Asheville Citizen-Times from Asheville, North Carolina • Page 1

I Down jrtjaJlAiLil ili III! in .1 HI1niiai.ii;ilf,WTB,. KMfcrj.ll.H fjh Faldo In Control cloudy Partly sunny today England's Nick Faldo holds a 4- with possible stroke lead heading into the final thundcrstorm8-round of the British Open. HI 81 City Tennis 10 60 Details on pag 10A Melissa Gurney wins women opentitle- Page id Asbestos battle 1 Page 1B Peaceful Retreat Forget the world at Earthshine lodge near Lake Toxaway. Page 1C fit yJ4 Home Try a getaway to Tennessee's playground, Dollywood. Page 1L Hff i tv.

i.jJ mmmmmmmmmimmmm ASHEVILLE CITIZEN -TIMES Multimedia Inc. VOICE OF THE MOUNTAINS Sunday, July 19, 1992 D5oiitoini rates a bo Polls show nominee favored heavily among Perot backers THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON Basking in the afterglow of a successful convention and the withdrawal of rival Ross Perot, Democratic presidential nominee Bill Ponder takes a look back Legendary Madison strongman talks of past controversies, his roots and philosophies By Paul Clark STAFF WRITER MARSHALL E.Y. Ponder was driving convicted burglarmurderer George Garner to the state penitentiary when he told the Madison County sheriff he was a "damn fool" for refusing a $75,000 bribe. The year, was 1961. "Garner said to me, Tfou could have been home, enjoying life on Street, and I could be up in Illinois, operating rr.y pinball Garner's attorneys had been down months earlier to see the small-town sheriff.

They were authorized to go as high as $150,000 to buy the former Cairo, 111., police chief freedom. Garner, the "brains" behind a robbery that led to a Madison County man's death, owned an amusement company as a "front" for his criminal activities, Ponder "I told them they didn't have enough money in the state of Illinois to buy me," Ponder said. haven't got enough guns to scare me because I haven't got that much he told the lawyers. It was the most spectacular case in Ponder's 32 years as Madison's top lawman. Now, six years after being voted out of office, the colorful 82-year-old loves to look back.

In his day, he was one of the most powerful local politicians in Western North Carolina. But with a dawn-to-dusk schedule tending the family's 12 acres of tobacco, he doesn't dwell on the past. TALES THAT TELL OF THE TELLER He always has time for a story, however, as he A 1 Clinton grabbed a commanding lead in a string of polls Saturday. Three separate post-conven- tion polls showed Clinton leading President Bush by 20 or more percentage points and in one poll by Newsweek magazine, the Democratic nominee had captured a majority of Perot sup porters. Both the Bush and Clinton camps played down the signifi OARYP1ELDSC1T1ZEN-TIMES Former sheriff E.Y.

Ponder's family name Is hard to escape in Madison County. Ponder stands In front of his son's auto parts store on Main Street In Marshall. cance of the polls at this stage of Gov. Clinton the campaign; Traditionally, presidential candidates fare well in polls immediately after their party convention. i Clinton told reporters Saturday that while happy through their toilets, after emptying them of water.

Ponder, having nabbed Garner's co-defendant Rocky Rothschild, was told Rothschild was bragging. So he emptied a commode and listened in. In 35 hours of recorded conversation, Rothschild implicated himself in 35 murders across the Southeast, including Lawson's. Rothschild, Garner and a third man received life sentences in Marshall, Madison's county seat. All have since died.

The consummate storyteller, Ponder tells tales See Ponder on page 6A demonstrated last week while driving between his farms in and around Marshall. "We knew nothing much about what happened (in the Garner case). A complete outside job," Ponder said. The sheriff spent years tracking leads from Wyoming to Illinois to Florida, trying to find the men that broke into Carson Lawson's store in Madison's Shut-in community, bound him and made off with $40,000. Lawson died of a heart attack during the robbery.

In those days inmates of the Madison County. Jail communicated with each other by talking about the poll results, the numbers shouldn't be taken too seriously. "It's partly a convention bounce and it's partly the last six weeks of hard work and reaching out directly to the American people and having a plan," he said as his bus caravan motored through Pennsylvania in a six-day campaign swing. Bush camnaien chairman care dependent Ml Big companies join to help provide Bob Teeter, meanwhile, said they President Bush never expected to be so far behind in the midsummer polls but did foresee that Clinton "would get a big bump" from his exposure at the Democratic National Convention and from Perot's withdrawal. Teeter said he was confident Bush would close the gap in the coming months.

The Newsweek poll, which had a margin of error of 4 percent, showed Clinton with a 27 percent lead over Bush in the widest gap between the two yet. See Clinton on page 7A Travelers Johnson Johnson, Amoco NationsBank the Allstate unit of Sears Roebuck and Motorola Inc. and the source said. "IBM has met with lots of companies around the country since last year to explore and discuss the possibility of collaborating and creating partnerships to fund dependent care facilities," said IBM spokesman JohnBoudreaux. He would not elaborate on specifics of the pro- See Care on page 7A of "corporate America Peace Corps," said Burke Stin-son, a spokesman for American Telephone Telegraph a participant.

Eventually 60 to 80 companies could contribute, but the 12 blue-chip corporations form the core and will provide most of the funding, said a source close to the project who gave details on condition of anonymity. The idea was conceived by International Business Machines which enlisted American Express Exxon Eastman Kodak Xerox THE ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW YORK A dozen leading U.S. corporations have committed millions of dollars to establish or expand programs to care for employees' children or elderly relatives, people familiar with the project say. Among the cities to be targeted is Greensboro. The unprecedented effort, not yet announced, reflects the growing role of women in the labor force and the absence of government aid for working couples with dependents.

The project, in its final planning stages, is a sort 1 Emm Asheville veterans remember The U.S. assault troops Pint hUrtiM nvfilon IndudML- i mm mtrm me nrtt Msrfrx Raid MOV JSI BtnHon-kxmodlnJn. ES.il ioiw8 mtMm comntndo- WLmF aJa into In the Ptcthc THE MORNING REPORT Guadalcanal battle as 'hell' Marines beat great odds turn WWII tide for U.S. Some U.S. and Japanese small arms United States Ovw.llltngth:3rt734'.

w.kiht:S.lbs. U.S. SpringfMd EftMtlv. about 600 9vW Kin. ivm Max.

oapMny: 3 rounas and victory in the Pacific. But for two Asheville itsidents Glenn Wells and Robert Putnam who were part of the First Marine Division to land on the 90-mile, humid piece of jungle in the Solo By Andy Gross 8TAFF WRITER 1 Some 50 years after a group of U.S. Marines waded to its shores on an uncertain August morning, Guadalcanal has become iwo--- CWMOA Ovmlll.ngth:3ll10lri. trrKnvt nu yam 4 (BAR) s) Jr JAPAN Ocean Ovmlll.nfldi:3n.Sln. ErrKtiv.

5-600 yvd. A five-minute capsule of the day's news, business, sports and television. Page 2A ASTROLOGY 14A BOOKS 6L BUSINESS 1-5B CLASSIFIEDS 2-16H, 2-10CL DEAR ABBY ISA DEATHS 8-19A LEWIS GRIZ2ARD 2A LIFESTYLE 1-C MOVIES 4L NANCY MARLOWE 1C OPINION 8-7B OUTDOORS SPORTS MM TELEVISION 7L TRAVEL WEDDINGS MOC Vol. 123, No. 201 112 Pigai M1J0d.0j.rtnd mon Islands, the experience was also testimo-ny to their endurance and courage against great odds.

Lifelong Asheville resident Glenn Wells minces no words in de- scribing his four months on Guadalcanal, "If was Wells. "It was hot. The known as the turning point in both the military and emotional tide of American fortunes in the Pacific theater during World War II. Young, inexperienced and bearing outdated weapons, the First Marine Division landed on Guadalcanal at 9:09 a.m on Aug. 7, 1942 eight months to T7) Jtptnm hid lelzfd prottctontt hcfdlnth 8ohmon 7tncf, tnd building mlraMa out Glenn Wells 1.

Iii.i. HMNFU jc lit Robert Putnam Japanese kept us awake all the time with their shelling. They had control of the water and the air." Wells, 68, was part of the First Marine Division that landed on the island in an effort to capture it from the Japnnese and cut See Guadalcanal on page 4A could mmM Autnllt, 1,006 totithml. Th Utn At MM. the day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor The assault was the first allied offensive against the Japanese.

The eventual capture of Guadalcanal was an allied stcpplngstone to later Invasions of Tarawa, Salpan, Pelellu, Iwo Jima and Okinawa on the wtiy to Tokyo 1992, Asheville Cltlzon-Tlmoa Publishing Co. HMDlllllMl tawUMMiMWluwwiiii.