Newspapers / The Franklin press and … / May 20, 1954, edition 1 / Page 2
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I dJt t fflmnklm aitit flht MigkUutfrs Jftanroroit Entered at Post Office, Franklin, N. C., as second class matter Published every Thursday by The Franklin Press Franklin, N. C. Telephone 34 WHMAR JONES Editor BOB S. SLOAN Business Manager J. P. BRADY News Editor lOSS BETTY LOU POUTS Office Manager CARL P. CABE Mechanical Superintendent FRANK A. STARRETTE Shop Superintendent DAVID H. 8UTTON Stereotyper CHARLES E. WH1TT1NOTON Pressman SUBSCRIPTION RATES Outside Macon County ^ Inside Macon County One Year T $3.00 One Year $2.50 81E Months 1.75 Six Months 1.75 Three Months 1.00 Three Months 1.00 MAY 20, 1^53 S. W. Mendenhall x Sam Mendenhall was everywhere ? singing in the Methodist church choir, attending a chamber of commerce committee meeting, teaching a Sunday school class, doing a chore for the Rotary club, working for the Boy Scouts, backing some project to improve the public schools, quietly saying an encouraging word to a boy or girl, man or woman, just when encouragement was most needed ? and 24 hours a day thinking out ways and meass to im prove the life of Macon farm folk. Whatever the activity, he seemed to have the knack of always being where he was needed most, right when one more shoulder was all that was necessary to turn the wheel. But with all his activities, Mr. Mendenhall never was too busy to be a human being ? one who could laugh ftong and heartily, one who enjoyed the give and-take of good-natured repartee, and one whose insight and sympathy were both deep and genuine. Sam W. Mendenhall, the man, will be sorely missed. Happily, his chief work, the translation into reality of his vision of a better farm life in Macon County, will live on. Frank Graham For Senator Here's the best suggestion we have seen, or are likely to see, about a successor to Clyde Hoey in the U. S. Senate: "Governor Umstead would now honor his state and serve his country if he would appoint Frank P. Graham to the U. S. Senate to succeed to the late Clyde Hoey." That is the thought of North Carolina's newest newspaper, The Chapel Hill News Leader, which appears for the first time today. +? ""It would be an act", the News Leader com ments, "that would confer distinction on the Um stead administration for two great reasons : "1. To see Frank Graham again in the U. S. Sen ate would relieve North Carolina of the evil con science from which it has suffered ever since Gra ham was defeated for the senate in a -campaign unparalleled in this state for sheer stench. / "2. Frank Graham would bring intelligence back to a senate which has all but lost it." Then Editor Phillips Russell adds what really amounts to a third reason: Moreover, he would bring a first-hand knowledge of Asia and Asians to a government which has been blund ering and bellowing in Asia in a way which has made . the world wonder if America has forgotten that once it was a far-off colony struggling for its rights under a bull-headed king. In dealing with Asia the U. S. has been relying on threats instead of knowledge, and the State Department has been hurling big. block-busting words like "massive retaliation" at fermenting peoples instead of trying to understand their wants and needs. Graham's experiences and contacts in Asia, plus his tact and humility, would help to save his government from further trying to brush back the waves of progress with bayonets and big talk. North Carolina has risen to the point where it can dispense with the mediocrities it has often sent to Washington. Frank Graham would help to raise his state and na tion to a new level. Senator Hoey The life of Clyde Roark Hoey spanned two ? no, perhaps half a dozen ? eras. Senator Hoey carried over into the middle of the ? twentieth century the courtly manners of the Southern gentleman of the middle of the nine teenth. His success story reads like Horatio Alger ? the poor boy from the little Southern town who rose to the United States Senate. It was a success story, incidentally, that could hardly be written today, for what boy of today could hope to win success without even a high school education? And a_ nee at his biography recalls another era, in the South ? one scarce half a century away in years, but incredibly far removed in atmosphere and man ner of living; for when Charles B. Aycock and his supporters were simultaneously freeing the govern ment of North Carolina from Negro rule and re leasing the state from the intellectual Slough of Despond into which it had sunk after Reconstruc tion, young Hoey was editing a newspaper in Shelby. As a matter of fact, he was editing a news paper and studying ? and later, practicing ? law, on the side. How strange that sounds in today's highly specialized age ! Clyde Hoey was not a liberal (in today's sense of the word), but he was a man of integrity. And he probably was not a great man, but he was a good one. i Neither of those statements, about his lack of liberalism and greatness, is completely true, though. There was within him an essential liberalism th^t many of today's professional liberals( and con servatists) lack; for neither Mr. Hoey's natural conservatism nor his cautious progressiveism were tied to labels. An illustration of that is the way he, elected as a conservative, battled for more money for public schools, during his term as governor. And there were elements, at least, ^of greatness about him. The dignity and the force of character that enabled him to conduct the Congressional in vestigation of the "five percenters" in .so impartial and fair a manner as to win nation-wide praise are among the characteristics to be found in all great men. \ Mj. Hoey will be missed by North Carolina. When he*is compared with some of his colleagues in the Senate, it is reasonable to believe he will be missed bv the nation as well. Others' Opinions OMISSIONS OF NOSTALGIA (Greensboro Daily News) This is the time of the year when snugly shod oldsters, their feet feeling the first swells of warmer weather, talk and write nostalgically about the joys of going barefooted as they re member them from years ago. Sure, we remember them too, how we looked forward to tak ing off our shoes and how we begged and nagged and plead and teased until finally sometime around the first week in May necessary permission was given but always with the warning that we'd have to put our shoes back on for Sunday school and church. But let's not permit nostalgia to get the facts about this bare-foot experience wholly out of line with what actually happened. Sure it was fine to feel freedom, to extend and wig gle your toes, to squeeze the cool, wet, soft earth through them on a scorching day, to drag them through the dewey grass of an early morning or to go wading, with pants rolled high, down in the creek that ran through the pasture. But that wasn't all. What about the first few days of cautious, toilsome painful walking over pebbles and rough ground, those sharp rocks that you encountered in the branch, the stumped toes and the stone-bruises, the glass and the nails that meant turpentine and bandages and slowed down or even halted play, the coerced foot-washing every night and the accentuated discomfiture of shoes when you had to don them for Sunday and put them back on permanently, come cool weather and the start of school? Going barefooted is a fine thing to look back to, but hadn't it just as well be honestly admitted that it wasn't all that the nostalgic oldersters have it to be and that the good old days, even to freely wiggling toes and unencased ankles and insteps, had their unpleasantries as well. Personally deponent wouldn't swap, right now, shoeless days for a stumped toe driven well back into its socket or a touchy stone-bruise which just seemed to go on and on and on. And that isn't saying, mind you, that as one walks on down the years, he can't still enjoy the luxury of at times slipping his shoes off and relaxing his sock-clad feet without taking any such chances. QUIT YOURSELVES LIKE MEN ; Who Shall Deliver Us? (EDITOR'S NOTE: Following are excerpts from the new book, "But We Were Born Free" (Bobbs-Merrill Com pany), by Elmer Davis, veteran newspaperman and radio commentator.) As G. F. Hudson has ooserved, "To repudiate faith in free dom is to abandon Western civilization." The founders of this Republic held that faith so firmly that its guarantee was embedded in the very first Amendment to the Constitution, almost as soon as the Constitution was adopted. Yet, lately that faith has been repudiated by many of our fellow citizens, if indeed they ever held It, and In that repudiation lies our greatest danger; it is this rather than any external attack, that might bring us down. We have now reached a point where; if agents of the FBI appear in the hometown of a prominent man of his commun ity and go about asking people questions about him, his neigh bors soon know that he is either on the way to jail or to pub lic office. I seriously doubt if such confusion Is healthy. Judge Learned Hand, In a speech so often quoted that per haps everybody knows It by heart, has said that he believes that that community is already in process of dlsolutlon where each man begins to eye his neighbor M a possible enemy, where nonconformity with the accepted creed Is a mark of dis affection, where denounclatlon takes the place of evidence, and orthodoxy chokes freedom of dissent. If we are not to become such a community, the friends of freedom will have to stand up and fight. What makes Western civilization worth saving Is the free dom of the mind, now under heavy attack ? Including some university graduates ? who have persisted among us. If we have not the courage to defend that faith. It won't matter much whether we are saved or not. I do not think Stalin could have licked us; I do not think that whoever now may be running Russia can lick us. But McCarthy and the spirit of McCarthyism could lick us ? no doubt without intention, but they could ? by getting us to fighting among ourselves like the Romans, by persuading every man that he must keep on looking over his shoulder, to make sure that the man beside him doesn't stab him in the back. There is still enough vitality In Western civilization to save us, unless we insist on disemboweling ourselves. The mutual exhortation of the Philistines before the Battle of Ebenezer was, "Woe Unto us! Who shall deliver us out of the hands of these mighty gods?" But then, realizing that nobody else was going to save them, they said to one another, "Be strong, and quit yourselves like men; and fight." And they did, and delivered themselves. So may we; but only If we quit ourselves like men. This republic was not established by cowards; ^nd cowards will not preserve it. PLAINLY SPOKEN (Wall Street Journal) The maid was helping with last-minute details before the bridge club arrived. She looked up from the silver she was polishing and said with a sigh, "Miss Harriett, I love to social ize, but I can't afford to retaliate." TV INFLUENCE? (Chapel Hill Weekly) In a conversation I had with Mrs. Irene Scruggs day be fore yesterday she said she wasn't sure but she suspected that what he.r granddaughter, Sydney Harvel, said in church last Sunday was the rpsult of the child's having become, even at the tender age of 3'/2, a television addict. Or maybe it was the result of the world's all-around commercilization. Sydney was attending church for the first time and when the plate was passed around she nudged her mother and asked: "What's he sellin'?" Those who dream by' day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. ? Edgar Allan Poe. Poetry Editor EDITH DEADERICK ERSKINE Weaverville, North Carolina THE HERMIT Silently, painfully robbing his soul Of all the beauty that makes our lives whole, He is missing the richness of spirit that glows In the song of a bird and the blush of a rose; / He has shut off his heart from the peace that they bring. And he never will share in the glory of spring. MILDRED S. BURGIN STRICTLY PERSONAL i By WEIMAR JONES CHAPEL HILL. ? From all over North Carolina, school children each spring make edu cational pilgrimages to the state capital. And the highlight of the visit to Raleigh, of course, is a tour of North Carolina's beautiful capitol building. That structure houses, among other things awe-inspiring to school children, the offices of the governor of the state. Wouldn't it give them a thrill if they could see the governor, maybe! or shake hands with him, even! Well, thousands of them do just that! It long has been the custom, when delegations of school chil dren visit the state' capital, for the governor (whoever he ma/ be) to see them, if it can pos sibly be arranged. And to the capitol? and the governor's of fice?they come in droves. E. L. Rankin, Jr., secretary to the governor, told me the other day that in a single day recent ly more than 500 filed through Governor W. B. Umstead's priv ate office, each of them given a handshake by the chief execu tive as they passed his big desk. That has vast advantages for the children: It must do some thing far their egos; and it probably gives them a sense of the nearness of their govern ment, and personalizes It for them. But It must be tough on the governor. To shake hands with and smile at 500 people, even schpol children, would be a try ing ordeal for most of us ? even if we had nothing else to do. And the governor of any Amer ican state has many pressures upon him. Mr. Rankin told me it had come out, at some of the Na tional governors' conferences, that the availability, through the years, of North Carolina governors, amazed executives and members of their staffs from other states. The wholesale reception of school children appears to be unusual. But the difference doesn't stop there. In many states, it is virtually impossible, according to Mr. Rankin, for the average citizen to get in to the governor's office; there are half a dozen secretaries the average man has to see first ? and it's their job to keep him out of the inner sanctum. That, of course, is a part of the responsibility of every priv ate secretary ? to protect his su perior from too much public pressure. In political life, the secretary has another, and con flicting, responsibility; he must avoid angering people. I should imagine the combination would make the job of being private secretary to a governor an al most impossible one. While there undoubtedly must be some self-important persons who arrive ? at any state cap itol ? without appointments, and order the private secretary to "tell the governor I am here" ? while that must happen occa sionally, Mr. Ranktn Is impress ed with the reasonableness of most persons. Sometimes those who arrive without appoint ments simply cannot be crowd ed into a busy day's busy sched ule; every available minute may be taken up by those who have had appointments for days, or even weeks. Yet It is not at all Infrequent, the governor's secretary told (Continued From Page 5) News Making As ft Looks To A Maconite ? By BOB SLOAH In the present campaign for the office of U. S. Senate be- ( tween Alton Lennon and Kerr Scott there Is one basic Issue It seems to me that stands out In the campaign. Will North Carolina be served by Lennon, a man who seems Intent upon bringing the Mc Carthy technique of campaign ing by hint, Innuendo, and par tial quotation to North Caro lina? (in the light of the type of campaign he Is conducting, Lennon's first statement upon reaching Washington as the junior Senator from this state, to the effect that he "would be glad to serve on Senator Mc Carthy's committee" stands out strongly X. Or would North Carolina rather be served by a man who served with outstanding success as Commissioner of Agriculture from 1936 to 1949. From 1949 to 1953 he served with such out standing success as Governor that many who voted for his opponent, Charlie Johnson, are among his strongest supporters now. North Carolinians, remem ber that when Kerr Scott was serving as commissioner of ag riculture and was a part of the administration the members of the powerful "state group" were voting for him year after ye&r. It was only when he challenged some of their leadership that they became so strong against him. ? * * There has been considerable written in the newspapers of North Carolina concerning the so-called secrecy law, but there has been very little information furnished concerning the law or why it was enacted. Because candidates for the legislature are being asked to commit themselves on this issue and ... voters will form opinions on their Answers I think it very vital that everyone should know just what this law says. Frank ly, I think the people are being mislead by the misnomer that is placed on this legislation in calling it a "Secrecy Law." Here is the law: Section 1. G.S. 143-14 is here by amended by adding at the end of said Section the follow ing: Provided, after public or open hearings have been held and opportunity has been afforded all persons interested in any appropriation to be heard there (Continued From Page 5) Do You Remember? (Looking backward through the files of The Press) 50 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK There were slight frosts on Wednesday and Thursday morn ings of last week. Dr. Frank T. Smith has plac ed a neat bar across tl^e outer space in his drug store and in side the bar has arranged a neat ice cream parlor furnish ed with tables, chairs, etc. It is a cozy place to enjoy a dish of the frozen deliciousness. Fresh loaf bread at E. K. Campbell's. 25 YEARS AGO Last week The Press carried a story to the effect that Will Stewart had seen an apple tree blown down by the wind and then placed in its original po sition by the same agency. And now comes Tom Crunkleton, of Highlands, who goes Will one better, in fact several better. According to a story brought to Franklin by John W. Edwards, Mr. Crunkleton claims to have seen a whole orchard blown down and then blown upright again. Mr. Crunkleton failed to j state whether this cultivation resulted in the production of J better fruit. P Don't see how they pulled off the Derby up in Kentucky with out the presence of Lee Barn ard's hat. The next time the fire alarm is turned in it might be a good idea to see how many automo biles can get in the way of the fire engine. 10 YEARS AGO Rev. and Mrs. A. L. Maxwell, Jr., and small daughter, Susan i Meredith, of Raymond, N. H., I were the guests of the Rev. J Carl W. Judy last week, Maxwell was a room-mate of j Mr. Judy at Duke University J Divinity School. Mr. and Mrs. W. V. C. (Top) Dalton, of Oastonla, spent the week-end with Mr. Dalton's parents, Mr. and Mrs. John H. Dalton, at West's Mill.
May 20, 1954, edition 1
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