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About La Grande observer. (La Grande, Or.) 1959-1968 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 2, 1960)
18 Seamen Get To Safety From Sinking SINGAPORE 1 1 Tli Kighlcen crew member of a wrecked Amcricai ship were taken from a liorm-battered rock south of here today by a British mine s'ler alte:- high waves swept a- "ii''rxjjjxrtjTjXfruvxrvvvvui Three Ortgon men were list td today at crtw mtmbart of he grounded freighter Valley Forge. K.n of them suffered irjury, acceding to wire re port. They a-e Gerald Tucker, McMinnville; Fred Lund, Milwaukie, and Thomat Rich ard, Portland. them out of .reach of al earlier rescue a'li-mit. The rescue left 11 members of the 7.202-lon freighter Valley Forge's crew of 37 unaccounted for. The 18-year-old ship, carrying 10.000 tons of American aid grain from 1'orllaid. Oreg.. to Iidia. struck Barlang Kap rock early Thursday in a gale that whipix-d up storm waves throughout the Kingapo'e area. A binganore tug was able to take off eight men before the waves forced it away from the wreck. It reported a lifeboat with 22 men was swept out of reach by the storm as it approached the tug. Signals received at the Singa pore Naval Station indicated that the lifeboat reached a rock in the area of the wreck and its crew Temperature Almost Zero For New Year Don't discard those long flan nels, dad, the weather is bound to get colder following last night's coldest period of the winter sea son. La Grande fire department of ficials reported the temperature dropped to three above zero some time before daylight this morning. At 8 a.m. today, the sun had done little in warming things. The temperature was only a meager five above at that hour. . At least. one record was set last nigbt it was the coldest r.ight of the year 1960. firemen said. Elgin Resident Merlyn G. Allen Dies At Age 65 ELGIN I Special ) Funeral ser vices will be held Monday at the Elgin Christian Church for Merlyn Glen Allen, 65, Elgin, who died of a heart attack Wednesday at a La Gmnde hospital. Mr. Allen had been a resident of Elgin since IMS. He had been in ailing health for several months. He was born at Miltcn. Ore., April 27, 1894, and was a Scottish Rite Mason and a memb?r of the Elgin Christian Church. He attended Co'umbia College and in 1915 earned his degree in pharmacy. He came to Elgin as an employe of Scott Harris in an Elgin drug store following ser vice in World War I. He later bought the drug store and oper ated it until a few years ago when he sold to S. F. Foster. He is survived by the widow, Mollie. Elgin: a niece, Mrs. La Velle Bean, North Po:t. Wash., and a cousin, Roy Allen, La Grand'.'. , Services will be held at 2 p.m. under auspices of the Masonic Lodge. Don Dempsey's Funeral Chapel is in charge of arrange ments. AMERICAN ON Yank Flier Admits One Attack Mission For Indonesian Rebs JAKARTA t'PI American Pilot Allen Lawrence Pope ad milted at his trial today that he flew one attack mission for the Indonesian rebels. The Florida flier, who was shot down last May. denied that he flew other attack missions. Pone is being tried on four charges: Assisting the enemy in time of war. which carries a max imum penalty of death: partici pating in an armed rebellion against the legal government of Indonesia: manslaughter, and il legal possession of firearms and explosives. Under cross examination by Judge Sardjono, Pope admitted that he attacked the Pattimura Air Base at Ambon with bombs and machine guns. He said he strafed "what appeared to be a C-47 transport plane, but was later found out. to be a dummy. Freighter scrambled to gaiety. A boat from the minesweeper Kiskcun, tok them off. II was not immediately known if the original count of the men in the lifeboat was wrong or if four wcr? last. Another unconfirmed report said that additional crew mem bers had reached safety in the In dnesiaii fort of Ta.ijong Pinang. The shipwreck took place In In donesian waters, about 50 mile? southeast ol Sipgaiiore. Winds up to 7fi m p h. made rescue work difficult. The vessel's agents suid thai the cargo 0.' wheat was sweling with water. Keports indicated the ship was breaking up aid would be a total loss, they said. . The ship, built in Wi. is owned by Peninsula Naviga'ion Corp. of New York. 2 Wrecks Greet 1960 Slick streets contributed to two minor accidents in La Grande as 1959 came to a close, and I960 got underway with a burglary at a local service station. Earl George Meuli, Rt. 1, and June Marie Steffens. 1304 L Ave., were the drivers of two cars that collided at the intersection of Eighth Street and N Avenue Thursday. No one was injured in the accident. Edward Franklin Calame. 605'4 B Ave., was the driver of a ve hicle that collided with a parked car owned by Richard E. Camp bell, Rupart, Idaho. The accident occurred in front of 804 C Ave. Thursday. Gene L. Bolm reported the theft of $20 from the cash register at the Standaid station, 1519 Adams Ave., yesterday. Bolin told police he was working on a car in the lublication room of the station when the theft occurred. The keys to the station safe were also taken, police said. Cited By Police Gary G. Decker, 1 Pine Crest Drive, was cited by police for operating a motor vehicle with an inadequate mu'fler yesterday. Decker was stopped oh Adams Avenue between Greenwood Street and Fir Avenue at 9:08 p.m. He was released on J 10 bail. Mary M. Reed, 2001 Adams Ave., was issued a citation fer driving without an operators license Thurs day. Mrs. Red was stopped in the 1500 block on Jefferson Avenue. She posted $5 bail and signed a waiver and will not appear in court. Walter H. Tachka was arrested cn a charge of vagrancy by police Thursday. Bail was set at $20. Hearings on all cases were sched uled for 3 p.m. Monday. Victim In Good Shape m Mae Irene Redman, Portland. was listed in good condition this morning at the Grande Ronde Hos pital. Mrs. Redman was admitted Thursday following a two-car col ision on U. S. Highway 30 at Lower Perry. The accident occurred at 9:10 am. when a car driven by Fred Lester Booher, La Grande, at tempted to pass a truck, forcing the Redman car o'f the highway. State Police said. Robert Redman, husband of the injured woman, told The Observer this morning that his wife suffered fractures and a possible broken back in the mishap. TRIAL FOR LIFE and also a fuel truck." , "I mysel; made no other attacks," he said. Pope also admitted that he had flo.vn "about a dozen flights for the rebels and all types like test nights, training flights and patrols like the one we are discussing here in court. Pope is charged with attacking other air bases, the Ambon har bor ar.d a convey. But he denied these charges, stating that except for the attack on the Pattimura Air Base "I attacked no other ob- WEATHER Mostly cloudy with scattered light snow flurri likely to night; (Mrtly ctoudy Sunday with chance if l fnr light now flurries Dorsisrlnf south portion; high Sunday 24-34; tow . LA GRANTEE 101st Issue 64th Yr I "a-'-" V".; ;v ;''' -.- v HAPPY NEW YEAR, TONY RAE Tony Rae Rysdam started the New Year off just right for her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Darrell Rysdam of Elgin. The 7 lb.. 4 oz. baby girl made her debut at 9:07 last night at the Grande Ronde Hospital in La Grande. She is the first baby to be born in 1960 in La Grande. (Observer Photo) Four Private Planes In Storm; Crashes United Praai International Eight persons were killed In two plane crashes in the South New Year's Day and at least four private planes with seven persons aboard were missing in a storm belt which stretched from the Rockies to Minnesota. Two Miami couples were killed Friday afternoon when a light plaue plunged into a swamp about IS miles east of Tallahassee, Fla. Police speculated that the plane may have been low on fuel. Fire Activity In '59 Totaled 102 There were only two fires in the month of February 1959, but those two alarms resulted in damage of more than half a million dollars here. La Grande residents were still talking about the Feb. 15 West Building blaze when the fire alarm sent firemen and volunteers to the Grande Ronde Apartments on Feb. 18. Insurance payments of $90,263 were made on the $265,000 West Building fire. Insura'ice paid $165,- 000 of the $300,000 in damage to the Grande Ronde Apartments. The apartment building is currently being reconstructed. La Grande fwemen answered a total of 102 alarms during 1959 with 42 of the calls general alarms. An average of 19 men answered each fire call. August was the biggest month in number of fires with 20 as com pared to the February figure of two. Fire department officials in spected 342 buildings during 1959 as part of the department's fire pre vention program. Fire schools and drills were also held in several lo cal business firms. firemen participated in many community projects during the past year. Fire Chief Hay Snider jcets, no harbo-s nor ships." .Pope chose not to plead guilty or innocent at his trial's second session today. This is permissible under Indonesian law. If Pone, of Homestead, Florida, is treated as a legitimate priso ner of war instead of as a soldier of fortune, he could not be held responsible for some of his ac tions in "combat." The defense claimed the Geneva convention is applicable not only between "belligerent states but al so belligerent bodies or communi ties." The judge overruled the defense counsel stressing that only sov ereign nations could be belligerent parties in war and that the In donesian rebels are not a sov- erein nation. He also stressed that the legal definition "enemy" un der Indonesian law includes reb els and insurgents. - , - -J. - . T A . Vi.'-. "V ' . Three men and a woman were killed Friday night when a single engine aircraft ran out of fuel and crashed in a pasture near Wetump- ka. Ala. - The , highway patrol said the Beechcraft Bonanza, flying from Bartow, Fla., attempted to make; an emergency landing but plum' meted into the pasture. Killed were the pilot, Emory G. Dia mond, 34, Springhill, La., M A Curtisx, . 42, Cullman, Ala., and Mr. and Mrs. R.W. Stewart ol Alarms has reported. He said that firemen manned a lost and found booth during the Centennial Celebration here and also participated in the parade. ' Many Activities A special demonstration during Fire Prevention Week in the fall was given at hnlftime of the Bend La Grande football game. Firemen also kept a daily record of weather in the city throughout the year. Five members of the department were graduated from the State Fire School at Baker this past year, the chief said. Fire protection in the city was bolstered with the arrival of the city's new fire engine. The l.ooo gallon per minute pumper with full Are fighting equipment cost the city $22,850. A movie projector was purchas ed by the department to aid in lo cal training sessions. Five smoke masks, seven helmets and four special turnout suits were also ac quired during 1959. - i f .v. rf Jv;;--;-v,' 7 V-7 ' kv-s. y: ' v'- - - " . '.--:v.: " it ' : ' '-" - - . : -, . ' . ' ! ' ' .-A Two visitors to La Grande whirl down the Sixth Street hill on their flying saucers as Grande Ronde Valley children enjoy winter fun in the snow. The pair, jimmy and Janet Andrews, didn't come from another planet, just another state. The two child ren are from Enumelaw, Wash., and are visiting at 1116 Jefferson St. (Observer Photo) LA GRANDE, OUCCON, SATURDAY, JANUARY 7, 1960 Missing Kill Eight Bartow. Seaich parties set out in the teeth of a New Year's Day bliz zard that isolated towns and crip pled holiday traffic to find the pilots and passengers of the four missing planes. Two pilots were saf after be ing reported missing in the storm. Warren Racine. 25, of Denver. Colo., walked to a ranch after spending 18 hours in his crashed airplane. Racine said he kept warm by tearing out the insula tion of his craft and stuffing it 'around his numbed body. - Another pilot believed lost near the Kansas - Nebraska border turned up safe at Crete, Neb. Aithur Wikle, Sioux Falls, S.D., told authorities he was forced to land at Washington, Kan., where he spent New Year's Kve. He took off again Friday for Yank ton, S.D., but heavy snows forced him down once more at Crete. In Texas, an air-ground search was underway for a light plane piloted by Houston businessman L. J. Alexander. His plane dropped out of sight on a flight between Corpus Christi and Houston. An aircraft with two Seattle, Wash., couples aboard vanished during a snow storm in the Sierra Nevada between Oroville, Calif., and Reno, Ncv. Two planes bound for Elko, Nev., were also reported missing. Rob ert E. Anderson of Sunnyvale, Calif., failed to make it to Elko. Meanwhile a Cessna Skylane dis appeared over Lovelock, Nev., Friday after the pilot. D. R. Man gles of Cordelia. Calif., radioed that he was headed for a fog bank and descending. The plane was enroute to Elko, Nev., from Napa, Calif. VISITORS FROM OBS Blizzard Paralvzes Great SNOW DRIFTS ISOLATE TOWNS, TRAP CATTLE United Press International A holiday blizzard paralyzed the Croat (Mains today and sent howling blasts of cold, snow and sleet into Mississippi Valley. 1 Safety officials posted dangerous driving warnings as highways coated oxer with ice or disappeared altogether beneath the 11-inch snowfall and four-loot drifts. The storm isolated towns, trapped livestock in farflung I paMurcK u'ui apparently swauuweu seven persons missing in four small airplanes somewhere in the vast bh.zanl area. The storm centered in eastern Nebraska and spread blizzard con ditions from northwest Kansas through western Nebraska, ex treme eastern Wyoming, Montana and most of the Dakotas. The storm was exixvted'to bile into the midwest today, bringing heavy snow, high winds and drifts to Minnesota. Wisconsin and up per Michigan. Sleet and freezing rain were to produce dangerous driving condi tions in northwest Illinois and northeast Iowa. Snowfalls mounted to 11 inches in western Nebraska, where whis tling 60-niile-an hour winds re duced visibility to zero. In the southwest, Silver City. N.M., was isolated by its third big storm in lfi days. Sheriff John Turney banned all travel from the beleaguered town when eight inch es of snow and four foot drifts blocked highways in the vicinity. The weather bureau predicted a bell of freezing rain or rain and snow from northern Missouri and eastern Iowa across northern Illinois and Indiana into southern Michigan today. Other rain was expected to stretch eastward from the storm- Accidents Piling Up . United Press International A nine-death automobile smash- up in Florida and a rash of other multiple - victim accidents sent the New Year'a holiday weekend traffic death toll soaring today toward an all-time high. The National Safety Council warned that the pace of slaugh ter on the highways threatened to break even the record for a four day New Year holiday "unless somebody steps on the brakes." The Florida Highway Patrol re ported that eight persons died in stantly and a ninth died in a hos pital when two cars collided head on on an isolated stretch of road south of South Bay, Fla. A United Press International count at 11 a.m. p s t., showed 222 persons dead in traffic since the tabulation started at 6 p.m. Thursday. Fires took 28 lives, other mishaps 39, for an overall total of 289. TO AID GROWERS WASHINGTON UPI Sen Leverett Sallonstall R - Mass.) said Friday night he will intro duce legislation to aid the "hard pressed'' cranberry industry. He said his bill will be designed mainly to help growers. AFAR RHYER Plains Area bound Mississippi Valley into the central and southern East Coast art as. More siiuw flurries and cold weather were forecast over west ern mountain areas, with rain in, llie I'aeilic Northwest. Sen. Kennedy Jumps Into Political Race WASHINGTON H!P1 Sen John K. Kennedy announced offi cially today he will seek the 1960 Democratic presidential nomina tion and said he is confident that he can "win both the nomination and the election." The 42-year-old Massachusetts Democrat, front-running in the polls and second to announce for his party's presidential nomina tion, had been an expected can- Priest Shot To Death Inside Car BUFFALO (UPI I A well-liked Roman Catholic priest who had left the rectory of Holy Cross Church to visit shut-in parishion ers was shot to death in his car Friday. Police could find no motive for the killing of the Rev. Vincent L. Belle. 37. '"This 'looks like the werk of a fanatic," Erie County Dist. Ally. Carmen Ball said. Father Belle's body was found in his car in a garage at the rear of the rectory about 9 a.m. by another assistant pastor when I j he shut-in parishioners called to say father Belle had not ar rived. He was sitting in the front seat with the car door still open. He had been shot three times with a small caliber gun. Two of the shots lodged in his chest. At first, it was thought he had suffered a heart attack. The bul let wounds were not found until his body had been taken to a funeral home. Dog Tags Available At Courthouse Here Union County dog licenses are now due and can be obtained from the county clerk's office at the courthouse here. License tags for males are $1 and $2 for females. Missing American Girl May Be Corpse Found In Morocco EDITOR'S NOTE: UPI spondent Robert Roaney of the Madrid bureau want to Tangier to look into the mysterious tiay ing of a girl batlevad to be an American. In the following dis patch he reports hew the new and untried Moroccan police force it moving slowly and care fully toward solution of the cat. By ROBERT ROONEY UPI Staff Writer TANGIER (UPI) Commit sioner Maazoouzi shakes hands '4 and smiles all around. But he In i sistt he can say nothing He J wants to make no mistake. . a uimiai in laiigiei. the city long wise to the ways of crime, he has his reasons. They are good ones. The youthful police official Is investigating the most celebrated murder the city has seen in yeart, and until his case is complete he is keeping mum. In cafes, bars and on street cor- ners the city's international popu lation of 200.000 confines itself to gossip the case is already solved, to their own satisfaction at least. Now they are waiting. Bey Findt Body They are eager to see how the young Moroccan police force, which replaced Tangier's old bri gade after the nation achieved in dependence, would handle this murder. It was the first the city has known in more than two years. On Dec. 13, a young Moroccan shepherd boy, tending his flocks, Flv Canft HE FOLLOWS THE TRADITION ROME (UPI) - The Ntw Year's Eva tradition in Italy ' is to throw out the window old pott and pans, bottles and rubbish, at mulnijht. The Rome aftarnoon news paper Giornale d'ltalia Friday said that a man in Pescara was carried away with the spirit and threw his wltt aut the window. The man was identified only at "Mr, Augusta R." The wife, the newtpapor said, wat not badly injured and made up with her husband ever another bottle of wine. didate for months. In his formal announcement, he noted that for the "past 40 months" he had toured every stale and had talked to Democrats "in all walks of life." He said he will enter the New Hampshire presidential primary March 8. Kennedy reserved any decision about other primaries until later, "as their filing dates approach." But he was expected to enter also the April S Wisconsin and the Oregon May 20 presidential primary contests, if not others of lesser political significance. Kennedy'! formal statement was released at a 12:30 p.m., ext. news conference in the big Sen ate caucus room, scene of meat of the Senate'i headline making investigation hearings, including the labor-management inquiry in which the Senator participated. Kennedy said the presidaocy "is the most powerful office in the free world." "Through Its leadership can come a more vital Ufa for ur -peopler he aaid.fn'lf aVe ran-V tered the hopes of the globe around u for freedom and a more secure life. Kennedy is the first major Ro man Catholic contender for the presidency since the 1928 elections when Republican Herbert Hoover defeated Gov. Alfred E. Smith of New York. County Cleric Resting At Home After Illness Union County Clerk C. L. Graham, now convalescing at his home following a Christmas day heart attack, expects to be back at the courthouse early this month. He was hospitalized here for a brief period of time following his Uness. SET DRUG HEARINGS WASHINGTON (UPI) The Senate anti-trust subcommittee will hold its second round of drug hearings from Jan. 21 to Jan. 29. It will take a look at prices charged for tranquilizers. in the Kabiria forest on the out skirts of Tangier, found a burlap wrapped bundle. The bundle contained the body of a young girl, mutilated and badly decomposed. A police doctor said she died from strangulation, but while still alive she had been struck on the back of the head. The face was battered to prevent recogni tion. There seemed to be nothing for the police to go on. That the dead girl was a foreigner one of the thousands who flock here every year seemed certain. Name Leaks Out Nine days later her name leak ed out. Reports said the girl was Barbara Helen Moeller, a 19-year-old college coed from New York. A week passed and nothing happened. Then, on Dec. 1, a 26-year-old Englishman, William Edward Moore, was picked up for questioning. A short time Inter he allegedly attempted suicide while under police guard. He was hospitalized. Moore had been seen often with the Moeller girl. He had left her in her Tangier hotel two weeks before her body was found and had not been seen since. Offici ally, nothing else was known. , Commissioner Maasouxi. stand ing in the sun in front of his office, could add only: "Wlthta a few days at the moat we will be able to release a complete story to the press. You understand. other than this I can say ing."