Newspapers / The Highlander (Highlands, N.C.) / June 13, 1968, edition 1 / Page 1
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SUBSCRIBE TODAY The ONLY Newspaper in This Wide World Devoted Exclusively to Promoting The Highlands Area Published in the Highest Elevated and Most Hospitable Town in Eastern America. Th« Wtathw THE WEATHER i HIGH June 4 74 June 5 71 June 6 68 June 7 65 June 8 64 June 9 75 June 10 79 LOW RAIN 47 .00 53 .00 49 .00 55 .43 60 3.59 61 .38 62 .00 AIR CONDITIONED BY NATURE VOLUME 10 Thursday, June 13, 1968 NUMBER 54 , TEN CENTS PER COPY Rotary Club Hears Stevens The Highlands Rotary Club held its regular weekly meeting Tuesday night with the largest crowd so far this Season. There were 12 visiting Rotarians and one guest, and a full local membership attendance with the exception of Leslie Misener and Robert Opsahl who have been ill. It was reported that Mr. Opsahl has been removed from Bloodmobile Coming Up Louis Potts, chairman of the Red Cross Blood Program, reminds Highlanders that a visit from the Bloodmobile is scheduled for Thursday, June 27 at the Methodist Church here. The hours are from 2 to 6 p.m., and Highlands’ quota for the visit is 60 pints of blood. Hillbilly Day Being Planned The Chamber of Commerce is shaping up plans to have a "Hillbilly Day” this summer. A special meeting of a com mittee has been called this week by Chamber President John Phelan, and full details on the proposed "Hillbilly Day” are expected to be released for next week’s HIGHLANDER. BAKE SALE The Presbyterian Women are holding a bake sale on Saturday, June 22, in the office of Lyda Harcombe on Main Street. Proceeds will go toward the annual hospital bazaar for High lands-Cashiers Hospital. Keep this in mind to stock vp on home-made delicacies. Nature Study Classes Set It has been accounced that Nature Study classes at the Highlands Museum of Natural History will begin on Monday, June 24, with Mr. Charles A. Bryan of Orlando, Fla. and Highlands in charge. The Museum is now open from 10 to 12 and from 2 to 5 on week days and additional information concerning the Nature Study classes may be obtained there. Library Hours Beginning June 15 the Hudson Library will be open the fol lowing days and hours: Monday through Friday 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday: 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. the, hospital to his home but will be confined there for some time, Mr. Misener is still at Highlands-Cashiers Hospital but has vastly improved and hopes to return to his home soon. Highlands Rotary Club looks forward to the complete recovery of both and their re turn to the weekly meetings where they have been missed. Rotarian Ernie Stevens gave the program with a talk on investments and the history of money and stock exchanges in the United States. He is by profession an investment broker and time did not permit his complete address which will be continued at a later date. Mr. and Mrs. Stevens have purchased the old Rebecca Nall home on East Main Street across from the Museum and are now in the process of re modeling it. President Bill McCall made a brief report on the District Rotary Assembly held in Marion, N. C. Wednesday of last week, June 6, which was attended by Dick Harrison, Fred Stewart and himself from this Club. Fine Arts Show To Be Aug. 2-3 The Nantahala Fine Arts Show, annual benefit for the Hudson Library, will be held August 2 and 3rd. Mrs. Charles J. Anderson, Jr. has generously offered the use of her building directly across from the Highlands Town Hall office. This will afford ample exhibition space and sculpture, photography, cer amics, as well as paintings and prints will be displayed to good advantage. - Furter notices, meetings and mailings will appear in the Highlander - so artists, get busy. Names of previous mailing lists will receive noti fications and entry blanks. Names of people interested in receiving these notices and as sisting with the show may write to P. 0. Box 802, Highlands. Rev. Webbe Attending Synod The Rev. Gale D. Webbe, rector of the Church of the Incarnation, is a delegate this^ week attending the meeting of the Synod of the Southern Provinces of the Episcopal Church at the University of the South, Sewanee, Tenn essee. He plans to return to High lands today. The Rev. Ur. Jon A. Caridad, Deacon, arrives in Highlands this Thursday to begin a work in the parish that will continue throughout the summer. He will assist in the entire program, with special emphasis upon Sunday School and Youth Work. He will be living in the- Guest Cottage at the home of Dr. and Mrs. Thomas B. Crumpler on Satulah Mountain, and will have a telephone of his own, listed with Information under his own name. Lake Yields Body Of Lost Child Bringing End To Five Day Search Military Police and State Troopers took over the control of traffic Sunday while prayers were offered in local churches for the family of the missing child. (Staff Photo by Helen Hopper) The ambulance waits to transfer the body of Cenda Schweers to Sylva after it was brought by helicopter from WhitesideCove. .(Photo by Carter Talley) Are Your Marigolds Growing? If you can produce one perfect stalk of any summer flower, from ageratum to zinnia, it may well win a blue ribbon at the Highlands Cashiers Garden Club Flower Show. Do you remember that one perfect stalk of gladiolus won the tri-color last year, the highest award in that category? The show will be held at the Cashiers Community Center on July 19, mid summer, when many garden flowers are at their peak. The Garden Club is anxious to have many entries in horticulture for die 1968 show. The exhibits were grati fying last year but there was room for more. Exhibitors may enter as many different specimens as they wish, and displays of vegetables are also requested. Good grooming is essential in preparing flowers for judging. The foliage should be clean, with stems long enough to support the bloom. The specimens should be condi tioned beforehand - plunged in water for some hours. A rose is best exhibited one half to one third open, never full blown. There is to be a class also for potted plants. These too should be in prime condition, the pots not over twelve inches in size, and clean. Schedules listing the rules for entering horticultural specimens will be placed con veniently in both Highlands and Cashiers. Any questions per taining to entries will be answered by the Horticultural Chairman of the show, Mrs. Worth Sherrill, phone, 526-3225, Highlands. Graduates Miss Margaret Ann Vinson of Highlands, North Carolina, received the Associate in Arts diploma in finals at Montreat Anderson College (June 2). She is the daughter of Mrs. Catherine Vinson of Highlands, and is a member of the First Baptist Church. Miss Vinson was a member of the Mu Lamda Chapter of Thi Theta Kappa. Montreat-Anderson College is situated on the grounds of the Mountain Retreat Association’s Montreat Assembly Grounds of the Presbyterian Church, U.S. The college offers a two-year program and is 17 miles from Asheville. The Harvest Of Hate Flaming death out of a gun barrel - mindless, senseless, violent death - has taken another man from the ranks of those who believed in human rights and justice; a man who took that belief to the people and imposed it upon their consciences. There is in this violent nation a long and bloody record of such murders. President John Kennedy leads the list in our time. There are others on that roll of honor, men well known and who worked in areas where all too often the days were a part of the darkness of despair. One was a lonely and courageous Negro, shot down in his own driveway in Mississippi because, as head of the NAACP, he publicly had sought to have his state accept the laws of equal citizenship; Medgar Evers died just outside the door of his home behind which waited his wife and children. Martin Luther King was gunned down by a sniper. He, too, had spoken up for justice in areas where justice had long been ignored and mocked. And now Robert Kennedy’s name is added. He, too, had spoken up for justice. He, too, was unafraid of the cowards who betray and kill from ambush or who infiltrate a friendly group to murder. A few lines from Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem “Dirge Without Music” seem apropos: “Down, down into the darnkess of the grave, Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender and the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know. But I do not approve. And 1 am not resigned.” We are not resigned. Nor may we be. The jackals, the cowards, the haters, the failures who hate achievers, the yapping feist pack that tries to drown out truth; those who dislike Jews, Negroes, Catholics, “lib erals;” the bitter and evil persons who organize themselves and send out hate literature; the Klan types, the “States Rights” die-hards, those who dynamite churches, synagogues, and homes - they are the abscesses in America’s society. (Editorial Reprint from the Atlanta Constitution - June 7, 1968) Attend Graduation Mr. and Mrs. Worth Henson of Bradenton Florida and High lands, have returned from Sewanee, Tennessee, where they attended commencement exercises at the University of the South this last weekend. Their son, WiUiam P. Henson, was a member of the graduating class, receiving the degree of Bachelor of Divinity from the School of Theology. Mr. Henson will be ordained a Deacon of the Episcopal Church on Thursday, June 20th. 1968, at St George’s Episco pal Church in Bradenton. The Right Reverend WiUiam L. Har grave, D.D. Suffragan Bishop of South Florida, wiU officiate at the ceremony on the Feast of St. Edward the Martyr, at ten-thirty o’clock in the morn ing. Mr. Henson wUl serve as Curate at St John’s Epis copal Church in Tampa, and he and Mrs. Henson and three chUdren are moving from Sewanee to Tampa this week. Mr. and Mrs. WUliam Henson have often visited in Highlands and have many friends here who wUl be interested to learn of their plans. A five day search which had mushroomed into the largest coordinated operation of its kind in the history of Highlands and perhaps Western North Caro lina, came to a close Monday when the body of 4-year-old Cenda Schweers was discovered in a lake some 2 1/2 miles from the summer home she had been visiting. The body of the child who had been missing since late Wednesday was found about 12dS p.m. by Bill Wilson, U. S. Forest Service employee; R. L. Worley, civil engineer; and Carlton Crane, owner-operator of Hilltop Amoco Station, all of Highlands. They were examining from a boat the bottom of Monroe Lake, located in the shadow of Black Rock Mountain on the Whiteside Cove side, when the doll-like figure of the little girl was discovered in about three feet of water and about five feet from the intake. The discovery was telephoned in from the Lombard residence about a mile from the lake by Woodrow Wilson, a former member of the Green Berets, who had been making on-shore preparations to dive in the effort to search out the lake bed. An autopsy was performed Monday afternoon by Jackson County Coroner J. E. Oliver, M. D. and, according to a state ment by Sheriff Brice Rowland Tuesday, the autopsy revealed no indication of foul play though it showed that death had not occurred from drowning. A severe injury to the side of the head was found, Mr. Row land said, and it was assumed that the child fell from a waterfall above the lake and was washed downstream. Sheriff Rowland said he planned to give the area a thorough re-investigatioii‘, however, in reconstructing just what could have taken place. Little Cenda, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Schweers of Atlanta, came to Highlands last Wednesday with her two brothers and her mother for a visit with Mrs. Sam Evins and children at their remote summer home in "TheBowery” which embraces some of the most rugged terrain in the High lands area. About 6:30 Mrs. Schweers discovered that Cenda was not with the other children and immediately drove up and down the road looking for her. When die efforts of the family failed to locate her the High lands police were notified, and around 7:30 p.m. the siren summoned members of the Fire Department who rushed to lend their assistance. Firemen tracked the child up the road toward the wilderness, and Marjorie Pierson recalled getting a glimpse of a crying child about 6:30, whom she had assumed was with com panions, passing up the road. Hard ground put an end to tracking, however, and there was still no sign of Cenda. As darkness fell, firemen called in the local U. S. Forest Service who were able to provide lights and radio inter communication, and later on Macon County Sheriff Brice Rowland and others joined the search. Those familiar with the area thought of the dangerous cliffs in all directions that might tumble the small tot down the side of the mountain. They dis carded the possibility of danger from wild animals, but knew that some deadly snakes in habited the area and would be a menace to the tread of tiny feet. Two of thefiremen, searching an area on the lower slopes of Black Rock, were almost sure they heard the hoarse and frightened cry of a child high above diem, but a thorough search of the whole general area from which the sound came revealed nothing. The child’s father, a com ptroller with die Fulton Federal Savings and Loan Association, rushed up from Atlanta to share his wife’s anxiety as soon as he was notified of Cenda's dis appearance. As a new day dawned, additional persons joined the search and others continued on without thought of rest or sleep. Sheriff Rowland asked Ranger James Brown and other Highland District personnel to direct and organize a systematic effort, and as time went on. Forest Service officials and workers from other areas joined the local group. Franklin radio station WFSC began broadcasting the story of little Cenda Thursday morn tng, and more Volunteers btgan coming in from neighboring towns and counties. The Franklin Mountain Mission For the People of Macon County responded as soon as they heard the broad cast, bringing food from Franklin and setting up a temporary ‘‘coffee canteen” in the back of a Forest Service truck on the field of operations at The Bowery. By this time Mrs. Louis Edwards and other local women had started a canvass for food and merchants, sandwich shops, hotels, restaurants, groups and individuals came through with hundreds of sandwiches to feed the ever growing number of volunteers. Potts Super Market became ‘‘donation head quarters," and food and money from a compassionate High lands and Macon County were deposited there, and later from more distant sources. Meanwhile searchers con tinued to plunge into jungles of briars, tall underbrush, and dense and tangled mountain shrubs, straining for a glimpse of a white sweater or a blue middy-suit which Cenda was reported wearing. Only a somber silence of the forest and the frustration of dis appointed hopes rewarded tbeir efforts. As the day wore on, the number of searchers swelled by the hundreds. The WNC Association of Rescue Squads provided crews from every county and town in the western part of the state, which were joined by rescue groups from South Carolina and Georgia. Job Corps workers also joined in the search at an early stage. Thursday night Patrolman Joe Morris received a radio message from Governor Dan Moore notifying him that he was sending a contingent of the National Guard to aid in the search. Police Chief Olin Dryman received a call from Georgia’s Governor Lester Maddox offering any aid that his state could provide. Around 65 voops from the Hendersonville National Guard unit began arriving in the early morning hours of Friday. The Highlands School building was turned over for their use, as cafeteria facilities were a much needed asset. A U. S. heli copter from Fort Bragg was another valuable means of help dispatched to the search area. By Friday the number of searchers had jumped up near or beyond the thousand mark as more rescue squads, men of tile Georgia Fish and Game Department, groups of individ uals from neighboring areas, friends of the child’s family from Atlanta, and others con tinued to pour in and join local men whose stubborn endurance was beginning to show the strain of anxiety and diminishing hope. This tremendous voluntary response in a time of need spoke out in valiant contrad iction to a common assumption that present-day Americans h»ve lost their conoornfor their feUowman. Friday afternoon saw the arrival of a Red Cross Emer gency Unit from Asheville, which set up in the field at The Bowery, helping dispense food and drink to weary searchers through the help of local volunteers, and later joining forces with local women who worked tirelessly in this capacity throughout the search. Friday also saw the beginn ing of rain from sullen skies, soaking and chilling the hundreds of men who continued to search and re-search the forested slopes and treacherous cliffs. Tragedy struck without warn ing during the search Friday afternoon when Fritz Stone of Tucker, Ga., a close friend of the Schweers family, slipped on wet rock and plunged over a 150-foot waterfall in Horse Cove and was dead on arrival at Highlands-Cashiers Hospital. This was the same waterfall that claimed the life of a 12 year-old youth on June 30th of last year and had since been marked bff and designated as dangerous by the Forest Service. Earlier in the day a National Guardsman, Spec. 4 Patton Bradshaw of Hender sonville, fell over a bluff and suffered fractured ribs and bruises. Friday night some 125 Army Rangers arrived from Dahlonega, Ga.t and also in structors from the North Carolina Outward Bound School, all specially trained in cliff and mountain climbing by use of ropes. Saturday morning more National Guardsmen arrived to join the search which was still being coordinated by U. S. F orest personnel. Ranger James Brown estimated that around 1500 men were in the rain-soaked woods Saturday. Small lakes in the area where the child was last seen had been drained or searched but had turned Up nothing. Con tinued rain turned roads and operation headquarters on The Bowery into a loblolly of mud. By this time the possibility of the child’s having been kid napped began to take precedence over other reason ing in the minds of many. Sheriff Brice Rowland, how ever, held to the contention that she was still somewhere in that tangled and untamed wilderness, though he felt it unlikely she could have survived the chilling rain or dangerous terrain this long. Dr. David R. Daniel, Sylva pediatrician, spent hours at the scene of the search, prepared to administer treatment to the child should she be found alive. Newsmen who came to report the progress of the search re mained to become a part of their own story in a shared concern for Cenda and her parents. Sunday operations were con centrated at the schoolhouse, and the area was closed to any but those helping in sotn* v*y. At morning worship services, * prayers were offered for the Schweers family, while outside Military Police and State Troopers took over the direction of traffic, barring spectators from some areas, and keeping a swollen line of traffic on the move. By Sunday night discourage ment and despair haunted the faces of those who had tried Bible School Next Wee k The Vacation Bible School, sponsored by the Highlands Inter-Church Group, will be held next week at the Episcopal and Methodist churches. Youngsters from age4 to 12 are eligible for enrollment. The pre-school group will attend classes at the Episcopal Church where the Rev. Mr. Jon Caridad, Mrs. John Hall, Miss Terry Niblack and Mrs. Betsy Round will supervise and instruct. School age youngsters will gather at the Methodist Church. Mrs. Herbert James, Mrs. William F. Harris and others are expected to be in charge of the children there. The Bible School begins Monday, June 17, with hours from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. The above map shows territory involved in the Large circle at left is location of Evins home. Monroe Lake where body was recovered. search for Ceuda Schweers. Large circle at right shows
The Highlander (Highlands, N.C.)
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June 13, 1968, edition 1
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