Beckley Post-Herald from Beckley, West Virginia • Page 4

BECKLEV POST HERALD Top The Momim EDITORIAL PAGE SID GRIM YELL B. CLAY General Manager FuWliht 'Roots' Is Old Hat In Hodel Family E.J. HODEL Editor JOHNF.McGEB Paw Four Friday April 8, If77 Will The Disaster Override Politics? Some of the worst flooding in West Virginia history has apparently begun to subside, leaving in its wake thousands homeless and additional thousands ruined financially and materially. We can be thankful, however, the loss in lives was minimal. Then are a variety of factors which contributed to the devastation of the floods.

Among them no doubt are the heavy rains, the population increase which brought expansion into low-lying areas, and destruction of natural watersheds which are incapable of containing even normal amounts of moisture. Although major flooding occurred in many areas of this state, ten counties have been declared disaster areas. If disaster relief funds are forthcoming from Washington some of the displaced residents in ravaged communities can at least begin rebuilding. Meanwhile, assistance is sorely needed in stricken communities. There are immediate needs for clothing, for shelter, for medical supplies, for food even for a simple thing such as water.

Some would probably like a place to send children until other suitable arrangements can be made. The status of secondary roads are a major problem in getting emergency relief to many areas. Former Gov. Arch Moore literally begged the state Legislature for funds to repair such highways, but was denied. Gov.

John D. Rockefeller IV has echoed the same request, asking for million. He now fears it might take as much as 9150 million to do the job adequately. By EMILE BODCL Afl the recent resurgence of in family trees, which has predated the television series, "Roots," tat been spurred on by that program taken from the Ala Haley book, is nothing at aU new in toil writer's family. Our family is, like many, made up of near oppoiitei.

Mother's people were all from the Old Dominion and decided southern tym- pathtoers. Her maiden name was Warren and she.was born near Union in Monroe County. of her first cousins, Mrs. R. R.

Woolf of Charleston, nee Johnsie Riffe of fflnton, was at one time state president of the Draghters of the American Revolution and also of the United Daughters 'of the Confederacy. That cousin went in big for genealogy and supposedly traced back one branch of the family tree all the way to a Welshman of 55 B.C., the time when Julius Caesar invaded Britain. On the other side, however, father's parents were both born in Switaerland only about 15 miles from one another, as the crow flies, but never met until they had come to Tuscarawas County, Ohio, as quite a young girl and he a young man. Grandmother Hodel had come with a kABV ICw aCf a Aunt Annie and a brother who had hoped to teve hta sweetheart tack in Switaerland come and join kirn tater. He worked and saved money to send for her, but when be wu abfe to do so, ate had proved fickte and married another 'nan He was heartsick and toft Ohio to lote himself farther Back in about the totter IMO's, we would guess, father and his only brother, our uncle for whom we were named, became curious at to what might have happened to their mother's brother.

The only due to his existence was a photograph he had sent back to his sisters long before. The portrait had been made by a photographer in Monroe, Wis. With only that due to go on, father and our uncle headed for Monroe, to ascertain what had become of the long lost uncle. We have now forgotten the details which Dad told us upon his return, but they ultimately traced uncle, who was by then quite an old man. In the Wisconsin dairy country he had prospered to some extent and had married and reared a family of a number of children.

The old uncte was no longer living in the Wisconsin section, but had moved to South Dakota where he was living on a farm with a son. However, there were other first cousins living in Beloit, Chicago, and other points. Father and his brother did not have time then to go on to Dakota, they did and jit to know some of the untiHhea- unknown courids. Later on they atoo got out to Booth Dakota to vtstt the node and other cousin. Fitter kept up with than from then on and oace or twice of the cousins visited here in Becktojr, generally Hopping off en route to some other deatination.

Lake Gram. That was tar from aU the tracing of too. Father also knew that he had to SwitMrhnd. He first went there in 1MB when wt were only about a year old. He WM gone for a month in the company of his father's brother, Un- cte Chris.

There he made the acquaintance of a number of relatives and flew across Switzerland in an early airliner. Uncle Chris would not go on the plane, but took a train and met Dad later. Upon his return, we were told, we did not know father at first and, in his words in our "baby book," 'It almost floored the old man!" Father made several other trips to Switzerland and other parts of Europe. On one he took along his entire family including mother and the four of ua children. We spent four months in Europe and a month or more in Switzerland.

During the Swiss sojourn, we met cousins galore from one end of the small nation to the other--literally, from St. Gallen near Lake Constance on the German border to Lausanne on Howevtt, wn In Ms capital Bern that there mn of rttottvti with whom visttcd at various points around the dry and its suburban The Hate! Jura, where we stayed, had a towrijr outdoor facility, a garden cafe, wheat the night before we were to depart aU the retotivti ware invited for a tart evening's vistt. It wu largely filled and the bin at the end of the evening wat astronomical by the standards of those days, August of 1888. We then debyed a day our departure in order to have a bit of raitful time to before going to Lausanne where there was only one cousin and her husband. However, it was most interesting to meet so many relatives who spoke German or French for the most part, though some of them were rather fluent in English, too.

It was a good thing, for only father spoke anything but English and his Swiss dialect of German was rather limited. ONE MIGHT NOTE that while the governor was making a well publicized tour of disaster areas with photographers placed conveniently ahead to record his stepping in the mud and jumping puddles there is little talk of legislators getting out of their cozy offices in the Capitol to view the damage. Instead, while people go hungry, many without the basic tools for survival, the Democrat- controlled Legislature is talking in terms of new departments tor the governor, higher fees for attorneys who defend indigents, and higher fees for drivers' and hunting and fishing licenses. It is also interesting to note that with a millionaire governor who promised such great accomplishments for this state, John D. Rockefeller IV, and a favorite son who is majority leader in the U.S.

Senate, Robert C. Byrd, disaster relief funds have already been approved for the sister state of Kentucky white a similar request for West Virginia is only in the completion stage. However, anticipating the arrival of federal relief funds and for many it will probably be too late and perhaps supplementary funds from the Legislature, it will be interesting to note if state lawmakers can set aside partisan legislation this year to at least give residents in disaster areas a chance to recover from so much personal loss. Jack Anderson-Oswald File Withheld WASHINGTON A confidential House memo accuses the FBI and CIA of "a serious supression of evidence which was vital to this country's investigation" of the John F. Kennedy assassination.

The House assassinations subcommittee "has uncovered a good deal of information which suggests that Lee Harvey Oswald was associated with one or both of these organizations," the memo reports. It charges bluntly "that both the CIA and FBI intentionally withheld relevant information from the Warren Commission and, in at least one instance, provided the commission with information known to be false." SPECIFICALLY, the memo accuses the FBI of withholding 23 Oswald files from the commission. The FBI "was in possession of pre-assassination files on Lee Harvey Oswald," states the memo. "However, of these files, only 46 were turned over to the commission." The information that allegedly was was contradictory. On the one hand, the CIA suppressed facts suggesting that Cuba's Fidel Castro may have retaliated against President Ken- nedy after learning about the CIA's plot against his own life.

But on the other hand, the CIA allegedly covered up evidence linking Oswald to CIA- sponsored, anti-Castro Cubans. The House memo, which was not intended for publication, draws no conclusion about the Kennedy killing. But it lays out the evidence that the committee has gathered thus far. HERE ARE the highlights: --The CIA did not disclose the Warren Commission that it had been trying to knock off Fidel Castro at the time Kennedy was shot. Killers from the Havana underworld, controlled by mobster Santos Trafficante, were used in the plot against the Cuban premier.

The mobster who directed the attempt on Castro and had been turned against Kennedy. Interestingly enough, a Cuban exile, according to the memo, quoted Trafficante as saying "that Kennedy was going to be hit." -Roselli had also suggested that the mob had ordered Jack Ruby to kill Oswald to prevent any disclosure of the Rafficante connection. One of Ruby's underworld associates, the memo reports, "indicates that in 1959 Jack Ruby traveled to Cuba and visited Santos Trafficante in jail." The same source also reported that "Ruby and Roselli had meetings in Miami several months prior to the assassination." jIMWWOH'TB SEE? HE'S JUST The thing that made us think of aH this was not "Roots," which we did not see since we work nights, but the letter we carried yesterday morning from a Bessemer, man, Ricbard Simmons trying to trace a great uncte, Willie Simmons, who was last known to have lived at nearby Skelton, part of which is now in the City of Beckley. Everyone is getting into the act, as Jimmy Durante used to say! And top of the morning to you! Yesterday And Today- George Benson-- Citizens Overruled, Overtaxed We saw a headline in our morning paper the other day which read: "Declaration of Independence discovered in old trunk." Our immediate reaction was "we wondered -where the bureaucrats had hidden it these last few years." But, then we read on and the story told us that two pages of what is believed to be from the long-lost original, four-page handwritten document by Thomas Jefferson may have been discovered. Experts are examining the find to determine if truly this could be a part of that document delivered to a printer ft Philadelphia over 200 years ago.

The printer made'about 1.000 copies of the original to be distributed to the Colonies, but the original has been lost ever since. Other Notables Visited State --A WITNESS had told committee investigators that Ruby introduced her to Oswald at a Dallas nightclub two weeks before the assassination. She "had been afraid to come forth with her information," according to the memo, because another woman disappeared after she mentioned seeing Oswald at Ruby's nightclub. But the long-silent witness "is now willing to testify." "Did you know that the only bill that has really passed the House and Senate, and been signed by the President, is the bill appropriating the higher salaries of the members of Congress? "The farmers can grow whiskers, the orphans can grow op, inflation can tear out the vitals of the con- pane, but the Boys in Congraas want theirs in advance, whether they deliver any relief to anybody else, or not." 1,1929 --The Warren Commission met behind closed doors on January 27, 1984, to discuss "evidence" that Oswald had been a FBI informant up to the time of the assassination. The i came two "independent" and "reliable" sources.

The commission's general counsel, J. Lee Rankin, took this up with the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who categorically denied any relationship between Oswald and the" FBI. Reports the memo: "The Warren Commission decided that rather than embarrass J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI they would not pursue the evidence." --A CREDIBLE witness has told House investigators that he met Oswald in Dallas shortly before Kennedy was killed.

The witness swore that Oswald was in the company of a CIA agent whom the witness had known for years by the name of Morris Bishop. According to the memo, Oswald was also seen leaving the Dallas office of Alpha 66, an anit-Castro organization founded and funded by Bishop. --A Dallas woman, named Sylvia Odio, reported that she had been visited by anti-Castro Cubans. They introduced her to an American, whom she later recognized as Oswald. The Cubans told her that the American was trying to persuade anti-Castro groups "to kill President Kennedy because of Kennedy's reaction to the Bay of Pigs invasion." Not long afterward, Kennedy was shot.

But the FBI misrepresented the woman's story to the Warren Commission, the memo This report "of what the Bureau knew to be patently false," declares the memo, "requires further investigation. By SHIRLEY DONNELLY When it was read-that President Jimmy Carter purposed to visit in West Virginia there came to mind other notable persons who have set foot on West Virginia soil in days gone by. George Washington was here to look after some of his land holdings. Thomas Jefferson came to Harpers Ferry. A dozen presidents have visited White Sulphur Springs and dined at The Greenbrier and the Old White before: it.

Aaron Burr called on the Blannerhasseti a i i Wood' County. Burr had been vice-president Vice President Marshall spoke in Charleston once. DANIEL Boone was a resident of Kanawha County for a time. Davy Crockett put in some time in the Eastern Panhandle. John chief justice of the U.S.

Supreme Court was at Hawks Nest hi Fayette County and calculated the height of that tower- ina cliff by boiling water. Daniel Webster spent a month at the Old Stone House near Cliff Top white on a hunting trip. Gen. Robert E. Lee was stationed on Big Sewell Mountain a while in 1861.

Following the battle of Antietam in the Civil War, President Lincoln held a conference with General George B. Clellan at Harpers Ferry. President Woodrow Wilson and Charles E. Hughes were campaign visitors in Charleston while they both were candidates for the presidency in 1916. W.

J. Bryan was in W. Va. a number of times. IN THE Civil War, generals John B.

--THE MEMO cites photographs and stories linking Oswald to members of a paramilitary, anti-Castro unit known as the "No Name Key Group." Some of the photos show "CIA agents assigned to train the Cuban exiles and soldiers tf fortune." Some members of the group were traced to Dallas shortly before the Kennedy assassination. --The committee has a cryptic Nov. 8, 1963 note allegedly written by Oswald to a Mr. Hunt. Oswald requests "information requesting my position before any steps are taken by me or anyone else." The memo suggests that the mysterious Hunt might be Watergate's E.

Howard Hunt, who had worked closely with anti-Castro Cubans. FBI Director Clarence Keltey has told us that all summaries were provided to the commission. Keltey also said the bureau furnished the commission with all pertinent information about potential informants, including the Cuban Syliva Odio. The CIA had not commented by the time we went to print. Floyd, Henry Wise, W.

S. Rosecrara, Jubal A. Early, John McCausland, A. G.Jenkins, W. Averlll, George Crook, David Hunter, and N.

P. Banks saw service on West Virginia land. Rutherford B. Hayes and young William McKintey, both presidents later on, soldiered in the Beckley area. One other high ranking army officer who served on West Virginia soil and was killed in action.

He was General Braddock, an English general. Gen. before the old State Capitol which was burned in January, 1921. JOHN C. Ctlhoun used to vacation at Salt Sulphur Springs in Monroe County.

So did Martin Van Buren. Carrie Nation, the noted anti-saloon woman, once visited in Mount Hope. Franftlin D. Pierce and Millard Fil- Imore, both presidents, visited Old Sweet Springs in its heyday. Henry Clay made stops at taverns in Fa County on trips to and from ien.

John Penning once appeared Washington and Andrew Jackson travel- Charleston and spoke to a crowd led through West Virginia once. Anthony HarHgan-- Soviets Are Adamant Collapse of the opening round of the strategic arms limitation (SALT) talks in Moscow indicates that the Soviets intend to be unyielding in their determination to achieve complete strategic superiority. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance had to return to Washington after the Soviets down proposals submitted by the Carter administration. This jection shows that President Carter and his associates fail to understand the determination of the com- muniit superpower. Caught in the web of liberal imaginings, they refuse to believe that the USSR isn't interested in a mutual reduction of nuclear arms.

Moscow will maintain a hard line hoping Mr Carter will yield on vital issues and give new strategic military advantages the local airport and the to the Soviet Union, THE ISSUES and the stakes in this confrontation between the USSR and USA are spelled out in a new report by Edward J. Walsh entitled "Detente and SALT: Defense Realities." Mr. Walsh traces the evolution, of the detente policy and the SALT negotiations and cites the startling growth of Soviet military power. He points out that the SALT I agreement, signed May 26, W72, left America in a position of numerical inferiority in terms of nuclear intercontinental missiles, with the Soviets allowed a total of 2,396 missiles and the U. S.

restricted to Walsh says: "That Soviet violations of SALT I have occurred is history; evidence that the Russians have mitigated in any way their ambitions of strategic superiority is non-existent" THE AMERICAN people have just witnessed a display of Soviet intransigence on substantive nutters of armed limitation, though Mr. Carter is attempting to put the best face possible on the miscalculations of his administration. One can be sure that the Soviets won't be any less rigid in May than they were in March. The danger is that the Carter administration, hi order to get some sort of' agreement and to appease anti- defense elements at home, will sweeten the offer to the Soviets at the May meeting in Geneva. IF EVER there will be a propitious moment for America to rediscover our own Declaration of Independence and the principles of freedom it declared, it is now as we enter the third century of our existence.

We need to declare anew our independence of government that ses the people, that overtaxes, over- regulates, over-plans, and overrules. Most of all. we need to rediscover the foundation of our freedom. We the find in New England turns out to be genuine, that every American will see it somehow and rediscover the great-principles of the prologue. AMERICA has been moving toward becoming a nation of cirminau as the crime rate (the percentage of the total population engaging in crime) goes up year after year.

America has been moving toward the destruction of the family as a unit of society as the divorce rate goes up, marriage rate goes down, and co- 1 habitation multiplies. America has been moving toward the destruction of the noble idea upon which the Declaration of Independence was based, as we teach our children there is somehow something wrong with saying a parayer in a public schook THE GREATEST good which cad come from a rediscovery of the Declaration of Independence is rediscovering the truth of the preamble: "We hold these truths to be self-evident; That aU men are and are endowed by their Creator That is the foundation of our freedom way of life. That is the baste of freedom anywhere in the world. That mankind is created by God and that God gave mm his freedom in the very act of tion and that governments ar? formed by the consent of the governed for the purpose of safeguarding thai freedom and those inalienable rights The opposite of the American heritage is the Communist heritage, 'They accept no god no inalienable and only the degree of freedom the Communist enslavers dedde is desirable. Which way America? by Brickman.