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VOL. 96 NUMBER 8
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Chemical
Leak Is
Controlled
By GARY STEWART
Editor
Highly toxic and highly flam-
mable liquid leaked for about six
hours from a Southern Railway
tanker parked behind Spangler
and Sons Concrete on the south
end of town Tuesday.
Late Tuesday afternoon, the
tanker was moved to a non-
residential area on the north end
of town, where a work crew
from the Celanese Corporation
tried to repair the leaking valve
Wednesday morning.
The leak was spotted at 10:30
a.m. by a brakeman as the train
was switching. Kings Mountain
Police, the State Highway Patrol
and the Kings Mountain Rescue
Squad blocked off the area to
traffic for most of the day while
the Kings Mountain and
Bethlehem fire departments
sprayed a heavy, continuous
stream of water on the tanker.
Larry McDaniel, Chief of the
Bethlehem Fire Department and
a maintenance employee at near-
by Foote Mineral, was familiar
with the type valve and attemp-
ted to repair the leak. He slowed
the leak from 90 drops per se-
cond to 20 drops per second, but
could not completely stop the
leak because of bad bearings
around the valve. With the leak
drastically slowed, Southern
4 Railway decided to, hang a
hh bucket under the valve and
move the tanker to the north
» god of town to a switch track
“néar the J.E. Herndon Company
iia A warehouse.
J The
Sr ——"
chemical,
ped from Celanese to Gastonia,
where it was to be switched to a
Seaboard Coast Line train and
moved on to Kimway, N.C.
i Although the quantity was not
Turn To Page 2-A
Methylacrylate, was being ship-
CHEMICAL LEAK - Bethlehem
pg HS
Volunteer
a
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Celanese Corporation to Kimway., N.C. Chief
El
firemen spray water on a leaking Southern
Railway tanker Tuesday morning behind
Spangler Concrete off Highway 216 south of
the city. The highly toxic and flammable
chemical was being shipped from the
Larry McDaniel of the Bethlehem Fire Depart-
ment adjusted the valve and got the leak
slowed down enough so the tanker could be
moved out of the city.
Photo by Gary Stewart
By GARY STEWART
Editor
With over 200 citizens looking
on, the Kings Mountain City
Council Monday night voted
unanimously to rescind its action
of January 24 which called for
an ABC, Beer and Wine referen-
dum in the city.
Rev. Eugene Land, pastor of
Second Baptist Church and
chairman of the Kings Mountain
Positive Action League, made
the request. None of the other
citizens who attended spoke out,
except for an occasional “amen”
to Rev. Land’s remarks.
Commissioner Jim Childers,
who said he understood on
January 24 that the board was
merely passing along the vote re-
quest to the City Elections
Board, made the motion to res-
cind the action. Norman King,
the only commissioner to vote
against the referendum on
January 24, seconded.
Except for Childers’ com-
ments when he made his motion,
there was no discussion on the
matter.
The Kings Mountain Citizens
For Legal Control, who re-
quested the vote through At-
torney and committee <co-
chairman Scott Cloninger, must
now secure petitions from the
Elections Board and return them
- within 90 days with signatures,
names, addresses and precincts.
of at least 25 percent of the City $
registered voters. td slay
Cloninger said ile
that_proceg|use Immec ates
Canis 8 ere
containing over 1,300 names to
the board at the January 24
meeting, but the board did not
take them. Commissioners voted
5-1 to call for the election.
“The bottom line of what the
board did Monday night was to
deny the people the right to
Finger Services Held
Funeral services for Belle
Miller Finger were conducted at
St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church
at 11 am. Saturday by the
Reverend Harwood Smith. Mrs.
Finger came to Kings Mountain
in October of 1912 and had been
a member of this church since
1913.
Daughter of the late Victoria
Virginia Rudisill and Clarence
Preston Miller, Mrs. Finger was
born October 12, 1890 in Lin-
coln County and married Oc-
tober 2, 1912 to Frederick Eli
Finger. She is survived by one
daughter. Sarah Warren and
three sons. Fred, Carl, and Dan
Funeral Services Held
For Vera Cooper, 92
Vera Mauney Cooper, 92, of
107 North Piedmont Avenue,
Kings Mountain, died Sunday at
4:45 a.m. at Kings Mountain
Convalescent Center.
A Kings Mountain native, she
was the daughter of the late
Jacob S. and Margaret Rudisill
Mauney, and the widow of the
late Dr. Edgar Caudius Cooper,
a Lutheran minister.
She was a member of St. Mat-
thew’s Luterhan Church, The
United Daughters of the Con-
federacy, the Daughters of the
American Revolution and the
Kings Mountain Woman’s Club.
Hanover,
She was a graduate of
Elizabeth College in Charlotte.
Survivors include one son,
Rev. Edgar Cooper of New
Pa.; one daughter,
Mrs. George (Margaret) Plonk of
Kings Mountain; eight grand-
children and 18 great-
grandchildren.
Services were conducted Tues-
day at 11 a.m. at St. Matthew’s
Lutheran Church by the Rev.
Harwood Smith and the Rev.
Gerald Weeks. Burial was in
Mountain Rest Cemetery.
Memorials may be made to St.
Matthew’s Lutheran Church.
Funeral Services Held
For Helen Blanton, 58
Helen Ramsey Blanton, 58, of
58 Canterbury Road, Kings
Mountain, died Sunday at
Cleveland Memorial Hospital.
" A native of Kings Mountain,
she was the daughter of the late
Earl Logan and Lola Falls
Ramsey, and was married to the
late Donald W. Blanton. She was
a member of St. Matthew’s
Lutheran Church and a retired
employee of First Union Na-
tional Bank. :
She is survived by one
brother, Charles F. Ramsey Sr.
of Kings Mountain; one sister,
Mrs. Nell Hedrick of Kings
Mountain; a niece, Mrs. Mary
Beth Sellers of Charlotte; and a,
nephew, Charles E. Ramsey. Jr.
of Kings Mountain.
Services were conducted Tues-
day at 2 p.m. at St. Matthew’s
Lutheran Church by the Rev.
Harwood Smith. Burial was in
Mountain Rest Cemetery.
Memorials may be made to
the Radiation Department at
Cleveland Memorial Hospital.
Finger all of Kings Mountain;
one sister, Bess Miller Plaxco of
Clemson Downs, S.C., nine
grandchildren, and 10 great
grandchildren. 4
Mrs. Finger was a charter
member of the Thursday After-
noon Book Club, an active
member of the Women’s Club
for many years and president
when the Club House was built
in the early thirties, a member of
the United Daughters of the
Confederacy and the Town and
Country Garden Club. She
worked in the alteration depart-
ment of Plonk’s Department
Store for many years and was
still active there at age 85.
Pallbearers included Joe A.
Neisler, Jr., Hugh M. Neisler,
Robert. P. Neisler, James E. An-
thony, Jr., S. Robert Suber, Jr.,
and James E. Herndon, Jr.
Interment was in Mountain
Rest Cemetery.
Report
To People
The Kings Mountain District
Schools annual “Report to the
People” is included in your
Herald today.
The tabloid supplement, writ-
ten by school administrators and
teachers, features past ac-
complishments and future hopes
of the schools. The cost of the
publication was made possible
by 14 area businesses, whose
names are printed on the back
page. :
The publication includes
feature stories and pictures from
all of the district schools, in-
cluding Kings Mountain High
School, Kings Mountain Junior
High, Central Middle School,
and Grover, East, West, North
and Bethware elementary
schools.
Lenten
Service
Wednesday
Wednesday,
within Central United Methodist
Church from 12:05 - 1:00, a
Worship Service and Fellowship
lunch will be shared with the
community. A minimum $1.00
donation per person is asked for
each lunch.
The worship leader for
February 23 is the Reverend
Harwood Smith of St. Matthews
Lutheran . Church and . the
message will be given by the
Reverend Eric M. Faust of First
Presbyterian Church. Lunch will
be served at 12:30.
PROTESTING LIQUOR - This sign stated the
thoughts of several citizens who attended
Monday night's City Council meeting. Over
200 citizens packed the council chambers and
February 23, .
vote,” Cloninger said Tuesday.
“The process that was followed
in requesting the election was
legal in all respects and adequate-
ly explained to the board by me
that night.” :
Supporters of the dry. effort
have claimed since January 24
that Cloninger’s petitions were il-
legal since they were not
prepared by the Elections Board,
and questioned whether the
citizens’ names on the petition
lived inside the city limits.
“I told the board that the peti-
tions were to be used as suppor-
tive evidence of the citizens’ re-
quest to call for the election,”
Cloninger said.
“The action of the board on
February 14 shows the in-
decisiveness of our board, not
only on the issue of allowing the
‘people to vote in an ABC
referendum, but in any other,
lobby of the Governmental Services Facilities
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REV. EUGENE LAND
-..Presents request to board
issue that may come before
them. The reversal of the
January 24 decision shows ex="
treme ineptness on their part.
“I believe their decision on
February 14 was politically
motivated in that the pony
sioners felt the POBYC Ying
blowins inne direction that
. “showed extreme un-
night, and SBOY
concern for EHOSe people who
had executed the petitions in-
tially and wanted the right to
vote on April 12,
« firmly believe that the com-
missioners have ignored the ma-
jority of the citizens who only
want to exercise their right to go
tothe polls and decide the issue
for. themselves,” Cloninger add-
Cr {
will begin immediately the peti-
tion process by requesting from
the Board of Elections and ask-
ing some of these same people
who have executed one petition
to execute yet another so that
they might exercise their con-
stitutional right to vote. This
issue of an ABC store will in no
way fall by the wayside. Enough
people want to exercise their
right to vote and my committee
intends to do everything in their
power to see that that right is
granted.”
In presenting his request Mon-
day night, Rev. Land said
citizens had voted down liquor
referendums twice -in the past
and his group is “strongly oppos-
ed to the city in which we live ,
the city which we love, going in-
to the business of selling whiskey
and allowing beer and wines to
be sold.”
Land said he could understand
how the board might not have
been clear on the ABC laws at
the January 24 meeting, since
the law “was not read to you and
Turn To Page 4
Photo by Gary Stewart
Center and urged the board to recind its re-
cent action which called for an ABC, beer and
wine referendum in the city. The
rescinded the action.
board