The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 3

Cos Angeles Sltnea Tuivliiy. April 2). IW2, Pari I 3 Z.A Native Will Be First U.S. Female Astronaut Woman, Black Selected for Space Shuttle Crews master's in physics in and a doctorate in astrophysics in 1978. She applied for astronaut training in 1977 and was one of 35 new astronauts selected a year later by the space agency out of more than 8,000 applicants.

Ride has served as a "capcom" capsule communicator between the mission operations control center in Houston She radioed to the space crew: When do I get my By GEORGE ALEXANDER. Times Science Writer The first American woman and the first black have been chosen by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as crew members for the seventh and eighth Space Shuttle missions, to be flown next year. Sally K. Ride, a Los Angeles native, will fly aboard the space shuttle Challenger, the second in a series of four spaceplanes being built for the space agency. Her role in the April.

1983, flight will be that of mission specialist, a job that involves carrying out a wide range of tasks associated with placing three satellites in orbit and operating a dozen or more scientific experiments during the course of the 6-day flight. Three months after Ride's scheduled flight. Guion S. Bluford. a 40-year-old Air Force lieutenant colonel, will become the first black to participate in an American space flight, also aboard the Challenger.

Bluford also will be a mission specialist on his 3-day flight. Ride, whose parents reside in Encino, was graduated from Westlake High School in 1968. She went on to Stanford University, where she earned two bachelor's degrees (one in English and one in physics) in 1973, a of the first flight of the Columbia last year; pilot Vnilv-rick H. Huack, 41. U.S.

Navy captain; and mission specialist John M. Fabian, an Air Force lieutenant colonel. The Challenger will carry a payload of a West German science spacecraft and Canadian and Indonesian communications satellites, which are all to be dropped off in orbit. A set of American scientific experiments also will be taken into space and brought back to Earth. Ride will not be the first woman to enter space.

Valentina Tereshkova of the Soviet Union flew alone in the Voslok 6 space capsule for 71 hours in June. 1963. but Soviet cosmonauts have told their American counterparts privately that her flight was more of a public relations stunt than a true test flight. Bluford, of Philadelphia, will join mission commander Truly; Daniel C. Brandenstein, a Navy commander making his first flight in space; and another mission specialist.

Dale A. Gardner, a Navy lieutenant commander, for the July, 1983. shuttle flight. That crew will carry into space an Indian communications satellite and an American tracking and data relay satellite. Both will be placed in orbit.

and the space shuttle Columbia on its second and third flights. During that second flight last November, one of the astronauts was describing the view of earth from the lofty vantage point of 150 miles up. "Sounds good," Ride radioed up to crewmen Joe Engle and Richard H. Truly. "When do I get my chance?" Ride's crewmates for the seventh shuttle flight will be mission commander Robert L.

Crippen, 44, a member Sally K. Ride off to space in shuttle next year. Medical Facility's Funds Cut Death Valley Region Losing Its Only Clinic Staff Writer The two trailers that make up irafb By LORRAINE BENNETT. Times DEATH VALLEY-Three years ago. Sylvia Burton, a sprightly desert dweller in her mid-70s.

saw her husband collapse here with a heart attack. "When they loaded him in the ambulance, struggling so valiantly to get his breath, I knew I would never see him alive again." she recalled recently. "There was no one here to stabilize him, so he died before he reached the hospital" 85 miles away in Las Vegas. To Burton and the other 5,500 people who populate the small communities scattered along the fringes of this blistering wasteland, convenient health care was until recentlyjust one more service they lived without. Then, in 1980, more than $150,000 in state and federal funds were granted to open the Death Valley Health Center.

The tiny clinic began functioning in February, 1981, in the hamlet of Shoshone near the Nevada border. Residents remember runs to an emergency room 85 miles away. A nurse-practitioner and small staff examined patients in two mobile homes leased from the school district and parked on Death Valley High School grounds. But two months ago the staff was told the funds would end March 31. Since then, angry residents have blamed everyone from "insensitive" local and state bureaucrats to the President for the lack of nearby medical care.

They recall frantic night drives to Southern Inyo Hospital in Lone Pine, the nearest medical facility in Inyo County about 180 miles to the northwest over a winding road and two mountain ranges. Residents remember harrowing ambulance runs and tense helicopter flights to the nearest emergency room, 85 miles to the east in Las Vegas, and the patients who didn't make it. "We do not deny the need for emergency medical services in Death Valley," said Dr. Kent An-gerbauer of the federal Public Health Service in San Francisco, who notified Death Valley clinic's staff of the funding cut in February. "But our region encompasses California, Arizona, Hawaii and Nevada, and there are places in those areas just as remote as Death Valley," he added.

Cutbacks are necessary because federal dollars from Washington GARY FRIEDMAN tos Angeles Times Center in tiny Shoshone, Calif. at remote desert health center. Two tough customers: Dr. Bill Bannen of Las Ve- suffered a heart attack but brushed it off; at right, gas confers with Bill Howell, 95, who probably longtime Shoshone resident Sylvia Burton, 76. Anti-Poverty Agency's TV Deal Held Up Bureau Revokes Order Permitting Sale of Station to TELACU By CLAIRE SPIEGEL, Times Staff Writer The staff of the Federal Communications Commission has revoked its permission for the sale of a Connecticut TV station to an East Los Angeles anti -poverty organization and some Virginia businessmen, an FCC official said Monday.

Commission Broadcast Bureau Chief Laurence Harris issued a rare order Friday setting aside an earlier decision approving the sale of Hartford's WHCT-TV to a corporation owned by The East Los Angeles Community Union (TELACU). its president and about 20 Virginia businessmen, including the state's lieutenant governor and a former congressman. A request for the commission to reconsider the matter was made recently by a longtime opponent of the sale, LDA Communications based partly on a series of articles in The Times last month about TELACU. TELACU was founded 14 years ago as a community organization to fight poverty and unemployment in the barrios and has mushroomed with the help of $10 million a year in government grants into a far-flung business empire. Times' Disclosures The Time disclosed that TELACU officials have used the agency's funds for private investments, loans and political activities.

TELACU received government funds to help acquire the Hartford TV station and then teamed up with prominent Virginians who provided millions dollars more in financing. Without putting up any money of their own, TELACU President David Lizarraga and a former TELACU official were to receive 10 of the stock in the corporation formed to purchased the station Television Corporation of Hartford. The propriety of TELACU officials getting stock in the firm is now under investigation by the Department of Justice, said William O'Connor; inspector general of the now-defunct Community Services Administration which gave TELACU $250,000 to help acquire the TV station. In its order, the commission confirmed the investigation, but stated that it could not hold up the sale on that basis alone. Instead, the, order said there is a need to review stockholder and purchase agreements that the Hartford company filed with the commission in February.

These documents did not prevent Please see TELACU, Page 21 begun to pull together some semblance of a campaign organization with only seven weeks left before the June 8 primary. He has hired a campaign manager, is raising money and insists that he is dead serious about his candidacy. The problem is that it may be too little, too late. Although millionaire Los Angeles businessman Max Palcvsky, a frequent contributor to liberal causes, will host a fundraiser for him next week, Vidal's latest campaign contribution report showed that he has only $21,780 in the bank. He is spending his own money heavily for a "modest television buy" in the next few days.

In contrast, Brown has nearly $2 million on hand. And despite Vidal's biting attacks Please see VIDAL, Page 23 are shrinking, he said. The decision to cut Death Valley's share came only after careful review of all such rural health centers in the region that rely on federal dollars, he added. Ranked with other centers by need. Death Valley "was very close to the bottom," too remote to become self-sustaining, Angerbauer said.

Only 501 patients came to the center for treatment last year, he said. "I can fully appreciate where Death Valley falls in their list of projects," said John Cassidy, the clinic's administrator. Cassidy does not dispute the center's lack of financial solvency, or the fact that other projects serve larger numbers of people. "But other folks in Los Angeles and San Francisco have options. These people here don't have options," he said.

"Los Angeles residents are no more than 20 minutes from the nearest hospital. We aren't. And a lot of folks come through Death Valley. If they have an emergency, they need to hear something more than that the nearest doctor is 100 miles away." Shoshone, the clinic's location, is a wisp of a town with about one hundred residents. But the clinic there also serves Tecopa, 10 miles south, where a seasonal population fluctuates between 300 to 3,000, and other small communities.

On Death Valley's Threshold Shoshone and Tecopa stand on Death Valley's threshold, beyond the boundary separating San Bernardino and Inyo counties. They seem, at first glance, little more than a gas station or two, a couple of bars, a few grocery stores and several small, stark buildings scattered across the sand. Sylvia Burton moved here from Oregon 22 years ago with her retired husband and rheumatic daughter and vows she won't be anywhere else. The warm desert climate and daily dips in Tecopa's hot mineral springs restored her daughter's health, she says. She lives in a rambling, one-level frame house which she and her husband began building 15 years ago "by trial and error." Construction is still under way, and Burton sleeps in the back yard.

"These are pioneer types, tough people," observed Dr. Bill Bannen, a Las Vegas emergency, medicine physician who comes to the clinic every other week to provide backup assistance for the resident nurse -practitioner. "When they come to see us, they are genuinely ill." On alternate Thursdays, Bannen pilots his private plane to a tiny Please see CLINIC, Page 24 Writer cluding San Joaquin Valley landowners who want the canal but not the package of environmental protections also on the ballot, as anti-environmentalists. "When the big landowners who are opponents of the canal openly admit that the major reason for their opposition is to retain easy access to the water of California's wild and scenic rivers, I believe them and I oppose them," Bradley said. Bradley also said that his major opponent, Sen.

John Garamendi (D-Walnut Grove), favors a cross-Delta project instead of the canal, which Bradley said "would wipe out the already decimated fishery of the Delta." The league, which makes contributions to candidates based on their stands on environmental issues, so far has not endorsed any of the five the threatened Death Valley Health and health aide Shirley Mason ed to be used in a campaign mailer of some sort. He said the Parker firm subsequently sent out a personal letter purportedly signed by Pope which praised Garamendi's record and asked for contributions to his campaign, implying that the league had endorsed the senator. "The signature is not mine," Pope told league members at the luncheon meeting to hear Bradley. Parker last week issued an apology for the letter, saying it was in error. Garamendi's campaign staff said it had "no involvement" in the addition of the appeal for contributions.

Pope called the incident "very embarrassing" and said that "frankly this screwup makes it less likely" that the league will endorse a candidate. Please lee BRADLEY, Page 22 Nurse-practitioner Michael Ford-Terry Bradley Gives Conservation Top Canal Priority Pledges Environmental Concern in Implementation of Controversial Project Vidal Becoming Serious About Senate Campaign By WILLIAM ENDICOTT, Times Political Writer By CLAUDIA LUTHER, Times Staff Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, appearing before a conservation group that opposes the Peripheral Canal, pledged Monday that he "will have no greater priority than the full implementation of environment and conservation features of that project" if he is elected governor. Bradley's comments came in an appearance before a California League of Conservation Voters meeting in Los Angeles. Bradley, defending his position in favor of the canal, which is on the June ballot for voter approval, said he sees the project as the "most feasible means to meet the water needs of Southern California which enhances the environment and conserves resources at the same time." He also attempted to portray some of the canal's opponents, in gubernatorial candidates Democrats Bradley, Garamendi and Mario Obledo, former Secretary of Health and Welfare, and Republicans Lt. Gov.

Mike Curb and Atty. Gen. George Deukmejian. But, because of an embarrassing snafu involving a campaign mailer put out by Garamendi, it is not likely that the league will endorse any of the gubernatorial candidates before the June 8 primary. League Executive Director Carl Pope said the incident began when a firm, which prepared one of Gar-amendi's mailers, asked for an assessment of Garamendi's.

record on environmental issues, which the league considers excellent. Pope said he prepared a three-paragraph analysis, which he sent to Richard Parker Associates in San Francisco, and which Pope expect As Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. would put it, Gore Vidal might be only a "speck in universal time" as far as California politics is concerned.

Vidal's late-starting race against Brown for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination and the almost whimsical way he has gone about it would seem to mark him as a frivolous candidate bent more on having a little fun at the governor's expense than actually winning. He spent some of his meager campaign funds on an advertisement in the New York Review of Books so that his literary friends would know he is running. His main campaign headquarters is an apartment over the garage at his Holly wood Hills home. But the best-selling author, historian and social critic finally has i.