The Akron Beacon Journal from Akron, Ohio • Page 4

A4- Akron Bejton Journal Smidjy, May 11, 1986 JOINING A Long Beach to Battery Park A palm unday9 to help the hungry -V, A ftf is! Kenny Rogers I it's going to happen." "Every place will be filled," said Carol Morton, deputy national press secretary for the event, which is a project of USA for Africa. Last year the organization raised $45 million for Africa's hungry. "We are going under the assumption that there will be no gaps." But promoters say to form an unbroken human chain across rural Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, nearly 2 million Americans would have to be transported from Midwest states. So, organizers in the Southwest admit that there will be more than just hands linking up along the route. Gaps in the line will probably be filled, they say, but not always with people.

In the Texas Pandhandle, giant cardboard likenesses of Houston businessmen are expected to grace some parts of state highway 287. In spots, they will be linked by ribbons to a stopped railroad freight train. In New Mexico, hot air balloons may float over Interstate 40 and be connected in spirit to palm prints taped to the road. Organizers estimate the line through New Mexico would need 529,320 people or almost half the state's population of 1.3 million to form an From Beacon Jounal wire services Two weeks before 5.4 million volunteers are needed to form a human chain across the United States, the promoters of Hands Across America remain optimistic that the Memorial Day weekend event will raise $50 million to $100 million for the nation's hungry and homeless. Ken Kragen, a show business promoter and USA for Africa founder who organized Hands Across America, predicts success for the May 25 event, even if the chain is broken in places.

The event's organizers claim that 1.5 million people have already signed up and that momentum is building. "This isn't a bunch of guys sitting around wishing this is going to happen," Kragen said. "This is an operation designed to make it happen." Kenny Rogers, Lily Tomlin, Woody Allen, Bill Cosby and other celebrities have endorsed the event, but Hands Across America is equally interested in a high school student's efforts to organize his classmates to join the route, Kragen said. Hands Across America's carefully nurtured non-political image has earned it endorsements from the governors of all the states it will traverse as well as from law enforcement and local government officials. The route begins in Long Beach, and ends at Battery Park on the tip of Manhattan in New York City, passing through 556 municipalities in 16 states and the District of Columbia.

It will cross about 1,400 miles of Southwestern desert. Those who want to be in the line will pay $10 to $35. For $10, participants will receive a commemorative certificate; for $25, a certificate and a T-shirt; for $35, a certificate, a T-shirt and a button. Participants are supposed to line up, join hands at 3 p.m. EDT on the Sunday before Memorial Day and sing three songs: America the Beautiful, We Are the World and Hands Across America.

The whole event will be over in about 15 minutes. By calculating that each person would take up 4 feet of space, promoters say they will need about 1,300 people per mile, a figure that staggers many local organizers. "It's really beyond anyone's comprehension," said JoAnn Shafer, town organizer in Cisco, 111. "They (the public) have a feeling that it's not really going to happen. That's my dilemma.

I know unbroken chain. In Arizona, American Indian tribes plan to set up teepees connecting with parked truck convoys, recreational vehicles and classic cars from automobile clubs. And throughout the desert, miles of rope and ribbons adorned with photocopies of the palms of thousands of Americans will help form a continuous line. So is Hands Across America a giant misnomer? "It's almost cheating, but it's a cute way of cheating," said Dana Hendrick-son, the group's eastern New Mexico coordinator. Added Dell Velasquez, an organizer for western Texas: "Trucks Across America just doesn't have the ring to it that Hands Across America does." If you haven't yet heard about Hands Across America, rest assured that you'll be hearing about it a lot over the next two weeks.

McDonald's is putting 300 million paper tray liners promoting the event into its restaurants nationwide. Public service announcements will become more frequent. "Over the next two weeks, you won't be able to look anywhere without seeing this kind of support," Kragen said. Lily Tomlin Woody Allen Human chain will be a feat of technology frrtn rrmff Ira) i v. Htm I TTl i FfH I I iinr-nr- r1'1 i Beacon Journal photo by Ron Kuner Personnel at Classic Data in Cuyahoga Falls are in the thick of computerized planning for Hands Across America By Laura Haferd Beacon Journal staff writer Hands Across America is a mind boggier, but don't tell the tekkies it can't be done.

"That's what the Hands people call us tekkies," said computer whiz Jim Plueger. He heads the technical systems team that is responsible for assigning people their places in the Hands Across America human chain, planned to link 5.4 million Americans from coast to coast on May 25. The charity project for America's hungry and homeless, brainchild of USA for Africa president Ken Kragen, has been called "audacious." To people who are increasingly disillusioned with software, hardware, fiberoptic communications and the whole panoply of space-age technology, it may seem more like "unbelievable." Believe it, Plueger says. "It's crazy pressure, but it's working, so it's fun," said the 32-year-old systems analyst who sits at the helm of the IBM main frame computer in Marshfield, Wis. Plueger's team at the low-profile Figi's mail-order company (a subsidiary of Fingerhut Corp.) came "on line" at the beginning of April to take on the biggest chunk of the last-minute logistics for "The Line" itself.

Most of the media blitz for the last few weeks of the Hands campaign has focused on Kragen and his organizers in Los Angeles, but it is Plueger and four small companies of what he calls "super-techs" who are really scrambling to make the event come together. These are the guys of computer-lab folklore: former Bell Labs prodigies like Bill Forsyth of Classic Data in Cuyahoga Falls with his bottle-glass spectacles and his pens in those famous plastic shirt-pocket liners. Some are the new breed of "D.P's," or data-processing hot like Plueger, a 32-year-old veteran of Diamond Shamrock's oil and gas projects in Texas. Their mission appeals to the American fascination with technical creativity, the same fascination that was tapped by the man-in-space program. But instead of looking to the stratosphere, Hands Across America is out to conquer miles and miles of Mother Earth.

The tekkies aim to prove to the American public that this country can still take a cumbersome, impossible project and make it fly. Sometime next week, Plueger's team will run the master program to generate hundreds of thousands of complicated letter-packets to Hands participants who are waiting to know where to show up for the party. "They say Ken Kragen is red-eyed," Plueger said. "There are people (in the data-processing network) who have put in 70-80-hour weeks around the clock to get this puppy up." As the countdown to Hands Across America moves closer, the tekkies are holding one another's hands a lot these days. "We have been talking on the phone at midnight from our houses," Plueger said of the teams working for the four computer companies cooperating on the event.

"These are the water boys on the team, the guts of the system," he said. Plueger joined the Wisconsin company two years ago. He seems energized by the pressure, and speaks in rapid-fire tekkie lingo that makes Hands Across America sound like a mammoth continental video game. "This thing was given birth from a systematic computer standpoint on Feb. 1, 1986," he said.

"You are talking a project of this magnitude that will probably not be done in another 200 years that had to be dreamed up, conceived and put in cement in a month and a half." Hands Across America as an organizing concept began last October, when Kragen and the USA for Africa board received market surveys that showed the project ought to be a hit with the public. They contracted with Forsyth's company in Cuyahoga Falls, a pi- (signing up for a place on the line)." When the volume of responses began to grow beyond Classic Data's capacity, Joe Nassour of the Hands Los Angeles headquarters lined up Plueger's outfit in Wisconsin to handle the final route-assignment push. Figi's mail-in address was added to the fliers seeking donations: Hands Across America, 7707 American Marshfield, Wis. 54472. As a safety valve, the Los Angeles organizers brought in Ticket Master, a nationwide chain of automatic ticket-sales outlets.

Ticket Master's 19 regional outlets are assigning participants to segments on the line when they order, the same way the chain does for festival seating at a concert. Ticket Master's program is separate from the massive computer run that Figi's will make in Wisconsin next week. In Northeast Ohio, people who want to order a space on the line through Ticket Master can call 1-800-248-8888. How will the placement process work all the way from Los Angeles to Manhattan and every little hamlet and deserted highway in between? Contributors fill out an applica oneer in the mail-order specialty that sends out premiums and thank-you letters to people who respond to charity advertising. Forsyth's team began collecting donations from people who called its new 800 number with credit-card contributions or wrote to P.O.

Box AMERICA, Akron, Ohio 44309. The team began sending out the Hands Across America premiums: certificates, T-shirts, sun visors and pins. Working with Forsyth and Classic Data were the long-lines experts at TCA Inc. (Telecommunications of America), a nationwide network of toll-free 800 lines that funneled the credit-card calls into the computers in Cuyahoga Falls. Forsyth's company, which earned its spurs conducting direct-mail campaigns for Rex Humbard, Ernest Angley and other television evangelists, began raking in the donations on master computer tapes.

It sent out mailings featuring Hands Across America celebrity co-chairmen Kenny Rogers, Lily Tomlin, Bill Cosby and Pete Rose. So far, the Cuyahoga Falls company has taped more than a million calls, Forsyth said. "For every call, you have two people tion that tells the city, state and ZIP code of the area where they want to join the line. "We have a combination (data base) of over 40,000 associated ZIP segment slots," Plueger said. Each ZIP code may have from one to 40 segments in it.

"You give me a preferred area of 44313 and" say route-assign me? The system will look at 44313 and look at the segments and see how they are filling up," Plueger said. "On the day that we will bang out the route assignments, we will hit you with that specific ZIP." Plueger's team will be working with between 6,000 and 7,000 route segments. Each will have a check-in point that will be identified on the mailing sent to participants, along with directions to get there. "We'll even tell you how to park," Plueger said with a giddy laugh. "Like 'turn your car off If the requests for placement in a certain ZIP code or segment are too heavy or too light the Hands Across America team in Los Angeles can "float" people within those areas to make the line come out even, Plueger said.

With the increasing publicity in the past two weeks, the flow of applications being mailed in is turning into a flood, he said. The number of new participants has grown from 1,000 to 5,000 a day from April to May, he said. Plueger bristled at some reports in the national media that participants were not being sent T-shirts in the right sizes. "Time out, folks," he said. "I can knock a thousandth of a cent off a bank statement and tell you where it's out, but if you're asking for a shirt and don't specify a size, I'll give you a large! "We are trying so hard to make this happen.

We would like nothing more than for everybody to be happy. Our biggest enemy at this point in time is time. May 25 is not going to be extended." Plueger said the system is "working fine for the volumes we've got." He said all of the tekkies are optimistic. "We feel it is a reality and it will happen," he said. "As professionals, we will not let this project fail.

"We take this project very seriously, and I am proud to be a part of it. I know that sounds hokey as hell, but "It's a dynamite project." Ohioans prepare to link hands over 593 miles line," Mrs. Cagle said. But the volunteer who took the call didn't get the couple's names, and they never called back, Mrs. Cagle said.

That's the way it goes in a one-shot organization effort, touted as the largest participatory event during peacetime in recorded history. Area citizens, churches, clubs and politicians have been responding enthusiastically, according to Mrs. Cagle. "Mile sponsors" committed to rounding up at least 1,320 $10 participants each include Akron United Auto Workers Local 856, Canton UAW Local 542, the cities' two mayors, Akron Councilman Robert Otter-man, Coca-Cola of Akron and radio stations WCUE and WKDD. Other "helping hands" include volunteers from the Barberton Free Clinic, the Kent State University Newman Center, St.

Vin- Continued from page Al computerized clearinghouses in Akron and Marshfield, will disseminate names to the appropriate states. Cull said organizers hope to attract some 800,000 Ohioans to make sure there are no missing links in the human chain of hand-holding Americans that Hands Across America plans to stretch from Long Beach, to Manhattan at 3 p.m. EDT on the day before Memorial Day. On Tuesday, Ken Kragen, president of USA for Africa from which the Hands campaign is an offshoot, told New York reporters that "in Akron, Ohio, a man and woman are going to get married while in line." No doubt there will be a lot of things going on along the line. For one thing, people may be fainting from the heat in Albuquerque hile it's hailing in Chi cent-St.

Mary High School, Goodyear, GenCorp, Westminster Presbyterian Church, St. Martha's Catholic Church, St. Paul's Episcopal Church and the Copley Key Club, Mrs. Cagle said. The music video Hands Across America will premiere on Akron WAKR-TV (Channel 23) at 7 p.m.

Tuesday. It features the Voices of America celebrity chorus, directed by composer Quincy Jones. Bias said the Akron office is planning last-minute signup locations. The locations probably will be in area shopping malls, he said. 1 Even if the elements cooperate on May 25, local authorities in many states have raised questions about insurance, police protection, traffic barricades and paramedic services.

Hands Across America has its insurance coverage paid up, Kragen announced last week. And cago. But will there be a wedding on the line in Akron? Well, said Akron Hands Across America coordinator Evaughn Cagle on Wednesday, "we don't know." There will be a Kuntz family reunion on the line on Canton Road south'of Akron. Copley and Fairlawn residents are selling tickets at Summit Mall to fill two miles with a community gathering. Akron Mayor Tom Sawyer will be on the line, and Canton Mayor Sam Purses is sponsoring a Mayor Purses Mile But what about the nuptial couple? "At the very beginning (when Hands Across America opened its Akron office in March), we had a person call and say they were getting married that day and wanted to get married in the Cull said the hassles over highway route changes are beig worked out.

According to organizers, there will be corporations, school districts and whole towns turning out en masse to celebrate a national cause that appeals to almost everybody raising money for America's hungry and homeless. "What people don't realize is that this is a statement that will be heard around the world," Bias said. He said that in the works is a plan to hook up a satellite broadcast of the 15 minutes of hand-holding for international broadcast. People who want to sign up for a spot in the line may obtain registration forms at area Gold Circle, mart and J.C. Penney stores and McDonald's restaurants, or call 1-800-USA-9000.

Miphael Cull.