Public Forum

letters sutmittod for PubUc Forum abould be UmifoH to SOO

'Wrts. The editor resoTw the right to edit longer letters.

To the editor:

Farewell to the'Greenville Volunteer Rescue Squad! Since they have already been declared legally dead and the obituary has been publicized, I think it is time the poor fellows had a decent burial. There is no use in the citizens trying to raise the dead. They should be allowed to rest in peace. So lets get on with the funeral.

It is time the city officials were able to turn their eyes away from this trivial matter and onto the major affairs of our city. It is time we, the citizens, realize there is a national crisis in the making that needs our individual attentions; otherwise, we may not be around for a rescue squad to pick up. Finally, it is time the fully competent fire and rescue personnel were able to carry on with their duties without being distracted by subordinate agitators.

TTie deceased, thcmgh functional while alive, will be proven unnecessary after death. So, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, lets man the shovels and make it deep!

Ms. K.M. Nelson

TotheedltOT:

Since the meeting Thursday night, Feb. 14, I have talked at length to a former member of the Rescue Squad who now lives in another state. From this source. I have learned things I havent been able to get from present members.

1 Ours is the only Rescue Squad around which has been subsidized by the city. Farmville, which has a good squad, is funded by donations and money-making projects of the members themselves.

2 Highly trained and qualified personnel do not tike being answerable to a fire chief who knows nothing about rescue work, nor is interested in it.

My belief is this; If the Jaycees who originally started the Rescue Squad, the Junior Womans Club, the Golden Key Club, the Town and Country Senior Citizens and the other organizations in Greenville wilt get together and go to work, we can reorganize our rescue squad and make it an independent organization. There were enough people at the meeting Thursday night to know what the general thinking is. If Dr. Hadley, Mr. Conway or some interested man will call a meeting of the general public to consider ways and means, I believe we can swing it. We could meet at the Court House or one of the schools.

When I see the size of donations given ECU, which doesnt need it half as badly as we need the rescue squad, I believe the people of this area can swing it.

Today two different women told me of calling the rescue squad to pick up heart patients and they didnt come. Both took the patients by car to the hospital. This will happen much more frequently as things now are.

To totally destroy a championship rescue squad of 25 years experience because a League of Municipalities recom-I mends it is childish beyond words. It doesnt make sense.

The DalJy Reflector, Greenville, N.C.Sundiy, February 24, IMOA-5

As I Recall It

Executed, He Was Born Fifty Years Too Soon

Elizabeth Savage Also ran for Mayor

To the editor;

While approving 100 percent the idea behind the designation of parking spaces for the handicapped, I also note some problems and question if all has been weighed well.

In the decidedly inclement weather of late, I have had occasion to note, while walking some distance in the snow, rain and ice, how many spaces for the handicapped were empty. It triggered the memory of the Christmas shopping season when cars were parked in fire lanes and other spots not for parking, while several handicapped spaces remained empty. I am physically able to walk these distances, but there are people (i. e. the elderly, pregnant women, mothers with infants in arms, those temporarily injured, etc.) who are not technically handicapped who are really being inconvenienced when spaces are available.

I have no suggestions for bettering the usage, but there must be a problem. Either those entitled to use these spaces are in doubt about their eligibility or the number of reserved spaces is too great for the population using them.

Linda B.Gurganus Grenville

To the editor: ^

In reference to your editorial, Target Awaiting FBI, may I suggest that you should have made a more thorough investigation of your facts before printing such an editorial. If you had done your homework, you would have discovered that the FBI is authorized by Congress to investigate approximately 200 violations of federal laws. Federal drug laws are NOT within the investigative jurisdiction of the FBI. This violation is under the Department of the U. S. Treasury, and specifically, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).

In view of the above, the FBI would have been in violation of the laws of the United States.

The FBI does have jurisdiction involving fraud against the government (ABSCAM) and interstate transportation of obscene material (BRILAB).

I think that you will agree that both of these are important violations of federal laws that go to the heart of Americas legal and moral systems.

Thomas W. Parrish

Editors note: The editorial, Tar^ Awaiting FBI, pubiished Monday dealt with illegal drug activity ducted by organized crime. A sp(Aesman fw the FBIs Charlotte office said it is not a violation of the law fw the FBI to be involved with the investigation of organized drug violations. Indeed, the FBI has jurisdiction in any organized criminal activity, including dnigs. However, the spokesman added that the DEA would have co-jurisdicti(Hi in cases involving illegal traffic in drugs. The Drug Enforcement Administration is not an agency of the Treasury Dq)artment, but a Justice Department agency, just as is the FBI, he added.

By Noel Yancey

Police in Raleigh called an elusive burglar the *Grey Mouse. In Durham, he was known as The Eel. Officers in the two cities blamed him for more than 100 burglaries that had terrorized citizens of Raleigh and Durham for several months back in 1937.

But on Dec. 29, 1937, the police got the break for which they had been , praying. A man asked a teller in a Durham bank to cash an $80 Liggett and Myers Tobacco Co. dividend check. When the bank teller asked the man for proof of identification, he said he would return the next day with a friend who could identify him.

When the man returned the next day, he found a Durham detective awaiting his arrival. That's how officers came to arrest Arthur Morris, a short, slight black man who looked younger than his 25 years.

On Sept. 1, 1939, Morris was put to death in the gas chamber at Central Prison in Raleigh for first degree burglary at the home of Dr.W.B. Dewar in a fashionable Raleigh neighborhood the night of Dec. 28, 1937. Morris was accused of entering the house through an open downstairs window, of making his way upstairs to an enclosed porch where Dewar, his wife and infant

daughter were asleep and of removing Dewar's wallet from a pair of trousers. The wallet contained two dimes and the L&M dividend check.

In a way, Morris was born 50 years too soon because the Legislatuie in 1974 changed the law so that first degree burglary breaking into a house or room where people are sleeping no longer carries the death sentence. Morris' crime is now punishable by life imprisonment.

Morris' two court-appointed lawyers, J.C. Little and W. Brantely Wombie, appealed his death sentence to the state Supreme Court. They objected to instructions Judge W.C. Harris gave the jury to the effect that it could either find Morris guilty of the capital offense or it could acquit him. Harris had reiterated this when the jury asked if it could find Morris guilty of second degree burglary.

But Morris lost his appeal. In upholding Harris' instructions to the jury, the high court went on to defend imposition of the death penalty for first degree burglary as a means to "protect the habitation of men, where they repose and sleep, from meditated harm.''

While Gov. Clyde R. Hoey had the Morris case under consideration, he

Doris Reaches Beyond Small Truths Of Living

BRUNSWICK, Ga. - You havent seen the complete me yet.

Chauncey Childs, the tormented but indomitable protagonist of Doris Buchanan Smiths book Tough Chauncey, read that line in a magazine profile of singer Johnny Cash. Chauncey fell on those words as a lifeline that tugged him toward the help he desperately needed.

A hardened criminal? Alcoholic? Disturbed adult? Chauncey is none of these, hes a grammar school kid.

The words Chauncey found in a magazine form a recurring, ongoing theme in Smiths fiction written for young people. No namby-pamby kids, these; no happily-ever-after tales of another time. Each character is a child of the 70s and each, in a different way, is as challenged as Chauncey.

There is the boy in A Taste of Blackberries whose playmate dies, who learns to live with grief and the guilty feeling that he might have saved his friend.

In Kick a Stone Home, Sara Janes parents are divorced, and she has to build a relationship with FW -Fathers Wife.

Stephanie - straight as a South Georgia pine tree -finds the easy, comfortable rhythms of her life changing with the advent of adolescence in Dreams and Drummers.

Each character must find a way to live with a handicap -physical, emotional, or both. Each is working his or her way toward the complete me.

And so, perhaps, is Doris Smith.

I would be dishonest if I said 1 didnt have a sense of

mission. I want to convey to children that, yes, life is tough, but you can still grow up and live it as a cockeyed optimist,

which I am, if you can accept and deal with the tough aspects.

Smith, who looks back on her own upbringing as narrow and insulated, feels that this honest look at reality was not readily available in books when she was a child haunting the local library. Often, it was not available at home, either, in a time when many parents found it difficult to speak frankly to their children, and some even worked overtime at protecting them from the slings and arrows that inevitably caught up with the kids anyway.

And when the arrows hit, the kids werent prepared. Smith feels. I know that what I was told at home amounted to small truths, she says, and I was too shy to talk over problems even with girlfriends. In this sense, much of the impetus for Smiths fiction springs from her own childhood. This is especially evident in her character Sara Jane, a tomboy with divorced parents, as was the author.

Today, Smith niakes a conscious effort to stretch beyond the small truths, both with her fictional characters and with her own family of five aged 18 to 23 plus 22 other children to whom the Smiths were foster parents.

Frm this special kinship with children of varied backgrounds, Smith stored away impressions, ideas, insights into the problems of growing up - all fodder for future books. I found that the feelings are the same from

received a flood of letters, telegrams and petitions asking that his life be spared. Those appealing for clemency included the Dewars, whose house he had burglarized.

Mrs. Dewar told a reporter in an interview several years ago that her husband and her father Dr.

Wallace G. Riddick, a former president of N.C. State University went to see Edwin Gill, who was then paroles commissioner, with a plea that Morris' death sentence be com-mqted to life imprisonment.

"My father told us, T would hate (Continued on pageA-7)

EVENTS COULD MAKE IT JUST SO MUCH SMOKE!

generation to generation, she says. But the language changes."

Her thoughts began to go on paper wnen ner youngest 1 went off to school a dozen years ago. At first I wrote three hours a day, she says. Today, most of the children are on their own and, one way or another, 1 work at my writing all the time. She is beginning to experiment with what can be the great advantage of a writing career - its portability - by working at her home in Brunswick on the Georgia coast in the cooler months and retreating to a primitive cabin at Cherry Mountain, North Carolina, in the summer where she canoes, walks three to four hours at a stretch, and identifies with Thoreau.

Response to her work has been rewarding, with childrens book awards and invitations to speak flowing in from around the country. But perhaps most rewarding of all has been the response from the readers themselves -poignant letters and earnest art work depicting favorite characters.

She communicates so effectively with children, perhaps, because she diligently follows her own best advice: do not preach. The message must be invisible, she says. Children simply wont accept didactics from their books. They have to believe in the characters and their ability to solve their own problems.

-VIVIAN HOLLEY

free-lance Roiwell, Ga.

FACING SOUTH welcomes readers comments and writers contributions. Write P.O. Box 230 Chapel Hill. N.C. 27514.

By GAIL MICHAELS

It's Terminal Guilt vs. Unquestioning Kindness

One morning after depositing Meg in her classroom, I encountered the bedraggled mother of one of Megs schoolmates as she was fastening her infant son into his carseat.

You look awful, I said with my characteristic tact.

I feel awful, she said. The baby kept me up all last night for the third time in a row, and who did I take it out on? His brother. As if the poor child doesnt have enough to put up with am.

There it goes again, terminal guilt. Its the rallying point of our entire generation. Granted, we parents experience a variety of emotions when dealing with our children - love, hostility, pride, humiliation, tenderness, fury, delight, despair, to name a few but always just under the surface, like a mole in an azalea bed, lurks that festering sense of inadequacy.

Its a wonder we feel as good as we do considering that, in the opinion of most experts, we cant do an^hing right. If we swat a child on the bottom, were guilty of child abuse. If we let him by with a lecture, were guilty of permissiveness. If we expect him to excel, were guilty of pushing. If we expect him to

meander along at his own pace without any interference, were guilty of neglect. And Heaven forbid that we ever puncture the bubble of our unconditional positive regard.

Of course, handling guilt is easier when the child is more imperfect than the parent. Children who are obnoxious, sassy, stubborn, whining, hostile, and demanding, as they usually are between the ages of two and 18, give parents the ammunition with which to rationalize their actions. But when a mother yells at a child who happens at the moment to be majoring in sweetness and light, she feels as if shes just run over the family pet.

Meg unfortunately, has been in the process of perfecting the cherub act since Christmas. I realize that the task of living peacefully with me during pregnancy is like maintaining the correct water level in the core of a nuclear reactor, but Meg is nothing less than obsequious.

Instead of meeting every criticism with the usual string of self-justification that would awe a Maryland politician, she merely shrugs her shoulders and sighs, "If you say so.

And if this isnt maddening enough, the child who heretofore thought that please was an emergency word designed to accompany only last ditch efforts now veils her requests in this manner: I think Daddy would like some hot chocolate, and if it wouldnt be too much trouble, sweet Mommy, please, I would like some too, please.

For someone whose temper at the best of times is as uneven as a handkerchief hem, this lollipop diplomacy is unbearable.

My guilt was becoming so overwhelming at one point that I finally asked Meg, Have I been so mean lately that youre frightened of me?

Of course not. Mommy, she said, patting my back reassuringly. "I know you love me, but ladies with babies inside have to be cranky. They just cant help it.

If the guilt doesnt kill me first, the kindness will.Evans-Novak...

(Continued hvmpa^A-4)

fusive praise for Brezhnev today.

Hammers political agility was shown by his jump from Richard Nixon (activities which led his guilty plea to a Watergate-connected misdemeanor) to Jimmy Carter. At the height of political attacks on Carters Panama Canal treaties, Hammer came to the presidents rescue. Rising dramatically from his front-row seat at a Nov. 2, 1977, briefing of a blue-ribbon committee backing the treaties. Hammer pledged $50,000 on behalf of myself and my company... to finance a pro-ratification publicity campaign.

Hammer is described insiders as too shrewd to try backdoor White House lobbying with Hamilton Jordan, Carters chief of staff who Lecame a Hammer en

thusiast during their fight together for the canal treaties. Hammers lobbying efforts to save his lucrative contract have been directed mainly at the Soviet Embassy in Washington. He has explained at length to Ambassador Anatoliy Dobrynin that if Moscow does not start pulling troops out of Afghanistan soon, U.S.-Soviet trade may not recover in this century.

Such a stunning Soviet reversal is completely ruled out in the foreseeable future, assuring a continuing U.S. trade clampdown that unquestionably weakens the Soviet Union. The irony is that when Dr. Hanuners phosphates are included in the clampdown, it will be not to show President Brezhnev a grand strategy to deal with agression. It will only show political expediency in the farm belt.

On The Trail With Candidate Ronald Reagan

By JAMES J. KILPATRICK

WOLFEBORO, N. H. - For Ronald Reagan, the day began in an Andover motel at 7 in the morning. It ended back at the same motel 14 hours later. In those 14 hours Reagan shook a thousand hands, smiled a thousand smiles and maybe won 200 votes he wouldnt have had otherwise. It was an altogether profitable day.

, This was Sunday the 17th, nine days before the New Hampshire primary. It was one of New Hampshires better days. Eight to 10 inches of snow had fallen on Saturday, ending 30 days of disaster for the tourist industry and reviving hopes that something might yet be salvaged from a terrible season. Now on Sunday the sun was shining gloriously; a baby-blue sky was strewn with baby pillow clouds. Thanks to the most efficient road-clearing operation in the country, the highways were miraculously clear. Thus Reagan went abroad in the land.

He had not expected such a Sunday exertion. Back in November, when a New Hampshire schedule was under preparation, Reagan was far ahead in the polls. At that ^ point George Bush of Texas was merely

George Who? Howard Baker of Tennessee was then running one point ahead of None Of The Above. Reagan had a solid organization in New Hampshire, left over from the 1976 primary when he had trailed Gerald Ford by fewer than 1,600 votes out of 112,000 cast. Whos to worry?

The Iowa caucuses changed all that. Now Reagan is running scared for the Republican nomination. He needs a convincing win over Bush next Tuesday 10 points or more-and the betting around the state is that he wont get it. My own guess, based on nothing more scientific than the seat of my pants, is that Reagan will win perhaps 39 percent. Bush 38, with the remaining 23 percnt divided among Baker, John Anderson, Phil Crane, John Con-nally and Bob Dole, more or less in that order. If this is even roughly accurate, the tail-enders will throw in their hands; Anderson will keep playing spoiler for a while, and Reagan. Bush and Baker will take their teams to the next big test in Florida. None of the three can yet be counted absolutely out or absolutely in, no matter what happens in New Hampshire.

Reagan will have this satisfaction, willy-nilly: He is giving New Hampshire his best shot. His appearance this past Sunday at Kingswood Regional High School provides a microcosm of this whole campaign. If youve covered one such rally, youve pretty well covered them all.

The high school, a lemon-cream concoction built in 1964, sits on the outskirts of Wolfeboro. a two-traffic light town halfway up the eastern side of the state. The town is mostly white frame homes, green-shuttered; it breathes New England charm, and here and there it breathes too hard: Ye Olde Dime Store on Main Street. In 1976 the town went heavily for Reagan over Ford. Building on that base, on only three days notice, local chairman Russell C. Chase was able to turn out 650 persons for the Sunday rally.

Reagans caravan arrived at 12:38, just eight minutes late. With wife Nancy looking lovely at his side, Reagan warmed up the crowd with a minutes worth of palaver, and then gave them seven minutes of solid stuff his record as governor of California, a pitch in favor of voluntary prayers in public

schools, a crack at the long form to come from the census takers (tell em your bathtubs are none of their business), and a nice peroration on the need to recover Americas powerful image in the world.

Reagan then fielded seven questions from the floor, dealing with nuclear power, nuclear wastes, registration for a draft, defense needs, fiscal policy, the situation in Yugoslavia and what about Nancy? Would she wear the pants in the White House? (No, said Reagan with a gTin, and-she wouldnt go to Cabinet meetings, either).

He answered all the questions briefly and responsively, saying nothing he had not said a good many times before, and by l:io the caravan had moved out toward Conway and Littleton. He may have dispelled some of the concern that hangs over his age. for he certainly didnt look 69. He looked slim and trim and fit as a whippet, and when he kissed Nancy goodbye in the lobby - she was off to New York to promote her new book - he had the matrons googly-eyed. So it goes on the traU, and Julys convention in Detroit now seems not so far away.