The Charlotte News
Thursday, December 18, 1958
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page
reports that the Civil Aeronautics Board had ruled this date that
flight training was not a required safety qualification for the
engineer-third man member on America's new jet passenger planes. The
ruling complicated the current labor dispute between the pilots' and
engineers' unions and the airlines regarding whether the third man,
in addition to a pilot and copilot, should be pilot-trained, the
so-called "third man" issue
In Vatican City, amid glittering and moving medieval pageantry, Pope John XXIII this date placed the red hats of their high office over the heads of 20 of the 23 new cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church. More than 35,000 cheering persons had filled the vast Basilica of St. Peter for the glittering public consistory, the climactic event in the ceremonies during the week, which had increased the College of Cardinals to 74 men. The new cardinals approached the papal throne individually, their hands folded in prayer, their bright scarlet trains trailing nine feet behind across the green velvet carpet. Tenth in order was one of the two new American cardinals, Archbishop Richard James Cushing of Boston, the other being Archbishop John O'Hara of Philadelphia, who was 13th in the procession. Each new cardinal paused, knelt quickly and kissed the Pope's slipper and then his hand, each time, the Pontiff having bent low to touch cheeks with the new member of the College. While the Pope spoke, two assistants held one of the broad-brimmed, flat-top hats, the galero, over the head of the new cardinal. Each cardinal moved away without his red hat, which would be delivered later in the day and would never appear in public until the cardinal died, the hat being placed on his catafalque and then suspended from the ceiling of his cathedral. Seated nearby, in a row before the cathedral chair, were the 23 previous members of the College of Cardinals presently in Rome, among them Archbishop Francis Spellman of New York. On Monday, they had met with Pope John in secret consistory to give their assent to the new cardinals, the first event in the week's program. The three who were absent this date were Fernando Centio, Papal nuncio to Portugal, Joseph Bueno Y Monread, Archbishop of Seville, Spain, and the Vatican's nuncio to Italy, Giuseppe Fietta. They would receive the insignia of their office from the chiefs of states of Portugal, Spain and Italy, respectively, following ancient custom between those countries and the Vatican. The day's ceremonies had begun with the new cardinals taking their oaths before the dean of the College, French-born Eugene Cardinal Tisserant. The week's ceremonies had increased the College, the senate of the church, to its largest size in history and had expanded it for the first time beyond the limit of 70 members set by Pope Sixtus V in 1586.
In St. Louis, it was reported that a St. Louis University student, who had been run over by a car and apparently shot three times, had been found dying in Forest Park the previous night, in a case which had baffled police. The 27-year old student had died without speaking, moments after passing motorists had found him sprawled in a road in front of the City Art Museum. Police were almost certain that two head wounds were from a small-caliber weapon and that half a dozen tiny wounds in his chest were from gunshot pellets, but were awaiting autopsy results. A car had passed over both of his legs. Police said they had no definite leads in the case. The young man had a good reputation and police had been unable to turn up any evidence that he had any enemies. Robbery had been ruled out as a possible motive. The young man's car, with the engine still running, had been found on a gravel lane behind the art museum, located in a secluded section at the west edge of St. Louis. Police had found about $20 in the man's pockets, along with a gold wedding band and another gold ring on his hands. His wife of six months said that her husband had left home for night classes at the University about 30 minutes before the body had been discovered. He was employed at an electric company. A police sergeant said that the head wounds were in the temple and the middle of the forehead, and that about half a dozen shotgun pellets were buried in his chest. The door on the driver side of his car had blood spatters on it and a trail of blood led about ten feet from the car, ending there and then picking up about ten feet from the body.
In Tarboro, N.C., an attorney had complained that he was "treated like a common criminal" after being arrested. The incident had led to a revision of police department policies and the chief of police being placed on probation. The 71-year old attorney had made the complaint after being arrested on a charge of driving without a license, indicating that before he was permitted to post a $100 bond, he was taken to the police department, fingerprinted and photographed. He said that an officer took him into a police photo room, hung a numbered card around his neck and took his picture. The attorney added, "I asked him if he had to do it and he told me he did." He said that he later had written State Attorney General Malcolm Seawall for an opinion regarding the incident and his reply had opined that the practice was illegal. State law provided that no officer would photograph a person arrested and charged or convicted of a misdemeanor unless the person was a fugitive, or was suspected of having stolen goods in his or her possession, or was wanted by another law enforcement agency.
John Kilgo of The News reports that the same condition blamed for the disastrous Chicago parochial school fire recently had been found in Charlotte schools this date. A News reporter checking eight local schools had found that doors leading to stairways in four of them were left open, and in one school, Central High, there was a stairway which did not even have doors. Open doors had been discovered at Central and Harding High Schools, Myers Street Negro Elementary School and O'Donoghue School. The open door condition at Central and O'Donoghue, both of which were three stories, was in violation of state law. But the condition at the other two schools, though not strictly in violation of the law, was condemned by local fire and building inspection officials. The State building code provided that all interior stairways, including moving stairways and elevators, had to be enclosed or their floor openings otherwise protected, with the exception of buildings not over two stories in height, stairways and elevators in buildings not over four stories in height where the stories above the second were used for storage only, and other buildings equipped with automatic fire sprinkler systems, when not over four stories, or when used only for storage. Mr. Kilgo found at Central doors on the third floor to the stairway being propped open and the principal had explained that the doors were not usually allowed to stand open, but had probably been pushed open and jammed, as "they did that a lot". In the Chicago fire, the second-story stairway door had been left open and the fire flashed down the corridor, killing 92 persons.
The eighth in the series of articles by prominent Charlotte residents regarding "The Christmas I Remember Best", is presented by Robert H. Lampee, advertising director of The News, who had been a naval officer during World War II, relating that the miracle of mutual adoration had begun during the invasion when the first American sailor had given a K-ration biscuit to the first dirty-faced Sicilian child. Between bombings, the blue jackets had been busy taking sounding in Sicilian ports, removing demolition charges, manning captured tugs, setting up communications and unloading troops, tanks, ammunition, gas and food, to make the island an Allied base. Exhausted, they had squatted to open their ration boxes and wolf the chow only to look up and see the haunted eyes of the "bambini", the starving children of Sicily. In many ways, the bambini were hard to take, as their bodies were covered in ugly soars, their stomachs distended from malnutrition, their clothes consisting of filthy rags, as they jabbered in a strange language, stole and soiled the streets. But a warm relationship had sprung up which had found its most eloquent expression at Palermo on Christmas Day, 1943. Sailors spontaneously had rushed to the canteen and bought their ration of candy bars, dumping them into a special barrel for the bambini. The Navy SeaBee carpenter shop used jigsaws to cut out Donald Duck and Popeye toys for them. Sailors rummaged through their seabags for old dungarees and then took them to the tailor shops for conversion to little dresses and pants. The Navy bakeshop worked late to cook huge cookies. A boatswain's mate organized the volunteers to fill the stockings with oranges, candy, cookies, and toys. The Navy tailor sewed the red suit for the bearded sailor who played Santa Claus for the bambini. It had rained hard on Christmas Day in the morning and a long, flat Navy trailer had been backed up to the administration building, with ladders rigged on each end and railings nailed into place, with a large Christmas tree lit up on it, as more Navy trucks had backed up and unloaded tons of Christmas gifts. In the distance, at the gate of the base, one could hear hundreds and hundreds of bambini, all over the town, squealing, yelling, laughing, shivering, clamoring. In the downpour, through the sentrys at the gate, had come the spirit of Christmas, as the sailors choked up when the bambini sprinted through in their bare feet to find the American Santa Claus. Young ones rode piggyback on their fathers or were carried wrapped in dirty shawls in the arms of their mothers. One by one they climbed up the ladder to the trailer, passed through lines of rain-soaked sailors, were patted by the sailor playing Santa and emerged with their arms full of gifts of affection. The pace had quickened and the screams of delight and of cold slowly subsided. The white powder on Santa's beard was washed away and his wilted cap curled over one eye. The piles of gifts disappeared and the sailors returned to their duties, as the Christmas party for the bambini was over. "Next morning in the Navy ship repair shop, a machinist working on a diesel engine for a landing craft to be used in the next Allied landing, turned to a shipmate and said: 'You know, that party for the bambini—damned if that wasn't fun!'" Well now, there was no need to curse like a sailor.
We have a question, incidentally, as to how Sr. Ricardo was spotted so easily by Anna Maria as not being the real deal when she did not seem even to have a scintilla of suspicion regarding the identity between Don Diego and his alter-ego. This is a mystery as surely as that of the bambini who seemed not to perceive the ruse of the sailor in posing as the faux Santa Claus in lieu of the genuine article. And how did the new commandante of Monterey later become a Senator in Washington, ready to bend the knee to General James Mattoon Scott and his Mount Thunder coup, at least until his complicity became subject to revelation? How did Sr. Ricardo, whom he had sought to hang, then become his aide in complicity with the coup? These questions deserve the fullest investigation. Though the heavens may fall, truth will out.
In Greensboro, N.C., it was reported that officers and court personnel were chuckling regarding an incident occurring in the previous few days. In the hills of the state, a song set to the tune of "Davy Crockett" told of one of the most famed and respected "revenooers" of all time, one Charlie Felts, whose office was in Wilkesboro. Around the whiskey stills, the workers sometimes joined in singing the song: "Charlie, Charlie Felts, king of the revenooers". Officers who were surveilling stills had heard the singing of the song. Not long earlier, some officers had been maintaining surveillance and the still workers were preparing to "make a run" and jar the whiskey, when they began laughing and joking, saying that "if old Charlie Felts is going to get us, he'd better hurry. It looks like Charlie is going to miss this one." One of the workers expressed the thought that Charlie would be very disappointed and that it would be the right thing to do to step over to the big tree and give him a call. He took an imaginary telephone from the tree and said: "Hello, Charlie, you'd better hurry if you're going to catch us this time… We're about to finish the run." He then hung up, laughed, started to turn back to the still, when a hand came from around the tree and clutched his arm. Charlie Felts said, "I got your message."
In Waltham, Mass., it was reported that motorists who parked illegally in the town during the Christmas season would find a ticket reading: "The Waltham Police Department has tagged this car for traffic violations. However, Santa Claus has fixed this ticket for you and extends to you the city's greetings for a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year."
At Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco Bay, it was reported that the San Francisco Bay Area United Crusade Fund had received a $496 contribution from the inmates, collected from wages earned in the prison laundry and industrial shops. The warden said that the idea was that of the inmates themselves.
As we have fallen behind, there will be no further comment on the front page or editorial page of this date, as the notes will be sporadic until we catch up.
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