The Times from Munster, Indiana • 17

Times The DOM Sunday, November 29, 1981 B-l Anti-Americanism Stirs Youths Region briefly Munster students respond to West German fears of US Dismayed by West German attitudes towards the United States, these Munster High School students wrote a letter to a West more, what then? Who suffers the most?" It was signed, "The Senior German Students at Munster High School:" John Zajac, Brenda Kushnak, Amy Strachan, Brian Morford, Jeff Walcutt and Lucy Yu. The students thought that was the end of it. They weren't even sure their effort would be published. Then, Kushnak, who included her home address with her signature, got the first letter from West Gemany about two weeks ago. "We fell off our chairs.

Our letter German magazine. They are, 1-r, John Zajac, Jeff Walcutt, Brenda Kushnak, Lucy Yu, Amy Strachan, and Brian Morford. had been published in the Nov. 2 edition, and we didn't even know it," Lucy Yu said. The West German resident who wrote tried to be objective about his country, the students said, explaining that there was real fear that his nation would be the battleground for a nuclear holocaust.

Soon, another letter arrived, and the author was not so kind. He likened President Ronald Reagan and Secretary of State Alexander Haig to Adolph Hitler and talked of Ameri 1 Lowe Wants New Judge To Replace Letsinger By NANCY BANKS Times Staff Writer cans as "killers." The Munster students were getting an education In German culture that wasn't limited to the correct use of the feminine article "die" versus the masculine article "der "I think they turn to the United States to say these things, even though the Soviets are just as much involved, because they know the Soviet Union wouldn't even listen," student Brian Morford said. Student John "Hans" Zajac said some people in West Germany, "a minority, I think," would "rather be Red (Communist) than dead," and he and his fellow Munster students can understand bow they feel although they don't agree. Speaking negatively of Communism, Yu described It as "someplace where you can't pursue happiness." Jeff Walcutt said with the certainty of being a teenager, "I think everyone here would fight to their death to keep it out." Mrs. Tippett, their teacher, who grew up in West Germany, put it in more humane terms.

"I wouldn't have been able to leave when I got married if I had lived a few miles east (in Communist-controlled East Germany)." Amy Strachan said, "I was never this aware before. I think I thought of Germans as Nazis," a statement that made her teacher, Frau Tippett, grimace. Another letter from West Germany arrived and the students burst with excitement as they poured over it, working on its translation. It was a lesson no textbook or classroom exercise could provide. While they struggled with the alien handwriting, West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and the Soviet Union's Brezhnev met in Bonn to discuss limits on nuclear arms.

In Frau Tippett's advanced German class, it was difficult to tell that interest in the foreign languages was on the decline among United States high school students. sented Lowe when he was convicted. The judge said the case later got lost in his pending files. In granting the new trial, Letsinger ruled that Wleklinski provided inadequate legal representation. Wleklinski, who died in 1977, resigned as an attorney in 1975 rather than face disbarment proceedings by the Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission.

The defendant claims he provided Wleklinski with names of alibi witness that were never called to testify during the trial. "How can Judge Letsinger conduct a fair trial considering the facts and circumstances surrounding this matter," the lawyers said in the motion. "In a re-trial, he has almost as much at stake as the defendant. It appears virtually impossible for him to provide a trial whicb is both fair in substance and appearance and above suspicion." Carlton Lowe previously argued the judge had shown bias and prejudice by waiting four years to rule while his brother "rotted away in prison." He said the judicial code requires prompt and fair disposal of cases. He called Letsinger a "clot in the artery of justice." Death while in fact her former husband, was not really Isabel's father.

In any event, they succeeded. The court split Isabel's estate between Seeing Eye, Inc. and the Mulhalls. None of this sat too well with Sidmon McHie, however, who insisted that Isabel, because she had continued to harrass him, had violated a 1926 agreement in which McHie had waived his rights to Isabel's estate in exchange for peace of mind. So with his own estate, which once totaled more than $20 million; reduced (in part by Isabel) to just The Times and some real estate, McHie went to court.

The federal District Court of Northern Indiana upheld his claim to the estate. Isabel's executors then appealed to the Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, which reversed the lower court. But with so much at stake, not only money but two decades of aggravation, McHie took the matter to the Supreme Court of the United States. Alas, the Supreme Court, In February 1943, refused to review Isabel's will. The lower court's finding stood up.

And Isabel continued to bedevil her husband from the grave. By LOW OLSZEWSKI Times Staff Writer MUNSTER It was a photograph of the Statue of Liberty standing Eroudly among a sea of skulls, and it rought a surprising message of the anti-Americanism sweeping Europe to a class of Munster High School students. "It really shocked us. I didn't know those feelings were out there," said Munster senior Brenda Kushnak, of the international debate on nuclear weapons represented by that picture. "You hear about the terrorism, but it just didn't seem that widespread." Suddenly, the six students in teacher Marlis Tippett's advanced German class became aware of the world beyond Ridge Road, a world where they knew what it felt like to be depicted as ugly Americans, and they decided to act The result was a letter to Der Spiegel, the West German newsmagazine where the picture and unfavorable copy appeared a letter that evolved Into a West German-United States debate on America's role in Europe.

"We felt they weren't trying to understand where we were at as a country at all," said student Amy Strachan, explaining why the class wrote a letter to the weekly newsmagazine. For a week, the students put their five to six years of language study to use, and the result told the West Germans (in a translated English version): "When we protect your country, we take upon ourselves a great financial sacrifice; this military expense occurs not only in our interest, but also in yours. "Through letters like those which you published, our interest in the German language, our understanding of Germany, and our cooperation for the protection of the German people is being greatly damaged. And if we do not understand one another any Strange The strange tale of Isabel McHie, wealthy and eccentric wife of Times' founder Sidmon McHie, continued long after her death in 1939. All her adult life, the one-time Floradora Girl feared that someone would relieve her of her bard-earned fortune.

She trusted no one, especially not her husband. Routinely she slept with a loaded revolver under her pillow, sometimes withdrawing and brandishing it to the bonification of McHie. She did not even trust hospitals. Once, when she required an operation, she insisted that McHie reproduce a hospital operating room in their New York Fifth Avenue home, which he did. Most of all, though.

Isabel feared that she would be poisoned, possibly by a family member, and that the poisoner would somehow claim her vast wealth. For this reason she included some extraordinary provisions in her final will. First she reauired that an autoDSV be held. Second, she established a $25,000 fund to prosecute the person responsible for ner death. Third, she stiDulated that anyone claiming to be her father be declared an imposfer.

Agenda The Lake County Council will conduct a workshop at 5 p.m. Thursday on a proposed cable television ordinance which may be acted on at the council's Dec. 14 meeting. The ordinance would regulate cable television In the unincorporated parts of Lake County. The workshop will be held in the Lake County Commissioners' courtroom at the Lake County Government Center, 2293 N.

Main St. A children's program on feeding birds during winter months will take place Tuesday in Ross Township. The program runs from 3:30 p.m. to 4:45 p.m. at the Deep River Nature Center in Deep River County Park, Ind.

330 and County Line Road. "It's for the Birds" is for children from 6 to 11 years old. They will learn to construct their own bird feeders from empty milk cartons and potato chip cans, as welt as how birds should be fed during winter. Pre-registration for the program is required and may be made by calling the nature center. The program Is sponsored by the Lake County Parks and Recreation Department naturalists.

Development of a new agency to aid the terminally ill will be discussed at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday at Purdue University Calumet. Barbara Hoyer, executive director of Hospice of Northwest Indiana, will lead discussion on the new agency in Room 1 16 of the Gyte Science Building, 2233 171st St. in Hammond. The session, sponsored by the Purdue Calumet Gerontology Advisory Committee, is open to the public.

Purdue University Calumet will also host a public lecture, Fingerprints in Chemistry," at 7 p.m. Wednesday in Koom I03ot the Gyte Science Building. Dr. E.L. Grove, senior scientist at the Illinois Institute of Technology Research Institute, will present the lecture.

Sponsored by the student affiliate of the American Chemical Society, the address Is free and open to the public. Potpourri The Northwest Indiana Symphony has announced a change in the program for its second classical concert at 4: 15 p.m. Dec. 6 at Munster High School Charles Ives' "The Unanswered Question" and William Schuman's New England Triptych" will be performed instead of the Symphony No. 2, 'The Mysterious Mountain," by Alan Hovhaness.

The orchestra performed the Ives work during the Bicentennial celebration in 1976. The Schuman piece will receive its first performance by the orchestra at a subscription concert. Both works were performed in November at special school concerts in the Region. There is no change in the featured work of the concert, Hector Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique." The St. Stanislaus School Board will hold a spaghetti dinner from 4 to 8 p.m.

Dec. 8 at the parish center, 4930 Indianapolis Blvd. in East Chicago. Tickets are $3.50 for adults and $2 for children aged 5 to 8. Children 4 and under are free.

Tickets may be purchased at the school office or in the rectory. Three Calumet Region students were among 150 admitted to the Purdue University chapter of Phi Eta Sigma, a freshman scholastic honor society. The society is open to any freshman or first-semester sophomore achieving a grade point average of at least 5 on the 6.0 scale. David J. Kapa I ka of Munster, Randall Lewis and Timothy J.

Ormes, both of Hammond, were inducted into the ranks. People Mike Costello, of 1404 Fisher In Munster, has won an Atari video game as first prize in St. Thomas More School's fruit sale drive. Mike, an 8th-grader at the school, sold 152 boxes of fruit. Other winners and their prizes are: Amy Kicko, a stereo phonograph; Eric Stugis, an AM-FM radio; Ryan Wong, a Polaroid camera; Lisa Fehring, a clock radio; and Craig Kobe, a Tlmex wristwatch.

Heading to the Top Poor, struggling, Mike Evans The Hammond youngster learned Friday that the hardest thing about riding a sled down a grassy hill hauling the sled back up to the top. The boy was playing (and praying for snow, we bet!) near the South Shore tracks in Hammond. CROWN POINT Convicted robber and kidnapper Thad Douglas Lowe is trying again to get a new judge. He wants a change from the judge who delayed a new trial ruling for four years. Lake Criminal Court Judge James Letsinger scheduled a hearing for Tuesday on a renewed motion for a change of judge.

Letsinger denied, without hearing, a similiar motion in August. Letsinger granted a new trial July 14 for Lowe, who sat in the Indfana State Prison at Michigan City for four years until the new trial was granted. Lowe, 32, served 11 years for conviction in March 1971 of robbery and kidnapping. He was sentenced to 10 to 25 years for robbery, and received a life sentence for kidnapping. He was accused of robbing and kidnapping an employee of a Martin service station in Gary.

Lowe, of East Chicago, is free on bond pending the new trial. Letsinger said he did not rule on the motion for a new trial at first because he was upset about the death of Norbert Wleklinski, the former East Chicago lawyer who repre Tale Lingers after By Archibald McKinlayl LI back the answers ana tne lawyers, despite their best efforts to avoid doing so, occasionally shouted their client's answers to the judge. The shouting match not withstanding, the trial proceeded and Mulhall, as evidence of his fatherhood, produced photographs of Isabel taken when she was a student in a Missouri convent. He also produced board bills he said he bad paid the convent. And to corroborate his testimony, Mulhall, believe it or not, produced a sister (his), Mrs.

Mary Haskell of Denver. Finally the judge reached his decision and to avoid intermediaries he stood and shouted it to Mulhall who caught It with a hand cupped over one ear. Mulhall, the judge ruled, did indeed have the right to contest Isabel's will, which had left her entire estate, minus $6,000, to Seeing Eye, Inc. of Morristown, N.J., the organization that provides dogs for the blind. The piddling $6,000 was left to Mother Mulhall, who was already contesting Isabel's will.

With his right to contest Isabel's will established, Mulhall joined with bis ex-wife to break the will, despite Mrs. Mulhall's intimation that John, Naturally, reality fulfilled Isabel's long-harbored fears. In April, 1940, John J. Mulhall of San Antonio, Texas, appeared in a New York court claiming to be Isabel's father, the father Isabel and her mother believed dead for more than half a century. But when court onlookers tried to persuade Mrs.

Mulhall to shake hands with the aged man, she scornfully turned away. John Mulhall's claim was also complicated by the fact that, at 89, be was a bit deaf. Because of his impaired hearing he had to have not one but two lawyers who took turns shouting at him. When he finally understood what they were saying, Mulhall shouted.