Tampa Bay Times from St. Petersburg, Florida • 7

section 12) TIMES WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 1993 Do these celebrities get tributes? Yes, lots COLUMNIST By ROBERT KEEFE Timet 8tatf Wrttar HOWARD TROXLER As in parking lots. Soon you may be able to leave your car in lots named after golf great Gene Sarazen, silent screen star Gloria Swanson and other notables New Port Richey claims as its own. Gloria Swanson, above, and Gene Sarazen. Sarazen, best known for sinking a double-eagle on a hole at Augusta National that helped him win the 1935 Masters, also is known for inventing the sand wedge while living in New Port Richey in 1930. "I don't think I lived in New Port Richey very long maybe just a couple of years," he said Tuesday.

Exactly how much time Swanson spent in New Port Richey before her 1983 death if any is harder to pinpoint. The legend of her time in town has been debated in local circles for years. "As far as I know, she supposedly did live here, but I don't think I can lay my hands on anything concrete as to whether she really did or not," said Glen Dill, a local historian who has lived in New Port Richey almost 60 years. "A lot of that was strictly hearsay," he said. "There were simply promoters of the area who were li ars.

Sarazen is less doubtful: "She didn't spent any time there," he said. "She may have spent some time in West Palm Beach, but not in New Port Richey. I lived there." Don't tell that to promoters of New Port Richey. The sign to grace the Gloria Swanson Municipal Parking Lot, near Sims Park, is to read: "A renowned actress of the silent screen, Gloria Swanson was one of the colorful residents of New Port Richey during the Boom Era of the 1920s. The home she lived in can still be seen on the banks of the (Pithlachascotee) River." "We're trying to put an emphasis on the historical names," said Mari-lynn deChant, executive director of the New Port Richey Community Cooperative the quasi-governmen- Please see LOTS 4B NEW PORT RICHEY Gloria Swanson is hailed as a queen of the silver screen.

Gene Sarazen's name is synonymous with golfing greatness. In New Port Richey, both of their names might soon be synonymous with a good place to park. The city of New Port Richey is considering naming five municipal parking lots after Swanson, Sarazen and other notables who visited or lived in the west Pasco community during the early 1900s. "So where's the park they're naming after me?" Sarazen, now 90, asked Tuesday when contacted at his Marco Island home by a reporter. No, he was told, it's a parking lot.

He paused. "I don't care what they do, as long as they don't name the sewers after me," he replied. Let there be color Fmeedl teomi tack in jjaoD Eugene Williams, awaiting sentencing for holding a gun at an officer's head, faces new charges that he assaulted two officers. By SUE CARLTON and MIKE MAHAN Timet Staff Wtttert Timet photo V. JANE WINDSOR Christian Life Enrichment Center at St.

Paul United Methodist Church in Largo. Don Joaquin, left, and Ron Vogt, glaziers for Midway Glass, install a stained-glass window Tuesday at the Since when is secrecy for a child's own good? When a kid is accused of a crime in Florida, it's usually kept secret. When the state decides the fate of an abused kid, that's kept secret, too. Why the secrecy? To "protect" our children. I think we should reconsider.

Thousands of kids are hardened criminals. They are not the ones who need protection from society. Society needs protection from them. Meanwhile, thousands of kids are shuffled from home to home by the state. I am not sure that giving the state secret power over them, and therefore unchecked power, is the best protection.

So we should consider getting rid of a lot of this secrecy, not only in criminal cases, but also in child abuse and other custody matters. I would make the facts of most cases public, while keeping only the names secret. Let's talk first about kids and crime. The good news is that something like half the kids who are accused of a crime never have a second offense. Maybe the system fixed them.

Maybe they were basically good kids who made a mistake. Fine. Keep it secret for first offenders. Everybody is entitled to one. But the repeat offenders The word "juvenile" does not do some of them justice.

We aren't talking about sweet little kids who stole candy. The top felony among Florida juveniles is burglary, followed by auto theft, aggravated assaults and batteries, and non-marijuana drug offenses. More and more are violent offenders. Attempted murders among juveniles are up 1,746 percent in the last decade. Not only are we entitled to be warned about these "children," we should be entitled to see how our system handles them which is not very well.

The system is a joke. There is no place to put seriously bad kids. Judges shake their fingers and rattle their chains, and the juveniles just laugh. "They know the system inside and out, and they play it like a fiddle," says Lynda Russell, a spokeswoman for the state. But the public doesn't see it.

The public gets outraged at a case in adult court, such as Sedrick McKinney, the notorious repeat offender in Tampa. Well, Sedrick McKinneys travel through the juvenile justice system by the hundreds, and we don't know a thing about it until they turn 18 and pop up as adult felons. We are entitled to know. I admit being on shakier ground when I say we should loosen the secrecy surrounding child abuse and similar cases. In these cases, called "dependen-' cy" hearings, the state decides whether to remove a kid from his or her home.

Accusations of child abuse are cheap. More than half the abuse complaints in Florida are unfounded. One out of 10 is sheer harassment. I would keep these secret. I believe in second chances for first offenders.

As state spokeswoman Catherine Deans put it to me: "It may be the kind of thing that never happens again. Does releasing the names help that family, or the child?" But time and again, we have seen cases that fell through the cracks. The state is not perfect. The normal checks and balances do not exist. Sometimes horrible things result.

In the city of Stuart, a child abuse report fell through the cracks. Five months later, a 3-year-old girl was beaten to death. The parents were jailed and when the mother got out, she petitioned to get her other child back! Did secrecy protect the child? A newspaper reporter named Tim Roche kept the case before the public eye for the Stuart News. In the end, the judge refused to return the girl to her mother but even had he ruled the other way, it would have been an official state secret. When Roche reported this secret ruling as well, he was ordered to name his source, refused, and was sentenced to jail.

The U.S. Supreme Court just refused to take his case, and he is under order to report to jail Friday. It seems silly to me that the state of Florida wants to jail Roche, who just became a reporter for the 5. Petersburg Times, for publicizing a secret case botched by the state. I think he should get a medal instead.

Who needs the protection of secrecy when kids commit serious crimes? And who is protected by the secret bureaucracy that handles juvenile matters the kids, or that bureaucracy? Victim describes attack to jury TAMPA The reprieve is over. Eugene Williams, a 16-year-old recently convicted of holding a gun to a police officer's head, got a Christmas present last month when a judge let him out of jail until his Jan. 29 sentencing. But late Tuesday, he was back in police custody. This time, the teenager is accused of shifting a stolen convertible into reverse, causing it to roll back toward two police officers on bicycles late Monday.

Tampa police Officer Lisa Bishop, who had a gun held to her head by Williams on the Fourth of July, said this latest incident underscores a "You shouldn't release violent offenders so easily." The teenager's father expressed dis-j appointment. I "It hurts bad now," Carl Williams said. "But I still say he's not a bad Eugene Williams had just finished the eighth grade when the July 4 incident occurred at the Ponce De Leon public housing complex. Drinking gin and wine coolers, Williams said he went up to the officer "trying to be a big man" and held a gun to her head at the urging of his friends. A live round was found in the gun's chamber.

Williams denied pulling the trigger. Charged with attempted murder of a law enforcement officer, he was found guilty of the lesser crime of aggravated battery on a law enforcement Circuit Judge Diana Allen released hint Robert James Brim is accused of raping two women in south Tampa. Police say he is a suspect in other attacks. By SUE CARLTON Tlmea Staff Wmer fresh blood on the windowsill led to Brim's arrest. Police then were able to get a court order to draw blood samples and saliva from him.

Those samples were sent to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement lab along with semen and other evidence taken from the rape scenes. DNA typing, or genetic fin-. gerprinting, linked him to the two rape cases, and prosecutors say he remains a suspect in several others. "You will hear the probability, the statistics, that show Robert Brim was the rapist in this case," prosecutor Leland Baldwin told the jury in an opening statement Tuesday. Brim's attorney plans to present Please see VICTIM 4B ist.

"Right away, he grabbed my throat and said, 'Don't scream and I won't hurt she testified Tuesday, her voice breaking. The victim was the first witness to take the stand in the first rape case against Robert James Brim, suspected in a series of attacks on women in the south Tampa neighborhood during 18 months. Brim, 34, is charged with raping two women in separate incidents in September 1990. He also is charged with breaking into a first-floor apartment on Horatio Street in October 1991. There, police say, he confronted a 27-year-old woman whose screams scared him away.

Fingerprints and Genetic evidence will be used in Robert James Brim's case. TAMPA The disabled 58-year-old woman lighted a religious candle for her grandson that night, hoping to ensure him a safe trip from Wisconsin on his way to visit her. Then she went to bed. By the light of that candle, she looked into the face of the man police would later call the Hyde Park rap Please see TEEN 4B TT Former dealers sue Toyota distributor I KS3J Eaglet's name tells its story Rejecting humorous suggestions, staffers at a bird center choose Seminole Wind for the eaglet that hatched from a fallen egg. 3 James Ferman Jr.

and Cecil Edge Jr. allege that Southeast Toyota Distributors ruined their Tampa dealership. By BRUCE VIELMETTI Tim Staff Witter By SUE LANDRY Timeu Staff Wrttw fifat V-'- the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce and still owns several Tampa dealerships. Edge has been prominent in several Tampa civic organizations including the United Way and the Downtown Partnership. Their suit claims that unfair, practices by Southeast led to the "ruination" of Friendly which Ferman and Edge owned from 1976 to 1989.

Ferman and Edge claim South- east coerced and intimidated deal-; ers into taking unwanted accesso-' ries, financing, transportation and advertising supplied by Moran-' controlled companies. They say Southeast pressured dealerships to inflate sales reports so Southeast would qualify for, more autos from Toyota Motor' Sales USA, and offered bribes to employees in return for perjured testimony. Please see TOYOTA 4B fcf. Vf Eagle Knievel was a popular suggestion, and Egg Flew Young was one of the funniest. But when it came to naming the miracle eaglet from Pinellas County, staffers at the Center for Birds of Prey in Maitland decided a serious name was the way to go.

So meet Seminole Wind, at 11 days old perhaps the most famous bald eagle in the country. "The funny ones certainly were funny, but we felt that the situation that brought him to the center is not humorous, so we wanted the name to somehow reflect the story itself," said Resee Collins, curator of the Maitland center where the bird hatched Jan. 2. "We wanted a name with dignity." Two prominent Tampa businessmen have joined a growing number of car dealers who are accusing a giant Toyota wholesaler of racketeering and fraud that inflated car prices and put honest dealers out of business. James L.

Ferman Jr. and Cecil E. Edge former owners of Friendly Toyota in Tampa, filed a 50-page federal lawsuit Tuesday against Southeast Toyota Distributors; its founder, James M. Moran; and several subsidiary companies. Ferman is the past president of Orlando Sentinel photo The baby eagle at the Center for Birds of Prey in Maitland will have a serious name, Seminole Wind.

Please see EAGLET 4B.