The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 8

8-A Monday, May 26, 1986 The Philadelphia Inquirer "5 Jl rTrasr8 nirc'Tm rssr? roao' "'rr ft i Hester Davis and Stephanie Denby reach from their car to hold hands with George Slaughter (left) and coordinator Derrick Estimated 400,000 link hands in Gantt, giving a vital link in the area of Broad and Diamond Streets three-state area Zk, I 4M 4Jsmf 11'' 4 Tit Svl HAwbww! 1, The PMKMphn Inquirer MYRNA LUDWIG Once homeless, 6-year-old girl leads the line By Rick Lyman Inquirer Staff Writer NEW YORK Even after the closing strains of "America the Beautiful" had melted away, and the thick crowd was fighting its way off the foot of Manhattan, Amy Sherwood still had her arms raised. She didn't want to stop singing. "This is a wonderful day," the beaming, breathless 6-year-old said. "It's sunny and beautiful. The whole world is holding hands!" Amy, who until a few weeks ago had been living with her family in a Manhattan shelter for the homeless, was chosen by Hands Across America organizers to be the very first person in the long line right down at the tip of Battery Park, ahead of the governor, ahead of the mayor, even ahead of the stars of Miami Vice.

"I used to live in a kind of a hotel and I didn't like it," Amy said. "There were drugs. People tried to get me to go in cars with them. We were in one room and had to sleep on the floor." Amy had been among hundreds who had appeared in a Hands Across America video shot earlier this year in locations all around the country, including her homeless shelter. The event's organizer, Ken Kragen, said he chose her "because of her face, I fell in love with her face." With the help of Hands Across America, Amy's family has been able to move out of the shelter to a small apartment in Brooklyn's Bay Ridge section.

"I like it there a whole lot better," she said. "I'm just across the street from my new school." Amy's mother, Jean Sherwood, kept a close eye on Amy during the event. "I told her this morning people'd be asking why she wanted to be here," Sherwood said. "She said it was because she wanted to be in a TV commercial. I told her, no, it's to help the poor, because the whole world will be holding hands." ware's link from the Pennsylvania to Maryland borders.

"We were completely linked at 3:05," said Peter Tovar, Delaware's director for the event. "At 10 minutes to 3, we had a lot of holes. But people moved from other areas." In the spirit of the event, people all over the Delaware Valley went out of their way to make the line work. Perhaps it was Glynn Moore, 23, a security officer from West Oak Lane, who best expressed the feelings of the crowd. In addition to helping the needy, Moore said, "People have a lot of dignity within themselves who come here.

It shows love and unity with all people of different races. "I'm looking forward to the day when it will be 'Hands Across the I hope one day we can get Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev to hold hands with us." Contributing to this article were Inquirer staff writers Julia M. Klein and Susan Caba, and corrsnnnrft.t Maureen Graham, Theresa Conroy and Paul Scicchitano. The Philadelphie Inquirer MYRNA LUDWIG Students from the William Dick Elementary School form link along Broad Street from Diamond Street to Susquehanna Avenue Hospitalized youngsters get chance to help REGION, from 1A 15 minutes in a protest against hunger and homelessness. Four participants in New Jersey even jumped out of an airplane to get a better view.

James Mack, of the American Eagle Parachute Team, said that he and three other skydivers jumped from a plane above Cooper River Park in Pennsauken. The view of the line from on high "was incredible," said Mack. Hands Across America, the giant chorus line of live aid for America's poor, snaked its way through eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware yesterday, leaving in its wake nearly $2 million in donations and more than 400,000 sunburned participants in the three states. "1 thought it was wonderful. It was a fabulous effort," said Jerri Reimer, 24, a resident of Rittenhouse Square who had gathered along with hundreds of others along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

Susan Popkin, a historian with the Philadelphia Maritime Museum, had, like a number of people, brought her two children to what she considered to be history in the making. "I wouldn't miss something like this," said Popkin, a resident of El-kins Park. "This was a major historic event." Organizers called the local event an unqualified success. Lynn Marks, director of the 65.2-mile eastern Pennsylvania segment of the line, said that her staff estimated that as many as 250,000 people participated in that portion of the link-up. "I'm exhilarated," Marks said.

"I think we had a tremendous response in Philadelphia." Officials in Delaware estimated that more than 50,000 linked hands in that state. In New Jersey, where officials estimated 150,000 people took part, there were no reported breaks in the line. Minutes before the link-up was scheduled to start, Mark said she was in contact with nearly 100 ham radio operators along the eastern Pennsylvania route. While some reported gaps in the line, Marks said she later received first-person reports from line marshals who said the gaps were filled. A quarter-mile stretch along West River Drive and a single block in the city of Chester were the only two spots where the line was broken in the local area, Marks said.

Derrick Gantt, a volunteer coordinator who was charged with lining people up around Broad and Diamond Streets, said that shortly before 3 p.m. he didn't think there was any way the line in his area would have enough people. "I was sweating bullets at 2:59," Gantt said. "I don't know where they came from. School buses full of people just suddenly appeared." As far as he could see, Gantt said, people held hands and sang.

In Prospect Park, Delaware County, police refused to allow the human chain to block the intersection of Route 420 and Chester Pike. Organizers instead placed a symbolic red, white and blue ribbon across the intersection. But the police were unable to control a spontaneous surge of the crowd and the human chain crossed the intersection for several moments at 3:10 p.m. "I love it," exclaimed an exuberant Alan Gordon, a Hands Across America volunteer from Glenolden. "This was the only place in the state where they wouldn't let us do it.

1 love In Wilmington, Maurice and Dolores Green threw their daughter the gathered to take part in the hand-holding and singing. There was Michael McDonald, 9, a cancer patient. Bonnie Fisher of Myerstown sat holding her 11-month-old son, Bradley, also a cancer patient. And waiting nearby were Agnes Dutill, 23, and Jan Howells, 31, both of West Philadelphia. Both blind, Dutill and Howells had come to share in the event with some nurses and patients they know at the hospital.

"I think it will be a neat feeling just knowing that everybody's to handicapped. When still an infant, she was given two months to live. But next month, Eshleman, 18, will graduate from high school, a National Honor Society student. "I think it's a really good event," Eshleman said, speaking through a special breathing tube while she sat cradled in a wheelchair. "It's neat that everyone does come together." And come together they had.

In a cafeteria just down the hall, dozens of children most of them hospital patients and their parents had gether holding hands in one big chain," Dutill said. "I thought it was for a good cause, for hunger," Howells said of her reason for coming. Dutill, acknowledging that so much of the world is denied her, indicated her determination not to be denied what she thought would be the best part of Hands Across America: the singing. "There are three songs, right?" she said anxiously. Then, a big smile crossing her face, she confidently added: "I know all three." and then held hands from her wheelchair.

Marinelli has cerebral palsy. "I couldn't push myself up and down the line, but I shouted," she said. "A lot of people came up and congratulated me. It's a lot of nonsense, really. I'm just like everybody else." In downtown Wilmington's Rodney Square, Gov.

Castle, Mayor Dan Frawley and Michael Spinks, the International Boxing Federation's heavyweight champion, joined hands to kick off the state's participation. "You did a wonderful job," Castle yelled to the crowd. As the crowd in the square released red, white and blue balloons into the air, people sobbed and parents reached into strollers linking hands with their infants. Raising arms above their heads, the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd swayed and cheered as a nearby church bell tolled. Although Delaware officials had feared that there would be gaps in several areas, participants were moved from crowded to empty sections of the state, completing Dela By Edward Power Inquirer Slatl Writer In the sunlit courtyard of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Jill Eshleman, her mother and sister sat eating their lunch, awaiting Hands Across America.

It was to be another historic event in the life of Eshleman, a young woman who, with every day, creates her own special history. Since birth, Eshleman, who lives in Nottingham, has been severely largest birthday party in the city. Standing on Wilmington's North Market Street, Michele Bowens marked her 18th birthday with about 30 invited guests by stretching her street-corner party down a city block. "It's so big," said Bowens, a senior at Brandywine High School. "I never had so many people celebrate my birthday." Half an hour before the link-up was to start, people throughout the Delaware Valley began gathering and touching hands in anticipation.

At Penn's Landing, participants clutched hands with their neighbors as if for dear life. Almeno Bowens, 62, a Republican committee person, said she had come from 17th and Norris Streets. "I feel good. We're all sisters and brothers. It's not the color; it's the heart.

We're going by how we feel inside. There's no black, no white. We're all one," she said. Along the 400 block of North Broad 6tl eel, oi aui6a a oiui iuv.m.u uuuut half-block worth of hands at 3 p.m. At 3:10, with a gap still threatening to quarters with a burning torch he carried from a refugee camp in his homeland on a 12-nation Odyssey to publicize the plight of a hungry continent.

It was a signal for the world to get on its feet and run, and participants set off simultaneously in sponsored races in five continents. "I am overwhelmed at what's happening," Geldof told tens of thousands in London's Hyde Park. "It's one thing to ask people to watch a pop concert of stars. It's the plaza surrounding City Hall, Mayor Goode, his wife and three children held hands. "This will not solve the problem" of hunger and homelessness, Goode said, "but it should be a demonstrating symbol that the problem is real." In New Jersey, Gov.

Kean held hands with comedian Joan Rivers at the governor's mansion in Princeton. Singer Dionne Warwick joined the line on the Benjamin Franklin Bridge linking Philadelphia to Camden. And, at Rahway State Prison, 503 of the 1,257 inmates linked hands behind prison walls for what they called "Hands Across the Big Yard." In the prison's recreation yard, Charles Allen, a member of the prisoner's representative committee, said: "Most of us come from poverty. We don't want to relate to it any more." The inmates, who earn $1.50 a day in prison salaries', pledged $2 to S15 each for the Hands cause. In Prosnert Park Joanne Murinelli.

23, an English major at Temple University, helped coordinate the event Sport Aid hungry and homeless Americans. Organizers billed Sport Aid as the "the race against time" because of the precarious state of the hungry in drought-ridden Africa. The United Nations was chosen as the focus of the event because the U.N. General Assembly tomorrow begins its first special session on Africa and its food crisis. In 273 cities from Abidjan in the Ivory Coast, to Wellington, New Zealand athletes, politicians, pop stars and millions of a.m.

disrupt the line, people on the street hailed others who were watching from nearby windows. Using hats as extenders, people on the line gained an extra three or four inches per hat. A gray Cadillac even pulled to the curb suddenly and disgorged three people who each took a place in line as others cheered and shouted. Just before the 3:15 deadline, the breach on Broad Street was closed. And across the street from Hands Across America headquarters at The Palace Hotel, an ordination ceremony for Catholic deacons was in progress at the Cathedral Basilica of SS.

Peter and Paul, when the Rev. George Majoros, still in his robes, suddenly rushed from the church into the street and took a place in the line. "I teach young people," Father Majoros said as he clasped a hand, "and this is part of the Christian message: 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto I'm representing all the people in church who wouldn't I romp rviit I had to!" A few blocks down the street, in another thing to ask people to get out and run 10 kilometers. Let's hope that in the United Nations they pay attention to the blistered feet of 20 million people." Geldof was the force behind the Live Aid concerts last summer to help raise money for famine relief in Africa. Although the running event to raise $100 million had its symbolic start in the United States, Sport Aid was overshadowed by the Hands Across America human chain designed to raise money for 20 million around world run in for Africa's hungry United Press International An estimated 20 million people in 78 countries took to the streets yesterday to run in Sport Aid's "race against time" to raise $100 million for the starving in Africa.

"It's been a great day," said Bob Geldof, the rock star who was the inspiration and driving force behind Sport Aid. "Certainly once again we've helped to keep thousands of people going." At 11 a.m. in New York, Sudanese runner Omar Khalifa lighted a flame at United Nations head 10,000 were on the road in Budapest in the biggest race ever staged in Hungary. The biggest single run was in London, where 80,000 people signed up to participate in a six-mile trot through downtown. In the crowd was Geldof, who had planned to accompany Khalifa in New York but bowed out at the last minute with tonsilitis.

"The doctor advised that what I do not need is jet lag on top of having to do six kilometers," he said. ordinary people took part in what Sport Aid described as "the world's biggest sporting event" In the African state of Burkina Faso, the entire cabinet was ordered to join President Thomas Sankara in the run. In Australia, thousands of athletes set off at 2 In Jerusalem, Prime Minister Shimon Peres and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher reviewed Israel's race. The Soviet Union was participating with races in Moscow, Gorky and Leningrad, and about.