Newspapers / Daily Tar Heel (Chapel … / Nov. 8, 1977, edition 1 / Page 6
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6 The Daily Tar Heel Tuesday. November 8, 1977 An editorial In Chapel Hill I TV Cohen f - c fi ll Silver I nl ' Kawalec Thorpe Today is election day. It is a day for exhortations about the democratic process and one's responsibility to take part in our system of government so dearly won more than 200 years ago. And it is a day for denunciation of apathy. But most of all election day is a day of failure. After all the flag waving and prodding is over, only 30 percent will have trod to the polls and done the duty to which every citizen pays lip service. Although we believe in all the altruistic and noble reasons to vote, we offer you today a practical reason to join the enfranchised 30 percent. It's a rather simple rule you've heard many times and in the case of politics it is painfully true: If you don't look out for yourself, then nobody else will. Translated into the vernacular of the political scientist the old adage means that our system guarantees you the opportunity to be represented, but it does not guarantee you " representation. You have to take care of that yourself. Why should you want to be represented? Because the water you drink, the buses you ride, the parties you give and the looks of the town you live in can all be affected significantly by the representatives who will be elected today. In Carrboro, the issues are buses, fair distribution of publicservices and the right of students to vote and participate in town government. In Chapel Hill, there is the noise ordinance, buses again, voter rights once more, parking problems, the ongoing war between the University community and town residents. In both towns, there are growing pains that must be soothed and long-range plans that must be drawn. The 30 percent who vote today are the citizens who will be represented in both towns. With the extreme factionalism that divides the towns University community versus other town dwellers, permanent versus temporary residents, liberals versus conservatives, blacks versus whites in some cases - no one can afford to spurn his or her right to be heard. Both towns need qualified, open:minded and responsive leaders to heal the wounds and nurture the growth of the two burgeoning communities. The Daily Tar Heel has put forth a group of candidates we feel can both adequately represent the needs of the University community and the town as a whole. We feel these candidates can provide a healing influence and a positive leadership for the two towns. In Chapel Hill, we endorse Gerry Cohen, Marvin Silver, Bill Thorpe and Bev Kawalec for the four open seats on the Board of Aldermen. In Carrboro, we recommend Bob Drakeford for mayor and Doug Sharer, Braxton Foushee, Sherwood Ward and. Nancy White for aldermen. All of these well-quaiified candidates have shown concern for students, faculty, staff and townspersons alike. 'We realize these individuals are not the only good candidates, but we feel they are the best. Whether you agree or not, we hope you will make your opinion known today. Not just for the town and the good of the democracy, but for yourself too. After all, they are your representat.ves or at least they will be it you make use of your franchise Drakeford today. In Carrboro ( - K A 111 " Sharer Foushee 4" i" . '0"i,i X Ward White Greg Porter Fili! or Ben Cornelils, Managing Editor Ed Rankin, Associate Editor Lou Bilionis, Associate Editor Lal ra Scism, University Editor Elliott Potter. City Editor Chuck Alston, State and National Editor Sara Bullard, Features Editor Ch E5siin, Arts Editor Gene Upchusch. Sports Editor Allen Jernigan, Photography tdttor 85th year of editorial freedom On today's ballot: referenda serious business for state When North Carolina voters go to the polls today they will decide on two bond issues and five amendments to the state constitution. And while most voters fail to take referenda seriously, the questions on the ballot this year highway and water bonds, succession, balanced budget, insurance, utility and homestead exemption amendments are serious business and merit thorough consideration. The major amendment on the Nov. 8 ballot, of course, is gubernatorial succession. The amendment would allow the state's governors and lieutenant governors to run for second consecutive terms of office. Public debate over succession has raged for nearly a year, and there is no need to recount the arguments for and against the amendment. This newspaper has supported gubernatorial succession throughout its most recent revival. We feel that North Carolina's chief executives have been lame ducks long enough. Succession is a must for this state. A crucial issue for the future of North Carolina is the balanced budget. The state has long adhered to the principle in its statutes, but as it now stands the law quickly may be rewritten in times of emergency. The constitutional amendment, w hich requires the General Assembly to balance the budget, would lock the state in a dangerous position. Although it is in vogue today to oppose deficit spending, the future is difficult to predict. There are instances where deficit spending is both beneficial and necessary for example, in times of economic recession or severe natural disaster. We think it unwise to endorse the balanced-budget amendment, and encourage every voter to opt against it. Those who support a constitutionally mandated balanced budget may live to regret it. The homestead exemption amendment would allow a surviving spouse of either sex to receive the benefits of the state's homestead exemption namely, that a homestead does not retain liability for the debts of a deceased spouse. The law currently says that a homestead left to a widow is exempt from the debts of her husband. In times gone by the homestead exemption would not effect a widower becuase debts rarely were incurred by wives. Today the picture is quite different. For this reason it seems only fair to extend the exemption to the male spouse as well. The right of a family to remain in its home without fear of creditors seizing the entire property must be protected. Approval of the homestead exemption amendment will ensure that this right is guarded for all citizens. Another amendment on the ballot seeks to extend certain privileges to both sexes. The life insurance amendment would permit wives the same rights husbands now have to insure the lives of the husband and his wife for the benefit of the wife or children. Existing law says only the husband may insure his or his wife's life for his wife and children. There is obviously no reason that the law should limit this privilege to only the male sex, and there are several good reasons to extend the right to wives. First and foremost is an equality granted by the federal constitution which the amendment will honor. The life insurance amendment is a sound extension of basic rights to the entire citizenry, and should be approved by North Carolina voters. The final amendment on the ballot concerns the joint ownership of electric generation facilities. Existing law prevents local governments and private utility companies from co-owning entire electric systems. The amendment should be approved by the state's voters. Regulatory requirements will not be changed if joint ownership is permitted, but financial savings, easier financing and increased reliability can result. With the cost of almost everything rising steadily, joint ownership and the consequent benefits which can accrue to consumers and owners alike can only help North Carolina. Both bond issues on today's ballot will serve North Carolina well. Approval of the S300-million highway bond issue will speed up completion of current highway projects, improve thousands of miles of primary and secondary roads, and replace inadequate and obsolete bridge across the state. If voters endorse $230 million in dean water bonds, a general tax increase to fund pollution control and water supply systemscan be avoided. The water bond will also allow the state to help municipalities and governmental agencies improve and expand existing water treatment facilities and construct new wastewater and water supply systems. North Carolina needs the clean water and highway bond issues. We think voters will:agree. letters to the editor Amendments, bond issues can strengthen state To the editor: The opportunity to improve and strengthen state government will be available to every registered citien in this state today. Good government, whether local, state, or federal, is a result of vision, of determination and of progressive planning. We can maintain the tradition of good government in North Carolina by fully supporting the five constitutional amendments and two bond issues on the ballot today. Of particular importance is the third amendment, w hich relates to the right ol the people of North Carolina to reject or re-elect their governor and lieutenant governor. Right now, these two elected officials are unable to succeed themselves; they are the only two elected state officials who are so limited. It should be our right to keep a leader who has proven to be effective and who has the advantage of experience in office. The $230 million Clean Water Bond and the $300 million Highway Bond issues are crucial to the future of North Carolina because they affect the potential for and rate of growth and development in our state. Presently there are 146 communities in North Carolina that are under some form of limited growth ornogrowth - because of inadequate sewage treatment and or water supply facilities. This bond issue needs to be passed so that our needs can be met. Likewise there are 16.400 miles of North Carolina roadways in need of improvement. The highway bond funds would permit the state to have the kind of transportation system that is needed to foster economic growth and development. I sincerely hope that all of our registered voters will join me in fully supporting this effort of keeping good government in North Carolina by voting "yes" lor all seven issues today. Howard N. l.ee 504 Tinkerbell Road Dubious drawings? To the editor: It is hard to believe that a newspaper w ith the quality ol the Daily Tar ffwould have on its staff a cartoonist of no more originality than Mr. Lee Poole. Throughout the semester we have noticed a tendency on Mr. Poole's part to borrow ideas for characters from the various works of M r. B. Kliban. The cartoon which appeared in the Tar Heel on Friday Oct. 28 one which we must assume Mr. Poole takes credit for, since his name was attached to it - was no less than a theft of a cartoon from Kliban's book of drawings entitled Whack Your Porcupine. The young man Mr. Poole labeled "Fletcher" was actually a copy of Kliban's "Roger W ilco," and, comparing the two drawings, one almost could conclude that Poole traced his "Fletcher" out of Kliban's book. If such a stunt had been tried on a term paper, the author would have been hauled into the Honor Court for plagiarism. If Mr. Poole does not have the creativity to come up with his own drawings, we suggest he at least give credit to B. Kliban when he decides to pull such a trick again. We have seen Lee Poole's drawings before and enjoyed them very much: Everyone loved "H ighrise, Lowlife." It is hard for us to believe someone with this much talent must stoop so low as to blatantly steal from an artist like B. Kliban, yet we have seen instances of this at least two other times this semester. This charlatan has gone unexposed long enough: From now on, we suggest that readers of Lee Poole's drawings pay close attention to the characters they're looking at since they might very well be found in a collection of cartoons by B. Kliban. Who will you draw next, Mr. Poole Snoopy? Brad Vogelbach David Rubinsohn Alan Clough Shepherd Lane Apartments The Daily Tar Heel welcomes contributions and letters to the editor. Letters must be signed, typed on a 60 space line, double-spaced and must be accompanied by a return address. Letters chosen for publication are subject to editing. Currie fond memories as 'Mouth of the South' There used to be an awful lot of sportscaster jokes circulating through North Carolina. Everyone, of course, had heard the one about the cray minded sportscaster who was so bored with a slow-down basketball game in the 1968 ACC Tournament that he interrupted his interviews with fans in the stands to remark "this is about as exciting as artificial insemination." And then there's the time he was announcing a Carolina basketball game from Portland, Ore., at 2 a.m., North Carolina time. He said he didn't believe many folks back home were listening to him, but in case there were, he would give a courtside phone number where they could call and have their names read on the air. As it turned out, he got so many calls he had to hire a couple of kids out of the stands to take them all. "IN QUOTES" By I. EE PACE You've heard the one, also, about the sportscaster who decided he'd cover a murder trial one day by bugging the courtroom and broadcasting the procedures all over the state. He laughed all the way to jail. Or how about the time this sportsprankster tied a balloon on a string to the finger of a Carolina basketball player w hile interviewing him for television? Or the time he jokingly complained over the air from Ohio that he was having a miserable birthday and would listeners mind sending him a little cash to cheer him up? And no one will forget the jokes about how this fellow would begin interviews with questions like "Jack, have you beat your wife lately?" The jokes go on and on. Many of them are bluer than the Tar Heel sky, but they can all be summed up in one riddle: What has four eyes, a wit as sharp as an ice pick and fans w ho once worshipped him as much as the teams he covered? The answer, of course, is Bill Currie. And, of course, the jokes about him aren't jokes. They're true stories. "Well," he says, "when you've got nothing going for you, you've got to do the offbeat things to attract attention." And attract attention, he did. Some of it was favorable, some not so favorable. But he drew so many notices during his tenure as the "Voice of the Tar Heels" in the '60s and early '70s that he became affectionately known as "The Mouth of the South." "I had the most fun back then," says Currie as he relaxed w it h a drink and some old friends in his Raleigh motel room last week before a speaking engagement. The next morning he would return to his job as sportscaster for KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh. "1 look back on those days with fond memories. 1 really enjoyed it. What I do now is work. It's not like it used to be," he said. Currie remembers well how it used to be, even before he inherited the most coveted sportscasting job in the state from Ray Reeve in the mid '60s. He started writing sports for the High Point Enterprise in the late '30s w hile still in high school, a job w hich earned him a scholarship to Catawba College, provided he serve as the school's sports information director. 1 1 is studies were interrupted by World War II ("You may have read about it. It's the one we won." he says) and terminated when he went hack to the Enterprise after the war. "Ihcv asked me if I wanted to he a teporter ot a sportsw i iter. 1 t.iid I'd be ,t icpoi tei since I didn't like spoils," Currie says. "But one night they told me the sportswriter was sick and asked me to cover a boxing match. Well, the sportswriter played a dirty trick on me. He died. So I became a sportswriter." The highlight of Currie's sportswriting career was making a minor league baseball pitcher mad enough to beat the leathers out of him while at the same time making the townsfolk mad enoug'h to turn his car over. "The guy went to Duke, if that says anything." He then began moonighting as a radio man. "They needed a man to read sports on the local station, and since the job didn't pay anything, they picked me." Currie left the sportswriting business in 1946 when he and the Enterprise managing editor got into a bloody fist fight in the newsroom. "I was 22 and he was 56 and he wore me out. He beat the hell out of me. 1 was yelling'I quit' the whole time while he was yelling 'You're fired.' " Next was a Winston-Salem radio station where one afternoon Currie told baseball listeners that a player manager who was having a poor day pitching "has just relieved himself on the mound." That was followed by a radio adventure back in High Point where he and a partner made enough money in three years to buy two weekly newspapers. "It took us all of six months to lose our $20,000 and another $20,000 that I'd borrowed on those papers," he said. He spent seven years with WRAL in Raleigh but after conflicts with the management, he moved to Wilson, where he began working with Ray Reeve on the Tar Heel Sports Network. He moved to Charlotte and WSOC-TV in 1963, where he stayed until more office fireworks prompted his move to Pittsburgh. "I don't know how to do anything else," he says of his lengthy career in sports broadcasting. "1 don't have a college degree; 1 can't teach school. I'm too cowardly to be a policeman, too timid to steal, too lazy to work." Folks who know Currie, however, testify he's not as inept as he claims. "A lot of people think he's not really sharp because of the way he comes off on the air," says former UNC Sports Information Director Jack Williams. "But actually he's brilliant. He can talk on any subject. He's very well read." Currie and Tar Heel basketball coach Dean Smith used to get into extended discussions on many topics other than basketball. "We'd never agree on anything," laughs Currie, w ho met Smith at side-by-side urinals in the Kenan Stadium press box in 1958. "It got to where if we did agree on something, it would scare me. Dean would have all these liberal ideas about everything, and I'm so far to the right that I'd say stuff that even Barry Goldwater wouldn't say." Currie is well read in Plato, classics and philosophy. He was also an avid writer of murder mysteries but hasn't contributed to the detective magazines in years. "We've had a lot of murders lately in Pittsburgh. Twelve girls have been killed in the last four months. The trouble is today you can't write a story until after they're convicted, or else y ou'll get sued. But I guess I'm just too lazy." Currie's job in Pittsburgh includes reading five minutes of sports on the early and late evening news shows and giving a commentary for both broadcasts. He does two other commentaries each day for radio. And, contrary to the belief of his friends and associates, it's no easy task coming up w ith four topics a day to comment on. "It's terrible. You don't know the agony 1 go through. Jesus, 1 agonie over it all moi ning." Currie laments. "People w ill come up and say 'Boy you've got an easy job.' But I've worked all day." Currie covers the Pirates, the Steelers, the Penguins, the Pitt Panthers and am one else in the area he's inclined to Bill Currie cover. And he doesn't carry a pistol around with him like he did in Charlotte. "Pittsburgh's safe, and I've learned a lot as I've gotten older. I go by a principle of 'Afghanistanism.' That means if you're going to jump on someone, don't jump on anyone near you. 1 never second guess the players and coaches around Pittsburgh. I can't play and I can't coach so how am I going to second guess them?" He has, however, criticized Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn a number of times. "I used to give him particular hell. I've compared him to a dog walking on his hind legs." One time Kuhn, all 6-foot-7 of him, picked Currie up and hung him over the third deck of Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh, saying, "You son of a bitch, I ought to drop you right now." "He let me down then," Currie says, "And we had a couple of drinks. He turned out to be a delightful fellow. Tremendous. 1 told him I thought he was being a sport about it all, and he said 'Bill, I'm making $ 1 50,000 a year, I've got an unlimited expense account. You think I care what you say?' " Currie, who has a picture in his office of him lying in an open coffin, has been divorced once and has moved across the river from Pittsburgh into Ohio, "where the divorce laws are more liberal," in an effort to elude a second marriage. He's adding to his work load in November by doing a nightly taped commentary for WSOC in Charlotte. He's started digging into the ACC to prepare himself for the shows, and he's closer now to the league and teams than he has been since that night in 1971 when Carmichael Auditorium and the Tar Heel Sports Network bid him goodbye. "God, I'll never forget that night. It's riht before tipoff The guy on the p.a. said this was a special occasion, because it was the last night for the "Mouth of the South." They turned the house lights down and put the spotlight on me for five minutes. It was halftime before 1 could get myself together. The "Mouth" then left to. become a Yankee. The South lost again. I.ee Pace, a junior join nalism major from Hendersonv il!e, N.C., is assistant spurts editor for the Daily Tar Heel.
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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Nov. 8, 1977, edition 1
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