Columbia Missourian Newspaper 1976-03-06

              J
Insight
New dhih
starts out
on bad skis
Student founder
runs into trouble
with his business
ByMikeGtadkessi
Missourian staff writer
Mail $ 5 to 374A Smith Hall at the
University and you can become a
" lifetime charter" member of the Mid-west
Sri Club.
As a member, you'll reap numerous
benefits, according to an advertisement
that has appeared in campus
newspapers the past two weeks.
For instance, as a club member, you
could take a trip to Winter Park, Colo.,
during spring break for only $ 155
exactly. $ 5 less than it costs non- membe- rs.
( Non- membe- rs must pay a
one- tim- e $ 5 membership fee. )
Other opportunities will arise for you.
The club offers " private trips planned
for members at no cost, personalized
ski trips organized every semester
break, Coors beer parties planned for
large groups of club members" and a
" subscription to the Midwest Skier
magazine. First issue to come out in
June."
Along with your lifetime mem-bership,
you also will be affiliated with
a club whose originator apparently is
operating out of a dormitory against
University rules, who has been
operating without a Columbia business
license, whose planned Coors parties
cannot be held legally in Columbia and
whose business tactics have left per-sons
in Winter Park upset.
Larry Feagles occupies Room 374 in
Smith Hall, and he is the founder of the
Midwest Ski Club. In a conversation
with a prospective club member,
Feagles said, " I've been working on the
club for seven months. Next semester I
will be covering 25 colleges in three
states. The club has been going a little
over a month, and there are 2,100 mem-bers."
Feagles said the Winter Park trip
was the fifth he bad organized and he
offers his members " a hell of a service.
My trips are personalized, and I'll do
anything humanly possible."
He said he makes ail the trip
arrangements himself. " I am rapidly
becoming a travel agent I alwautod '
for the Student Ski Association for two
years, and I was the best represen-tative
in its seven- yea- r history."
According to advertisements for the
trip, vacationers can choose from " five
top- quali- ty lodges." While talking with
the prospective customer, Feagles
said, " I've had to cancel a couple of
lodges but you can choose from two. "
He later told the Columbia
Missourian that he misinterpreted the
response to the ski trip. " The ski trip is
not going as well as I thought it would. I
planned for 135 - I'll be lucky to fill
half that."
Feagles' cancellations have cost the
lodges and a reservation service time
and money, said Liddie Mason, who is
in the central reservations department
of the Winter Park Resort Association.
She said the association does central
booking for the area's resorts. No fee is
charged for the service, she said,
because a 2 per cent tax is levied in
Winter Park.
" Originally, Mr. Feagles booked 163
spaces at five lodges. At this point, he's
cancelled all but 28. This not only costs
us directly in time but the lodges are
hurt. They reserved Use spaces and now
they won't be filled," she said.
She said she is not familiar with the
Midwest Ski Club or Feagles. " To my
knowledge, and I've worked here four
winters, and we never have worked
with him. I can tell you we won't
again."
Feagles said he originally reserved
135 spaces, not 163 as the association
said. " It did cost them their time,"
Feagles said Thursday, " but the lodges
aren't hurt"
He said he made calls to the lodges
and they told him they had filled the
spaces he cancelled. " And Use lodges
are going to charge me a handling
charge so they're not hurt," he said. He
added that the association could not
have previously heard about the Mid-west
Ski Club because it is new.
While Feagles' club has been
operating for a month, it has been doing
so without a city business license.
Chub Phillips, Columbia business
license manager, had not heard of the
club until Feb. 24 when he was presen-ted
a copy of fee club's ad.
At that time, Phillips said, " Anyone
doing anything for a profit must have a
license to operate in Columbia, and it
looks like he is."
The club's directors, he said, " would
have to come in and fill out an ap-plication
... and they have not"
He added, " I'm going to check this
out and get in touch with him to see if
he's doing anything. A lot of people run
ads and don't do any business." Failure
to have a business license, he said,
could constitute a misdemeanor.
Feagles said, however, tint he talked
to a window clerk at the business licen-se
office early in February about ap-plying
for a license. " I was waiting for
my sales tax number to come In from
the IRS and to find out if it was legal to
( See RAD, Page 18)
..-- - 7
1
THFBI fe Ifll hh
ATLANTA ( UPI) The nation is bat-tling
its worst onslaught of influenza- sinc- e
the great Hong Kong epidemic
eight years ago caused 1,207 deaths and
the toll still is climbing, the national
Center for Disease Control said Friday.
The center said a survey of state
health departments showed 24 states,
the District of Columbia and Puerto
Rico have epidemic levels of the
disease, 15 states have regional out-breaks
and 10 record isolated cases.
Graphs used by the center to depict
the number of pneumonia- influenz- a
deaths in 121 major VS. cities
registered a sharp upsurge during
February and officials said the current
epidemic still appeared to be gaining
momentum.
The current epidemic of A- Vict- oria
flu started later in the year than usual,
during the first week of February.
Deaths attributed to the epidemic
jumped from 97 in the first week of
February to 178 the second week, 339
the third week and 656 last week, ac
cording to the center.
Don Barreth, center information of-ficer,
said, however, that while " there
has been a lot of flu activity this year, it
still does not compare with the Hong
Kong outbreak in 1968- 6- 9, neither in the
number of cases nor the number of
deaths"
In the 196849 outbreak, the center
estimated there were 30 million cases of
the disease. At the peak of the
epidemic, 1,100 persons died in a week.
The final death toll was set at 12,700.
In the current outbreak, the center
said the New England and Middle
Atlantic regions were continuing to
report the most flu activity, although
the illness appeared to have peaked in
the Northeast.
The Pacific and mountain states and
the South Atlantic area showed sharp
rises. Twenty- si- x residents of a nursing
home in St Petersburg, Fla., died in the
past two weeks of causes believed to be
flu- relat- ed. Health authorities ordered
tests to learn more about the fatal
illnesses.
The center said data from 532 repor
ting institutions in the United States
" indicated increased absenteeism in 3
per cent of the schools and 29 per cent of
the industries, and increased emergen-cy
room visits in 43 per cent of the
hospitals."
Outbreaks of influenza, most of it
similar to the A- Vict- oria strain, also oc-curred
in Canada, Denmark, France,
French Guiana, Hungary, Jamaica,
Korea, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and
Switzerland, according to a report to
the center from the World Health
Organization.
68th Year No. 139 Good Morning! It's Saturday, March 6, 1976 16 Pages - 15 Cents
Stoffel enjoys a friend's company after his 30- mim- ute lunch rush at his tavern near Fulton.
Stoffel says he expects to make money from the venture once Union Electric's nuclear power
plant is under construction.
Text by Fran liberatore
Photos by Debi Savin
I
Even at 73, George Stoffel could
not pass an opportunity to make
money.
Stoffel owns the Green Acres
tavern, located about 16 kilometers
( 10 miles) south of Fulton. He says
he decided to build the tavern when
he heard about the construction of
Union Electric's nuclear power
plant near Fulton. " There's good
money in that."
Before coming to the Fulton area,
Stoffel worked in a tire re- cappi- ng
shop in East St Louis. While living
there, he bought land around Lost
Canyon Lake and the site where the
tavern is now.
The power plant site is located
about 1.6 kilometers ( 1 mile) south
of the tavern and is expected to em-ploy
about 2,400 workers when full- sca- le
construction begins. Stoffel
says he expects it will take one or
two years for this to begin, " but it
could be this summer."
Area businessmen are preparing
for the influx of workers, he says.
" There are some trailer pads being
put up now to accommodate mobile
homes," Stoffel says.
Now there are only a few workers
at the construction site, Stoffel
says, and in the course of the week
he sees most of them at least twice.
Right now he says he has no com-petition
nearby, and most of the con-struction
workers who do not come
into Green Acres bring their lunch to
work, rather than drive off the con-struction
site.
Most of Staffers business comes
from the workers during the lunch
hour; after that an occasional friend
comes in to drink a beer. " Business
is pretty slow now, but it'll pick up
just as soon as they start building
that power plant"
Stoffel' s business has tripled since
he opened the tavern last April, and
he says he expects it to go way over
that once the workers begin moving
to the area. " No one lives here now,
but this area is going to be a city
when the plant gets going."
Tigers seek
cage crown
at home on TV
The Missouri Tigers will make a bid
for the Big Eight basketball
championship at 2: 05 this afternoon at
the Hearnes Center when they meet
Colorado.
A victory today will guarantee the
Tigers their first undisputed conference
crown since 1930.
A victory today also would assure the
Tigers of a berth in the National
Collegiate Athletic Association playof-fs.
They likely would meet the Univer-sity
of Washington Huskies in sub- region- al
play on March 13 in Lawrence,
Kan.
The contest can be seen on local
television ( KOMU- T- V, Channel 8)
starting at 2 p. m. It was selected by the
National Broadcasting Co. as the Big
Eight's " wild card" television game
this week after Missouri's stunning 81- 7- 2
victory Wednesday night over
Kansas State.
Missouri, which is 23-- 4 on the year
and 11-- 2 in conference play, will be led
today by guard Willie Smith, whose 38
points Wednesday paced the Tigers'
victory over Kansas State.
Colorado is tied for sixth in the league
race with a 44 record.
For further details, see John
McGrath's story on Page 12.
4
ByJimVogel
Missourian staff writer
The major fruit crops in mid- Misso- uri
can withstand several more
nights of cold weather as long as the
temperatures rise above -- 6 degrees
Celsius ( 20 F) during the day, Aubrey
Hibbard, a horticulture professor at the
University, said Friday.
The high today will be about 4 C ( 40
F) with the low tonight about -- 4 C ( 25
F), said David Horner, meteorologist in
charge of the National Weather Service
office at Columbia Regional Airport.
Apple and peach trees in the area are
in the " tight bud" stage and are
resistant to plunges in temperatures,
Hibbard said. But if temperatures were
tofaUtobetween- 9C( 15F) and- 7C( 2- 0
F) for more than 24 hours, even those
buds could suffer damage from
" radiation frost," he said. Radiation
frost occurs when a plant's heat
radiates into space during extended
periods of cold weather.
The high temperatures in February
warmed the ground and helped plants
retain heat, Hibbard said.
Flowers that opened in response to
the abnormally high temperatures,
however, probably will not produce
much fruit, he said. This includes
apricots, forsythias and magnolias.
Also, the cold weather will prevent
plants from producing any more
flowering buds this year, Hibbard said.
Because of high temperatures in
February, most plants in Columbia are
about a month ahead of their usual
schedules, making them susceptible to
damage when normally cold weather
returns, Hibbard said.
The damage caused by weather fluc-tuations
can be measured accurately
about two days after normal weather
has returned, he said.
Columbia should experience the
return of winter conditions this week as
lows of about 0 C ( 32 F) are forecast for
Monday and Tuesday, Horner said.
This will be a departure from the ex-tremes
in the weather mid- Missou- ri has
experienced recently. Highs of about 24
C ( 75 F) for the first part of the week
were balanced by lows of near -- 4 C ( 25
F ) Thursday and Friday nights.
Between the temperature changes,
strong winds brought a deluge Thur-sday
as 2.2 centimeters ( 1.88 inches) of
rain fell, most of it between 4 and 5 p. m.
The heavy rains caused flooding in
low- lyin- g areas of Columbia, leaving
about 15 centimeters ( 6 inches) of
water on many city streets. Route E
was impassible under SO centimeters ( 3
feet) of water.
The Columbia Fire Department
responded to six calls to help pump
water out of flooded houses and
basements.
Columbia was not alone in having
weather problems this week. A severe
ice storm swept through the East and
Midwest Wednesday, causing power
failures affecting 500,000 Michigan
homes.
House speaker
shirts issue
JEFFERSON CITY ( UPI) - An ex-tended
warm spell and an extensive
breakdown in the air conditioning
system prompted speaker Richard J.
Rabbitt to allow state representatives
to work in shirt sleeves Tuesday.
The temperature in the muggy cham-ber
was well above 27 C. ( 80 degrees F )
when Majority Leader Kenneth Roth- ma- n
announced he had checked and
found that the air condition system was
broken and was not expected to be
repaired for another month.
It was 28 C. ( 82 degrees F) in the
other chamber, but senators didi't
acknowledge the heat and worked in
their required coats and ties.
Bond still refuses to free funds
By Scott Bowles
State capital bureau
'
JEFFERSON CITY Gov.
Christopher S. Bond said Friday that
although the state's latest revenue
figures are encouraging, he does not yet
know whether he will be able to
release money withheld from state
agencies.
" At this point, I'm very hopeful we
can release all or part of the funds,"
Bond said at his press conference
Friday. " As soon as I have a definite in-dication
of whether I can or cannot
release some or all of the funds, I will
announce it"
James Spainhower, state treasurer,
requested release of the funds because
his figure show that as of Feb. 29 the
state's income for fiscal 1976 has in-creased
11.57 per cent over the same
period last year.
In addition, the Columbia Missourian
reported Friday that almost half of the
$ 28 million now being withheld could be
released. Those figures were drawn up
by the University State and Regional
Fiscal Affairs Unit
Last fall, Bond asked state agencies
to pare their general revenue ex-penditures
by 3 per cent so there would
be enough money for emergency ap-propriations
and tax refunds. This
money will be returned to the agencies
in May in whole or part if there is a sur-plus
at that time.
Since Bond originally had estimated
an increase of 8.5 per cent in state
revenues for the year, the current 11.57
per cent figure released by Spainhower
would seem to allow the release of the 3
per cent to the agencies.
However, Bond now says a revenue
increase of 12.34 per cent is needed to
compensate for income tax refunds and
emergency appropriations before the 3
per cent can be released.
" The February figures are very en-couraging,"
Bond said. " The question
is whether the February figures are in-dicative
of a trend and whether we'll be
able to pay the 3 per cent in May."
Bond also said he couldn't say yet
whether he would be able to release the
$ 12.7 million withheld from the school
foundation program which Sens.
William J. Cason, D- Clint- on, and Nor-man
L. Merrell, D- Montic-ello,
had
requested.
Inventor plugs low- ener- gy bulb
WASHINGTON ( UPI) - Federal
energy officials announced plans
Friday for commercial development of
a revolutionary light bulb that uses 70
per cent less electricity and may last up
to 10 years.
The inventor, Donald D. Hollister of
Placentia, Calif., predicted his " Litek"
bulbs will initially sell for $ 7 to 510
apiece and should be on the market
within two years.
Although the Litek bulb looks like an
ordinary incandescent bulb and will
screw into a regular lamp socket, it is
actually a small flourescent light It
gives off a white glow similar to that
from a flourescent tube and emits little
heat
The new bulb has no filament to get
hot and burn out Instead a coil of wire
about the size of a small lipstick tube
becomes a cool electromagnet when the
power is switched on, making mercury
gas in the bulb give off ultraviolet light
that triggers a glow from a
phosphorous coating.
The bulb should bum from 12,000 to
24,000 hours, which equals five to 10
years of normal use, Hollister said. He
said it will burn out eventually when a
transistorized control circuit fails.
Hollister said he got the first idea for
his long- lif- e, low -- energy bulb about
eight years ago, but ' ' it went over like a
lead balloon" at that time and
remained " a solution looking for a
problem," he said.
Then came the energy crisis. Sitting
in a long gas line in 1973, Hollister retur-ned
to the idea, founded his Lighting
Technology Corp. in 1974 and turned to
the Energy Research and Development
Administration for help in putting the
bulb on the market
Hollister said he has made about 100
of the new bulbs by hand. Some of them
have been tested by ERDA and the
National Bureau of Standards.
ERDA Assistant Administrator
Austin Heller said ERDA will provide
Hollister with $ 310,000 under a one- ye- ar
contract to work out final technical
problems with the new bulb, conduct
market studies and develop plans for
commercial production. He said'
Hollister is providing $ 34,000 in mat-ching
funds.
Hollister and ERDA officials said 25- w- att
Litek bulbs put out about ti same
light as a 50- w- att incandescent bulb and
can cause radioa to sputter with static if
the power line voltage dips.
Heller said the government's in-vestment
in Hollister's idea carries
with it a guarantee that no big company
will buy up the patent and keep the
litek bulb off the market