Philadelphia Daily News from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 4

At Age of BigriityfsWe llkarrikhahle Possession By TOM FOX T'lERE WAS SOMETHING so terribly undignified about the hole thing. A public relations man pushed Sylvester Magee, a terribly dignified old Negro from Hattiesburg, who was sitting in a wheelchair, out onto the floor of the Civic Center's Convention Hall where they are holding the Philadelphia Boat Show this week. Then another huckster helped old Sylvester Magee cut of the wheel chair and into a plastic dinghy and sat him next to a sign that read: "Only $99.75." "Great, great," said one of the half-dozen photographers there to record the event on film. "How about a pair of oars?" said another. So a pretty blonde handed Sylvester Magee the oars and be pretended he was rowing the dinghy across the floor cf Convention Hall.

THE WHOLE THING WAS A LITTLE EMBARRASSING if you stopped to think about Sylvester Magee being 125 years old. Of course, everybody knew he was 125 years ft -Vnf jfy A 'HQf I CLOSE-UP mm I don't have 'em, I chew. Course, I cant eat the way I'd like 'cause all I got is three teeth up front. Sure can't eat meat with only three teeth when they're all up top." HE IS A SOFT, FRAIL, GRIZZLED LITTLE man with a full head of gray, kinky hair. "Been up there all the while," he says of his hair.

He also wears a small goatee that stirs oriental thoughts. Yesterday he was wearing a grayish-blue checkered tweed suit, a dark blue shirt without a tie and a black topcoat with a velvet collar and lapel. "My daughter, Vera Mae, bought me this suit," he said. Sylvester Magee, who was one of 14 children, had four wives and has outlived three of them. He's sired seven children.

Ine last one was born when he was 107. "She's 18 now," he says, "but she ran off with her mother. Now I'm living with Vera Mae the last six months." Actually, Sylvester Magee is a devout fisherman. His favorite stream is the Bouie River, which runs through Hattiesburg. "Like to catch them mud cats, they make good eating," he says.

He said his biggest catch was "a big blue cat," but he couldn't remember the weight. Sylvester Magee's age has been documented by The Civil War Round Table of Jackson. said Mrs. W. Arlington Jones, the wife of a Hattiesburg attorney who looks after Sylvester's interests.

She accompanied him to Philadelphia. "His birth was traced through a family Bible," she said. "A descendant of the plantation family that owned Sylvester is a judge in Mississippi. He has all the records." SYLVESTER MAGEE RAN AWAY FROM a plantation in Carpet, N. in 1861 shortly after his mother and father were sold at a slave market in Enterprise, Miss.

"I had to be with my folks," he said, "so Marse Hugh Magee bought me. I can't say Marse Hugh was a good man 'cause he whipped me. But his father, Marse Robert, was the finest man who ever walked the earth." When the Civil War broke out, Sylvester joined the Union Army. He was 20 years old. "I didn't exactly join," he says.

"They jes lined all us slaves up and said, 'You niggers who wants to be free come on this side and you that don't stay where you He was twice wounded during the siege of Vicksburg, but he's not entitled to a pension. "Don't have no record of my belonging," he explains. "No Social Security either. I came along long before Social Security." He gets by on a $50-a-month State welfare check. When Sylvester Magee celebrated his 124th birthday in 1965, his Hattiesburg friends, Negro and white, threw a big party for him.

The Mississippi State Legislature proclaimed the day Sylvester Magee Day and during the party a telegram arrived from President Johnson. "THAT SURE WAS A HAPPY DAY," he says. "Course, I've always been a happy man 'cause I believe in the church and in Jesus Christ. I can't read or write but 52 years ago somebody read me the Bible. I remembered something from Hebrews, 12.14 'Follow peace with all mankind, for without holiness, no man will see the living God.

I heard that 52 years ago and I live by it." Sylvester Magee's parents were almost as ageless as he is. His father lived to be 123, his mother 122. "When I got to be their age, I asked Him to let me live to be 125 and He did," the old man said. "The Lord's sure been good to old Sylvester. "No, no," Sylvester Magee said when somebody asked him if he expected to live to be 150 years old.

"No," he said softly, "no use planning on anything like He's going to call call me soon. "And 1 11 be ready." aid and a former slave who was twice wounded during the Civil War. That's why Sylvester Magee was at the Boat Show in the first place. "Sylvester Magee The Oldest Fisherman In The United States," is the way they billed him. Anybody who is 125 years old and was once a slave and was twice wounded in the Civil War should be accorded a lot more dignity than was accorded Sylvester Magee at the Boat Show yesterday.

But he seemed to enjoy his role. He is a class man. In fact, he showed more class than anybody in Convention Hall yesterday by not dropping his cigaret butt on the floor the way the rest did. He as smoking a Salem when they wheeled him onto the main floor and by- the time they got him into the dinghy, all he had left wa a butt. He was having trouble holding onto the butt when they handed him the oars and said.

Row. Sylvester, row," but one of the PR men took the butt from SylvesteT Magee and the show went on. "BEEN SMOKING FOR 108 YEARS," Sylvester Magee said when they got him back in the wheelchair, "but I Bever drink anything hard. "Smoked my first one in Carpet, North Carolina, SYLVESTER MAGEE "the Lord's been good to me." Daily News Photo by Sam Pwrn when I was 17. That's where I was born, Carpet, North Carolina May 29, 1841.

If the Lord lets me around, 1 11 be 126 pretty soon." Sylvester Magee's first cigaret was one he rolled from "the dead leaves that fell off a tobacco plant down in Carolina. I layed them out in the sun to dry and next day or so I came back and rolled 'em in some old brown bag paper." He's not exactly a two-pack-a-day man, although he was chain smoking yesterday. "I smokes what I can get," he says. "Course, when Good Day- PEOPLE IN THE I NEWS I ILL SPEED AHEAD A Belridere. alderman wants trains going through town speeded up from five to 15 miles per hour.

John WiUeraaa said the increased speed would eliminate traffic jams on eross roads and step children from darting under ycw moving trains to put pennies on the tracks. OVER EDUCATED The only tw children of school age in the Efiglish village of Runcorn have a new school to themselves. Janet Gridler, 9. and her brother, Michael, have a teacher apiece, caretaker, two cooks and a school principal. The school was built in anticipation of an influx of new families.

They've not arrived but school will continue anyway. BATTLE FATIGUED Despite pleas from British Army, Navy and Marine commanders conducting Exercise Cold Comfort near Dartmoor, England, retired Adm. Sir Gay and Lady Gay Sayer refused to let their land become a battleground. They stood in the middle of a Battlefield and waved away helicopters trying to land howitzers. "The noise and disturbance frightened ponies and sheep," said Lady Saver.

3Iore than 800 treeps continued the exercise, their cries and gcBiire rattling around the Savers. Can't Link Hair to a Human, Penn Prof Tells Murder Jury By JERRY OPPENHEIMER and NELS NELSON Dr. Wilton M. Krogman was called to the stand today in a defense attempt to brush away the hairs that allegedly link Paul Delehanty with murder. Hair, along with fibers, -coukJ jnk a hajr ,0 human cording to Defense Attorney being.

John Patirck Walsh, are the only! DR KROGMAN testified under bits of evidence the State has'questioning from Walsh that to link 33, with the "differences (between hairs) are Oct. 5, 1965, strangulation of Miss of such a nature that it would Beatrice Convey, 58, in a room be impossible to say that one at the Hotel Philadelphia, Broad hair belongs to Mr. and Wood sts. I A recognized world expert in Dr. Krogman a r.rnfpwr anH hi man hairs, Dr.

Krogman was chairman of the Department tnird witness to testify for HOME COMING CELEBRATION Sale agreements for purchase of three Strawberry Mansion neighborhood homes rehabilitated by Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation are contracted in sample home at 2037 N. Woodstock st. by (from left) Pastor and Mrs. Richard Grove and children Sarah, 4, and Paul, Mr. and Mrs.

Arthur Bryant with Councilman Thomas Mcintosh (standing, rear), and Mr. and Mrs. Irvin Pearson as Barnet Liebermai, executive vice president, PHDC, points toward the dotted line. the defense after the State rested its case, yesterday. BIG GL'N of the opening de-defense testimony yesterday was Physical Anthropology in Graduate Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, testified for the defense' that there was no study- lavafl-fWilliarrt J.

Wolfgang, a mustach- able or known i to- man which Continued on 'page 41.