Newspapers / The New Bern Mirror … / Jan. 30, 1959, edition 1 / Page 1
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Hundreds of millions of people the world over had reason in re cent days to mourn the passing of Hollywood’s greatest showman, Ce cil B. DeMille. For our part, we -remembered with gratitude the in terest he displayed in the Yuletide Revue here. Busy though he was, he took time out when the Revue observed its 20th anniversary three years ago to send a congratulatory tele gram. In a later mail there came an autographed photograph from him. In both instances, DeMille re ferred to himself as a “transplant ed Tar Heel.’’ Never, in his long and illustrious life, did he lose sight of the fact that his boyhood was spent in the Old North State—over at Washing ton. He grew up in a home where there was a distinct awareness of God, and his religious background •was reflected in the spectacular production of such epics as “King Of Kings’’ and “The Ten Com mandments.” It surprised no one who really knew DeMille, when a close friend said quite simply after his funeral that the most distinguished movie maker of all time regarded death as the “beginning of the great ex perience.” How he lived and what he did with his talents had already spoken eloquently of his belief in the soul’s immortality. DeMille was literally born into show business His parents were touring New England in a road show at the time of his birth, but came to North ^jCarolina soon aft erwards. He proved to be the same sort of trouper that his less notable mother and father had been. In fact, before heading for Hoi lywood to pioneer the flickers with Samuel Goldwyn and Jesse L. Las- ky, he was an actor,' a playwright _and a theatrical producer. In ev ery phase of entertainment, he was eminently qualified to speak with authority. All of which emphasizes the tragic mistake that citizens in our neighboring city of Washington made when they permitted . De Mille’s home to be demolished and replaced with a service station There’s nothing wrong with a service station—they are a neces' sary and vital part of our modern evistence—but no business estab lishment of any sort should have supplanted a landmark of such im portance. For years the house was a tour ist home, and countless millions would have paused to visit the, dwelling had it been properly pub licized and utilized. It seems to us that a worthy tribute to DeMille and a lasting attraction of the first magnitude for Washington itself would have been the conversion of his boyhood home into a motion picture mu seum. Not only DeMille but everyone in Hollywood could have furnished a vast store of items for a show place such as this. If only props, costumes and the like from his own productions had been collected for display, the home would have been a fabulous sight to behold. From this tragic mistake, every community can learn a lesson. Cer tainly,-here in New Bern, where we too have been less than careful and' thorough in the preservation of our past, we should take heed and guard against similar errors. We were no less foolish in our failure to protect from the ele ments and the ravages of time the ancient fire fighting equipment now enshrined in the New Bern Firemen’s Museum here. Luckily, it was salvaged in time to be preserved and restored, but that doesn’t minimize the fact that we, were late in evaluating its worth. The way we overlooked its priceless value for years on end is The NEW BERN PUBLISHED WEEKLY IN THE HEART OF EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA 5 Per Copy VOLUME I NEW BERN, N. C., FRIDAY, JANUARY 30, 1959 NUMBER 44 CUTE CAULERS—Cece May and Susan Jones will be knock ing on many a New Bern door next week, when the 1959 Girl Scout cookie sale get under way. So will other local Scouts and Brownies. The drive is due to run until Feb. 18, here and in other towns throughout the Coastal Carolina Council. Profits help to buy equipment and supplies for the youngsters, and provide outdoor opportunities through the Council’s camp development fund. Aside from that, the cookies—chocolate mint, cream-filled sandwich, and butter scotch—are quite tasty. We can hardly wait to make our choice.—Photo by Billy Benners. Top Cop in Nation's Capital One of Our Hometown Boys New Bern’s Johnnie Sullivan has gone a long way in law enforce ment circles since his kid days, when he was a ring leader in the cops and robbers games played among the small fry in Riverside. Not only is he pointed to with pride by fellow officers in the Washington, D. C., police depart ment, but hailed from coast to coast as tops in his field. Johnnie didn’t achieve distinction through political pull. He earned it the hard way—^repeatedly risking his life. As Irish as St. Patrick’s Day, the good-natured New Bernian has al ways had the spunk for which the wearers of the green are famous. He displayed it as an aggressive athlete at New Bern High school, where he starred in football, base ball, and basketball thirty years ago. Then, as now, Johnnie was em thusiastic and never inclined to' call it quits in a bad situation. This will to win got the better of him one afternoon, while the Bruin baseball team was facing one of its bitterest foes at Kafer Park. He was on the mound for the Bears, and at that point it was a scoreless contest. However, the vis iting team had a man on third base. no credit to our intelligence. We too have been indifferent about the destruction of land marks, and now it’s too late to make amends That’s wihy the trage dy of the DeMille home should re main a warning sign to us in days and years to come. Sullivan cut loose with a fast ball that got by the catcher, Francis Ferebee. The ball bounced off the grandstand, and the base runner on third scooted for home plate.: Johnnie, momentarily forgetting it was baseball and not football that he was engaged in, made a flying tackle on the runner, sat on his head, and yelled for Ferebee to throw him the ball for the put-out. terference and the run counted, terference an dthe run counted, but nobody could say that Johnnie wasn’t trying. This sort of determi nation has set the pattern of his life ever since. Yet, his keen sense of humor has endeared him to ev eryone with whom he is associated. To give readers of the Mirror an on-the-spot idea of how he is evalu ated in the Nationa’s Capital, vce requested an official, unbiased re port on him from the Metropolitan Police Department there. Here, as it was written for the Mirror, is that report: Sullivan was sworn into the Me tropolitan Police Department, in Washington, D. C., on October 1, 1940. He was graduated from rook ie school on Jainuary 20, 1941, and assigned as a uniform patrol of ficer in No. 4 Precinct, which cov ers the southwest area of the city. No. 4 Precinct was a particularly hazardous assignment for a young and untried police officer, inas much as this section of the city housed a large proportion of some of our most undesirable citizens, most of whom were well-known to this department. This is the precinct where the young officer learned the hard way; not procedure for proper enforce ment of the law, but the most bas ic law of policing—that is, how to do a good job of policing and still stay alive while doing it. During the early part of 1941, the city was plagued by a series of armed robberies committed against at tendants at gasoline service sta tions. On April 10, 1941, Officer Sullivan was assigned to “cover” a certain gasoline service station in the event an attempt was made to rob it. The attempt was made and this was Officer Sullivan’s baptism by JOHNNIE SULLIVAN fire—a running gunfight with an armed bandit. The bandit made his escape temporarily only to show up a few hours later at a local ho^ital for treatment of gunshot wounds. He was taken into custody at this time and subsequently identified by most of his victims. For this dis play of fearless policing. Officer Sullivan received a commendation from the Board of Commissioners of the District of Columbia. From No. 4 Precinct, Officer Sul livan was transferred to Admini strative Headquarters and assigned to the vice squad. He was ordered into plain clothes and began a hectic assignment dealing with commercmlized vice, to wit, gam bling, sale of unlicensed liquor, and all the attendant evils that go hand in hand with these two vices. In 1944, Det. Sullivan became Det. Sgt. Sullivan and was trans ferred to the Detective Bureau. He held assignments in the Robbery Squad and the Homicide Squad. Perhaps the most widely known case in which he was concerned, and on which he worked diligently for weeks^ was the rape-murder of Dorothy Berrum, a young govern ment girl who, unfortunately, was at the wrong place at the right time and with the wrong man. She was murdered by a marine named McFarland on Haines Point in this city on Oct. 6, 1944. Mc Farland was apprehended and paid fop his crime in the electric chair. Det. Sgt. Sullivan was commended (Continued on Page 6)
The New Bern Mirror (New Bern, N.C.)
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Jan. 30, 1959, edition 1
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