The Morning News from Wilmington, Delaware • Page 1

A comeback Weather: Today. Mostly sunny, windy and continuing cold, high around 30. Clear and cold tonight, low 15 to 20. Sunday: Mostly sunny and slightly warmer. High 35 to 40.

tow in the 20s. Sunday: Details, A4 Ann Landers. D4 Editonal A8 Arts D3 Obituaries A9 Business B10 People D3 Calendar D3 Record A4 Classified C2 Sports B1 Comics D5 Television D4 The Tally-Ho, once one of the Wilmington area's most .1 ia i ii i i i i for steam A Lebanon. N.J., firm that wants to put coal-fired steam engines back on the nation's rails says its prototype. Old 61 4.

a retooled popular rognispois win oe erasing ior gooa to make way tor a shopping center. Real estate I Outstanding folks A dozen men and women have been nominated to take the Delaware Jaycees' Outstanding Young Man and Outstanding Young Woman awards. Pace 36-year-old locomotive, passed each test with flying colas. Business DlU Tally-Ho to close The News ourna A Gannett newspaper Wilmington. Saturday.

Feb. 9. 1985 35 cents Vol. 12. No.

7 1985. The News-Journal Co. Coirsail. chosena wit- frrv -x Vfl 1 ttS' CL Probe of health care firm alleged By CELIA COHEN Dover Bureau reporter DOVER A home health care business run by Democratic state Sen. David B.

McBride and his wife, Mary, is being investigated by federal inspectors for the alleged fraudulent overtoiling of patients, according to sources familiar with the case. The business, Southern Delaware Home Health Care Agency is a nonprofit organization that provides health care to Medicare patients through doctors' referrals, according to Mary McBride. In an interview late Friday afternoon, she acknowledged that billing errors had occurred. The problem, she said, was poor accounting that was being corrected. She denied any knowledge of a federal investigation.

David McBride refused to be interviewed about the alleged investigation. Both McBrides were at work Friday at Southern Delaware Home Health Care Agency, located in Treadway Towers on Loockerman Street in Dover, but Mary McBride said her husband wouldn't comment. Later, David McBride telephoned the News-Journal papers but said he would talk only if he were promised he wouldn't be quoted. When the promise wasn't made, he hung up. Sources who asked for anonymity said investigators had reviewed records and interviewed witnesses concerning allegations of false claims.

Officials in the U.S. Justice Department office in Wilmington and the U.S. Health and Human Services Department office in Philadelphia refused to confirm or deny the investigation. Mary McBride, the administrator and founder of the business, insisted that David McBride had nothing to do with the errors. The two were married about a year ago, and David McBride joined the organization See MCBRIDE A4 i Associated Press WASHINGTON Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Dole on Friday recommended that Conrail be sold to the Norfolk Southern selecting the railroad from among three bidders for the government-owned freight line.

Dole said the selection of Norfolk Southern "will leave Conrail in the strongest financial position, best preserve service to Conrail shippers and give the taxpayers the best rate of return possible." She said the sale, if approved by Congress, would include a number of guarantees that Conrajl not be resold or broken up for at least five years. The agreement also would require Norfolk Southern to divest itself of tracks in parts of New York, Ohio and Indiana to assure that shippers continue to have alternate rail routes. Norfolk Southern offered $1.2 billion and a variety of other considerations, including forgoing cer-tain tax benefits, for the government's 85 percent interest in the freight railroad. Conrail workers own the other 15 percent, but Norfolk Southern plans to purchase that holding for $350 million. The selection is expected to be heatedly debated in Congress, which must approve the sale.

See CONRAIL A4 At 1 AP Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Dole (right) presents a model of a Conrail railroad car to Bob Oaytor, chairman of the Norfolk Southern on Friday. Reagan tabs Walters for post at U.N. By BERNARD WEINRAUB The New York Times WASHINGTON Gen. Vernon A. Walters, an experienced envoy and former Central Intelligence Agency official, was I I tv fr Balloon pump used to sustain Canhy Park tot Heart experiment successful By JANE HARRIMAN Staff reporter Brandon Ruba, 3-month old son of Edward and Virginia Ruba of Canby Park, owes his life to a balloon.

Brandon was born with a heart defect and was sent to St. Christopher's Hospital for Children in Philadelphia, where surgery was performed to repair it. After the operation, doctors went to take Brandon off the heart-lung bypass machine that had kept him alive during the surgery, but found his heart was too weak to beat on its own. Until recently, Brandon would have died. But surgeons used an experimental device a balloon pump to help his heart beat until it regained its strength 30 hours later.

The device, an intra-aortic balloon pump, is regularly used in adults having heart surgery. Only recently has the device been made in a very small version and modified to inflate an deflate quickly enough to beat a baby's heart at the necessary rate of between 130 and 200 beats a minute. It is inserted into the main artery, and put next to the heart. Brandon is oniy the second infant in the country on whom it has been used sucessfully. "He's doing really well," his mother says, and will not need further surgery.

Doctors expect him to grow up to lead a normal, active life. Ruba is a construction worker and in the National Guard Reserves. He and his wife, have an older child, Robin, 2'. nominated by President Reagan on Friday to succeed Jeane J. Kirkpatrick as chief U.S.

delegate to the United Nations. After the announcement, the 68-year-old retired Army general told reporters at the State Department: "I will do my best to continue the superb work that Ambassador Walters iillliilBii Kirkpatrick has done in the United Nations to restore and enhance the position of the United States." In accepting the U.N. post, Walters made it clear that he would hold Cabinet rank, as had Kirkpatrick. In recent weeks, administration officials have said Secretary of State George P. Shultz sought to remove the post from Cabinet status.

The general said, in response to a question: "My understanding is the position is See WALTERS A4 Photo by Jim Graham Brandon Ruba joins his mother, Virginia, his father, Edward, and his sister, Robin, 2Vi, at the family's Canby Park home. David B. McBride Oberly says hospital probe 'will shock the public crimes against the elderly and financing of 1 1 -J the General Assembly to enact he talked about Re and defended his practice of lobbying against the early release of certain prisoners. Oberly said he has appeared in person, written letters and sent pictures of murder scenes to correction officials in hopes of discouraging early release of inmates. "I think that's my role as attorney general," Oberly said.

But he said some members of the bar think that sending pictures of corpses is "questionable ethics." "It's my feeling that if you make a decision to release a murderer, you should know all the facts," Oberly told the group. He said correction officials and the Board of Pardons should take into consideration not only what an inmate has done in prison, but they should also be reminded of the crime. Oberly recounted almost a dozen features of his legislative package, including fingerprinting of school bus drivers and child-care workers, stiffer penalties for evidence will be used in Re's upcoming court hearing to re-evaluate his mental competency. But Oberly did say that Re, who is accused of shooting Jayne A. Griffin five times with a pistol and using "a shotgun to finish her off," should not be allowed the kind of freedom he has been given at the hospital.

"He's incompetent to stand trial, yet he goes out to dinner, goes shopping and to church," Oberly said. "That's going to change." "That is irresponsible, uncalled for and an insult to the family of that woman," Oberly said as the crowd applauded. New hospital and social service officials have "walked into a hornets' nest" and should not be blamed for past abuses, Oberly said. Oberly spoke to the group in a meeting hall in the Grand Opera House. But before addressing his announced topic at the luncheon a package of laws he has asked By CECILIA FRIEND Staff reporter A Department of Justice investigation into Delaware State Hospital will bring "new revelations that will shock the public," Attorney General Charles M.

Oberly III told members of the Masonic Club of Delaware on Friday. The investigation was prompted by the activities of mental patient Roger A. Re, who repeatedly has been found mentally unfit to 'stand trial. Re, 41, was charged with first-degree murder in the 1976 slaying of his estranged wife. Re's activities at the hospital have included repairing and selling private cars from the hospital garage and going on shopping trips, out to dinner and to church with a nurse, according to court records and accounts given to the News-Journal papers by former and current hospital employees.

Oberly said Friday that he could not yet disclose details of the probe because the programs tor compulsive gamDiers irom state lottery proceeds. But the attorney general said he was withdrawing one of his proposals the so-called "Dramshop Act," which would hold bar owners liable for injuries caused by intoxicated patrons. Oberly said the purpose of the law was to inhibit bar owners and bartenders from "giving drink after drink after drink" to someone who is becoming intoxicated. But the effect of the proposed law might be misplaced responsibility and a proliferation of lawsuits against innocent bar owners, Oberly said. Oberly said someone could be "partying all night" before going to a bar and not appear visibly drunk.

If he is served one drink, leaves and gets into an accident, an injured person could unfairly sue the bar, he said. "I'm a strong advocate of drunken-driving laws. But maybe I've jumped too soon into this proposal," he said. 1 ww Charles M. Oberly 111.