The Charlotte News
Saturday, May 12, 1956
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President's doctors this date had reported that he was "physically active and mentally alert" after a two-day exhaustive checkup at Walter Reed Hospital, with his blood pressure normal and no sign showing of muscle weakness or angina in his heart. The report said that he had shown good tolerance to increasing physical activity over the previous six months since he had departed the hospital in Denver, to which he had been committed when he had his September 24 heart attack. It was the first full-scale medical examination for the President since February 11, when he had been found physically fit to serve another term, and on February 29, had announced that he would seek re-election. The doctors said that X-rays showed that there were no changes in the President's lungs or in the shape or size of his heart, compared with X-rays dating back to 1946. The healed scar from the heart attack showed no sign of enlargement or bulging. The President had left the the hospital for Burning Tree Golf Club this date, where he played a round.
In Washington, it was reported that Walter Reuther, head of the UAW, had said this date that if the Democratic Party tried to "straddle the civil rights question" it did not merit "the support of the American people." In a prepared speech for the ninth annual convention of Americans for Democratic Action, Mr. Reuther said that the party could not compete with the Administration in the middle of the road. He ventured that the Democrats could win but that they had no right to do so unless they offered the American people the kind of clear choice which would provide the policies, programs and leadership for extending the New Deal and Fair Deal into the future. Mr. Reuther was vice-chairman of the ADA. The ADA national chairman, Joseph Rauh, Jr., had stated somewhat the same theme in his prepared report, saying that the organization had to wage its biggest battle "against the middle of the road—against the idea that there is inherent virtue in compromising great issues."
In Nicosia, Cyprus, the EOKA underground this date had called on every Greek in Cyprus to try to execute the British military Governor, Sir John Harding. The calls were made via leaflets scattered about Nicosia and signed by the leader of the organization, announcing the hanging of two British soldiers in reprisal for the execution of two EOKA gunmen the prior Thursday. The British had not confirmed the announcement, with British military authorities saying that the two soldiers named had been AWOL for some time, but that they had no information they had fallen into the hands of EOKA. The leaflets said: "Instead of a material reward which can emanate only from scum and can be accepted only by scum, we shall make the executioner of the sadistic tormentor of the Cypriot people a national hero whose name will be written in gold letters in the roll of honor of the heroes of the Cypriot struggle." The police, meanwhile, were distributing leaflets calling on Cypriots to "disown the blood-stained fanatical terrorists" of the underground EOKA, that "these murders do not help our national cause. On the contrary, they retard and smear it."
In Parris Island, S.C., Brig. General Wallace Greene, Jr., newly placed in charge of recruit training at Parris Island, said that the Marine Corps had no intention of changing its "boot" training program or "letting it get too soft", as he addressed the surviving members of a platoon of recruits who had been forced on April 8 by their sergeant to march into a tidal stream, where six had drowned. The General, who had come to the base from Camp Lejeune, N.C., to take over recruit training in the aftermath of the tragedy, said that he was "taking the stars" from his collar because he did not want to talk to them as a general officer in the Marine Corps, but as a Marine. He said that the drownings had been "most regrettable", but that he had no intention of letting the system get soft, that they had to have "tough training to produce the kind of Marines we need to fight our future battles." He urged the men to tell their families and friends what boot camp was like and praised the platoon for its "fine cooperation and spirit". Relatives of several platoon members were in the audience. A woman said that she was proud that her son was a Marine, that he had always spoken very highly of the staff sergeant in question and of another drill instructor. She said that her son had "left a boy, and now he returns a man." The staff sergeant who had ordered the march was set to appear before a Marine court-martial on July 14 on charges of manslaughter and violation of Corps regulations.
In Brunswick, Ga., a Federal District Court had issued a temporary injunction restraining the Interstate Commerce Commission from increasing freight rates charged to 19 pulp and paper companies, which had been scheduled to take effect on May 16. The injunction had been requested by the companies and 12 railroads.
In Raleigh, it was reported that North Carolina Democrats were expected to choose a national convention delegation disposed to support Adlai Stevenson, when the state convention convened the following Thursday with more than 3,000 Democrats expected to assemble for their biennial gathering. Governor Luther Hodges had said repeatedly that he favored Mr. Stevenson as the presidential nominee of the party. But while the convention was expected to favor Mr. Stevenson, it was not expected to send an instructed delegation to Chicago in August—the report confusing the site of the Republican convention at the Cow Palace in San Francisco with the site of the Democratic convention—, as for many years, the state had sent uninstructed delegations to the national conventions to provide more leverage in influencing the party platform and nominees.
In Charlotte, Election Board workers were swamped again this date by waves of new voters who had waited until the last day to register for the May 26 primary.
Charles Kuralt of The News reports that Mecklenburg County Democrats had gone into what appeared to be a wide open county convention during the afternoon, with the three front-running candidates for county chairman being Linn Garibaldi, W. M. Nicholson and Paul Ervin, with Mr. Nicholson, a local attorney, being pushed by a group of rebels in the party, while Mr. Garibaldi had been the choice of the old guard and a front-runner several days earlier. Mr. Ervin, a supporter of Mr. Garibaldi, appeared to be the only person acceptable to both sides, according to one party member. The keynote address for the convention was given by former Mayor Ben Douglas, the Democratic candidate for the Congressional seat presently held by Republican Charles Jonas.
In Columbia, S.C., it was reported that the way had been cleared this date for the Southern Paper Corp. to build its multi-million-dollar pulp and paper plant near Van Wyck in York County. A major obstacle had been removed the previous day when the State Water Pollution Authority had granted the company a permit to discharge waste from the proposed plant into the Catawba River. Former Governor Strom Thurmond, running for the Senate and among the notable figures present, had told the Authority that plans had already been made to improve the waste disposal system, and that both Charlotte and Rock Hill, S.C., were planning to upgrade industrial and domestic waste discharges into the Catawba. Former Senator Charles Daniel of Greenville, representing the company, assured the Authority that the company would do everything called for to protect the streams of South Carolina. The company's vice-president said that it planned to build a plant which would initially employ 1,200 workers and produce 400 tons of paper daily.
In Goeulzin, France, a fisherman was riding his bicycle along a canal with his four-year old daughter fastened securely to the carrier behind him, when the bike had gone out of control and plunged into the canal. The man was thrown clear and swam to safety, but his daughter, still firmly attached to the bike, had gone to the bottom of the canal. A bargeman, using a long boa hook, had pulled up the bicycle with the little girl still attached, and firemen had revived her.
In New York, flames had destroyed a costly flotilla of 60 model yachts at a Brooklyn boathouse and yacht club the previous day, valued from $200 to $1,000 each. The cause of the fire was not known.
In Knoxville, Tenn., a blind college student the previous day had received a 60-day jail sentence and a $100 fine after he pleaded guilty to a charge of drunk driving, with the sentence and fine suspended. He was a student at the University of Tennessee, through assistance from a State rehabilitation program for the blind. He told the judge that he was "operating the gear, brake and clutch" of the car while a cited companion was stepping on the gas pedal. The patrolman who arrested the two men testified that both were intoxicated, with the blind man behind the wheel while his companion gave him instructions.
In Kansas City, a chubby, voluble salesman pleaded guilty to a charge of impersonating a Federal officer, by pretending to be an investigator for the CIA, and was sentenced to 14 months in prison the previous day. The reason for his pretense was to fleece romantically-inclined women, assuring them that he was traveling the world so fast on secret assignments that even the Government could not catch up with him to pay him his $15,000 in retroactive salary which he said was due him, and so he told them that he was amenable to receiving their loans, with most of the women believing he would marry them. He had pleaded guilty a week earlier before Judge Charles E. Whittaker—to be named by the President later in the year to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, and then early the following year to the Supreme Court
upon the retirement of Justice Stanley Reed. Judge Whittaker had delayed sentencing pending examination of the defendant's background, and acknowledged the previous day that his examination had proved uncommonly interesting, referring to the defendant as "a real Lothario". He said that he had received letters all week from the duped lady friends of the defendant, one of whom having reported parting with $3,000 for a house in Denver which she never received, and then added money for wallpaper while the Government was presumably trying frantically to pay the defendant as a "secret agent". Another woman had bought him an automobile and a third had loaned him $250 so that he could attend his mother's funeral in California, which was also false. The case which led to the defendant's downfall had involved a middle-aged woman who let him have $690 between his "secret missions to Europe". Judge Whittaker said that on the day he had pleaded guilty, he had rushed to that woman and "induced her to go with him to a confessor of her faith and before him stated he still intended to marry her." After citing that record, Judge Whittaker ruled out probation, but said that on the positive side of the ledger, a letter he received from one of the women, who had paid out a considerable sum, had said, "I guess I must have gotten my money's worth."
In Tokyo, the Japan Veterans Association had unanimously decided this date to "oust all Communist infiltrators" from its ranks.
In Nara, Japan, veteran star of stage and screen, Louis Calhern, 62, had died of a heart attack this date while he was preparing to start work on his 69th film, "The Teahouse of the August Moon" he had been in Japan since the previous month and appeared to be in good health except for a slight cold during the previous few days. He had died in the U.S. military hospital in Nara.
Off Tampico, Mexico, crewmen aboard a shrimp boat cast their nets the previous day and came up with a giant ray fish weighing 1,115 pounds, the four-man crew having fought the fish for four hours before landing it.
On the editorial page, "Fluoridation: Charlotte Can Be Proud" tells of the battle to obtain fluoridation of water having not been won in some areas, that there were still active dissenters, many of whom were very earnest in their opposition. But dedicated champions of science and enlightenment had prevailed in Charlotte, and the entire community could be glad that they had.
The city's seven-year experience with fluoridation, according to a report released during the week by the dental health officer of the City Health Department, had been successful, the survey showing that native born first-grade children in Charlotte who had been drinking fluoridated water since 1949 had 40 percent less tooth decay than youngsters who drank unfluoridated water, with the comparisons made with children in nearby Mooresville and Statesville who did not have the opportunity of drinking fluoridated water.
Experts also found that there were no ill effects from fluorides observed on the teeth, the supporting structures of the teeth or on occlusions of the teeth.
Charlotte had been a pioneer in fluoridation of municipal water and so the results would be scrutinized throughout the country. It could be placed with the famous Newburgh-Kingston study of New York, the report of which had been issued the previous December, in which health leaders of New York said that the adjustment of the fluoride content of water was a "safe and effective" means to reduce tooth decay in children.
At present, 23 million people in 1,150 communities drank artificially fluoridated water, while another four million had spent all their lives in such areas as Colorado Springs, Colo., and Bartlett, Tex., where the drinking water contained fluorides in higher concentration than that used for dental health. Repeated long-term studies had found no adverse physiological effects.
Fluoridation occasionally had been under legal attack, but it was significant that in 15 court cases, fluoridation had been upheld 14 times, and in the one exception, the ruling had been reversed by a higher court.
It indicates that it was not mass medication, that it was not a medicine or a panacea, and did not treat tooth decay which had already begun, but was an important dietary factor during the time teeth were forming.
As the Charlotte dental health officer had warned the previous day, proper dental care was still an important ally of fluoridation and brushing of teeth should continue regularly, with periodic visits to the family dentist.
"Town Hall" tells of Charlotte Mayor Philip Van Every having given the newspaper a wrist-slap for disagreeing with him on annexation, leaving the newspaper "smiling happily through our tears." It says it had been grumbling about the fact that the Mayor had not been using his eloquence enough to educate the public on the issue, and that now that the ice was broken, it hopes that he would turn his eloquence toward the perimeter.
"Politicians and Cigars: An Interview" tells of Winston-Salem Mayor Marshall Kurfees having come to Charlotte recently to solicit votes for his Senate campaign, and says that if the light had not been red at Mint and Third, it would not have known he was present, but that because it was, it had spotted "hizzoner" on a wall, smiling, where he would continue to be until someone tore him down or weather wore him out of sight. It finds it to have been a technicolored campaign poster, showing him with a big, brown cigar while smiling. A tree near the building shaded the upper part of his face and so the thing it remembered most was the name Kurfees, a smile and a cigar.
It suggests that most politicians, however, did not mind being faceless in the voter's mind, as long as the smile, the name and the cigar were remembered, particularly the cigar in North Carolina. But it also suggests that one would think that in Winston-Salem, where they manufactured Winstons and were soon to make Salems, the Mayor would rather pose with a cigarette.
It had called its political consultant, Col. C. S. A. Beauregard, Ret., "noted gatecrasher at $100-a-plate Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln Day dinners" and asked him why politicians liked cigars, to which he had replied that it was the thing because there was nothing more masculine, unless it was a Bull Durham sign, than a good cigar. When it asked him what was wrong with the cigarette, the reply was that it was too puny, and regarding a pipe, that pipe smokers were shifty looking, always looking like they were thinking, and the pipe tied up a hand, when he could be shaking with both. He said that the public expected politicians to smoke cigars, as nearly everybody had an uncle who did so and behind a stogie, everyone appeared to be everybody's uncle. When it suggested that the colonel did not look like any uncle it had ever had, he said that the writer had funny uncles.
"Thank you for dropping by, Colonel. You got a match?"
It's a slow Saturday at The News.
A piece from the Winston-Salem Journal titled, "Winken, Blinken and Nod", tells of Frank Sullivan, writing in the New York Times magazine recently, having presented a strong case for the after-lunch nap for working folks, contending that a short daily siesta could go a long way toward preventing ulcers, heart trouble, neuroses and various other afflictions caused by the complex way of modern living.
It indicates that most people who were working would agree with Mr. Sullivan, but that working out a way to obtain such naps was more easily said than done. There were not many bosses who encouraged the habit, and even supposing that they did, there was the problem of finding a location in which to take a nap, with the most logical place being at home. But if all working people went to their homes at noontime, there would be a rush-hour during the middle of the day, making people too cross and tense to sleep by the time they got home.
And if a person went home, they might as well have lunch, causing ulcers and neuroses for housewives cooking the lunch for their husbands while having to quiet the children while their father took his nap.
Aside from going home, restaurants might install nap rooms adjacent to their dining room, but there would just be another committee meeting established in the nap room, interrupting sleep.
Women would be using their nap hours to have their hair done and take a sunbath while physical-fitness-minded men would be at the YMCA exerting themselves in swimming or some kind of ballgame.
It concludes that in the end, there would probably be no one taking naps during the nap hour, except those who presently had "great difficulty after lunch not laying their heads … down … on any … old … hard … desk top, closing … their … eyes … and dropping … off …… zzzz…"
Drew Pearson indicates that it had been nine years since several million people all over the country, from schoolchildren to businessmen to junior chambers of commerce to labor unions, had sent the Friendship Train to Western Europe in 1947, at a time when France had been torn with riots amid a railroad strike, when Communists had raised a strike among agriculture workers in Italy just as the crop was ready for harvest, and when sabotage squads had been sent from Moscow to wreck French trains. A lot had occurred in those nine years, but during the current week, a partial contribution of the Friendship Train had culminated with the dedication of the French-American Hospital near Saint-Lo, the scene of the most devastating battle of the Normandy invasion in 1944, the location where General Omar Bradley had finally broken through the German hedgerows. It had been picked by Americans as a locus for a hospital, as a small contribution toward reconstructing the damage wrought by the battle. Both French and American money had gone to it and contribution from the Friendship Train had taken the form of insurance money paid when the Communists had set fire to a Paris warehouse containing some of the food from the train.
Mrs. Myron Cowan, whose husband had done a good job as U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines and Belgium, had been chatting at a cocktail party with Ned Foote, the ambitious Justice Department official who aspired to head the antitrust division. Mrs. Cowan had remarked on the fact that 80 to 90 percent of the press in the country were strongly for the President, to which Mr. Foote had responded by asking what about the Washington Post & Times-Herald—which was the newspaper for which Mr. Pearson worked. Mrs. Cowan reminded that it, too, had supported the President, to which Mr. Foote asked about the Herblock cartoons, saying that they were terrible, that he was a Communist and ought to be suppressed. Mrs. Cowan stated that nothing could be further from the truth, that Mr. Block had won all kinds of prizes and that it was easy to call someone a Communist, which Mr. Block was not.
"Why, he even drew a cartoon of
Vice President Nixon coming up from a sewer," responded Mr.
Foote. Mrs. Cowan said, "That is exactly where he belongs
That's why he eventually had the Plumbers at the White House.
Doris Fleeson discusses the
announcement of Senator Walter George of Georgia that he would not
seek re-election in the fall, indicating that he made his decision
after his closest supporters had informed him that there was a
bandwagon move afoot to former Governor Herman Talmadge
Senator George had received assurances as long as six months earlier that the President would appoint him to a diplomatic post matching his prestige, the intermediary having been the President's golfing companion in Augusta, Robert Woodruff, chairman of Coca-Cola. But the Senator and his small but loyal band of old friends could not believe that Mr. Talmadge represented a genuine threat, and the Senator's feelings were genuinely hurt when his loyal supporters told him of their warnings that he did.
The Senator had never had a personal organization and many of his old friends on whom he depended were dead. It was thus decided that his loyal supporters would take private polls in 100 Georgia counties, finding that former Governor Talmadge could not be easily beaten.
Ms. Fleeson indicates that Mr. Talmadge was both an accomplished demagogue and that which his critics called a man of dangerous ability. He could be charming and was much more talented than his father, former Governor Gene Talmadge, who had been no mediocrity in politics. He had campaigned against foreign aid and for the Bricker amendment to limit presidential power to make treaties, and generally took a strictly nationalist position. But, she indicates, Washington had changed the minds of other ambitious men.
Democrats would lose the wise counsel and vast experience of Senator George, but had gained in the sense that they did not have to restrict the fights they might have made or the policies they might have championed to avoid placing Senator George on the spot in a hard campaign against Governor Talmadge. It had been tacitly understood by the Democrats in the Senate that Senator George was not to be embarrassed if possible. It had been said that the race which had been shaping up between the Senator and Mr. Talmadge was the soft underbelly of the Democratic campaign to recapture the presidency.
Southerners had been urged to sign the "Southern manifesto", criticizing the Brown v. Board of Education decision and vowing to circumvent it, on the ground that they had to help Senator George. But the manifesto was harming the party nationally in pivotal states where the black vote was important, and Republicans cited it as one of the reasons why they were confident that black voters would break to them in 1956.
Politics was always filled with
irony
Senator George had decided to quit the Finance Committee chairmanship to become chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, leaving Finance in equally conservative hands, that of Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia. At the time, Senator George said that he felt he should devote his remaining years to doing what he could to save peace in the world, and had been doing that on the highest level of statesmanship.
His friends bitterly felt that he had suffered at home for that stance and not just from the demagogic appeals made by Mr. Talmadge, akin to those of Senator McCarthy. When the Senator was no longer chairman of the Finance Committee, even though still a member, his friends had suggested that he had lost much of his usefulness to the interests he had so long protected. The Senator's basic problem was that he and his rival had drawn support from the same interests, despite being personally very different, and when those interests had to choose between them, most had gone to former Governor Talmadge, with his future ahead of him.
Ms. Fleeson concludes that the end of the Senate career of Mr. George had its own majesty, as he left at the peak of his influence in contribution and friendship with fellow Senators of both parties. She states that it was a splendid farewell from the "dean" of the Senate, just as had been the case with former Vice-President Alben Barkley, when he had died as a Senator recently.
Incidentally, the above-linked "Meet the Press" program of March 3, 1960, in which El Paso Times reporter, Sarah McClendon, who was a member for decades of the White House press corps—sometimes by accent confused with native North Carolinian transplanted to Portland, Me., May Craig
In any event, the point is that one cannot necessarily judge a book by its cover
A letter writer deplores the lack of adequate peepholes available into the construction site of the Wachovia Bank building, wants to know how people could follow the construction when they had only allowed three for average height persons, wants something done about it.
A letter writer agrees with a previous letter writer and News music critic, Edwin Bergamini, regarding the need for additional performances of local operas, such as Aida of the previous week. He says it would be desirable to make it possible for schoolchildren to attend a special matinee performance at low prices or to admit them for 35 or 50 cents to regular performances. He recalls in his younger days when large groups of students traveled 25 miles in chartered buses to attend performances at the Metropolitan Opera, spending many hours in advance preparation learning the story and background for the performances, finding that such trips had done a lot for many in shaping their later tastes in music. He says that the letters columns had been lately carrying laments over the current craze for rock 'n' roll and suggests that it might be the case that youth had not had enough opportunity to hear anything else, that just as it was good to wean youngsters away from comic strips by exposing them to good literature, it was good "to wean them from comic-strip-type music by exposing them to better."
A letter writer finds that many people in Charlotte may have missed out on some of the best entertainment because the newspaper had failed to review it, that having been a performance of Twelfth Night presented in Shakespearean style and Elizabethan costume at Myers Park High School, so beautifully performed that one could scarcely believe that the actors were teenagers. There had been several small children in the audience who showed no signs of restlessness during the performance, with one four-year old sitting in the front completely entranced throughout the performance. She understands that it might be a policy of the newspaper not to cover high school performances but wonders why only adult groups rated reviews.
A letter writer recommends voting for the best candidates for the State House in the primary of May 28, suggesting a vote for James Vogler, Jack Love and Frank Snepp.
Two letter writers indicate that the results of the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra's 25th anniversary campaign indicated that it would provide the funds necessary to operate the orchestra during the year, and suggests that the contributions of the newspaper had greatly helped the campaign, so thanks it on behalf of the orchestra.
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