The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 11

section The Scene 2 Living 6 Marciarose 6 Ruth Seltzer 7 metropolitan Friday, Sept. .30, 1977 fe ffiitoelpfita Inquirer By DOROTHY STORCK A Norristown councilman dies in action I .1 thrown, according to one account. Upon adjournment, however, the angry words and ill feelings have customarily been forgotten. FennelPs death left the council members and other borough officials shaken. "John Fennell was the sort of person you could really establish a rapport with and enjoy," said Philip J.

Miller, borough treasurer. "He was a fine councilman." Council President Orr said yesterday, that he had accepted FennelPs resignation Wednesday night with a grain of salt. "I excepted him to call me today (Thursday) and say he changed his mind. Now he won't be able to," said Orr, who was close to tears. By Susan Q.

Stranahan and Ruth O'Bryan Special to The Inquirer A popular member of the Norristown Borough Council died of an apparent heart attack Wednesday night a few minutes after he had angrily resigned his seat in a dispute over a new tax and stormed out of the council chambers. John A. Fennell, SO, had sought permission of Council President Francis Orr to speak against a one-mill business-privilege tax that Mayor John J. Murray had just signed into law. Orr, a lifelong friend of Fennell, ruled the councilman out of order because the tax already had been enacted.

Moments later, Fennell the father of six handed Orr a written note, walked to a table occupied by local news reporters and told them: "I quit." He then left the municipal building and walked Wi blocks to a nearby restaurant, where he ran into several friends. Suddenly, according to the restaurant manager, Fennell "just keeled over." He was pronounced dead at Sacred Heart Hospital in Norristown at 9:05 p.m., a half-hour after he had left the meeting. Over the years, Norristown council meetings have produced numerous shouting matches and, on at least one occasion, a brief fight that resulted in more punches being pulled than A quiet drink with Minicam We were halfway down the block, heading for Downey's saloon on South Street, before we saw the Action News truck. It was parked" across the street from the pub but the cables were snaking up the steps and into the place. I knew right then that any hopes I Reflecting briefly on the time demands and pressures placed on local elected officials, Orr said, "The frustration gets the best of you sometimes.

You're damned if you do and damned if you don't. You're hardly ever home. I've been asked many times, 'Why do you do To tell you the truth, I just don't know." The tax Fennell criticized imposes a one-mill levy on borough businesses. It is expected to produce $130,000 in additional revenue. It was challenged unsuccessfully in the courts and vetoed earlier this month by Murray, but at the special council meeting Wednesday, Murray withdrew the veto and signed the tax.

Fennell, who operated the John J. Philadelphia inquirer chulu ISAACS the Army ones in basket) during WWI K. P. Home Nocton Son Fuel Co. in Norristown for 25 years, lived at 564 Hamilton St He was serving his second term on the council.

He told friends that he had run for office because he felt someone had to serve. He is survived by his wife, Agnes; his father, J. Albert; two daughters, Alice Ann, and Rosemarie; and four sons, John A. 3d, Timothy, Patrick and Ricliard. Funeral services will be at 9:30 a.m.

Saturday at the Bosler Funeral Home, 800 W. Main Norristown. A Mass of Christian Burial will follow at 10:30 a.m. at St. Francis! of Assisi Church, Burial will be in St.

Patrick's Cemetery, Norristown. Ceritano is barred from hotel Bankruptcy judge orders owner out By Dick Pothier A Inquirer Business Writer A federal judge ordered wine importer Armand Ceritano yesterday to stop interfering with the new management of the Philadelphia Hilton Hotel and barred him from all but public areas of the hotel. Ceritano, who purchased the South Philadelphia hotel in December 1976, filed a voluntary bankruptcy petition in U.S. District Court here two months ago. He lost operating control of the hotel about 10 days ago when a trustee appointed by a federal bankruptcy judge brought in a professional hotel-management group to operate the hotel.

Several members of the management group said that Ceritano had tried to throw them out of the hotel recently and that the trustees sought yesterday's order as a result. "The court order gives him 24 hours to remove himself from the premises and orders him to not interfere with the management or opefa-. tion of the hotel," said Vito Canuso, an attorney for the court-appointed trustee, Paul P. Giordano. "But he is not being barred from the public areas or the public rooms, of the hotel," Canuso said.

"He is as welcome as any other member of the public." The order also allows him to reach the offices of Ceritano Wines Inc. in the lobby. The order was signed by federal bankruptcy Judge William A. King. Ceritano, for his part, claims that "a bunch of strangers from Pittsburgh" came into the hotel about l'O days ago, fired the old managers, and changed office locks.

"I worked 16 hours a day in that hotel, turning it into a productive hotel," Ceritano said yesterday. t'l was able to get that hotel with my personality, and now they say I can't use my personality to sell a hotel room." said Ceritano, whose face and voice and personality became widely known from radio and TV commercials for Ceritano wines and the hotel. "Now I no longer need the voluntary bankruptcy, and I've been trying to withdraw it. There is now plenty of money for creditors, but I can't get to a judge to withdraw the petition." Ceritano took over ownership of the hotel with almost no investment by assuming its $6.8 million mortgage from the Westinghouse Credit A little more than seven months later, on July 25, Ceritano and his' partnership, which owned 75 percent of the hotel, filed for protection from creditors under the Federal Bank- ruptcy Act. The hotel had lost money consist-.

ently before Ceritano took over, but he said revenues had been increasing sharply in recent months. Westinghouse was preparing to (See CERITANO on 3-B) James L. Herbert, of Florida, built this balloon The best seat for watching the war was a good target had for a simple toddy on a wet weekday evening were shot. We were heading into a live Action Cam production. "Oh, lordy," said my friend.

"The TV cameras are in there and I haven't even combed my hair. You have to know that my friend is a newswoman who has interviewed the top show biz stars of our day. Also, she had just finished explaining to me that she was dragging, I mean dragging, after a long day's travail. It would be all she could do, she had explained, to totter to the bar and reach out her hand for a cup. "Maybe," she said now, reaching wildly into her purse for her lipstick, "maybe I can make it down the back steps to the ladies' room before they see me." The syndrome That's it.

That's the TV syndrome Everybody has a touch of it. That's why you see them jumping and mugging and waving behind the TV reporter on the scene. He may be reporting a murder or a fire or a riot, but right there behind him you'll always see these people jumping and waving and grinning. Now they've got these Cams and Minicams which telecast from remote sites "live" fnto the news studios. They are supposed to take the home viewers right to where the action is.

Trouble is, the action isn't happening until the TV crew says it is. There is no way of slipping into a place incognito when you're lugging three kleig lights, a sound system, a shoulder-mount camera and a TV reporter with pear-shaped tones. Inside the bar, Hank Sperka, who is the maitre d' at Channel 6, was setting up his instant, live, spontane- ous spot for the six o'clock news. I His segment was called "Phillies Fever." At precisely 6:22, in time for Don Tollefson's sports announcements, everybody in the bar was supposed to wave his champagne glass (champagne courtesy of Jack Downey, the owner) and cheer because the Phillies had won the Eastern Division championship. The solution Then Hank Sperka, who had a plug in his ear and a walkie-talkie in his hand, would interview two Phillies fans both girls who were clinging to his side, and one British sailor who had wondered in off the H.M.S.

Penelope and who had never seen a baseball game but who had a nice accent. After that, back in the studio anchorman Jim Gardner could say, "Wow! That's some Phillies fever!" and that would be the kicker for the night. Things were not perfectly swell, though. The microwaves or the turbo-flots or whatever were acting up in the wet weather. It was 6:08 and Hank Sperka couldn't get through to the studio.

"Hello, hello, hello," he kept muttering into his walkie-talkie. Practice cheers were going up all around the bar. Jack Downey broke out some more champagne. The old stuff was getting warm' and sticky under the lights. "I have to go to the bathroom, Hank," someone yelled from across the packed room.

"Do I have time to go to the bathroom?" The segment "Wait now, wait now OK, we've got it," Sperka shouted suddenly. He smiled into the camera and' put his arm around the round-faced girl at his side. "Are the Phillies gonna win the pennant?" he asked, eyes twinkling. "You bet, all the way!" the round-faced girl replied. She paused, blinked into the lights and decided she'd reach for stardom.

"All the way!" she said again. Behind her, right on cue, the bar crowd cheered. "Wow! That's some Phillies fever!" Jim Gardner said, back in the studio, and signed off for the night. Nifteen minutes later, with the lights gone, the cables coiled away, Downey's saloon was quiet again. People started drifting home to dinner.

"Mom," one girl was saying plaintively over the telephone. "Didn't you see me? That was my arm waving right behind Hank Scruggs." "Mom," the girl said again. "That was me waving. How could you have missed L. By Linda Loyd Inquirer Staff Writer Craig S.

Herbert could spot the front lines during World War I by the hundreds of artillery lookout balloons floating for miles. "They stretched as far as you could see, from the English Channel to the Swiss border," recalls the 77-year-old Lafayette Hill, man. delphia from as far away as Hawaii and Alaska for a three-day reunion of the National Association of American Balloon Corps Veterans. The men who tended the observation balloons, most of whom are now in their mid-80s, say an attack by enemy airplanes on a balloon was "an adventure you can't forget." "I may not remember what I did or ate vesterdav. but I can remem- He should know, too.

He was part ber every detail of the war," Herbert of the Second Balloon Company in says. "eyes "Frankly, I don't know how of the guys to expect, said Herbert, Europe in 1918, known as the of the army." ''Sometimes we were called Sitting Ducks," he says. Back in the "Big War," before days of helicopters for patrol sions, 4,700 enlisted men and 400 offi- men, the officers, who were usually cers were assigned to spot enemy ac- in the balloons, and most of them are tion in France from tethered hydro- dead now. A lot of us were kids, 16 or gen-filled balloons at 4,000 feet. The 17 years old." and brought it along, but it's not like Craig S.

Herbert (on left many in the older and to- conven Craig S. Herbert Frederick H. Simpkins charged in slaying been beaten and and had been dead about 24 hours. Tests have been inconclusive as to whether she was sexually assaulted. Miss Heal, who lived alone, was described as a garrulous woman, apt to engage unsuspecting friends and neighbors in lengthy conversation.

Simpkins' mail route brought him to her door almost every working day, (See MAILMAN on 5-B) Germans were doing the same their side. Yesterday, Herbert and 75 wartime compatriots were in of gather at Ch. 12 1,500 The plot is familiar, the ending a mystery keep show off air The who founded the organization 1932. "We're dying off fast. the "Most of us who are left were mis- balloon ground crew.

It was the on During the 1920s, when Herbert other balloonists were getting his gether at American Legion Phila (See BALLOON on 3-B) with the murder of Miss Helen B. Heal. He is being held without bail in the Burlington County Jail. And on the quaint, tree-lined streets in the upper-middle-class neighborhood where Miss Heal lived, neighbors were shocked to learn that the quiet man who brought the man each day is now accused of murder. "I'm just dumbfounded," said an elderly man who lives across the street from Miss Heal's neat, ranch-style home in the 500 block of Covington Terrace.

"It's a real shame," added another neighbor as she sat on the porch of her home. Miss Heal was killed over the Labor Day weekend, and her body was discovered by a brother who went t4 her home on Sept. 6. She had back the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party. The 60-minute installment, taped weeks ago is to be broadcast tonight at 9 p.m.

After the first protests to-the installment surfaced, the station, scheduled a half-hour taped adden-' dum to be broadcast afterward: Councilwoman Beatrice K. Cher-nock, who achieved her first prominence 20 years ago as a teacher on the station, was among last night's protesters. "I opened Channel 12 20 years ago teaching social studies," Mrs. Cher- nock said. "I object to any program that projects hatred and is It shouldn't be aired." At 5 p.mB Common Pleas Court Judge StanlGreenberg began hear-(Se "SHOW on 3-B) By Harry Harris nwiirr Stall Writer More than 1,500 demonstrators gathered outside Channel 12.

the area's public broadcasting station, last night to protest plans to broadcast a controversial installment of "Black on the News." The demonstrators, some carrying placards, paraded along 46th Street between Market and Chestnut Streets until 7:30 p.m., when about 15 people representing Jewish, black and labor groups addressed them from a floodlit flatbed truck. Earlier in the day, City Council President George X. Schwartz urged that the managemest of the station, WHYY, catjcel the installment, which consists of witerviews with leaders of By Leslie Wayne Inquirer Staff Writer MOORESTOWN, N.J. It's a murder that reads right out of Agatha Christie. The victim is a 72-year-old spinster schoolteacher who was strangled and whose nude body was found at the foot of her cellar steps.

The suspect is her mailman, a auiet, mild-mannered man of 38, who for 16 years brought the mail to her door, occasionally stopping for coffee and often helping with house repairs. He delivered the mail along the same route for almost a month after her murder, walking along the sidewalk in front of her house, quietly handing mail to her neighbors. On Tuesday, mailman Frederick H. Simpki was arrested and charged.