Columbia Missourian Newspaper 1984-06-11

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76th Year No. 226 Good Morning! It's Monday, June 11, 1984 2 Sections 20 Pages 25 Cents
United Press International
Gary Hart, while insisting Demo-cratic
Party rules " have to be
changed," said Sunday he will not
challenge Walter Mondale's dele-gates
for the presidential nomi-nation.
For the first time, Hart publicly
disclosed he would not threaten par-ty
unity by staging a last- minu- te
challenge to Mondale's accumula-tion
of enough delegates for a first
ballot nomination.
Since Mondale narrowly acquired
more than the 1,967 delegates needed
for the nomination last week, Demo-cratic
leaders have feared the Colo-rado
senator would pursue his claim
that 500 to GOO of his rival's delegates
are " tainted."
His campaign has filed a com-plaint
with tiie Federal Election
OCampaign ' 84
Commission stating that the dele-gates
were elected through so- call- ed
independent committees designed to
circumvent federal spending limits.
Mondale, while discontinuing the
practice, insists nothing illegal took
place.
" It's a legal and ethical question,
and not a political one and I think
that's where it should remain," Hart
said during an appearance on ABC's
" This Week With David Bnnkley."
" The Democratic Party is going to
have to resolve this issue," Hart said
in response to a question.
" I think it's up to the party and its
official institutions to undertake
that. What I intend to do ... is wage
a positive campaign for this party's
future and for this nation's future. I
think that's the best contribution I
can make to our party. "
Hart who has 1,212 delegates of
his own compared with 1,975 for
Mondale and 367 for Jesse Jackson,
has been meeting with party leaders
and political allies since Tuesday's
final primaries when he won three
out of five, including California to
assess his chances for a challenge.
Party rules " have to be changed
and they have to be made more
fair," Hart said.
In response to another question.
Hart would not flatly renounce a pos-sible
vice presidential post: he called
such talk premature.
" I have no intention of being vice
president" Hart said from Denver.
" I didn't undertake this race to be
vice president
" I'm not much good at taking or-ders.
. . . The job I have now ( rep-resenting
Colorado in the Senate) is
a better job."
Mondale, meanwhile, was resting
at the Long Island, N. V., estate of a
fnend, where he intends to stay until
Wednesday.
Jackson, back home in Chicago,
talked with the city's mayor, Harold
Washington, who has a favorite- so- n
slate of 36 delegates. Turning his at-tention
elsewhere, however, Jackson
told reporters he was devoting his
weekend to " playing basketball in
my back yard and eating hot dogs "
Despite the difficulties of
raising their retarded sons
alone, strength apparent as
Women endure
By Linda Stelter
Mtssourian staff writer
Great hopes and fears hover in the
mind of every expectant parent
For Alice Morison, the hopes for
her first child were slowly drowned
in a three- da- y nightmare of labor
pains and anxious thoughts.
Twenty- fiv- e years ago, Alice's
doctors were hesitant to perform a
Caesarean section when the size of
her baby's head made a routine
birth impossible. Alice's baby, Don- ni- e,
lived. But his head was crushed
during birth and doctor's indicated
that he would spend the rest of his
life mentally handicapped.
They were right.
Five years later, in 1963, Margaret
Turner entered the hospital to give
birth to twins. The head nurse as-sured
Margaret that the pair was sit-uated
correctly. There would be no
complications, she said.
Forty- eigh- t hellish hours later,
Margaret's room was full of soft- spok- en
doctors.
The nurse had been wrong. Marga-ret's
twins were not in the correct
position. One of them was under
Margarefs rib cage.
She gave birth shortly thereafter.
The first baby was a healthy 6
pounds. The second baby weighed
sis pounds and was born dead. Five
minutes later, the doctors had re-vived
him. He would live, but he
would be mentally retarded.
Margaret's husband, Fred, asked
. what it would take to keep the baby
alive. Expensive specialists was the
answer.
" It took every cent of our life sav-ings
of 10 years," Margaret said,
" andthenmore."
The baby, named Trent, left the
hospital alive, as his father had vow-ed
he would.
In 1974, in a moment of troubled
emotions, Trent's father was asking
if the expense had been worth it. The
Turners not only had lost a lot of
money. They had lost their marriage
and they were losing hope.
The trials and tribulations of being
the parent of a retarded child are
more than many people can endure.
Nonetheless, some people are made
stronger by the ordeal.
Margaret and Alice, despite their
difficulties, have endured.
They know the pain of receiving
telephone calls in early morning
hours from well- meani- ng relatives
who demand that the child be shut
away.
They also know what it is like to
give up the simple pleasure of a
night out because baby sitters are
afraid of jobs involving retarded and
epileptic children.
Although both women's marriages
ended in divorce, Margaret and Al-ice
have few complaints just a lot
of insight
Three years ago the two met at
work. They became close friends af-ter
they realized they have more in
common than being single parents
with mentally handicapped sons.
The more they got to know each
other, the more they did together:
Trent Turner receives a helping hand and a worm from Alice Morison and his mother, Margaret, center.
fishing, camping, picnicking and the
Special Olympics. The more in-volved
in the Special Olympics they
became, the higher the praise they
gave to a program that recognizes
the needs of the special persons in
their lives.
" It's a program," Alice says,
" that lets these kids have their mo
ment of glory.
" These kids go through life being
told directly and indirectly that they
can't do this or that. Then you see
them doing things that everyone told
them they can't do."
For example, Alice tells of a girl
she taught to play baseball. The girl
hit the ball after a few practice
swings.
" She only hit the ball two feet, but
her expression was worth 10,000
practice swings," Alice says.
" Even if I didn't have Donme, I'd
still be involved."
Both women have pushed their
sons, though they say that is unusual
for the parents of handicapped chil
dren.
" If you tell me I tan't do some-thing,
I'll do it," Alice sj. just to
prove I can.
" That's how I brought Donme up '
Margaret also has cncour, iged
Trent to constantly expand his abili- -
See MOM, Page 8A
SurveyJ 10 drop In violent crime
WASHINGTON ( UPI) Violent
crime dropped 10 percent in 1983,
the sharpest decline in six years,
the Justice Department reported
Sunday. There was a dramatic IS
percent decline in personal rob-beries,
the department said.
The annual National Crime Sur-vey
said Americans were the vic-tims
of crime 2.9 million fewer
times last year than in 1982. It
found record low rates for several
property crimes including theft,
I which dropped 8 percent to the
lowest level recorded in the sur-vey's
11- ye- ar history.
I The government's survey is
1 based on interviews with 123,080
i people in 60,000 households. It is
I considered by many to be a more
J accurate gauge of crime in Ameri--
ca than other surveys because the
victims of crimes are interviewed.
In April, the FBI issued its pre-liminary
crime statistics for 1983,
which showed a similar pattern.
The FBI, which bases its figures
on crimes reported to police, found
serious crime including rapes,
assaults, thefts and other offenses
dropped 7 percent in 1933, the
biggest decline in 23 years. .
Many criminologists believe the
decline is due to the aging of the
crime- pron- e baby- boo- m genera-tion,
and crime wUl increase again
in the late 1980s and early 1990s
when children of the " baby boom-ers"
reach the crime- plague- d
teenage years.
The Justice Department survey
said the rate of residential bur-glaries
declined by about 9 percent
in 1983; assaults declined 7 per
cent.
Steven Schlesinger, head of the
department's Bureau of Justice
Statistics, said the drop in victimi-zation
rates was due to several
factors, including sentencing
changes, shifts in population and
" neighborhood watch" programs.
" The increasing willingness of
judges to send convicted felons to
prison, which is reflected in rec-ord-
high incarceration rates,
may act as a deterrent by the mes- - g
sage it sends to potential crimi--
nals," Schlesinger said.
The report also said there were 1
approximately 568,000 fewer vio- - B
lent victimizations rapes, per- - 8
sonal robberies and assaults
thaninl932. I
It noted there were 36.9 million g
victimizations in 1933. I
Mondale has a long list
of potential VP choices
WASHINGTON ( UPI) - Walter
Mondale's virtual lock on the Demo-cratic
presidential nomination has
spurred the inevitable guessing
game on possible running mates.
Gary Harf The first woman? A
Southerner or Westerner to balance
the ticket?
Geography, age. ideology and gen-der
are among the considerations
Mondale will weigh in choosing a
vice presidential candidate.
Would a Hart- Monda- le ticket be
the strongest possible against Presi-dent
Reagan? And would Hart ac-cept
in the aftermath of the hard- -
fought pnmarv campaign '
Should Democrats seloct a wom-an,
putting aside the fa t that the
party has no women politicians that
now are household names . ktoss the
nation'
Does organized labor. oper: all
the AFL- CI- O. have enough ilout to
dictate Mondale's selection '
In these days of virtually instant
mass communications, are regional
considerations important enough to
tip the selection toward the South or
See SPECULATION Page8A
Tubman rescued slaves; relative
works to rescue spot in history
BUCKTOWN, Md. ( UPI) - Deter-mination
is what kept Harriet Tub-man
smuggling black slaves to free-dom
through Green Bnar Swamp
and determination is what fuels a
struggle to preserve a place in histo-ry
for the American heroine.
" To look at the swamp, it don't
look like nothing particular," says
Addie Clash Travers, 72, a distant
relative of Tubman. " But that's
where she ( Tubman) hid out. The
slave church also means a lot to me.
It don't look like nothing but it's
all in the head."
Travers has led an often discour-aging
drive to promote the memory
of the courageous black woman who
helped hundreds of slaves escape the
pre- Civ- il War South via the under- -
ground railroad.
Travers single- handed- ly founded
" Harriet Tubman Day" nearly 17
years ago, a tune when fiery race ri-ots
npped through Cambridge, the
county seat of Dorchester County on
Maryland's Eastern Shore.
" Sometimes you could count the
heads ( at annual church services in
Tubman's honor)," says Travers,
who stubbornly persevered until last
year when she saw standing room
only at the Tubman ceremonies.
Tubman, who often is called the
" Moses of her People," was bom
about 1820 in a slave cabin on the
Brodas Plantation southwest of
Cambridge near Bucktown. Original-ly
named Ararrunta Ross, she even-tually
assumed her mother's first
name, Harriet, and later married a
free Negro named John Tubman.
She began her work of leading
slaves to freedom about 1851, when
she made contact with Quaker farm-ers
and learned of local connections
to the underground railroad
Tubman is credited with helping
about 300 slaves to freedom on 19 for-ays
into Maryland after her own es-cape
from slavery. She was so suc-cessful
in her efforts that a bounty of
$ 40,000 in gold was placed on her
See TUBMAN'S, Page 8A