Daily Press from Newport News, Virginia • Page 21

Daiil) The Times-Herald Saturday, August 19, 1989 "vMfvL 28 l28lr -ir loo fie Magazine" Gunner's Mate Trae Garrett cradles a high explosive shell in one of the Iowa's magazines ot tne owa maaaz nes. Religion Am 1 1 I ixv "Faces of the Iowa, The Photographs of Robert Sabo" runs through Sept. 1 0 at the Ascending Gallery of the Peninsula Fine Arts Center, 1 01 Museum Drive, Newport News. Four other exhibits also are on view. Hours are 10 a.m.-4 p.m.

Tuesday-Saturday and 1 -4 p.m. Sunday. Free. Call 596-8175. 'EWPORT NEWS Some times being in the right place at the right time is the best thing that can happen to a photogra pher.

That the case with Robert A. Sabo, a Navy photojournalist who spent six months photographing the officers and men of the USS Iowa. Sabo completed his assignment the day before an explosion in the No. 2 gun turret killed 47 sailors. The tragedy gives his already stunning collection of black and white portraits a compelling impact.

Fourteen photographs of the crew are on view at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center. Subjects range from the commanding officer standing in front of the Iowa's bridge, to a cook preparing food deep in the belly of the ship. The pictures of the men in the ranks have the most lasting effect. Boiler technicians, damage controlmen and gunner's mates stare directly into Sab-o's camera. Most of the space around them is dark and cramped.

Clad in rumpled T-shirts and overalls, covered with grit and sweat, some of the men wear dust masks and welders' goggles. They grasp heavy hammers and wire brushes in their hands. One sailor, standing in the battleship's magazine, cradles a high-explosive shell like it was a baby. He seems too young and vulnerable to be so close to mortal danger. Such blunt, straightforward images take ordinary men and make them seem heroic.

They also illustrate the vast gulf between life aboard the Iowa and recruiting posters showing well-scrubbed sailors perched in front of glowing computer terminals. What Sabo captures here is not the modern, high-tech Navy but dirt, muscle and elbow grease applied in the face of danger. It's the oldest story in the sailor's book, and one that deserves this moving retelling. MARK ST. JOHN ERICKSON Joseph Pryweller Broadcast news a New station brings good news to the Peninsula Another local television station is joining an increasingly crowded field on Sept.

1. But if you live on the Peninsula, this one might be different. WBH, Channel 51, from Gloucester County promises to offer Peninsula news, information that Station Owner Lee Bo-wen said the local network newscasts ignore. "The other stations care more for news about south Hampton Roads," said Bowen, who left his job with a building supply company to start Channel 51. "Unless it's bad news, they don't bother with the Peninsula." Whether Bowen's claim is true, his low-frequency, station is expected to delve into the good news on the Peninsula.

A nightly newscast will focus on human-interest stories, as well as local news and sports highlights, he said. That's the good news about Channel 51, which has waited for its Federal Communications Commission license for two years. The bad news is that its signal at first will extend only as far south as James City County. In January, Channel 51 will get a power boost, and the independent UHF station is expected to be seen as far as Hampton, Bowen said. Much of the station's broadcasts will be syndicated shows and movies.

The programming includes '50s TV shows, such as "Flash Gordon" and "Roy Rogers." 'There'll also be game shows and "clean-cut" video programs, plus sporting events from basketball to college football, Bowen said. But the station's thrust will be news from the Peninsula, broadcast daily at 5:30 p.m. and shown again at 7 p.m. That's so people can watch the network news before switching to their local station, he said. Channel 51 joins a growing legion of UHF television stations looking for attention.

Hampton-based WJCB, Channel 49, is expected to come on the air with full power this fall and broadcast religious and family programs. And WYAH, Channel 27, in Portsmouth recently was purchased by a group of businessmen who plan to broaden its family appeal. It should lead to an interesting skirmish among the independent stations, some large and some small, that will begin to flare early next year. Tape splices WAVY waterlogged: The quarterly television ratings were released this week, and WAVY, Channel 10, fared the poorest among the three network stations. The results come with a word of warning.

The summer ratings, which measured the percentage of television viewers who watched each station during July, aren't that important to either advertisers or to television executives. It seems that with reruns and unusual work schedules in the summer, viewing patterns are abnormal from the rest of the year. Enough said. Now to the results. As has been the trend of the past year, WVEC, Channel 13, continued to lead the ratings for its 6 p.m.

newscast, and WAVY was the ratings leader at 11 p.m. This was according to the results from both Arbitron and the A C. Nielsen Co. But the disturbing news for WAVY came in the size of its lead. Both WVEC and WTKR, Channel 3, have cut into WAVY's 11 p.m.

ratings points, making the race among the three close. On top of it, WAVY's ratings fell at 6 p.m., dropping the station into an uncontested third place among the three stations. WTKR continued to hold steady in second place at both 6 and 11 p.m., Please see News, C4 Inside C2 It seems like old times thanks to Richard "Cheech" Marin. C2 Spectacular "Batman" was only the icing on summer C4 Parents Anonymous helps abusive parents change. HI 4 mm A ,4 i1 i fM I I y--1- f' 4 w-' V-rrH' Top left: "4 D'm Vew" Damage Controlman 3rd Class Timothy E.

Wilber and his crew wield cutting torches and sledgehammers to remodel with iron and steel. Left: "Firebox Cleaners" Boiler technicians Leonard Erwine and Michael Mowry take a break while cleaning a firebox with a wire brush. Above: "Sledgehammer" Boiler Technician John W. Cheslak makes repairs on a main steam line. Seriously now, there was another side to the '60s Let me tell you about my '60s.

When I left the deadening calm of my hometown in the summer of 1968 for the University of Wisconsin in Madison, I thought that I was heading for an intellectual adventure in the Midwest, a place that Sinclair Lewis had made exotic to my 17-year-old mind. Instead, I became part of history, a privilege that changed the course of my life. In Madison, a peaceful, middle-of-no-where city, the '60s were distilled to their essence: dissent and personal exploration. A few students formed the knot of activists who gave shape and direction to the general discontent, summoning anti-war rallies, running affinity groups, commandeering mimeograph machines. But for most of us, just being there was enough.

Every comfortable middle-class assumption came into question. I lived in a student co-op with 50 18-year-olds, joined a co-op grocery and learned to change the oil in my VW bug at a co-op garage and let my American birthright of individualism struggle with principles of sharing and personal responsibility. I learned life has meaning beyond money-making and status; I discovered that actions, however small, could cause a riptide. The mass-movement paradox was that it taught me to think Please see '60s, C4 By ARLENE LEVINSON Newsday I want to know, whose '60s was it anyway? I was there, and I can prove it. Yet for the first time in ages I am feeling alienated.

I don't recognize those tie-dyed movie renderings of bead-brained hippies, or the nostalgia-soaked news accounts that trivialize into cuteness yet another 20th anniversary of some perplexing event. At the other extreme are a few ex-radicals having a change of heart. They claim that we who stirred and raged in the '60s questioned authority so hard that we destroyed America. They seek our repentance, but they won't get it from me. Now the anniversary of Woodstock is upon us.

That surprise party a generation threw for itself was 20 years ago this week. I didn't go. I was 18 that summer, working in a windowless clothing factory in New York's Suffolk County. Home from an eye-opening freshman year at college, I was discovering suburban poverty. I recently met someone who actually went to Woodstock.

What was it like, I asked him. Was it really the climax of the '60s, the definitive event? "I don't remember," he said. "I was stoned the whole time." I.