The Indianapolis Star from Indianapolis, Indiana • Page 16

The Indianapolis Star GENERAL NEWS EDITORIAL Section 2 SUNDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 7, 1952 Lucky Hoosiers Have Mighty Close Shaves In Some Of Year's Most Feakish Mishaps Holdups And Burglaries Net Indianapolis Bandits $400,000 During Year Gravel Dealer Sues County For $5,075 Seeks To Collect On Material Sold Without Contract (The following article was prepared from the otional Safety Council's compilation of freak accidents.) Animals were still shooting people in 1932 folks were falling fantastic distances or tangling with automobiles and walking away from the accidents and Hoosiers experienced a fair share of at thp home of Edwin G. White, 5901 Washington Boulevard, Three masked men pulled the job. The police may be on the road to solution of the Frankovitz and White cases. Held at Louisville is 35-year-old Chester Merrifield, arrested after he shot a Jefferson County (Kentucky) police-! man. Louisville police said Mcr- rifield was wearing a watch inscribed "To Edwin G.

White, in appreciation of 25 years' service, White Baking Company, Aug. 2, 1951." In Septeml)er, this city was shocked by the $6,000 pay-roll robbery of a messenger for the Central Rubber and Supply Com- pany, 30 East Georgia Street. saved a child from serious injuries in a five-story fall. Six-year-old Louis De Rosa slipped while playing in an apartment hallway in New York City and fell down a stairwell. Five floors below he landed on the back of ar German Shepherd named Prince.

Neither dog nor boy was hurt badly. Champion distance faller was 10-year-old Kenneth Wright, of Compton, Cal. Playing on top of a cliff near Lake Arrowhead, he slipped, fell 200 feet virtually straight down, landed on a nearly vertical rock-slide, rolled and tumbled down the slide for 1,000 feet, then took another long drop and roll before reaching the foot of the cliff. He didn't break a bone. A real hardy kid.

A CHEERING NOTE in the generally grim traffic situation is a noticeable trend toward hardier pedestrians. In Portland, a sturdy jaywalker dashed through a busy intersection against a red light, smacked into a car driven by Kenneth E. Phillips, demolishing the radio antenna, and kept right on going a hit-run pedestrian! And in Atlantic City, 240-pound Domi-nick Ianscoli merely laughed when an auto struck him, shook hands cordially with the driver and helped him push the car to a garage, where a mechanic estimated it would cost $300 to fix up the basTied-in radiator. in November. They moved leisurely and casually through th store, terrified clerks and customers, and fled with $12,000.

But bandits have had to share the limelight of notoriety with safecrackers, too. Safecrackers can point with professional pride to these jobs: The Polk Milk Company, in August. Abel's Auto Company. 1030 North Meridian Street, $10,000 in May. The small-time bandits and burslars don't gt the headlines of the society-type thugs but they make a living.

More than 10 liquor stores, cab drivers and small shops report robberies each week, police said. GLAMOR IV CRIME? Sure, if you like a brief ride through the headlines identified as the Bludgeon Bandit, Lemon Drop Kid, Rubber-Nose Randit, Radiator Hose Bandit: Polkadot Shirt Bandit, Loud Tie Bandit or White Hands Bandit. The trick-name boys all figure in the crime of our city. They come and they go, each identified by certain eccentricities in dress, speech and method of operation. They rise fast and they fall fast.

John Henry Sherman, 27, 939 Congress Avenue, has been caught. He sits forlornly in a cell, scarcely the type you'd identify as the "Bludgeon Bandit." Although he denies it, he has been identified as such by the bandit's victims. Remember the "Radiator Hose Bandit," James P. Marshall, 28? Happy Landing In Korea. the year's unusual mishaps.

The auto owned by Joe Strauss of Indianapolis has the distinction of taking its own full mea-ure of revenge. The car was struck while making a left turn. It rolled with the punch into the path of another car. The second impact sent the Strauss vehicle around in a full circle, and it delivered a resounding thump in the rear of the car which struck it in the first place. IT IS FROBABLE that no one has ever seen a train go past from a closer vantage point than George Thonjas of Jeffersonville.

Thomas stalled his car on a railroad track just as a fast train bore down on him. The train struck the car at 65 miles per Hour. The crash sheared off the entire hood of the auto neat as a pin, but didn't do a thing to the auto from windshield back. In fact, the windshield didn't even get a scratch and neither did Thomas. The Cleanest Hoosler The cleanest boy in the state on Sept.

12 was 3-year-old Michael Cannon of Elwood. That was the day Mike climbed into the family washing machine just before his mother started to do the laundry. She turned on the motor and was startled to hear loud and sudsy screams. Mike was rescued undamaged but alarmed, and abnormally shiny for a boy his age. JULIUS MONROE was awak-ened from his sleep in Baltimore, by a sharp pain in his right hand.

He looked over to a chair, and there was his pet rabbit moodily staring down the sights of a .22 caliber rifle. Monroe charitably figures the rabbit hit the trigger accidentally. But a pig in Lueneburg, Germany, had a clear motive of self defense for shooting a butcher who was trying to kill it. As the butcher knelt beside ine pig to nmsn loaaing nis gun, the pig sprang up and struck the trigger with a hind leg. The butcher was shot through the knee.

You can imagine the surprise ef Mr. and Mrs. Milo R. Ewing of Denver when a cow landed kerplunk on the roof of their car as they drove along. The bovine bombshell had escaped from the stockyards and, fleeing from two cowboys, leanpri off an nv-prna rmtn thp Ewing car.

Casualties: One dead i i i i up people, and a badly battered car. WHILE RABBITS and pigs were causing accidents, a dng MI saw something fall from a sta tion wagon traveling ahead of hor. She picked it up, figured the people in the station wagon would eventually miss it and want it back, and took off to overtake them. She had a time doing it, too, for the couple in the station wagon thought the pursuing driver just wanted to play games. Mrs.

Middleton finally caught up, after a 15-mile chase, and returned the lost object. And was the couple in the station wagon ever glad to get it back, practically undamaged. It was their 2-year-old son! Safety hats are worn to prevent accidents. But not the one worn by a civilian operator of a crane at the Portsmouth Navy Yard in New Hampshire. The operator leaned out of the crane to shout at a fellow worker far below.

His safety hat fell off and struck the man on the ground, breaking his nose. WACO, was proud of its shiny new accident investigation car as the safety auto made its first official trip. It wasn't long before the car ran into an acci-dent, all righ i own. Swerving to miss a taxicab, the safety car banged into the auto of Retired Fire Chief Jim Meers. The safety crew Patrolman Joe Rodriguez and Sam Abay tore the seals off the new first aid kit and treated themselves for minor injuries.

YES. THINGS are still quite normal in the odd accident world. In fact, the only tried and true member of the freak squeak cast who failed to get into the act as usual in 1952 was the perennial field mouse who each year meanders out of the field, climbs into an automobile and proceeds to scare the daylights out of a woman driver. By BILL ANDERSON Bandits and burglars have hit a $400,000 jackpot in Indianapolis this year, harried police reported yesterday. Biggest haul $78,000 in cash, jewels and furs was by the notorious "society bandits" who specialize in forays on unsuspecting house guests of Indianapolis society figures.

The bonanza of these sinooth-working gunmen began May 25 with a SlW.OOO haui at. the home of Lipot Frankovitz. 5555 North Meridian Street. The masked raiders swept in while Frankovitz and four guests were playing cards. THE STICKIT MEN really moved into the higher income tax brackets on Oct.

4 when 14 Indianapolis social leaders were relieved of cash, furs and jewelry I totaling $50,000 during a party I City Yearly 100 Unwed (Thousands of young women in the United States each year are faced with the shattering realization that they are to bear a child out of wedlock. A Connecticut case worker, attending a local social conference ronrrn-tion here recently, casually remarked that hundreds of such women each year simply don't know where to turn. This is the first of two articles designed to inform the public about a Red Feather service which deals with these tragedies.) By CAROLYN PICKERING Some of them, frantic with fear, seek out the quack physician, the abortion specialist. Far too many of them resort to suicide as the only way out. But others, those with courage and a burning desire to right their mistake, turn to the sanctity of a licensed maternity home.

These are the unwed mothers of the nation. IN INDIANAPOLIS every year, more than 100 of them, their hearts crying for understanding in the face of rejection and shame, grope their way from the shadow of death and into the light of a new world. As the executive director of the Suemma Coleman Home, 2044 North Illinois Street, herself a mother and a grandmother, said: "No life tumbles into such jagged pieces of disorder as that of the unmarried woman who finds she is going to have a baby. At least, the prospective mother can't imagine a misfortune so great." From the very young teenager, too immature to know the meaning of love, but woman enough to crave affection and tenderness, to the older girl fraught with anxiety, refuge in a maternity home is "like having a millstone removed from around their neck." These are the words of the Very Rev. Msgr.

August R. Fus-senegger, executive director of the Catholic Charities Bureau, which directs the operation of St. Elizabeth's Home, 2500 Churchman Avenue. YEARLY, some 60 women facing unmarried motherhood pass through the doors of the Suemma Coleman Home. Another 40 or more seek the haven of St.

Elizabeth's Home. What kind of girls are they? Trash, from the other side of the tracks, you say? Nothing could be farther from the truth. Many of them, to be sure, are scarcely more than children, totally unprepared for the responsibility that comes with childbirth. They may have been on a wild spree of passion and promiscuity. They may have, but more often than not they're like the girl next door who never misses going to Church on Sunday.

Or, they're the shy, retiring type of girl who may know Ihe philosophies of Plato or Aristotle and wears the badge of honor student BUT, REGARDLESS of their background or their brains, they face a common dilemma. They must somehow conceal their identity from the world, and, more important, they must make adequate provisions for the life of the tiny bundle of humanity they will bear. Perhaps a "typical" case history in the files of the Coleman home would best tell the story. This young mother-to-be we shall call Sally. Sally's dolls hadn't been packed away long enough to gather dust.

Her mother, a hardworking, conscientious woman, faced the impossible task cf being both mother and father to her two children. Sally, having become suddenly "man-conscious" found, upo'1 looking in the mirror, that slit was no beauty. Beaus were few and far between. i I County commissioners were slapped with a $3,075 law suit! yesterday by a gravel dealer'; seeking to collect for material sold to the county without bene-1 fit of a contract. 'George B.

Specs, owner of the; Specs Gravel Company on Union 1 Chapel Road, claims the commissioners approved his hill for; gravel bought last spring, but that the county auditor refused payment on grounds he had no contract to sell gravel to the county. He is suing for payment in Superior Court, Room 4. At the time the bill was presented originally, commissioners discovered the gravel had been purchased illegally because of a clerical error in a list of approved suppliers furnished the County Highway Department. But Dr. Golden P.

Silver, commission president, said yesterday the county cannot legally pay the bill because Specs had no contract. The commissioner added that the gravel dealer should have known he was not entitled to sell to the county in the first place. Hero In Escape From Nazi Prison To Speak Friday The man who turned a "wooden horse" against his Nazi prison camp guards in World War II will address the Indian apolis chapter of the English Speaking Union Friday in the In dianapolis Athletic Club. The hero of the novel escape from a Stalag Luft prison is Oliver Philpot, former flying officer of the Brit PHILI'OT ish Royal Air Force. Together with fellow prisoners Eric Williams and Michael Cod-ner, Philpot built a vaulting horse for exercising purposes.

Unknown to the Nazi captors, the "horse" contained a man who dug like a mole inside the contraption while his companions exercised above. A tunnel was made under the wires. After months of digging, the escape was made under fire. Philpot, last man out, disguised himself as a Norwegian businessman and finally reached Stockholm, capital of neutral Sweden. The escape was described in the best seller, "Stolen Journey," and was made into a movie.

firms and1 was reported by Construction League workers under the chairmanship of Francis A. Wilhelm and Marshall Abrams. Conner said Employe Division chiefs will meet at the American States Insurance Company this week to decide on about 20 companies on which to start solicitation of employes. However the date of the meeting remains to be decided. "It is our hope that these companies will serve as pacemakers for employe groups throughout the city," explained Keith H.

Hoffman and Paul G. Pitz, division cochairmen. THEY SAID they will ask these companies to grant payroll deduction of contributions to make pledge payments easier for employes. "We also plan to urge employes to accept $36, payable over a three-year period, as a minimum for those in the lowest income brackets," Hoffman and Pitz added. "This amounts to only $1 a month and, with payroll deduction, will hardly be missed." They emphasized that if the company employes adopt this fig.

ure as a minimum on which to figure contributions, the campaign can succeed. wanted to sell Christmas trees had to go through regular channels to get permission, the holiday season would be over before they could get started. Harold W. Geisel, executive secretary of the zoning board, confirmed yesterday that Atkins' location was zoned for business but not for open air sales. He said the board must grant temporary variances in such cases.

Although issuance of "special i permits" by commissioners was termed "unusual" by other eoun ty officials, it was pointed out that commissioners have authority to approve or reject actions of the Zoning Board. A number of such "special permits" were issued to Christmas tree dealers last year but Atkins' is the first given by commissioners this season. SI CESS HAS MADE bandits and strong-arm men more brazen than ever. Three men staged a daring daylight robbery of the Stop and Shop Supermarket, 28th Street and Capitol Avenue, Shelters Mothers VICTIM prince charming to "ship out," there were last minute heated vows of lifelong devotion and promises of marriage. As the weeks rolled by, the love letters grew shorter and more dispas sionate.

Soon after Sally realized she would bear the child of the man to whom she had professed un dying love. She clung with a fervent zeal to the memory of that first love. With childlike enthusiasm, she pledged her life to her unborn child. Caseworkers and counsellors, older and wiser, didn't try to change Sally's mind. She did it herself after several months in the home convinced her that, only by placing her child for adoption would the youngster have the opportunity to face the world free of the stigma of illegitimacy.

FOR SALLY, and hundreds like her, the decision was a courageous one. The experience of childbirth becomes beautiful only when the mother cuddles her offspring to her bosom and realizes she has something which can never be taken from her. But, for Sally and the hundreds which duplicate her decision each year, those few hours of pain, sweat and often tears have no tangible reward. This is the fate of the unwed mother. (Tomorrow: A home away from home.) Mate Seized In Slaying Anderson Vet Held In Wife's Stabbing Anderson, Ind.

(Spl.) A young World War II veteran was held on a homicide warrant after his attractive wife died yesterday of stab wounds inflicted by a rusty pen-knife during an argument over their broken marriage. Sheriff Joe Brogdon said Edward Eugene Warnell, 28-year-old Anderson factory worker, admitted plunging the pen-knife into his wife's back two times while the screams of their three small children rang through her tiny apartment at Alexandria. WARNELL, who contracted malaria while he served in the South Pacific during World II, said he took time off his job at the Warner Gear plant at Muncie Thursday night and went by bus to Alexandria, where his wife, Beth, 28, had been living in a small apartment since their separation six weeks ago. She had been employed as a waitress at an Alexandria cafe. They talked about 30 minutes.

Then, as Warnell's wife turned away, he seized her arm and she and the children started to First Hospital Drive Report Luncheons Set landed astride a moving auto. The driver of the car was surprised too. Nobody was hurt, little damage done. Trolley Motorman Albert J. Cooney of Philadelphia can't be blamed too much if he looks the other way the next time he has a chance to play good Samaritan.

Cooney saw flames shooting out of a house, stopped his trolley car and turned in a box alarm. He continued his run and three minutes later met the fire truck as it raced to the fire he had reported met it head-on. Five firemen and three trolley passengers were injured. VERY TOW FEOrLE are complaining these days that they are overloaded with dough. But it I literally happened to baker Ru- us Franklin, of Atlanta, when i0 pounds of.

the stuff slipped from a mixing table, fell on his foot, fractured a bone. Close Shave In Indiana The average patient can expect to wait a while when he drops in to see a doctor' without an appointment. But Gus Smith found not one but a group of doctors actually springing to attention when he dropped in on them in St. Louis one day. Gus, a maintenance man, made his entrance via a glass ceiling in the City Hospital and landed on a conference table surrounded by physicians.

Robert Moses, of Brockton, had one consolation when his truck ripped through nine highway posts, rolled over on its side, and lay there quietly. It could have been worse. The truck was loaded with dynamite! ON A HIGHWAY near Meridian, Mrs. G. D.

Middleton him. She told me to say the Lord's Prayer. And before I got started on it, Major opened one eye and yawned. Thus began my intimacy with Mary Greenwillow with a small deed of kindness that lodged in my soul forever. All of us live spiritually by what othe.rs have given us, often unwittingly, in the significant hours of our life.

At the time these significant hours may not even be perceived. We may not recognize them until years later when we look back, as one remembers some long-ago music or a boyhood landscape. We all owe to others much of gentleness and wisdom that we have made our own. And we may well pause often and ask ourselveswhat will others owe to us when people recall their contacts with us? (CafrifM, 19M, ti Srui Ptrklm Otnlar ui Altwrt L. Cl.

Ennlort tt Dm EtUlt Mltom Oiralw.) Fulton Purser's Modern Parables My Dog And My Friend Marshall, 7777 West Washington Street, and a man apprehended with him, Chester Blanton, 28, now are serving jail terms. THE POLICE SAY merchants. cab drivers and just plain citi zens can help curtail the activi ties of the high-flying bandits. Call the police if you are sus picious of the man who wanders by, eyeing your store or your home with special interest. Sgt.

Edward Clark, police burglary squad chief, advises merchants and businessmen to install burglar alarms, keep their offices lighted, particularly over the safe. Tell the police where your safe is located, advise them of your office exits and tell them how to contact you in case of a burglary, Clark urged. Do this, Clark declared, and the bandits and burglars will wear numbers instead of fancy nicknames. Federal Gas Tax Shift To Stales Urged To get more roads without more taxes, local truck operators favor cancellation of the Federal gasoline tax of 2 cents a gallon. James E.

Nicholas, executive-secretary of the Indiana Motor Truck Association, said yesterday that members look with favor on a recent recommendation of the National Grange. The Grange urged immediate withdrawal of the Federal gov-ernment from the gasoline tax field. This would leave the states with an extra 2 cents to spend on their local roads. THE FARM organization further urged the government to withdraw "as soon as possible from the field of automotive taxation." This would eliminate present excise taxes on automobiles, trucks, tires and accessories. Nicholas said the Governor's Conference has approved elimination of Federal gasoline taxes, as advocated by the Grange.

If this were done, Indiana would have a 6-cent tax a gallon to maintain its highway system, or an increase of 50 per cent with no extra cost to the motorist. NICHOLAS SAID the legisla-five committee of the motor truck association will meet Dec. 22 and may give formal approval to the Grange proposal. The association will renew its effort to stop diversion of highway funds by presenting a constitutional amendment to the 1953 General Assembly, Nicholas said. If it passes two legislative sessions, the amendment will go on the ballot for approval by the voters.

This has passed one session but never the required two, Nicholas said. THE GRANGE announced a similar stand against diversion of taxes on gasoline and revenue from license fees ta any purpose other than the construction and maintenance of roads. "There is no connection between Federal excise automotivt taxes and Federal aid to high-ways," the Grange announcement received yesterday by the truck association stated. "These taxes first were levied during World War I as emergency taxes and since have been levied for general revenue pur poses. "For the fiscal year that ended June 30.

1952. the funds appropriated for highway uses were less than one-fourth of th more than $2,000,000,000 col-lected in automotive exciit taxes." Airborne Hitchhiker Things looked a little rugged for Air Force Capt. Fred C. Seals of Dallas, when he fell out the wide-open door of a mile-high C-16 cargo plane as the plane lurched violently in bad weather while dropping supplies to G.I.'s in Korea. But just as Seals struggled desperately to pull the ripcord of his parachute, the plane hit an air pocket, dipped sharply downward and scooped the plunging airman neatly back aboard through the same door he had used as an exit.

ALSO SURPRISED and grateful was flier Joe Wardle of Salt Lake City, Utah, at the way his forced landing turned out. Heading for an open highway and an emergency landing when his single engine died, Wardle pulled up the nose of his small plane preparatory to touching ground. He felt the wheels and sat thorp u-nitincr foi hit and sat there waiting for the plane to stop rolling. Instead, it continued briskly down the road. Perplexed, he peeked out and was understandably astonished to discover the plane had our vestibule.

I played Major was sick and I was the doctor. So I gave him the medicine." "How much did you give him?" "All of it," I sobbed. Mary Greenwillow pulled on the left rein and Sloppy turned the wagon around in a great half-moon. We stopped at our alley. "Son," said Mary Greenwillow, "go bring me the dog." Major was lying stiff in the sun behind our back-yard gate.

I picked him up by his four paws and lugged him down to the I wagon. Mary Greenwillow held i his soft underpays against her Results thus far in the Indianapolis Hospital Development Campaign will be revealed by drive workers Tuesday and Wednesday at noon report luncheons. First to report, in the Indianapolis Athletic Club's. Green Room, will be the Commerce and Industry Division, Willis B. Conner drive chairman, announced yesterday.

Next day, another tally will come from the Major Corporation Gifts Division at the Columbia Club. AT THE SAME time, Conner added, officials expect to announce a "total-obtained-to-date" figure on the drive for a proposed new East Side Community Hospital, a new Norways Foundation Hospital and building additions to Methodist and Beech Grove's St. Francis Hospitals and Methodist Hospital's Nurses Home. Meanwhile, Conner reported $89,000 in new pledges obtained by the Commerce and Industry Division. Among these were $27,000 from Stark Wetzel Co.

and $10,000 from North Side Chevrolet Inc. THE REMAINING $32,000 came from several construction Dear Friends and Gentle Hearts: Disillusion is a disease youth catches from age, from people too busy to be simply human. I look back on my own youth and 1 realize how so many people gave me help and understanding, courage and they never knew it. Like my friend, Mary Green-willow. My first clear memory of Mary Greenwillow is of a summer's day when she drove up in front of our house in Baltimore.

I can still see her descending from the canvas-topped wagon with the red-and-yellow wheels. On the curbstone she dropped a lump of lead tied to the reins of Sloppy, her mare. Then she crossed the mossy brick pavement and mounted our white marble steps. "Son," she said to me, "what are you crying about?" "My dog Major is dead," I wailed. "WHERE'S YOUR Mom?" she demanded.

When I brought mother to the door Mary counted 12 eggs into our mixing bowl and laid a tissued pound of butter in with them. "Look," she spoke i in a reasoning tone "the kid's lost his dog. Can I take him for a ride on the wagon? I'll get him a good lunch down at the market and have him home be- fore suppertime. It'll sort of take his mind off things." She allowed me to lift up the lead hitcjiing weight, and to keep my hands on the reins with her, As we went clip-clopping along she asked: "What made Major die?" Then I told Mary what I had not dared to tell my mother: "I killed him!" "You did?" said the butter and egg lady with tranquility. "How?" "SOMEBODY THREW a sam-pla bottlt of patent medicine in Commissioner Defends OK Of 'Special' Yule Tree Sale Dr.

Golden P. Silver, president of the Board of County Commissioners, yesterday defended his granting a "special permit" to sell Christmas trees on a North Side street corner although the action involved bypassing the County Board of Zoning Appeals. Silver admitted he gave permission for S. D. Atkins to sell trees on the northwest corner of 62d Street and Keystone Ave- I nue after Atkins was told he could not get a regular permit until the December meeting of the zoning board.

And the commissioner said he would approve similar "special permits" for sale of Christmas trees if the location was not in a residential area and there were no serious objections from nearby property owners. Silver said if everybody who scream, Warnell told Brogdon. Thp sheriff said Warnell admitted clapping his hand over her mouth and stabbing her twice, in the back, as she twisted in his Thp couple's three children. Carolyn, Betty Jean, 5, Rnd Michael Edward, 4, watched in fear. When their mother slumped onto a lounge, Carolyn ran crying from the upstairs apartment to a taxi stand four blocks away to summon police.

ALONG CAME a serviceman dashing in his uniform and full of the love end affection denied her since the divorce of her parents. Sally was in seventh heaven. Here was a companion who saw mor than surface beauty in her. When Uncle Sam ordered her i ear. "I DON'T BELIEVE he's dead," she declared.

"I think that medicine just put him to sleep, A lot of medicines these days are loaded with paragoric." She rubbed his jowls with her palms. She coaxed and cajoled.