The Montgomery Advertiser from Montgomery, Alabama • 9

Montgomery Advertiser ftUBABt SECTION Tuesday July 21,1998 Pete Burn, Interim city editor, 261-1520 i roaop pun ALABAMA Goal: The new Alabama Partnership for Families wants children's issues to.be as popular as football in Alabama, David Bronner said scorecard for candidates seeking state offices. It will include the candidates' answers to questions, as well as the voting records of legislative incumbents, including how they voted on the Children First is-. sues during the last legislative ses-; sion. T. "We're not asking politicians td raise taxes.

We're asking politi-' cians to use whatever resources; are available to meet the needs of children," said Susan Kynes, the! partnership's executive director. 1 she said at a news conference Monday. Birmingham attorney John Hall, chairman of Children First, said the partnership is non-partisan. Another member, state pension fund chief David Bronner, said he hopes the partnership can get Ala-bamians as excited about children's issues as they are about football. Members of the partnership said they plan to hold candidate forums across the state and develop a ASSOCIATED PRESS Several groups and community leaders have formed a partnership to try to push children's issues to the front of the election-year debate in Alabama.

Many of the people involved in the new Alabama Partnership for Families have been active in Children First, the group that has tried without success to pass a cigarette tax to generate new funding for school board, said the partnership wants candidates to talk seriously about all issues affecting children. "Alabama's children must no longer be kissable campaign props," SOME DISAGREE ABOUT SHORELINE PROBLEM Judge orders death sentence in slaying trial 1 1," i Vf.3 A -til 1990 ZlJ iZZTi-: tHaK St ri-JjL i 4 I ROUNDUP BIRMINGHAM 'Baptist' editor's wife dies of injuries Eleanor Foster Terry, wife of the editor of the state's Southern Baptist newspaper, died Monday at University Hospital in Birmingham from injuries suffered in a car accident in South Africa. She was 55. The Terrys were attending a meeting of the Baptist World Alliance when the accident occurred July 11 in Durban, South Africa. They were flown back to Birmingham on Sunday.

Terry suffered head and facial injuries and a broken jaw. Bob Terry, 55, editor of The Alabama Baptist, was in satisfactory condition at University Hospital on Monday. He underwent surgery in South Africa for a fractured nose and other injuries. Funeral services were scheduled for 3 p.m. Friday at Dawson Memorial Baptist Church in Birmingham, with burial in Southern Heritage Cemetery.

SELMA Man gets life in slaying case A maintenance man convicted of beating his 87-year-old employer to death last year was sentenced to life without parole Monday. Charles Scott, 29, said he was happy not to have been sentenced to death in the slaying of William Paugh and also pre Scott dicted that he eventually will be exonerated. overturn the conviction," he said, as he waited to be taken back to the Dallas County Jail. "I've said all along that I'm not guilty." Dallas County District Attorney Ed Greene called Scott's conviction "richly deserved" and said an alleged co-conspirator Steven Odon will be tried later this year. During brief courtroom comments Greene described Paugh as a "helpless elderly man." LONG BEACH, MISS.

AUM professor named USM dean The University of Southern Mississippi has named its first ever academic dean for the university's Gulf Coast campus, school officials said Monday. Joe B. Hill a professor and administrator at Auburn University Montgomery, will fill the new post on Sept. 1. Hill, who has served as dean of AUM's School of Sciences since 1981, was selected from among four finalists out of a pool of 86 applicants.

"My focus will be to make quality education accessible to the people of the Gulf Coast community. Quality and accessibility are two key issues," said Hill, 58, who headed AUM's Department of Mathematics and Pre-Engi-neering from 1969 until 1981. TUSCALOOSA Storms down trees, knock out power Severe thunderstorms dumped heavy rain and hail in several locations across central Alabama, leaving downed trees and power outages in their wake. Dwight Mullins, operations manager for Alabama Power, said about 1,200 customers in the Tuscaloosa area were without power after a storm swept the area about 2:30 p.m. Monday.

High winds uprooted a tree which fell on a home, authorities said. Gas lines in the home ruptured and had to be turned off, but no one in the home was injured. Lightning struck electrical wiring at the Behavioral Healthcare Center in Tuscaloosa, and firefighters were summoned to clear the smoke in the building. From staff and wire reports Some erosion specialists say the beach is disappearing at Gulf Shores. The beach is shown, at left, in a 1990 file photo, and at right, in 1997.

Experts say beach shrinking children's programs. Others have been involved in educational and welfare issues. Former first lady Marsha Fol-som, who serves on the Cullman 1 The Gulf Shores Holiday Inn, built 28 years ago, is protected by a seawall, but much of the adjacent beach has vanished. Hit hard by Hurricane Danny a year ago, and by winter storms in February, what was once more than 150 feet of sand now is often knee-deep surf. Some days, when the current, waves and barometric pressure cooperate, there's still about 30 feet of beach.

But other days, after riptides and cross currents and storms have their way with the sand, beach-combers can no longer walk the shoreline without wading. "As the beach erodes away, that seawall will act just like a jetty and Please turn to BEACH, 4B ment on another planet that can analyze the fingerprints of molecular structure," said Wdowiak. The actual instrument is being manufactured at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Wdowiak is briefed weekly about the progress and gives advice. "We want to understand Mars as a world," he said.

"We want to know, 'Could Mars have ever been a habitat, was there life on Mars and is there life on Mars The program is something of a dream come true for Wdowiak, who has wanted to go to Mars since he was 7. "I am in the middle of the comprehensive exploration of Mars for the next century," he said. Wdowiak hopes his link with NASA's Mars exploration will spark development of an astrobio-logy department at UAB. Astrobio-logy is a multidisciplinary field that researches the origins, evolution and future of life and its relation to the universe. iy-3 ffizr I Case: Matthew Reeves was convicted of killing Willie Johnson who had stopped to help Reeves By Alvin Benn MONTGOMERY ADVERTISER SELMA Matthew Reeves was sentenced to death Monday for the shotgun slaying of a good Samaritan who tried to help him and his brother when their car broke down two years ago.

Reeves shook his head and quietly muttered 'No, when Dallas County Circuit Judge Tommy Jones asked if he had anything to say prior to sentencing Monday afternoon. In February, he was found guilty of capital murder by a jury that recommended the death sentence for him in the slaying of Willie Johnson a Selma municipal worker. Reeves thrust a shotgun barrel into Johnson's neck and pulled the trigger not long after Johnson had given them a lift in his pickup in November 1996. "(Johnson) just didn't deserve to leave this world the way he did," the victim's sister, Delois Smith, said outside the courthouse after the sentencing. "He was always helping people in need." Unlike previous court appearances when he snarled and shouted obscenities as he was being led into the courtroom, Reeves appeared subdued as he was led before Jones in chains.

His lawyers Tommy Goggans of Montgomery and Marvin Wiggins of Greensboro conferred with him briefly in a holding cell prior to sentencing. Goggans said an appeal, which is mandatory in capital murder cases, will be filed soon. Dallas County District Attorney Ed Greene cited the "viciousness and deliberateness" of Reeves' actions in Johnson's murder. He said the jury's recommendation 10 to 2 for death should be followed. Jones also called Johnson a "good Samaritan" in his brief remarks to Reeves.

4' I View: The mayor says there's nothing wrong with the beach except in front of the Holiday Inn ASSOCIATED PRESS GULF SHORES Some guests at the Gulf Shores Holiday Inn want to know where the beach has gone. Some erosion specialists say the beach is disappearing. Engineers photographing the beaches annually say the shoreline is closer to hotels and condominiums that border the Gulf of Mexico. wru (J Ah 'A MA Jrrrz ALVIN HENNSTAI-T. Matthew; Reeves, in front, was sentenced to death Monday at Dallas County Circuit Court.

"(Johnson) stopped by the side of the road to help those he believed to be in need of assistance," said the judge. "Then (Reeves) put a shotgun to his neck and took his life." Reeves, in trouble with Selma police long before he became a teen-ager, was arrested a few hours after the murder of the popular Selma municipal employee. Arrested with him and also charged with capital murder were his brother, Julius, 18, and Brenda Suttles, 20. Julius Reeves is to be tried later this year. Suttles testified against Matthew Reeves in ex-, change for a life sentence which she received several months ago.

Authorities said the three had. gone to a party after the murder and spent part of the time listening to rap music before Matthew Reeves was taken into custody. Julius Reeves and Suttles left town for a few weeks and were arrested at the Montgomery bus station where they were spotted as they tried to return to Selma. Last year, Julius Reeves who also had an extensive juvenile re cord was sentenced to 25 years in prison on an unrelated robbery conviction. University of Alabama at Birming- ham professor Thomas Wdowiak demonstrates a model of the device -he helped develop -that NASA plans to send to Mars.

The device, known as a Raman spectrometer, can test Mar- tian rocks for evi- dence of life. 'I am in the middle of the comprehensive ex-. -ploration of Mars for the next Wdowiak said. 'I have been preparing for this all my 3 1997 ASSOCIATED PRESS GULF SHORES' OPTIONS The city has three options to deal with the eroding beach, experts say: Rebuild the beach with sand trucked in from pits or pumped in from offshore Build seawalls and jetties as a stop-gap measure to protect buildings, which could accelerate beach loss Do nothing and let the most seaward structures succumb to erosion or a hurricane. Then, don't rebuild them, or rebuild them farther back and on stilts where possible I i UAB scientist involved in search for life on Mars ASSOCIATED PRESS BIRMINGHAM Thomas Wdo-wiak will never fulfill his childhood dream of going to Mars, but one of his babies is getting ready to make the trip.

Wdowiak, an astrophysicist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, helped develop an instrument that NASA plans to send to the red planet in the search for ancient life. The scientist worked with colleagues at Washington University to develop the Raman spectrometer, which can test rocks for evidence of life. NASA will have one of the devices aboard the Athena land rover, which will explore Mars in 2003 and 2005. While the Raman spectrometer is not new, UAB scientists have produced one of the smallest in the world, Wdowiak said. What once fit in a room can now fit in his hand.

"We will have the first instru ASSOCIATED PRESS COMING WEDNESDAY: Selma Rotarian visits Argentina through exchange program.