The Charlotte News
Friday, October 7, 1955
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Denver that a hospital bulletin this date had reported that the President had "another good night" without any sign of complications and was looking forward to a more active role in the conduct of Government business. His doctors reported that he had slept soundly and almost continuously for eight hours. Aides had indicated that he would have a hospital routine change which probably would afford him a more active role starting during the coming weekend. Early the following morning, he would pass the crucial two-week point since his coronary thrombosis on September 24. Doctors had repeatedly said that the first two weeks were the danger period for potential complications, but that it was only their best estimate on the basis of experience. If all continued to go well, the doctors planned to allow the President to engage in occasional conferences with other Administration officials and allow him to study official papers occasionally.
But don't let the Vice-President
come too near him on Halloween, as you know what that could eventuate
in
At the U.N. in New York, the U.S. and Britain proposed formally this date that a second atoms-for-peace conference ought be held under the auspices of the U.N. in about three years. The two Western powers had submitted a resolution a few hours before the General Assembly's 60-nation Political Committee had begun the debate on peaceful uses of atomic energy, the resolution expressing satisfaction with the results of the atoms-for-peace conference held in Geneva between August 8 and 20, proposing that the Assembly continue the advisory committee which had planned the Geneva meeting. The proposal had also noted "with satisfaction that substantial progress has been made toward negotiation of a draft statute" establishing an international agency to promote the peaceful uses of atomic energy. The statute had been circulated to all interested governments for their consideration and comment. The U.S. had been conducting negotiations on the agency in Washington for the previous year and the statute provided for a governing board, including the U.S., Russia, Britain, France and Canada as the main countries, leaving it to the board of governors to decide what the relationship would be between the new agency and the U.N. India had submitted a resolution proposing that the agency should be required to submit annual reports to the Assembly and to consider Assembly resolutions relating to the agency's operations, as well that the Assembly should set up a special committee to carry out those provisions. Another Indian resolution also called for a second atoms-for-peace conference, but did not indicate a date when it should be held. Senator John Pastore of Rhode Island, a member of the U.S. delegation, was slated to lead off the debate during the afternoon and it was anticipated that he would stress the proposed international agency.
In Paris, General Pierre Billott, the new Minister of Defense in Premier Edgar Faure's Cabinet, had flown to Morocco this date to try to salvage the French Government's reform program for the strife-ridden North African protectorate, possibly able to assure the survival of the Government if able to obtain quick action. He had been named the new Minister of Defense the previous day, succeeding General Pierre Koenig. The new Minister's party, the Social and Republican Action Party, a Gaullist splinter group, had asked him to resign under threat of expulsion from the party, but the General had defied that request. The party had already expelled the minister for Tunisian and Moroccan affairs, who had a large hand in forming the Government policy in those protectorates. General Koenig had been one of four members of the Gaullist Social Republican Party to step out of the Government at the request of the Premier because they could not give wholehearted support to the Moroccan reform plan. The National Assembly's debate on Moroccan policies had resumed this date with a long list of orators scheduled to speak.
In Bournemouth, England, British Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan declared this date, in a foreign policy address before the annual Conservative Party conference, that the West intended to offer Russia "full protection" against any armed threat from a united Germany. He said that the West would propose a security pact of that type at the Big Four foreign ministers conference to open in Geneva on October 27, in an effort to induce the Soviets to approve of unification. He said that the Western security guarantee would be effective "whether such a united Germany chooses to join" NATO or would remain neutral. He warned the delegates against expecting spectacular results at the Geneva meeting, saying he would be satisfied if they made some "practical progress".
In Laramie, Wyo., skilled climbers had fought bitter cold and wind to ascend a snow-covered mountain this date to retrieve the bodies of 66 persons killed the previous day in a United Airlines DC-4 airliner, in the worst commercial airline disaster in U.S. history. The plane had carried three crew members, plus 17 Air Force inductees and two infants among the other 63 passengers. Among the dead were five women members of the Salt Lake City Mormon Tabernacle Choir, which recently had concluded a concert tour of Europe. The rescuers were seeking to climb the near-perpendicular south face of the 12,000-foot Medicine Bow Peak, locus of the crash, which had taken place an hour after departure from Denver for Salt Lake City and San Francisco, the flight having originated on Wednesday night in New York. Rescuers who had managed to ascend the peak the previous day through deep snow had counted about 50 bodies before increasing winds and darkness had forced them to withdraw, descending to a base camp slightly more than a mile from the scene of the crash. The worst previous commercial airline crash toll in the nation's history had been that of a Northwest Airlines DC-4 in Lake Michigan on June 24, 1950, killing 58 aboard. The worst crash toll of any type had been from an Air Force C-124 transport plane, near Tokyo on June 18, 1953, killing 129 people aboard.
In Towanda, Pa., it was reported that the flipping of coins the previous day had determined which of three couples could not board the United Airlines DC-4 which had crashed. Three executives of the Sylvania Electric Co. of that town and their wives had been en route to Salt Lake City by air the previous day, according to a company spokesman, and were planning to take the plane in Chicago, but had found that there was only room for two couples and the coins were flipped to determine who would remain behind for a later flight. The winners of the coin flip had perished. Hopefully, it was a fair flip and not a "heads I win, tails you lose" sort of endeavor, picked up from the recent premiere of "The Honeymooners" regarding use of the shared television set. But we must not speculate on such things unfathomable.
In New Castle, Ind., an uneasy truce was being enforced by National Guardsmen at the point of bayonets this date between the UAW members and the Perfect Circle Corp., manufacturers of piston rings. Union officials said that their members throughout the state were out of hand with anger and might converge on the town again if the struck foundry were reopened. Eight persons had been shot in a riot at the gates on Wednesday and shortly afterward, the plant had been evacuated of non-strikers and closed. Mayor Paul McCormack had announced that the National Guard would remain in the town during the weekend and that there would be no attempt to reopen the plant prior to the following Monday. A top company official told a reporter that the firm intended to reopen the plant just as soon as the National Guard was withdrawn and local authorities permitted it. The UAW representative, however, had told Mayor McCormack that he did not control the feelings of the workers throughout Indiana and Kentucky or across the country and could not therefore assure against the actions of others, that outside sentiment might cause trouble which he could not control should the plant be reopened. Governor George Craig had sent 600 National Guardsmen to the town shortly after midnight on Wednesday, including tanks, weapon-bearing half-tracks and fixed bayonets for the Guardsmen's rifles. Modified martial law was in effect in the town, with taverns closed and the selling of liquor banned, streets patrolled by the infantrymen, with all mass gatherings forbidden, including at ball games and other such social functions. Every highway into the town was blockaded by Guardsmen, searching cars for weapons. The strike had begun on July 25 and 35 strikers had been fired by the company early during the current week for picket line disorders, the latter event having apparently sparked throughout the state UAW protests, as an estimated 5,000 demonstrators had descended on the foundry on Wednesday, marching on some 100 non-striking employees inside the plant. The company had stocked the plant with firearms for self-defense, done with full knowledge of law enforcement. Officials of the company had not denied that the first shot fired had come from within the plant and the UAW denied that the demonstrators had returned the gunfire with their own weapons. The UAW had struck for a union shop, compulsory arbitration, a guaranteed layoff plan and assorted contract improvements in wages and pensions, as well that any new contract formed at the New Castle plant would be binding on neighboring company plants.
In Tehran, Iran, the Government warned Government employees the previous day to stop smoking opium within six months or be dismissed.
In Fayetteville, N.C., two North Carolina soldiers had been killed and a third soldier injured this date when their automobile skidded several hundred feet and overturned several times on Highway 87 near Spout Springs in Harnett County. The injured soldier was said to be in satisfactory condition at a hospital in Sanford and was being transferred to the Army hospital at Fort Bragg, all three soldiers having been members of the 61st Chemical Company at Fort Bragg.
In Apex, N.C., two school boys and their uncle had been killed this date when a passenger train had hit the automobile in which they were riding, with the uncle and one of the nephews dying at the scene and the other nephew dying five minutes after arrival at a hospital in Raleigh. A Highway Patrolman had stated that the uncle was taking the two nephews to school when the accident had occurred in the early morning, at a time when a light fog covered the ground as the car approached the railroad crossing. The train had been traveling at about 30 mph at the time of the accident and its headlights had been on and its horn blaring. It had struck the automobile broadside and scattered wreckage for three-quarters of a mile along the tracks of the Seaboard main line. The patrolman said that the car had been so thoroughly torn apart that "it looked like a jet plane crash". It was the second multiple fatality automobile accident in Wake County during a period of 30 hours, as early the previous day, five youths had been killed in a head-on collision on U.S. 64 near Zebulon. The two accidents brought the county's death toll for the year to 45, the highest of any county in the state. The train had been undamaged and continued its journey after a delay of about 40 minutes.
In Greensboro, N.C., J. Spencer Love, chairman of the board of Burlington Industries, the nation's largest textile manufacturing firm, had reported that the textile industry in the South had a good year and that the outlook was brighter for the future, stating that something like 135 percent of two-shift capacity in the South, wage trends and take-home pay had increased and that earnings of the better companies, though not what they ought to be, had improved substantially during the previous year. He estimated that Burlington's profits for the fiscal year would be double that of 1953-54.
Emery Wister of The News indicates that William F. Sides, a World War II veteran of Hickory who had been bed-ridden with a rare ailment for three years, had been flown to Washington this date for observation and possible treatment, transported by the North Carolina Air National Guard in a C-47 transport plane, quickly converted to a flying hospital. Mr. Sides had been taken to the National Health Institute on arrangements made by Congressman Charles Jonas and his administrative assistant, both of whom accompanying Mr. Sides to Washington. He had been in the Navy during the war and was said to be suffering with hepatolenticular degeneration, for there being too much copper in the tissues of his body and not enough in his blood stream, causing him to be in an almost continuous state of palsy, unable to control himself. A cousin of Mr. Sides, a Charlotte police officer, had accompanied him to Washington, and said that he would be kept at the Institute for four weeks. The officer said that his cousin had been unable to work for three years and that prior to his illness, he had been connected with the Merchant Marine and for a time had driven a produce truck. It was not known how he had contracted the malady.
In New York, the Army had commissioned the first male nurse in its history, Private Edward Lyon, sworn in the previous day as a second lieutenant in the Army Nurse Corps. He was already a registered nurse and for a time had been a nurse of the surgical and psychiatric wards at Kings Park General Hospital and the nurse-anesthetist for the Nassau Hospital in Mineola. Previously, only female nurses had been commissioned, although some enlisted men had served in the Nurse Corps. Legislation sponsored by Representative Francis Bolton of Ohio and passed by Congress during the year had enabled Private Lyon to obtain the commission, following a 14-year fight by professional nursing societies to obtain for male registered nurses equal status with women in the Army. Brig. General Harold Glattly, first Army surgeon, said that men trained in nursing were vital for service in the front lines and in small isolated stations where women could not be sent. Private Lyon would be assigned for a six-week Army basic nursing course at Fort Sam Houston in Texas, and then would be assigned to a general hospital.
In Chicago, hog prices fell to the lowest level in more than nine years this date, with losses ranging between 25 and 50 cents per hundred pounds, with most hogs having sold at between $15.25 and $15.50 per hundred pounds, the lowest prices since June 28, 1946, when the Office of Price Stabilization ceilings had been in effect. Major livestock markets had received large numbers of hogs, with receipts at 12 terminals totaling 80,400 hogs, compared with 53,728 a year earlier and 48,707 two years earlier.
In Dallas, presumably in Texas rather than in North Carolina, picnickers paid no more attention to bright yellow garbage cans than old drab green ones, according to the City Park director, who had reported this date that after a frustrating three-month experimental program aimed at tidier parks, "operation can" was over. That's good news.
On the editorial page, "Time for the Coroner's Post-Mortem" indicates that Glenn Ferguson, in the latest issue of the Journal of the American Judicature Society, of which Mr. Ferguson was assistant editor, had stated that the office of the coroner was one of the most notable anachronisms in the judicial system of the country, that to determine by judicial process "whether a ruptured appendix was the cause of death is only slightly less ludicrous than to ask a jury to decide whether a pain in the abdomen warrants the removal of the appendix." He had developed a case for the medical examiner system throughout the country.
It posits that his facts and figures ought be required reading for all North Carolina legislators, as the 1955 General Assembly had made only small inroads to the coroner problem by passing a postmortem examination bill, leaving the door open, however, for individual counties to exempt themselves from it. It indicates that nothing short of complete abolition of the present system would suffice, that while some counties had competent medical men in the office of coroner, Mecklenburg being one, with a doctor in the post, other counties were less fortunate, being served by coroners with no special medical or legal qualifications. It finds that there was no sensible reason in modern times for any North Carolina county to be served by anyone other than a trained medical examiner, preferably in pathology, to investigate all cases of death involving mysterious circumstances. It indicates that the office ought be appointive rather than elective, with the appointments made by an independent commission, with an attractive salary and provisions for a competent medical staff made available.
It recognizes that such a system would be difficult to achieve because the coroner, except for the sheriff, was the oldest office in the Anglo-American legal system, with even the century in which it was created being in dispute. The Articles of Eyre of 1194 had provided that the justices should select four individuals to safeguard the pecuniary interest of the king, with their duties including everything from protecting the royal fish to determining the king's interest in "unexplained death"—the word "coroner" deriving from corona or crown. The system had come to America with the English settlers, after which protests had arisen in the 1870's when a common practice in Massachusetts had been brought to the attention of the people, after a county coroner had found the body of a small child floating in the river, had conducted an inquest and receive the required fee, whereupon the body was returned to the river and the same procedures had been repeated by other coroners downstream. That led to the coroner system in that state being replaced by medical examiners appointed by the governor.
It posits that such a simple solution would not be possible for North Carolina as the coroner was a constitutional office.
In 1951, the National Municipal League had completed an exhaustive study of the coroner system and had recommended a model statute for all states, calling for medical examiners, trained in pathology, with extensive experience in investigating violent death. A year later, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws had become interested in reform of the system, and its model statute proposed a Commission on Post-Mortem Examinations comprised of ex-officio state officers such as the attorney general, the public health chief officer and the deans of the medical and law schools of the state university. The commission would appoint a chief medical examiner who would direct the Office of Post-Mortem Examinations. The chief would be required to be a physician with a minimum of two years of postgraduate training in pathology. It quotes from other proposed requirements for the post. For instance, the medical examiner had to be infallible "in determining the direction of a bullet through the body", had to know "how to remove the organs of the neck to demonstrate manual strangulation without destroying either the tissues to be examined or structures vital for subsequent embalming", had to know "whether a hemorrhage in the brain caused a fall or whether the fall caused the hemorrhage", had to understand "how to determine whether death was due to drowning or whether the victim was dead when thrown into the water", "whether the multiple fractures resulted from a fall or from being struck by a motor vehicle", and if from a fall, "how to search for evidence to distinguish among accident, suicide and homicide", that all of those basic problems and many others, "especially those concerning surreptitious poisoning", had to be understood by the pathologist who would be an expert in legal medicine.
It suggests that the problem of mysterious death was not inconsequential, that the Census Bureau reported that approximately ten percent of all deaths in the country resulted from violent or unnatural causes, that in a large metropolitan area, there were another ten percent of deaths which had obscure causes and unknown attendant circumstances, requiring medico-legal analysis. A uniform medical examiner system in each of the state's 100 counties, it concludes, was therefore one of its important needs and deserved a place near the top of the 1957 General Assembly agenda.
It is too bad that the systems in Tallahatchie and LeFlore Counties in Mississippi were so completely bereft of competent professional medical personnel that a proper autopsy or other examination even to determine basic identity of the corpse was not performed, perhaps by political design, resulting, in any event, in the all-white, all-male jury finding, in just over an hour of deliberations on September 23, the two obviously guilty co-defendants not guilty because the jury believed, according to the foreman, that the body pulled from the Tallahatchie River on August 31, three days after the disappearance and admitted kidnaping by the co-defendants of Emmett Till, was not in fact that of Emmett, despite his uncle and mother positively identifying the body and the body having borne a ring with the initials "L.T." for Louis Till, Emmett's deceased father, a ring which his mother identified in testimony as his father's and stating that she had provided it to Emmett just before his departure from their home in Chicago for a two-week vacation with his uncle in Mississippi. It was to the advantage of some in some places for there to be no sufficient medical examination into causes of death or even medico-legal ascertainment of identity of a body, in some instances.
The above-referenced article indicates that, not surprisingly at the time, county coroners in Mississippi were, as in most states in 1955, elected pursuant to the State Constitution for four-year terms and had no required qualifications.
The North Carolina Legislature would, in 1957 at its next biennial session, completely rewrite its provisions regarding the state's public health laws, though the particular revisions to the session laws are not available online, accessible only to the 1959 session, and thus you would have to go to a law library and plunder through the stacks to obtain the particular skinny on it—other than through newspaper reports of the time on the 1957 session. But North Carolina did, ultimately, revise its statutes regarding the medico-legal system, beginning with the 1955 session, and finally, in 1967—perhaps mystically, or through the Hollywood grapevine to Raleigh, inspired
"New Hope for a Voice of Freedom" indicates that far from the least of the sins of the deposed Peron dictatorship in Argentina had been its murder of La Prensa, the leading independent newspaper which had made a habit of printing facts even after it had been warned that El Presidente would be the sole judge of what was fact. The newspaper's reputation had been so great that its suppression had become a symbol of the ruthlessness of El Presidente.
He had seized the newspaper in 1951 without compensation to the family which had owned and operated it since 1869, and had turned it over to the politically-dominant General Confederation of Labor, which had made it a mouthpiece for El Presidente's propaganda mills—not unlike, say, Newsweek nowadays.
When El Presidente had been chased from Buenos Aires during the recent revolution, few observers had been ready to concede immediately that the threat of dictatorship had been ended in the country, first desiring answers to whether El Presidente's exile would be complete enough to prevent him from scheming to return to power and whether the new regime would call for free elections, and La Prensa, returned to its former owners. The new Government had pledged free elections and El Presidente had departed for Paraguay, but the newspaper remained in the hands of the labor federation through agreement with the new Government that the courts would have to decide the newspaper's fate. There were now reports that the labor federation was on the verge of dissolution, as workers were ousting the leaders chosen and assigned to them by El Presidente. Those stooges were so frightened by the upsurge of democracy in the country that they had appealed to the new regime for protection.
It regards those reports as affording the basis for hope that the workers would overthrow the political domination and give up their ill-gotten newspaper voluntarily. It posits that the workers had no better ally in their fight for freedom than the newspaper, but that it could not speak for freedom and decency until it was free.
"Whew!" indicates that Dr. Thomas K. Cureton of the University of Illinois was trying to be helpful, but in the future, should take better care in his tests, after trying to make everyone feel like a lazy slug by saying that Americans were overweight and underworked softies, having recommended that people run in place for two minutes at 180 steps per minute and hold their breath afterwards for 30 seconds, challenging them as to whether they could do it.
It indicates in the negative and breathlessly dedicates itself to the proposition of economist Beardsley Ruml, who had found all of his impulses for physical exercise quickly gone when he stretched out on the couch to consider what he should do.
A piece from the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch, titled "Cool New Dream", indicates that
it had read a news item telling of construction of a six-lane
overpass to carry the proposed Mark Twain Expressway over the Wabash
Railroad tracks in St. Louis County near Cool Valley, muses that Duke
Ellington had written a piece called "Warm Valley"
It envisions a little break between two gentle ridges, with houses of frosty white, topped by moon-blue roofs, small, playful and friendly breezes frolicking around in it, surrounded by light green grass, pastel flowers, and "everyone looks as if he had kept cool with and since Coolidge."
"That old dream of the Kentucky colonel sitting on the wide, white-columned portico and, looking out over his acres of lawn, sipping a mint julep—that old dream will have to take a backseat. It isn't in a class with the poetry we have in mind now. Cool Valley. Cool, man. Cool."
Drew Pearson indicates that news from the Far East had been off the front pages since the illness of the President, but that the fact remained that the Joint Chiefs were expecting serious trouble around Formosa during the fall and intended to meet any such trouble with atomic weapons, a response which had been cleared by the President prior to his heart attack and which the military, therefore, did not anticipate clearing again with him. That could produce serious repercussions with the country's allies. The Chiefs were quietly withdrawing U.S. manpower from the Far East and concentrating military strategy on air and sea power, in preparation for potential retaliation with nuclear weapons. Currently, three Army and one Marine division were stationed in the Far East, and the first to be withdrawn would be the First Cavalry Division in Japan, though not yet announced. The Chiefs were still considering withdrawing the Army's 7th or 24th Division from Korea. That would leave South Korea with practically no U.S. support, but the Chiefs were depending on President Syngman Rhee's Army to stop any minor Communist attack, and on atomic weaponry to resist a major attack.
Similarly, U.S. atomic-air power was poised around Formosa in case the U.S. should become embroiled in an outbreak between Communist and Nationalist China. The public did not realize that 10,000 U.S. troops were stationed on Formosa and of those, 1,500 were attached to the U.S. military mission there, with the remainder being Air Force personnel. With such an American stake in Formosa, any Communist attack on that Nationalist-held stronghold would necessarily involve the U.S. The likelihood of such an attack, in the view of the Pentagon, was more imminent than the peace news from Moscow had suggested, with Pentagon strategists being convinced that the Chinese Communists were simply biding their time and would attack first Quemoy and Matsu and then, subsequently, Formosa. The Pentagon expected that latter attack prior to the end of 1956. They pointed to the large Chinese Communist withdrawals from Korea, believing that those troops would be moved to South China, opposite Formosa.
Mr. Pearson concludes that despite better relations in Europe, the military prognosticators in the U.S. saw war clouds gathering in the Far East.
Marquis Childs, in Chicago, indicates that at a regional meeting of Democrats in Chicago on November 19, Adlai Stevenson would announce his availability for the Democratic presidential nomination for 1956. Mr. Stevenson would not confirm that eventuality even to the political leaders who were increasingly coming to his law office in Chicago, but it represented the confident expectation of his closest advisers. As in the months leading up to the Democratic convention of 1952, Mr. Stevenson was again being accused of being coy, but from his perspective, it was not that and he resented the accusation, stating it as rather a conviction that if the leaders who controlled the party machinery wanted him to be their candidate again, knowing of the kind of campaign he would wage, then they would join as they had in 1952 to choose him as the nominee.
If things worked out as his admirers believed and hoped, Mr. Stevenson's future would start with a dinner speech on the evening of November 19, in which he would declare his intention to run again and indicate that he could only run his kind of campaign, one based on the issues and not on personalities. The popular response to that declaration, both within the party and from independent voters, would provide the impetus to the increasing belief that he was the inevitable choice. It was being argued that he had a far better chance to bridge the conflicts within the party than other potential candidates and, as opinion polls were showing, only he among his rivals could elicit a large national response.
The decision was not yet final, but it was most unlikely that Mr. Stevenson would enter the presidential preference primaries, beginning in New Hampshire in March, which was likely to create fierce intra-party rivalries, which Mr. Stevenson believed would not determine the nomination. He would speak throughout the country during the months ahead, but not too often, emerging by midsummer as the choice of most Democrats, both from the South and the North, wanting to unite to win the election. As the nominee, he would not have to campaign on his own, with only the help of eager amateurs, as he had been forced to do in 1952, instead this time having a strong and effective party organization solidly behind him.
That was an optimistic view which might not turn out to be the case, as many Democrats were already saying that if he wanted the nomination, he must get out and fight for it. They ascribed his reluctance to do so to his intellectualism, his "eggheadism", but Mr. Childs regards it possibly as the smartest type of politics, as it had been demonstrated in the past that there was nothing more fatal than continuously running for the presidency.
An example of that phenomenon was Harold Stassen, who had sought the presidency so avidly for so long that he had practically eliminated himself from consideration for the Republican nomination. The attitude that there had to be someone better qualified had often produced a positive effect, such as the case of President Eisenhower running in 1952. Since the latter's heart attack in Denver, there had been a marked increase in a Stevenson candidacy, reflected by his calling list and correspondence. He had visited Texas on a speaking tour recently and had met there with Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson and Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, a tour which had been planned long prior to the President's attack two weeks earlier.
Mr. Stevenson had said that people appeared to think that he should be more interested in seeking the nomination now, but that he was concerned with principles, beliefs, and convictions, that the Democrats should take over the Government regardless of whether the President would run in 1956 or not.
He had accused Republicans in recent speeches of substituting words for deeds, talking about schools, highways and farm prices, but doing nothing about them and other problems confronting the country. He believed that the hero worship of the President had tended to silence the kind of continuing criticism essential to healthy self-government. That which had been denounced as "appeasement" under the Truman Administration was now being hailed as a great triumph by the Eisenhower Administration, when, at the Geneva summit conference in July, the President had met with Soviet rulers to try to negotiate a truce in the cold war.
He concludes that, increasingly, Mr. Stevenson's speeches would regard the mistakes of the Administration and the way in which those mistakes had either been ignored or glossed over, with one of his close associates saying that he wanted to fight "not Democrats but Republicans."
Robert C. Ruark, in Palamos, Spain, still apparently fighting the bulls, indicates that it appeared strange to him to consider Bob Feller as an athlete about ready to retire from the game, having a family and children getting ready to attend college, that it was strange that most of the has-beens had not even been when he began reporting sports. About the only person he recognized on Jacob's Beach was Al Weill or maybe Charlie Goldman, because he had known them when Lou Ambers had been a busy champion. He had been away from the sports scene for so long that he did not even know whether "Evil-Eye" Finkle was still in the picture, could only now remember that Lou Diamond had been called "The Honest Brakeman" because he had never stolen a boxcar.
Apart from wrestlers, whom he does not dignify as athletes, there was not a single practicing muscleman whom he could remember as being current to the scene when he was reporting on it. Some were coaches and some were managers, but he had been moving out when Phil Rizzuto was breaking in.
He recalls his first interview with Babe Ruth and the way he had walked off with three homers and a single in the last week he had played. He remembered Lou Gehrig, who had never told anyone that he was dying until he was nearly dead, taking a lot of abuse in the process. He recalls Hank Greenberg's bad feet and the skirmish he had with Buck Newsom, and the fact that on the day of it, he had seen Ken Overlin, the new middleweight champion of the world, informing him that he could not punch any better than Mr. Ruark.
He was so old that he remembered Kit Klein—to be distinguished from Kit Marlowe—, who had the prettiest legs he had ever seen and so he had written in his lead: "Kit Klein has the prettiest legs I ever saw. They are long and slim and honey-colored…"
Later he had met Sonja Henie, the figure skater, and that night had gotten loaded and dined in Georgetown with the current managing editor of the Washington Post and Times-Herald, Al Friendly, who was wrong when he said that it was a brown La Salle he had driven when they were copy boys together, it having been a green Lincoln, as he had previously described it.
He remembers Tony Galento and the yogi stuff with Lou Nova, before Yogi Berra ever obtained his moniker. He recalls the night Max Baer's little brother, Buddy, had hit Joe Louis with a punch which started in Bethesda, and put Mr. Louis in his lap, as duly recorded in Life, "and you could have scraped my eyes off with spoons, because I hadn't had much practice catching Joe Louis in my lap."
He concludes that it all told the reader that he was not any kid.
A letter writer indicates that the City Council, the Board of County Commissioners and citizens of the city ought not permit Good Samaritan Hospital to close, that it would be an injustice to the black population of the city. "We love good colored people in Charlotte. They are God's people." He says that the community had spent millions of dollars for amusements and for white hospitals and that there should be a drive to raise money to keep Good Samaritan open and, as soon as possible, to build a modern hospital on large grounds with plenty of parking space somewhere on Statesville Road for black patients, built so that it could be enlarged at a minimum cost as the population increased. He advises not merely making a makeshift addition to Memorial Hospital for black patients, that the new, modern hospital should be staffed by black doctors and nurses, as the black population wanted.
A letter writer addresses the same issue, indicating that there had been so many contradictory reports regarding the quality of available facilities for black patients in the community that he was confused, but that if the Social Planning Council had found a great need for additional facilities during its survey of a year earlier, the need really existed and it was up to the people of the community to do something about meeting it. If a black patient became ill with a disease which was communicable, then it was the problem of the entire community, as germs did not stop at geographical boundaries or "White Only" signs.
A letter writer from Cheraw, S.C., indicates his deep concern about the report of the health of the President, says that he is a Democrat and believes the President was the President also of the Democrats and that they admired him, that he had always admired his sincerity and honesty concerning government affairs, as he was a military man and not a politician. He suggests that the President had done his best for the nation and that all the people should appreciate what he had accomplished. There were still many things to be done for the nation and its people, but all were subject to mistakes. He asserts that the pressure of being President had shortened the life of FDR and that no other position had more strain than being leader of a business or leader of the nation. President Eisenhower had needed to retire from public life after World War II, as he had done his part and believes he would have been better off had he done so, but that there were those who believed a man should work until he was over 65, which he believes was "just a job for the mortician to come and take the body from the job to the cemetery." He suggests that those opposing reduction of the retirement age to 60 had probably never done a day's work in their lives and were living at the expense of those who labored. He urges retiring those people as they could not keep pace on a job and urges joining in prayer for the President for his speedy recovery. "A nation that forgets God shall not stand."
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