The Charlotte News

Thursday, December 11, 1958

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Oswego, N.Y., that hope had given way to renewed gloom this date in the blizzard-stricken city, as residents had awakened to new snow and a forecast of more. Another 4 inches had fallen during the night, raising to about 6.5 feet the total accumulation which had broken roofs, buildings and businesses, and almost the spirit of the people during the previous five days. Two local building contractors estimated that damage had reached $500,000 and probably would go higher. Three families had been reported evacuated from their homes during the night because of collapsing roofs. But so far, no injuries had been reported. Most roads in the area had been opened and food supplies were considered adequate. A contractor's warehouse and an oil company building had collapsed on Wednesday, and roofs of at least three other businesses had given way. Householders cleared snow from rooftops when cracks appeared in the walls of many dwellings. There had been some sunshine on Wednesday and the heavy snows had tapered off, causing schools to expect to reopen on Friday and industries to recall workers. Equipment loaned by the town of Rochester during the most severe storms earlier in the week had been recalled. Additional plows had been loaned to Oswego by Camp Drum at Watertown. The Civil Aeronautics Administration had authorized its offices at Buffalo and Rochester to send snow tractors. Generally, the cold wave had relaxed to some degree in the mid-continent this date, but there was not much relief in other areas in the eastern half of the nation. Although temperatures moderated in the central part of the nation, it was still cold, with below zero temperatures again during the morning in some northern Midwestern sections.

Emery Wister of The News reports that a snow and ice storm which had swirled up from the South had given eastern and southern Mecklenburg County a cold taste of winter this date, but that the storm had practically bypassed Charlotte while moving northward, dumping as much as three inches of snow in Matthews and east Mecklenburg barely ten miles from Charlotte, while Charlotte only experienced some flurries.

In Chatsworth, Calif., tape recordings discovered near the dynamited wreckage of the Fountain of the World monastery pointed to two former cult members as the persons who had been responsible for the explosion, which had killed nine persons and possibly ten in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. The two persons were believed to have shared the fate of their victims. Detective said that the blast apparently was touched off by a 33-year old man and a 42-year old man, both of Joshua Tree, Calif. Tape recordings made by the pair the night before the dynamiting indicated that they were angry at the leader of the cult, Krishna Venta, who had perished in the explosion, and they wanted to "bring him to justice". The tapes lasted an hour and recited their grievances against Mr. Venta and the cult, and also contained farewell messages. Detectives believed that that the two men had deliberately blown themselves up. Five other adult members of the cult and two children had been killed in the explosion. One and possibly two other bodies had also been recovered. The violent explosion and the fire which followed had made identification of the victims nearly impossible. The two men in question had been seen in an argument with Mr. Venta about an hour before the explosion, but details of the quarrel were not known. The tape recordings had been found in a pickup truck of one of the two men, parked near the cult's 29-acre colony in Box Canyon, about 30 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

In Denham, England, it was reported that a 23-year old British woman had appeared before a U.S. Air Force court-martial this date and told of her love affair with an Air Force master sergeant accused of murdering his American wife. The 37-year old Korean War veteran from Hobbsville, N.C., was accused of poisoning his wife with arsenic the previous June while carrying on a passionate affair with the 23-year old woman. He had pleaded not guilty to the murder and to a specification of adultery. His 43-year old wife and mother of three children had died in a hospital at the Air Force Base on June 9. The young woman said she had known the sergeant for two years but that he had told her that he was divorced. She said that she had discussed with him marriage and she expected to get a divorce herself in the current month. But on June 14, the sergeant had come to her and told her that his wife had died. She said that she told him that she thought he had told her that he was divorced, and he had replied, "Yes, I know." She said that he had visited her at her home and they had gone out together, that he had bought her a fur stole, shoes, and a ring, though not an engagement ring. She said that she could not recall some of the exact details of her friendship with him and sometimes she blushed during questioning. She was not certain whether he had given her the ring for a Christmas or a birthday present. Medical experts had already testified that they had found arsenic in some of the organs of the dead wife's body.

Ann Sawyer of The News reports that in the Mecklenburg County schools, as far as principals and teachers had been able to determine, not a single white child was going without lunch because they could not afford it. To determine the need for free lunches in the County's white schools, the newspaper had talked with the system's 33 principals and they reported that the situation was in hand and that their schools were without any children going without lunch. From individual school reports, they were feeding over 250 free meals daily at present. The previous year, the system had provided 45,000 free lunches at a cost of between $9,000 and $10,000. The situation was quite different in the City school system, where it was estimated that at least 1,750 children had little or no lunch each day. Approximately 250 children received free lunches in the city, at a cost of $10,000 per year. Both systems had to finance free lunches out of lunchroom operations, the City on a system-wide basis and the County on an individual school basis. Based on figures supplied by City and County school personnel, it appeared that the City, with about 30,000 schoolchildren, ought be feeding about 2,000 free lunches. If the County's needs were being met for its 20,000 white children, it meant that only between 250 and 300 children needed free lunches. But the story was different for the County black schools, where it was estimated that between 220 and 245 more free meals ought be provided. As an example of how the County white schools were able to feed all of their needy hungry children, a principal reported that an elementary school feeding 12 children free each day had no waste in the kitchen, that because almost the same number of children ate in the lunchroom each day, almost exact amounts of food could be prepared and any food left over was served at a later meal if it could be safely saved. A standard plate lunch, with no additional food offered, helped to prevent waste, according to the principal. The system-wide menus also provided for some inexpensive, but nutritious, meals. At that particular elementary school, a meal was rarely served which cost more than receipts. That particular lunchroom had approximately $1,700 monthly in expenses, about $450 to $500 of which was for a cafeteria manager and three workers, and the remainder for food. Small items in the budget were storage and transportation. Lunches served in all County schools were in keeping with regulations attached to receipt of Federal commodities and a state reimbursement on each lunch served. Lunches were required to contain certain amounts of protein food.

The United Community Services, which administered the United Appeal funds, this date indicated that it would provide about 5,000 free lunches and would launch an immediate study of the problem. The president of the organization said that $1,000 would be made available for temporary help and that the Social Planning Council would undertake an exhaustive study to determine the need and responsibility. Private citizens were also making contributions to the City schools' free lunch program. As of the present date, checks amounting to $235 had been received by the Lunchroom Department at the Educational Center. In Charlotte, school lunches cost a quarter per day, or approximately $40 per year per student.

In the second of a series by prominent Charlotte citizens on "The Christmas I Remember Best", novelist and short story author Marian Sims says that Christmas, 1944 had been her most memorable. She had a furnished apartment in Atlanta while her husband was on Los Negros island in the South Pacific, a tiny island perched almost on top of the equator. In those years, they had done their Christmas shopping very early and after asking her husband for his request for Christmas gifts, she had received a reply prior to fall indicating that he would like to have a camera and a bolt of red cloth. She understood the camera but wondered about the cloth, which he had clarified by indicating that Micronesian natives had a passion for anything red and that, wisely distributed, the cloth would generate more good will and voluntary labor than all of the tea in China. So she made the purchases and mailed the box. On Thanksgiving morning, there appeared an item in the Atlanta Constitution, via Tokyo Rose, that Japanese planes had on the previous night bombed Los Negros island and inflicted heavy casualties. She said she had kept going because it was better than sitting still, wrapping packages, rubbing elbows with the crowd, and listening to radios, jukeboxes and department store pipe organs dreaming of a white Christmas, instead of a South Pacific island where the temperature was 120. A letter had arrived about two weeks later, indicating that the bombing of Los Negros had been carried out by one straggling plane which had detoured to strafe the runway, with the casualties having consisted only of a lot of scraped noses from hitting the deck in a hurry, one ensign having suffered a nick from a bullet in his rear end, for which she believes he later received a Purple Heart. "Anyhow—for me that Christmas of 1944 arrived ten days early. The rest was window dressing."

As we have fallen behind, there will be no further comment on this date's front page or editorial page, with the notes to be sporadic until we catch up.

Meanwhile, in Monterey...

Framed Edition

Links-Date — Links-Subj.