Albuquerque Journal from Albuquerque, New Mexico • Page 11

ALHl (L EKQl JOl UN AI, M.m.luv. May 2f. 1K( All 'ft tfiHrt-TiifrttamfrhMf Organizer 'Amazed' At Support in N.M. I i fif V''f':" 'lt i Bob Prosky who is Sgt. Stan Jab-lonsky on NBC's "Hill Street Blues," joined Gov.

Toney Anaya in line. The crowd was eager for Prosky, who was decked out in a straw hat with an American flag in the hat band, to pose for pictures. The only serious injury of the day befell an Albuquerque police officer, who was injured when another motorcycle collided with his on 1-40, west of the city. Officer James Spain suffered a fractured collar bone, but was scheduled to be released from the University of New Mexico Hospital Sunday evening, said hospital spokesman Bob Hlady. Spain was driving on the shoulder of eastbound 140 a few miles west of Albuquerque at about 2 p.m., making sure no one pulled into traffic.

Bernalillo County Sheriff Alvin Campbell said another motorcycle cut onto the shoulder, colliding with Spain's. Michael N. Brayman, 29, of Albuquerque, was booked into the Bernalillo County Detention Center on suspicion of careless driving, driving with a revoked license, no insurance and no registration. Cars and trucks backed up for miles when police stopped traffic to allow the Lifeguard I helicopter to land on the highway and pick up Spain. But most people were good natured about the delay.

After Spain had been transported, people gave "thumbs up" signs to police officers, or honked and cheered. Across the border in Arizona, an unlikely gathering of American Express employees and Navajo In- JOURNAL PHOTO JIM Judy Fuentes, left, and Carol Corbin encourage passers-by on 1 40 to join them in the celebration. aras Mopes Spots esolate Fill "('' ikTh fJ i 1 WM. i By Jeff Await JOURNAL STAFF WRITER CLINES CORNERS At 11:30 Sunday morning, Harry and Cathy Davis stood beside their car on a desolate stretch of 1-40 about 70 miles east of Albuquerque. Within 90 minutes, the Colorado Springs couple planned to join hands with six million Americans.

But there were only six other people and one dog in sight. "I think it's going to be a challenge," said Harry Davis. "Every now and then it seems like there's a group of people, but there's still a lot of holes to fill." Nearby, Chris Martin and John Walker of Albuquerque fastened one end of a spool of red and white rope to mile marker 238 and, with the spool hanging out the window of Walker's car, began driving toward marker 239. Considering the lack of celebrities, a sky full of clouds and the barren miles of pavement between Clines Corners and Santa Rosa, Hands Across America attracted some surprisingly large crowds. But where hands were absent, the rope connected the hundreds who decided to come here, where they were told people were most needed.

And in some places the ropes weren't long enough. JOURNAL PHOrO Looking east toward Tucumcari, and the line's end, overpass on NM 84, 17 miles west of Santa Rosa. CONTINUED FROM PAGE A1 California," said Carol Morton, a spokeswoman at the national headquarters. That diversity could be seen along Albuquerque's Central Avenue, for example, where members of the Silver Avenue Trinity United Methodist Church stretched eastward from Nob Hill to join hands with several hundred Sikhs, many of whom had driven down from their community near Espanola. At the west end of town Special Olympics participants joined hands along the Central Avenue bridge, while Isleta Pueblo dancers joined hands in Tijeras Canyon.

The more than 100 Special Olympians lining the bridge over the Rio Grande were wide-eyed and smiling as they clutched hands, raised their arms and swayed back and forth. "I feel like everybody's happy, everybody's with friends again," said Bob Thomas, a member of the Association for Retarded Citizens of Albuquerque. "It was like opening a gate. All the kids got to see what America is all about." A festival atmosphere followed much of the route. At Nob Hill, businesses hawked their wares while small-time entrepreneurs set up hot dog, hamburger and lemonade stands among a clutch of classic automobiles.

Booths were set up to sell Hands Across America T-shirts and caps; there were balloons for the kids, and rock bands played before and after to a parking lot full of straw hats, sun visors and turbans. In Gallup, which calls itself the "Indian capital of America," vendors offering silver and turquoise Indian jewelry competed with merchants hawking red, white and blue Hands Across America T-shirts, and other items ranging from snow cones to water pistols. Despite plans that called for hundreds of thousands perhaps as many as a quarter million New Mexicans, out-of-state residents, Native Americans, and celebrities, to converge on Gallup, the turnout was slight. In downtown Gallup, there were breaks in the line, some of which were left empty while others were filled with lengths of red-and-white rope. A three-day Indian powwow also drew few to Gallup.

As late as Saturday, Native Hands Across America was distributing leaflets saying it hoped to attract 200,000 Indians to Gallup for the intertribal powwow, scheduled for Red Rock State Park east of Gallup. But Sunday, Park Manager Jay Vidal said the event had attracted at most 2,000 people. At Red Rock, more than 1,000 Native Americans joined the line. Against the backdrop of burnt orange sandstone bluffs, they provided an explosion of color as they joined the line in ceremonial dress. Mitch Church of Gallup, a volunteer organizer, speculated the low turnout might have been caused by predictions of huge crowds.

"The potential of 200,000 people frightened away the crowd," Church said. However, the event was still a success "because it brought this town together in a good cause." Jerry Brown, coordinator for Native Hands Across America, lost much of his enthusiasm for the project Sunday, when only $11,000 of the $150,000 he said had been promised for powwow prizes and expenses failed to materialize. "You better believe I'm disappointed," Brown said, his voice breaking with emotion. "I'm really hurt." Funding arrangements that were being made by "other people" fell through, Brown said. "It wasn't Hands people who were going to put up the money, (but) it was Hands people that made the arrangements." Across the state, at the Texas- New Mexico border, country sing ers Kenny Rogers and Lee Green wood drew a large crowd.

Rogers and Greenwood clasped hands with an enthusiastic crowd on a stage near the border just before a rainstorm sent people scurrying to their cars. "This is something you can tell your kids about," Rogers told the crowd. "We may not be covering every mile but we are linked by rope and ribbon all the way." A murmur of disapointment went through the crowd and many people turned away when it was announced that Rogers and Greenwood wouldn't be traveling the 21 miles to San Jon to receive the keys to the city and a post-event barbecue. "It was just a last-minute thing," said Harvey Rose, husband of San Jon City Clerk Bobbye Rose. "They said they (Rogers and Greenwood) went to the airport (near Tucumca-ri)," he said.

But many chose to stay in San Jon and eat barbecue and listen to ausic by local perfrrmers. Farther west on 1-40, in Moriarry, "We don't have to have Kenny Rogers and all the major stars to attract us," said Lorraine Montoya of Albuquerque, who, with nine others, stretched a rope along a mile of the interstate. "These people just had dedication. We're the people that believe in this. Those other people just want autographs," she said.

"It's a desolate stretch," said Gary Hefkin of Albuquerque. "This is where all the die-hards came who knew it was going to be desolate." Among those people was Becky Atkinson, who traveled with her two daughters from Anderson, to help fill the line in New Mexico. "We heard that they needed people in New Mexico and we decided it would be an adventure," she said. "Besides, the girls had never seen the desert before so we thought this would be a good opportunity." Some spots along the interstate drew large crowds; busloads of people set up lawn furniture and barbecue grills. A few people took advantage of the event by selling food and soft drinks from trailers and pickup trucks.

Espanola residents came out in force, their line extending east across the hills west of Clines Corners. Others from Mora, Taos, Las Vegas, N.M., and several Colorado towns filled miles of "4S JOURNAL PHOTO RICHARD PIPES message with blankets between roadway west of Santa Rosa. As the 1 p.m. link-up time approached, people along the roadway were frantically waving and yelling to passers-by to stop and join the line. Truckers driving along the "Hands" route waved and blew their air horns at the crowds, but few stopped until State Police tr 1 Ariz.

Teacher Recalls When U.S. Fed Him By David Morrissey JOURNAL STAFF WRITER GALLUP Peter Hande-land of Fort Defiance, took part in Hands Across America as a way to help the hungry in this country. But Handeland, an English teacher at the high school in Window Rock, just across the Arizona border from Gallup, had another, more personal reason for standing in line in Gallup Sunday. It was his way of saying thank-you to a nation that fed him when he was a hungrv child. Handeland was born in 1944 during World War II in Berlin, Germany, a city that Allied bombers had largely reduced to ruins.

As a child he knew hunger and thirst and cold. He also knew that the food he ate, when the war ended, came from America. "I remember the Berlin Airlift," he said Sunday while standing in line. "Here these two nations had been at war, and the Americans had defeated us. But now they were feeding us.

I was very grateful." That action profoundly affected him, Handeland said. At the end of the war, "There were days we didn't have anything at all to eat," he recalled. Without food from America he might have died. Handeland came to America when be was 16 and became a citizen in 1961. Since coming to this country, he has lived in the Southwest.

But he said he has never forgotten being hungry in Berlin and being fed by America. "I know there are people in this country who are less well off than me," he said. "America helped me. So I wanted to help them." dians clasped hands against a backdrop of parched rangelands and mesas. Hands Across America officials had billed the lonely, mirror-flat stretch of 1-40 running through Navajo, about 70 miles west of Gallup, as among the "toughest miles" in the nation to fill.

They were probably right. On either side of the 1 '2-mile chain of more than 1,000 corporate employees and more than 100 Indians that turned out Sunday was an unbroken vista of sage and sky. A few dared to take a stand alone, far from the huge, blue hot air balloons that marked the mile claimed by American Express. Journal writers contributing to this report included David Morrissey and Patrice Locke in Gallup, Patricia Gabbett in San Jon, Jeff Await in Clines Corners, Rhonda Hillbery in Moriatty and Charles Moore, Sieve Shoup and Johanna King in ttf:" i vS 1 -l 4L i ft I I Li fi to I A i -1 -v 5 4 r' A A I 1 1 halted traffic at 1 o'clock. The intersect uf S.

si the scene of one of the gatherings, where the crow cheered, airplanes circled r.v luiul and Las Vegas police car Iwe slowly along the interstate. "It's time," an officer announced over the car's loudspeaker "Hold hands, i if? fj -J V. JOURNAL PHOTO JIM THOMPSON Clutching a Hands Across America flag, Donavon Nez, age 5 months, waits in Albuquerque for line to form. if fc-J If 5 ,1 If -1-' 'fK 1 Hands' participants spell a Tucumcari and San Jon, N.M. Bea Sheridan and her son, Jimmy, 5, waii rlonG the event.

The chain turned onto Central Ave. ivs.