St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 27

0PI5HARl 61998 A8 ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH NEWS MONDAY, MARCH 16, 1998 http:www.sttnet.com ILLINOIS jr- -t TITANIC 0 Hit Titanic' increases popularity ofrauseum TV Candidates are spending little for Win Metro East Continuedfrom PageAl has the clever ad of the day," he said in a phone interview from his home Sunday. It is not just a partisan sentiment Mac Warfield of Granite City, chairman of the Madison County Democrats, said Sunday: 'The bickering back and forth (on TV) doesn't help anybody. We might be better off without it" Like it or not, Chicagoans are getting a strong dose. Fitzgerald ran ads picturing an opulent office and accusing Didrickson of spending $364,000 in tax money for remodeling when she directed the state Department of Employment Security.

The problem, Didrickson replied, is that the picture isn't of her office, which was in fact more modest and only part of two floors of renovation work. She ran a commercial showing a masked Fitzgerald above the slogan The Trust Fund Kid," highlighting his partly-inherited wealth estimated at $40 million. The Metro East region would seem a plum to share in such TV campaigning. With 600,000 people, it is the state's second largest metropolitan area, home to about as many people as Alaska, and more than in two other states. The twist is that it gets all its TV and major talk radio coverage from St.

Louis stations. This is where simple economics take hold. While advertising costs more in bigger markets, the value delivered for each dollar is about equal wherever it is spent, political strategists say. But with an audience split between two states, St. Louis is an exception.

About 80 cents of a dollar spent for St Louis TV pays for a Missouri audience that does not vote in Illinois. So campaigns traditionally bypass, the market in favor of other places especially the Chicago area, home to a majority of the state's voters. That's where Congressman Glenn Poshard, the only downstate candidate in a tight race among Democrats for governor, invested in last-minute TV time to blame opponent John Schmidt for jobs lost to Schmidt's work as a mergers and acquisitions lawyer and for his support of 'partial-birth abortions." Of course, Schmidt is on TV, too, to complain about Poshard's anti-abortion, pro-gun record in Washington. The truth sometimes gets muddled in the middle. Schmidt for example, said he does not support late-term abortion, except to protect the mother.

And Poshard some time ago decided he was wrong to oppose a ban on assault weapons. Poshard, Schmidt and the other major Democratic gubernatorial contenders Roland Burris and James Burns have taken advantage of exposure from broadcast debates and TV news public affairs programs to define and clarify such nuances in their positions. They appeared together as recently as Sunday, in a genteel hour-long discussion with Dick Kay, political guru of Chicago's WMAQ-TV. But emanating mainly from Chicago, those shows usually don't reach the Metro East area either, leaving voters in places like Alton, Belleville, Collinsville, East St Louis, Granite Lawsuits against election rivals are becoming part of the political game, observers say. Bl City and O'Fallon comparatively unfamiliar with the personalities and positions.

The result makes Metro East area voters work harder to get acquainted, and forces statewide candidates to court them more directly, as major contenders did Saturday night at Madison County's Republican dinner in Bethalto. The scarcity of Illinois political ads on St Louis TV also insulates voters from some of the upstate controversies. One is over Schmidt's commer- rial mocking a Poshard speech with black-and-white slow motion and no sound track. It highlights Poshard thrusting his arm into the air, in what critics said seems a subtle comparison of the conservative Democrat to Adolf Hitler. Lacking exposure to all this, the Metro East area might see a more level playing between candidates who are rich (Fitzgerald, who has spent $7 million of his own so far in the Senate primary) and those who are not (Burris' lean budget for governor cannot afford any TV ads.) In the end, it all makes the Metro East area a throwback to the days before so much TV and big money, McGlynn concluded.

"Is it better or worse to rely on a 30-second TV ad that was scripted by the candidate, and that might not even be true?" he asked. "That's not the way you win down here," he continued. You win down here by motivating party committeemen and local activists to get out and tell their neighbors they believe in you." Nova Scotia facility shows artifacts retrieved from sea Tin: Associated press HALIFAX, Nova Scotia Two days after the Titanic sank in 1912, a cable repair ship sailed from Halifax with a sad cargo: blocks of ice, embalming fluid and stacks of empty coffins. Two weeks later, the Mackay-Bennett was back, bearing 190 bodies pulled from the North Atlantic. Most went unclaimed and were buried in Halifax.

The graves give Halifax a unique bond to the disaster. And, along with artifacts retrieved from the sea including an intact Titanic deck chair now on display at a harborfront museum, the city hopes to convert that tie into a tourist boom in this year of Hollywood-fueled Titanic-mania. The Mackay-Bennett was the first of three Halifax ships sent to search for the more than 1,500 Titanic victims. Together, the ships found 328 bodies 119 were buried at sea and the rest were brought the 700 miles to Halifax. When the Mackay-Bennett reached the disaster site on April 20, 1912, the crewmen were staggered by what they saw.

"As far as the eye can see, the ocean was strewn with wreckage and debris, with bodies bobbing up and down in the cold sea," crewman Arminias Wiseman wrote. The Mackay-Bennett's cranes, normally used for working on undersea cables, hauled bodies out of the water. Other dead were retrieved by crewmen in small boats. "It was hazardous, brutal work," said Dan Conlin, a curator at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. "The bodies were surrounded by floes of ice." On April 30, the Mackay-Bennett, dubbed by Halifax newspapers "the death ship," approached the dockyards.

Church bells tolled, flags flew at half-staff and hearses lined the piers. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS An unidentified visitor places a wreath on the grave of a victim of the Titanic's sinking, at Fairview cemetery in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1996. The ship went down on April 15, 1912. Thieves plunder city's architectural history the grave, connecting it with Jack Dawson, the fictional hero played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie "Titanic." On a recent morning, a few bouquets of flowers and a ticket from a March 1 showing of the film lay on the grave. In past years, the Titanic graves received only a handful of visitors each week.

Since the movie opened in December, 60 to 70 people have been coming daily, Conlin said. The three Halifax ships retrieved not only bodies, but also artifacts that make up the core of the new Titanic exhibit at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. Since the exhibit opened in December, visits to the museum have been up 100 percent, said Gerry Lunn, curator for visitor services. About 10,000 visitors came last month, in February, compared with the normal 3,000 to 4,000. Even in death, class barriers were preserved.

The bodies of first-class passengers were unloaded in coffins, second- and third-class in canvas bags, crewmen on open stretchers. Of the 209 bodies eventually brought to the rink, 59 were claimed and taken away. The rest were buried in three Halifax cemeteries. The biggest group of Titanic graves 121 is on a slope at the rear of Fairview Cemetery, overlooking a railroad yard. A popular gravestone One stone is marked with the name J.

Dawson. According to Conlin, the man buried there is James Dawson, a crewman who worked in the engine room. But cemetery workers say teenage girls are making pilgrimages to The mother lode Police and those in the antique business say that St. Louis archi- tecture travels all over the country, often to places with a lack of historical buildings but no shortage of money. St.

Louis ironwork is espe- cially valuable, said Dave Lewis, who has been involved in salvaging antique architecture and currently heads the neighborhood watch in Soulard. With its proximity to iron ore discoveries just south of St. Louis in the 1800s, artisans here "turned out some really fabulous stuff," Lewis said. "St. Louis is the mother lode" he said.

(Tim O'Neil of the Post-Dispatch staff contributed information to this report.) By Joan Little Of the Post-Dispatch Over the past three months, about 30 ornamental iron gates have disappeared from the Soulard and Benton Park neighborhoods. In the Lafayette Square neighborhood, thieves have taken about 25 antique items fences, gates, statues, fountains and window guards in the past six months. Bit by bit, piece by piece, thieves are stealing the architectural heritage of St. Louis. "If this keeps going, 10 years from now the city of St.

Louis will no longer have this wealth of beautiful architecture, and that would be a shame," said Melanie Smythe, president of the Lafayette Square Restoration Committee. The thefts have caused neighborhood groups to offer $500 rewards to anyone who can help convict a thief. The thieves, known as "pickers" by dealers, will go to great lengths to get the city's treasures. On Christmas Day, they stole two large wrought-iron gates from the courtyard of Kilabrew's Grill Bar at 1727 Park Avenue in Lafayette Square. The antique gates stood at least 8 feet high and were 2 Vi inches thick, said Bob Lawlor, owner of Kilabrew's.

Russ Lauer, who rents about 100 apartments or houses in St. Louis, said that at least 10 fireplace mantels had been stolen from his buildings in the past year. Lauer said he had been a landlord in the city for 20 years and never before had any problem with architectural theft. WATERF0RD ANNUAL STEMWARE EVENT WATERFORD NEVER DISCONTINUES A PATTERN! OVER 80 PATTERNS AVAILABLE Order any stemware pattern by April 1 and receive it In time for holiday entertaining. Use our exclusive Tabletop Club Plan and take up to 20 months to pay with 0 finance charge on $100 minimum purchase.

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