Newspapers / Jones County Journal (Trenton, … / May 2, 1968, edition 1 / Page 1
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:THE JONES COUNTY IO U RNAL NUMBER 1 TRENTON, N. C., THURSDAY, MAY 2, 1968 VOLUME XX Federal Judge John Laridns is Voted Outstanding Wake Forest Alumnus '67 United States District Judge John D. Larkins, Jr. of Trenton has been named' Wake Forest University’s "Most Outstanding Alumnus of the Year.” The University’s School of Law bestowed the coveted honor up on the fifty-eight year old feder al jurist at its annual Law Day banquet held Saturday-night. In presenting the award, Thom as J. Robinson, President of the Student Bar Association, hailed Larkins “as a leader who has brought acclaim to himself and to his alma mater. He has exer cised that judicial restraint and temperment which are the foundation of our system of government. His forte is in his understanding of what is right and just; and, in his ability to bring about reasonable solutions to seemingly hopeless pro blems.” Law School Dean Carroll W. Weathers praised . Larkins as “one of North Carolina’s most outstanding citizens. He has brought distinction to this Uni versity by his competent and just disposal of those matters which daily confront him. We are proudi to call him one of our own.” The late President John Fitz gerald Kennedy appointed Lark ins as^the United States District Judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina in August of 1961. Since that time Larkins has established a reputation as one who can cut through com plex legal issues and get, as he prefers to put it, “to the meat of the coconut.” He has served with the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on several occasions and has one of the lowest rates of reversals of any judge in the nation. Larkins who enrolled at Wake Forest when he was only fifteen, was the son of a Baptist preach er and spent his childhood in Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina. He graduated from high school in Greensboro. He graduated from Wake Forest in 1929 and passed the North Caro lina bar examination prior to his twenty-first birthday. He served a clerkship in Charlotte before coming to Trenton, the county seat of Jones County, in 1931 to establish a law practice which he maintained until 1961. At the Ige of twenty-five, Larkins was elected to the State and was president pro-tempore of the Senate in the 1941 ses sion. For five years he served as chairman of the Advisory Bud get Commission and was legisla tive liason to former Governor Luther Hodges from 1955 to 1958. A Baptist, Larkins is chair (Continued on page 6) Saturday Shoot-Out Hospitalizes One Puts Another in Jail A Saturday night shoot-out in Lincoln City hospitalized J. P. McNeil of Lumberton and put Leamon Exum of 1023 Lincoln Street in Kinston in jail. Police say McNeil suffered either two or three pistol wounds in the head, and after emergency treatment at Lenoir Memorial Hospital was trans ferred to the university hospital at Chapel Hill. His condition is understandably critical. Exum is charged with assault with a deadly weapon with in tent to kill, pending McNeil’s re covery. McNeil was also report edly armed, but police have not indicated whether he had fired at Exum. Booze Kills Woman Lauristine Staton Kinsey of 1111 Chestnut Street was pro nounced dead at 12:25 a.m. Wed nesday in Lenoir Memorial Hos pital, where she had been rush ed after Police Lieutenant Hugh Fisher noticed that she had quit breathing after being brought to the police Station by Deputy Sheriff Carl Long and Policeman Leon White, who had found her in a car parked on the 400 block of South Queen Street. Attend ing physicians and Coroner Ray mond Jarman concurred in the ruling that her death was the re sult of acute alcoholism. Gets Academy Appointment Roland Dennis Latour, son of 'Mr. and Mrs. Ted Latour of 1404 Carey Road has been ap pointed to the Air Force Acade my. Latour is a senior at Grain ger High School. Nine Cases Cleared In Recorder's Court During Past Week Trials before Judge Joe Bect on or pleas of guilty before the clerk cleared nine cases from the docket of Jones County Re corder’s Court during the past week. In the non-traffic department Wilbur Metts of Comfort was fined $20 for public drunken ness and disorderly conduct and Lester Sinclair of Maysville paid $41.50 to make good a worthless check and the court costs. A. G. Cheston of Trenton route 2 and Paul Stokes of Camp Le juene each has nol prosses enter ed in charges of driving without a driver’s license. Marshal Thomas Williford of Raleigh paid $31.50 and Jacquel ine Rhodes Paylor of Kinston paid $26 for speeding. Allen Watt Chapman of Trent on paid $13 for improper pass ing and Walter Allen Jacobson of RicWands paid $13 for driv ing with an expired license. A charge of littering the high ways against George Newell Thompson of Arlington, Va. was dismissed. May Lose Leg Deputy Sheriff Dan Killings worth reports there is fear that Johnny Hill may lose leg. Hill suffered a mangling shotgun in jury on the night of April 21st in a shooting in White Oak Town ship. Theodore Smith of Pol locksville is under indictment for the shooting, charged with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, inflicting serious bodily injury. Hill is in the university hospital at Chapel Hill. Voting Regulations Saturday’s primary election will see voting from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Absentee ballots are only available to members of the armed forces. Democrats will be i permitted to vote only for Demo-1 cratic Party candidates and the ! Wallace Petition Is Over Hump in N. C. With Saturday Push Operation Dixie proved high ly successful for former Ala bama Governor George Wallace, with petitions available at all court houses in six southern states on Saturday of last week. The purpose of these petitions was to obtain sufficient certi fied registered voter signatures to allow Wallace’s name to be on the ballot for president in this year’s November election. Lenoir County has had certi fied 750 such signatures, Duplin County 445 and Jones County more than 600. Under North Carolina law it was necessary to obtain 10,000 certified signatures and far more than this have been obtain ed, although final tabulation of the state total has not been made yet. Not Back Yet Although Virginia Governor Miles Godwin granted extradi tion of Martin David Rochelle to North Carolina on April 22rd the £»nes County Sheriff Depart ment reported on Tuesday, April 30, that Rochelle is still being held in Virginia. He and Richard Rodesky are charged with the February 7th murder-robbery of Jones County ABC Store Manager Albart J. Jones Jr. of Maysville. No exact date has yet been set for the trial of the two, who were absent without leave from Camp Lejuene when they committed the robbery-murder. same holds true for Republicans and those voters who are regis tered as “independents” cannot vote for anybody on Saturday, since there are no “indepen dent” candidates. Voters are urged to permit employees to leave work long enough to vote during the mid-morning and mid-afternoon, when voting is generally lightest. PUBLIC SCHOOLS REPRESENT GROSSEST DISCRIMINATION IN ALLOCATIONS OF FUNDS Neither Rhyme Nor Reason Involved in Distribution of State, Federal Funds By Jack Rider What with all the noise made in recent years on the sacred project of “equality”, and the concerned effort that has been made at the state, local and • federal levels to put all public education on one common plane it Is monstrous to note the dis criminatory distribution of tax money for the operation of the public school system in North Carolina. And it may be presumed, 'as in the weird welfare world of discrimination, -that this county by-county discrimination found in North Carolina also exists as between states. Consider just a few of the ex tremes to which these education dollar dividers go to deny equal educational opportunity to the children: in the public schools of North Carolina: Last year the average spent per pupil in all the schools of North Carolina was $428.29. Of that total the state average dis tribution of that sum was $292.18 from state funds; $65.68 from federal funds and $68.45 from local funds; or 68.5 per \ cent state funds, 15.4 per cent A federal funds and 18-1 per cent local funds. Now the most recent report from the North Carolina Depart ment of Puhlic Instruction re veals the extreme range of these distributions insofar as individ ual counties are concerned. The distribution of state funds runs from the high of 85.9 per cent in Alexander to the low of 56.3 per cent in Hendersonville City Schools. ' In federal fund distribution the spread runs from 33.8 per cent of the total cost per pupil in the Morven City School System to the low of 4.8 in' the Iredell County System. Local funds range from the high of 34.7 per cent in Mecklen burg County to the low of 4.6 per cent in Yancey County. Dollars and cents wise the spread between counties ranges from $365.85 the state provides in Cherokee County per pupil to the low state allocation of $259.41 per pupil to Cumber land County. Federal funds for schools range fi-om $153.76 per pupil sent to Vance County down to the $19.19 per pupil sent to Cald well County. Local folks scratch up from the high of $166.47 per pupil in Mecklenburg County to the low of $20.19 per pupil which Yan cey Countians dig up per pupil. The allocation to Lenoir Coun ty Schools is $303.90 from state sources, $114.68 from federal funds and $69.88 from county sources; or 62.2 per cent from state, 23.5 per cent from federal and 14.3 -per cent from local tax es. The Kinston' School System is treated thisaway: State funds per pupil $286.24, federal funds $63.78 and local funds $102.74; or expressed in percentages: State 63.2 per cent, federal 14.1 per cent and local funds 22.7 per cent. - Jones County’s per pupil costs were State $302.30, federal $123.02 and county sources $23.79 or in per centages: State 67.3 per cent, federal 27.4 per cent and county 5.3 per cent. What is this strange new egalitarian arithmetic that is used to send one county so much more than another? Is it relative wealth of the county, relative size of enrollment, nearness to military installations? If the records of the department of public instruction are correct if is neither of these factors that unbalances the scales of educa tional justice. Onslow is the most heavily im pacted federal area and gets 25.6 per cent of its school funds from the federal government, compared to the aforementioned 27.4 per cent to Jones, and the 33.8 per cent to Morven in An son County, which is no where near a military base. The per pupil expenditures in North Carolina schools last year ranged from the high of $533.52 in Cherokee County to the low of $334.67 in Iredell County. As any educator knows, in education as in everything else one gets what they pay for and tt is of long-standing note that Cherokee County schools are far superior to the backward Pied mont schools maintained in Ire dell County. The fact that Cherokee County is able to spend 59 per cent more per pu pil per year adds up, with this new kind of math to better edu cations for Cherokee County children than for Iredell Coun ty children, and anyone who believes this myth is likely to believe anything. The Greenville and Kinston city school systems are similar in every respect: Kinston’s has 0,000 pupils, Greenville’s (has 5,614. Total per pupil expendi tures last year were $452.76 in Kinston and $410.60 in Green ville, but Greenville got 70.9 per cent of its expenditure from the state, while Kinston just got 63.2 per cent. Taxpayers in Greenville just had to find 13.8 per cent of their school budget while Kinstonians had to find 22.7 par cent. But there is worse: Goldsboro spent $424.42 each on its 7,949 pupils; got 66.3 per cent of this from state sources, 19.3 per cent from federal sources and just 14.4 per cent from their own tax till. But there is worse: Wayne County spent $433.07 each on its 11,911 pupils and only had to scratch up 7 per cent, while state funds kicked in 66.1 per cent and federal funds accounted for the other 26.9 per cent. In dollars and cents the per pupil local contributions locally range from $102.74 in Kinston, to $56.84 in Greenville, to $61.02 in Goldsboro to $30.72 in the Wayne County system. In education, as in everyother form of public expenditure there can be no logical, and possibly no legal basis for such gross discrimination in the distribu tion of public funds. Each school administrative unit should, in all fairness, be allocated the same amount of money per pupil from state funds and from federal funds. Our legislators, in Raleigh and Washington, permit these inequi ties by delegating to administra tive units the power to conceive and enforce regulatory pro grams that work penalties against one county, and give huge windfalls to others. This should never have existed in the first place, and: it surely should not be continued on this basis.
Jones County Journal (Trenton, N.C.)
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May 2, 1968, edition 1
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