tan bottle with green print sitting on the dresser. Were they trying to impart something subliminally by having the concluding scene looking toward the United Nations Building?)

As we have fallen behind, there will be no further notes on the front page or editorial page of this date, as the notes will be sporadic until we catch up.

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