Newspapers / The Transylvania Times (Brevard, … / March 10, 1975, edition 1 / Page 7
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If It’s Good For Transylvania County, • The Times Will Fight For It. VOl. 88 — No. 20 THE TRANSYLVANIA TIMES A State And National Prize-Winning Home Town Newspaper SECTION B BREVARD, N. C.. MONDAY, MARCH 10, 1975 P1TR1.ISHED SEMI-WEEKLY Bfealth Care Cost Tops $1 Million IBlue Cross and Blue Shield ol North Carolina paid benefits totaling $1,032,901 to providers of health care in Transylvania County in 1974, the nonprofit health care plan announced today. c oThe figure includes payments to hospitals, physicians, skilled nursing facilities and home health agencies. Health care institutions in Transylvania County that received payments for regular Blue Cross and Blue Shield claims or government programs administered by the Plan include: Transylvania Community Hospital, Tran sylvania Community Hospital Skilled Nursing Facility, and Home Health Services of Transylvania Community Hj>spital. Claims paid on behalf of Blue Cross and Blue shield of Nprth Carolina subscribers last year totaled $198.4 nfillion, compared to $158.5 million in 1973. An additional $170.9 million was paid through Federal government health care programs ad ministered by the Plan, up from 1973’s total of $132.2 million. The Plan administers the hospital portion of Medicare aftd the Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Uniformed Services (CHAMPUS), which covers dependents of United States military personnel. Including regular Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina subscribers and £icipants in the two irnment programs, the serves more than 2.2 million Tarheels. It is the 13th U.J^st Blue Cross Plan and the 12th largest Blue Shield PJan in the nation. County Tax Supervisor To New Post Roger Owen, Transylvania County Tax Supervisor, has resigned his $10,200 a year job, to accept a position in Kansas. In his new post, he will be directing the work of 11 county tdx supervisors in that state, according to Commission Chairman Bill Ives. Owen has served the county since. December of 1972, or jUst over two years. May Lou Allison of the tax si ipervisors office was ex p seted to be named acting tax s tpervisor by the com rrfissioners. New Recreation Director Bill Alverson, right, shares laugh with Recreation Assistant James B. Eure during meeting in Brevard on Saturday. Mr. Alverson will assume his post on April 1. New Recreation Director Named Transylvania County has employed a new recreation director to take over the duties on April 1, it has been an nounced by Bill Ives, chair man of the Board of Com missioners. William B. “Bill” Alverson III, currently recreation director in Madison County, will assume the post vacated by Craig Freas early in February, according to Mr. Ives. Mr. Alverson was in Brevard Saturday going over records of the Transylvania Department of Parks and Recreation and “getting the feel” of the position, he said. The 27-year-old Union, S.C. native holds a B.S. Degree-in Recreation and Parks Ad ministration from Clemson University. Having served in Madison County since Sept. 1, 1974 (he was Madison’s first recreation director), Mr. Alverson for three years was beach ac tivities director at Calloway Gardens, Pine Mountain, Ga., and prior to that was recreation program director at Camp Springs in Lancaster, S.C. He is married to the former Peggy Reynolds, and the couple has one child. He is a Baptist and a veteran of the U.S. Navy. The Alversons will reside at Apartment 3-C, French Broad Apartments. Hector Brown Gets 1 Year In Prison Hector Brown, 27, on Thursday was given a one year active sentence in prison on a misdemeaner charge of breaking and entering at the old Brevard Elementary School. District Court Judge Ladson Hart passed sentence on Brown. The young man still faces charges of breaking and en tering and larceny at Pisgah Forest School and Temple Baptist Church at Pisgah Forest, and charges of assault with intent to commit rape on a 16-year-old girl in Brevard. Charged with Brown in the Pisgah Forest and Temple Church robberies are Jeff Allen Finley, 19, and Richard Allen Abrams, 21. Both are under bond in the case. Transylvania’s Public Payroll Relatively Small (Special to the Times) NEW YORK, Mar. 8 - The number of Transylvania County residents on local government payrolls appears to be relatively small. Compared with other communities across the country, the proportion of local people so employed is below average. This is brought out in the latest survey of public em ployment, conducted by the Department of Commerce and entitled “Compendium of Public Employment.” Such studies are made every five years. The figures for local areas, recently released, include all persons on the payrolls of counties, townships, municipalities, school districts and special districts. Federal and state employees are excluded. Special interest attaches to the findings because public employment, at all levels, has been playing an ever ‘‘Sty Of The Blind Pig’ On Saturday At Jenkins (After watching one of the E rehearsals for next ay’s production of “The The Blind Pig”, one left to ponder the igly invisible rules by people and history often ;e on each other. play, which is to be ted at Mary C. Jenkins Cbmmunity Center Saturday n ght, March 15, deals with a period that has been been s rangely, and unaccountably, nsglected; the period just b (fore the beginning of the c vil rights movement in the i id-50's, and the effect of that i ovement’s beginnings on the a rerage black person. Average people, after all - 1 a they white or black, seldom t ink of the events of their b lives as being of fitorical importance. |As an old Assyrian proverb joes: History is for wstorians; living is for liople. Having grown up in lie early 50’s, and being at feat time privy to the thoughts Fat least, the expressed feoughts • of many Mack people, one would have been struck with the knowledge that many blacks at that time were more annoyed by the boat-rocking of Mr. King and his fellows down in Mon tgomery than they were anything else. Looking back, it’s easy to imagine that most people were hard put to see that anything dramatic or of lasting importance would come out of a bus boycott. “The Sty Of The Blind Pig” deals with the lives of one family during the summer that the Montgomery boycott was begun by Martin Luther King. While slight reference is made to the events in Mon tgomery (after all, the play takes place in Chicago, and Chicagoans are notably un concerned about anything that happens anyplace else), the changes that take place in the lives of the protagonists of the play are a harbinger of changes to come. Fittingly, the play does not indicate whether these changes are to be good or bad. “The Sty Of The Pig” is being presented by the Community Improvement Organization (CIO), with aid from the Department of Recreation and Brevard Little Theatre. Barbara Ann Cash plays the lead role of Alberta; Jacob Aubrey Norman (Duro Timi Muyiwa) as the street singer, Blind Jordan; Linda Gash as Alberta’s mother, Weedy Warren; and Frederick Gordon as her uncle ‘Doc’ Sweet, a drinkin’, gamblin’, sportin’ man-about town. Linda Gash, of course, will be remembered for award winning acting job in BLT’s “A Raisin In The Sun” two years ago, in which Frederick also Appeared Barbara Cash and Jacob Norman are both making their debuts. Direction is by Carle Wilson, and make up was designed by Jeanette Austin. increasing role in the economy, due to its growth and its rising cost. The report lists a total of 477 full-time workers or their equivalent on local payrolls in Transylvania County at the time the survey was made. Part-time workers were converted to their full-time equivalent to permit com parison with other com munities. In terms of population, this total amounts to 23 employes for every 1,000 local residents. This is less, proportionately, than is reported for most parts of the United States, the average being 32 employees per 1,000 population. In the State of North Carolina the ratio is 27 per 1,000. As for the payroll costs in Transylvania County, they are somewhat lower, relatively, than they are in most localities. They come to ap proximately $13.51 per local resident per month. This compares with $25.16 per capita at the national level and with $18.29 in the State of North Carolina. According to reports from the Department of Labor and the Census Bureau, public employment has been zooming in the United States in the last ten years. Most of it has been changed at the state and local levels. The Federal job force has not changed significantly. The total number of government employes rose from 9.7 million to 14.1 million in the 10 years. More than half of the rise was in the field of education. Your Government At Work Clerk Of Court Looks At Laws, Old And New BY DOROTHY OSBORNE Times Staff Writer A law degree would be helpful to Marian McMahon, Transylvania County’s clerk of court. She operates the office, overseeing the work of an assistant clerk and three deputy clerks, with lots of study, hard work and common sense. “Things are so busy,” the plump, gray-haired mother of two grown sons said. “The phone’s ringing and people are wanting things. You have to be pretty well up on what you have to do.” She and the others in the office are constantly checking the laws, studying the new ones, to see what is required in the various business phases of the office. Mrs. McMahon’s position is an elected one, with her salary coming from the state. Transylvania County supplies the office space. Primarily, the work in volved being “custodian of records of the courts and magistrates’ records. “All records are public record except juvenile records. We receive and collect court costs and fines, child support payments, settlements in judgments, criminal and civil. We make disbursements to the proper persons. “If claims are settled out of court, we have to witness it. We record minutes of various courts, docket liens, lis pen dens (to notify persons that action is pending) and judgments. "We prepare the calendars. We have calendar meetings with the local bar association and determine cases that should Kc calendared," she said. Criminal court is scheduled by the chief district judge. Cases are calendared at times that are as convenient as possible for officers involved, with an effort to group all cases of one officer, so he won’t have to spend the entire week in court. “We need some officers on the job,” she said, smiling. The office issues warrants and takes waivers of plea. A person can pay court costs and not go to court on some traffic tickets, she said. “We issue right many search and arrest warrants for the sheriff’s department. We certify all bonds.” Juvenile hearings are held every five or six weeks. Twenty cases will be heard at the next hearing, and 19 were hears last time. “That’s a tremendous increase,” she said. TYPES Four kinds of children come before juvenile court, she said. These are delinquent, undisciplined, neglected, or dependent. The majority of the cases, she said, are un disciplined children, the runaways and truancy cases. They have a few larcenies, she said. Other duties include holding hearings to declare people incompent in order for a trustee or guardian to be appointed; they probate wills and appoint executors and administrators for the deceased; they audit the accountings of the executors and administrators; they file adoption papers; they issue interlocutory decrees and final orders; they give oaths of various types of appointed and elected people; they hold Slerk of Court Marian McMahon, sitting, Assistant Carolyn G. McCall. hearings to change names of people; they process ap plications for passports; they appoint substitute trutees. They hold special proceedings for adoptions, abandonment, land division, disputes on boundaries. “Claim and delivery civil action is becoming more and more popular,” she said. This happens, for example, when someone purchases a house and an oral agreement is made that certain items of furniture will be left in the house; and then, when the seller moves out, he moves the furniture with him. BOND In such cases, a bond is set so that the property won’t be destroyed. Then Mrs. Mc Mahon holds a hearing and makes a decision concerning the furniture. “If they don’t like the decision I make, they can appeal to a district or superior court judge. So far,” she said, “there have been no appeals." Mrs. McMahon also holds hearings concerning com mitting persons to Broughton Hospital. It used to be that a hearing had to be held before they were taken, she said. But now they can be taken— emergency treatment is needed in many cases, she said — and then be returned to the county within 10 days for a hearing. The office is open to the public from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Frieay. But her work does not end with the close of the office. She is on call at all times, and frequently is called during the night and on weekends for such emergencies. VETERAN It’s all a part of the job — one that she knew something about before she ran for office. She had two years experience as assistant clerk, she said, working first with R. H. Caldwell after his election in 1966. Following his death about 10 months later, J. O. Wells, now deceased, was appointed. In 1968, Mr. Wells did not want to run, and Mrs. McMahon did and was elected for a two year term. She was re-elected in 1970 and 1974 for four-year terms. She was the only woman and only Republicn who was elected in the 1974 election in Transylvania County. A native of Buncombe County, Mrs. McMahon and her husband, Claude moved to Transylvania County in July 1951. His father, now retired, was pastor of Little River Baptist Church. In fact, they were married in 1946 in the Little River parsonage by his father. Mr. McMahon, an employe at Olin’s film division is on medical retirement. Their older son, Terry, works at Olin and is choir director at Grace Baptist Church. He studied at Brevard College, Carson-Newman and at Western Carolina University. Danny is a freshman at Western Carolina, studying drums and voice. “He’s batching and learning to cook. If he doesn’t learn music, maybe he’ll learn to take care of himself,” his mother said. TEACHES She is also musical. She is organist at Little River Baptist Church and also teaches a Sunday School class. She is a member of the Business and Professional Women’s Club, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Order of the Eastern Star. “I like to sew and I like to cook. I enjoy baking things like cookies to bring to work. “I love doing for others, and this job affords all the op portunity, if you take ad vantage of it,” she said. She tries to explain to everyone who comes to her exactly what is involved in what they are signing or doing. She wants them to understand what they are doing and what it means. AIDES The others in the office are Carolyn G. McCall assistant clerk, who has worked with Mrs. McMahon since she was first elected; Dottie Hutchins, deputy clerk, since April 1966, who works with the criminal division; Kay Hunter, deputy clerk who works in the civil division; and Diann Hall, deputy clerk, who works in the bookkeeping division. Although the deputy clerks have responsibility for certain areas, each of them knows the others’ work, so that the office can run smootly. Mrs. McMahon is pleased with the operation of the ofice. “We learn by doing, and with qualified help, it has enabled us to do the work as efficiently as we have. The auditor said it was one of the best in the state. “I am proud of it.” Traveling Vets Better Check VA If you’re a veteran with a yen to travel or establish residence overseas, you’d better check first with the Veterans Administration. That adivce comes from VA Regional Office Director H. W. Johnson who explained that under the law, VA cannot provide certain benefits in foreign countries. Knowing that benefits are available could become crucial to a veteran’s well-being Johnson stressed, especially if medical problems arise. Before traveling outside the U. S., a veteran should obtain a statement of his service connected disabilities from the VA office which maintains his medical records. In an emergency, an eligible veteran is entitled to VA-paid hospitalization for service connected conditions. The veteran or a representative must present the VA statement to the embassy or consular office within 72 hours after hospitalization begins, together with an application for medical benefits. Notification of outpatient treatment must be made within 15 days. VA care for veterans with both service-connected and nonservice - connected disabilities is available only in' the Philippines at the Veterans Memorial Hospital in Manila. As in the United States, however, veterans with nonservice-connected disabilities are eligible on a space available basis, and only if they are unable to; defray expenses. Education benefits are; available overseas to eligible; veterans, eligible wives,! widows and children pursuing! degrees in VA-approved foreign schools. Compensation and pension checks also may be mailed to; most overseas addresses but GI home loans are not available to veterans living in foreign countries. To insure prompt receipts of checks, veterans traveling in foreign countries should maintain stateside mailing addresses, where possible. , f t ■ . . M
The Transylvania Times (Brevard, N.C.)
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March 10, 1975, edition 1
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