Pensacola News Journal from Pensacola, Florida • 10

Mft) The Pensacola Journal Thursday, July 14. 1983 Death Notices, 11C Classified, 11 -16C FIRST torn 0. Special election Lewis Grizzard Journal Columnist Siegelman sets filing deadline (R MONTGOMERY (AP) Secretary of State Don Siegelman set an Aug. 29 date Wednesday for candidates to file for ballot position in the special election of a reapportioned Legislature. But Republican officials called for primary elections and were joined by a would-be Democratic candidate in seeking to change the Sept.

27 date of the special election in order to hold the primaries. A federal court has ordered a special election of a reapportioned Alabama Legislature this fall, and Gov. George C. Wallace set the Sept. 27 date for the election.

But a petition filed with U.S. District Judge Truman Hobbs of Montgomery seeks an order for the Democratic party to hold a primary, rather than handpicking its nominees. The petition also asks for any changes in the election date necessary to provide for the primary. Calvin Biggers, a would-be Democratic candidate for the state Senate, filed a petition Wednesday seeking to join in the suit. Urging Democratic party officials to hold a primary, he said, "I cannot condone this throwback to the politics of the smoke-filled room." Bill Harris, chairman of the state Republican party, also delivered letters Wednesday to the offices of Wallace and Siegelman, calling for official action to move back the election date in order to provide for primaries.

The State Republican Steering Committee unanimously adopted a resolution to hold a primary, and Harris said the Sept. 27 date does not allow for adequate time to prepare for the primary. Siegelman, meanwhile, announced the Aug. 29 deadline for candidates to file for ballot position in keeping with the Sept. 27 special election date.

He said his position "reminds me of the National Guard. At this point I am under the governor's orders, but I recognize we are in court and could be federalized at any moment." Hobbs has scheduled a hearing Friday on the election dispute. "We call for a primary election because we are strongly opposed to handpicked nominees," said Harris, who accused Wallace of siding with Democratic party officials who want to leave the Democrat-dominated Legislature unchanged. He said Wallace "did not want to submit the liberal members of the Legislature to a vote of the people." Harris, whose party began holding primaries in 1974, said the GOP was the "open-door party in Alabama." Vacations are no day at the beach A great many Americans take their summer vacations during July. Deciding oh what to do and where to go used to be quite simple before the days of cut-rate air fares and discount vacation packages to places you've never heard of be-fore.

What you did before was jump in the car, fill it up with 30-cent-a-gallon gasoline, and head for the nearest beach. I don't care what beach it was. All beaches were basically alike during the '50s. You left early in the morning and drove all day, and you didn't worry about any silly thing like calling ahead for reservations. Upon arrival, you simply cruised the strip until you found a motel that had such breathtaking amenities as free TV, air conditioning and hot showers, and then you pulled in and took a room at $12 a day, double.

As a boy, I can recall having my vacation made perfect because the motel my family had chosen for the week had an ice machine that produced crushed ice, a marvel that received detailed treatment in the subsequent "What I Did On My Summer Vacation" essay I turned in on the first day of school the following September. Every year it becomes more difficult for me to decide what to do on my summer vacation. Last summer, a friend and I took a jet to Las Vegas and then took something the Wright brothers wouldn't have flown in over to northern Arizona and proceeded to ride mules own a canyon so we could spend three days rafting down the mighty Colorado River. Except for the awful heat, the fact that there was no way to ice down any beer, and the lack of what I considered to be appropriate toilet facilities for an individual who had been reared in a Methodist church and educated in a large Southern university, it was a great trip. Recently, this same friend called and suggested we go on a safari to Africa together.

"Have you been drinking?" I asked him. "Absolutely not," he said. "I just think it would be interesting to go on a safari to Africa." Not me. I've had enough of roughing it on tang and answering nature's call in a little green tent. Today, people go to Cpzumel and Tahiti and Hilton Head on their summer vacations.

Before, we went to major places like Panama City and Daytona Beach and Myrtle Beach. The beach was something in those days. There was Jungle Golf and Dinosaur Golf. And skee-ball and the Scrambler ride at the amusement park and shooting gallery and indescribable treats such as snow cones and foot-long hot dogs and cotton candy that somehow always got in your hair. And sunburn, too.

And sand in your swim trunks. And sand between your toes and sand in the bed at night and sand in your foot-long hot dog if you weren't careful. I miss those days. I miss the old beaches and the old motels that had great names like Wind 'N' Surf, Sea Spray and the Sand Castle. They're gone, now, given way to nondescript Holiday Inns and Ramadas and a thousand ocean-front miles of condominiums.

Skee-ball has been bowled over by Pac-Man, weeds fill the carpeted fairways of Jungle Golf, and the foot-long hot dog stand is now a McDonald's where the milkshakes come out of a machine. I don't know what I'm going to do on my summer vacation this year. Maybe get a six-pack and go to the zoo. re yTsszrDS I 'jmLj. jbiiz ii IZZIIZIl Drinking age, DUI bills clear panel Teacher lobby wins, 2C MONTGOMERY (AP) The governor's bill to raise Alabama's legal drinking age to 21 passed a Senate committee Wednesday along with his measure to increase the penalties for drunk driving.

The two bills now go to the Senate, where they could come up for a final vote as early as Thursday. Gov. George C. Wallace presented 47 anti-crime bills when the Legislature began its regular session in April. Only one has made it through the entire legislative process.

Ten measures, including the drinking age and DUI bills, are one step away from fijal passage by the Legislature. More than half the bills have not cleared the house where they originated, which will make it hard for them to pass with only four meetings days left in the legislative session. Many of those anti-crime bills passed the Legislature last year when former Gov. Fob James included them in his crime-fighting package, but he killed the bills when he failed to get them to the secretary of state's office on time. James got the bills passed in a quick special session where members had little time to study them.

The Legislature has used its longer regular session to study the bills extensively and they have sparked more controversy. Brian Morgan, Wallace's assistant legal adviser, said the governor won't give up on the bills if they don't pass before the session ends Aug. 1. "Those that don't pass this time could be addressed in a special session this year or the regular session next year," he said. The drinking age bill cleared the House last month, and the Senate Judiciary Committee passed it 7-2 Wednesday, sending it to the full Senate for consideration.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Curtis Smith of Clanton, would raise the drinking age to 21 but allow those who are 19 or 20 at the time it becomes law to continue purchasing beer or liquor legally. Those who turn 19 after the bill becomes law could not legally buy alcoholic beverages for two more years. The bill, if it becomes law, would go on the books Oct. IS.

See DRINKING, Page 2C Secure house Staff phot by Ranee Hannans-Rilev wide house from a field in Pensacola to the corner of and South LaRua streets. The movers are tightening the chains needed to secure the house to a truck for the move. The house belongs to Maxine Cameron, who just purchased it. Gene Adams (left), Brad Rowell, and Julious (bottom) prepare to move a 42-foot long, 18-foot Lawmen confiscate marijuana chief deputy with the Baldwin County Sheriffs Department, said Wednesday. He said police have two or three suspects in the case.

Anderson said information from the Alabama Bureau-of Investigation led police to several wooded plots where the four to 10-foot high plants were growing. He estimated the plants would account for roughly 1,500 pounds of marijuana. "(ABI) called us around noon Tuesday and said the plots were located by air," Anderson said, adding that all but a few of the plants were burned in Bay Minette Wednesday. ABI officials were unavailable for comment Wednesday, RAYBUN Baldwin County and state law enforcement officials Tuesday confiscated nearly 2,000 marijuana plants growing here off County Road 47, about 10 miles northeast of Bay Minette. "I think there will be discussion with (Baldwin District Attorney Tom Norton) relative to arrests," Jim Anderson, Island zoning proposals at Issue Lawmakers look to referendum McMillan said numerous discussions and meetings with island residents have convinced him that a majority want some form of land use control in unincorporated areas such as Orange Beach, and along the Fort Morgan Peninsula.

"(The referendum) is just to put the issue to rest once and for all," McMillan said. "All we've ever tried to do is what the people wanted." Not so, said Jim Bradley, executive director of the Gulf Coast Area Chamber of Commerce and a director of the Committee to Protect Property Rights, both of which opposed McMillan's earlier zoning proposals. Bradley said the push for planning and zoning was being led by "anti-growth" advocates not representative of the majority of area property owners. The stand of Bradley and others on his committee drew a scathing letter distributed to the local press by Baldwin Health Officer, Dr. CP.

St. Amant. "I speak for the silent majority, the 'little the retired," St. Amant wrote in his July 4 letter supporting planning and zoning regulations on Pleasure Island. "The acronym CPPR could as easily stand for the Committee to Perpetuate Property Rape.

They do not care about environmental protection, clean water, or anything else. Their creed is to make the dollar and to hell with the environment and the residents. And, there are politicians, both local and state, who are more than willing to help them." Bradley said he could not speak for the "little people" St. Amant referred to, but that his comments opposing earlier zoning measures did speak for members of the island's business community, which the chamber represents. "We believe what's in the best interest of the business community is ultimately in the best interest of the people who live and work on the island," Bradley said, noting that tax revenues fed by growth help build roads and new water and sewer systems, and sjjpport other community services.

"We believe in orderly growth and development, and we don't want to see the island raped," Bradley said. "We want a good, clean environment, but growth and development, too." Bradley said he supports the idea of a referen-See ZONING, Page 2C By CRAIG CAIRNS Journal Staff Writer PLEASURE ISLAND Baldwin County legislators are hoping a proposed advisory referendum election will settle once and for all whether unincorporated areas of this barrier island should be subject to land use planning and zoning measures. But at least one opponent who has successfully fought against a number of earlier zoning proposals said Wednesday there still are many questions to be answered, before he can support a referendum on the issue. And county officials said Wednesday they are still working on details of the proposed advisory election, which county commissioners tentatively approved at their July 5 meeting. "We figured it was time to put up or shut up," State Rep.

Steve McMillan, D-Bay Minette, said Wednesday about why he and State Sen. Jerry Boyington, D-Fairhope, are now pushing for a referendum election in Pleasure Island's unincorporated areas. Boyington was unavailable for comment Wednesday. Clergy urges inmate's charges be dropped KV: Harris' retrial is now scheduled to begin Monday in circuit court at Bay Minette. The group urging Graddick to shelve the case against Harris included three black ministers in Montgomery, two local representatives of Church Women United and a representative of Clergy and Laity Concerned and the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Members of the group wore "Free Imani" buttons. Harris, who remains on death row pending the retrial, goes by the name "Imani." Judy Cumbee of Clergy and Laity Concerned said Harris was "unjustly imprisoned because of improper counsel and a woefully inadequate defense" when he was first sentenced to five life terms for rape and robbery in Birmingham. tend he did not stab the guard, and during the late 1970s he was described in Soviet bloc journals as a black victim of the American judicial system. The Soviet comments about the case came at a time when then-President Carter deplored the Soviets for their treatment of dissidents. She said he did not stab the guard in the 1974 uprising at Holman and that Graddick should drop the murder charge, open a review of Harris' initial life sentences and give him "some measure of justice, which we believe would include his freedom." Harris was sentenced to die under a 19th century Alabama law that mandated the death penalty if an inmate was convicted of committing a murder while serving a life term.

MONTGOMERY (AP) A group of church women and black clergymen urged Attorney General Charles Graddick on Wednesday to drop murder charges against Johnny Harris, whose case once drew international attention. The group presented letters and other appeals to Graddick's secretary, who said they would be given to the attorney general. But a spokeswoman for Graddick, Janie Nobles, said later there were no plans to drop the murder charges. Harris, who has been on Alabama's death row at Holman Prison near Atmore for more than eight years, was sentenced to die in 1975 for the stabbing death of prison guard Luell Barrow during an inmate uprising at Holman. Defense lawyers for Harris con The constitutionality of the law was upheld by the Alabama Supreme Court in a 5-4 ruling but has not yet been reviewed by the U.S.

Supreme Court. Prosecutors contend that Harris played a key role when inmates took two guards hostage in a wing of Holman Prison in 1974. Harris contends that he played no major role in the riot and did not stab Barrow. The Alabama Supreme Court ruled that, even if Harris did not stab the guard, his role was sufficient to warrant the death penalty. Harris' conviction was overturned last year after a circuit judge ruled that the prosecution had access to evidence, not made available to the defense, that could have impeached the testimony of the state's key witness.

Staff Photo by jerry Kovach Double trouble Baby sitter Georgia Lucille had her hands full in downtown Pensacola Tuesday as she had to put twice as much effort into pushing a double stroller with twins John Mapshel Senkarick (left) and John Pierce Senkarick. The twins live at 51 S. Jefferson Plaza in Pensacola..