The Atlanta Constitution from Atlanta, Georgia • 1

ife? Reggie Leaves Yanks Hawks Win pfo. 4, Defeat Blazers Page 1-D Without A Clipper 1 1 Sports, Page 1-D MORNING STREET EDITION THE ATLANTA CONSTITUTION For 113 Years the South' Standard Newspaper ATLANTA, CA. 30302, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1982 TWENTY-FIVE CENTS (Higher Outside Retail Trade Zone) 56 PACES, 4 SECTIONS VOL, 114, NO. 174 P.O. BOX 4689 Violinist FaM Was 'Lovely Woman? Friends Recall i I Yood said there are no suspects in the killing of Mrs.

Bertolino, who UvW at 3568 Pin Oak Circle in Doraville with jher husband, Peter, who plays the viola in the Atlanta Sym-phony Orchestra. She had three Daughters and two grandchildren. Svenson, who is the vice president for security for Cousin's owner of the Omni Hotel, said hotel security guards were called to the scene by visitor) who became alarmed when they heard the shrieks. "Her screams were heard1 by people on both ends of the corridor," i Svenson said. "When her screams occurred, someone called our control center.

When our people got there, she was there and the people who had been following her up the escalator were there." He said those people told him they saw a man carrying a purse run past ihem and down the escalator just before they entered the hallway through the double doors. See SLAYING, Page 11-A By Brenda Mooney Conttilulioil StH Wriltr A 48-year-old freelance violinist has been identified as the victim of a fatal stabbing which occurred at the Omni International Hotel Saturday night seconds after she was seen walking alone into an enclosed hotel corridor. Atlanta Police Bureau spokesman David R. Yood said Sunday that the victim, Elizabeth Ann Bertolino, was leaving a job at the hotel's convention center about 9:15 p.m. when she was stabbed in the back during an apparent robbery in a hallway that connects the convention center and the hotel's main lobby.

Ivar Svenson, a hotel official, said her body was found by conventioneers who had been just a few feet behind her on an escalator leading into the hallway, which is enclosed by double doors, and heard her screams. Dozens of people were in the lobby at the other end of the 100-foot hallway, which has one glass wall overlooking the city and spans International Boulevard. meeting rooms. She finished her last song a little after 9 p.m. and was headed home.

Whoever killed Mrs. Bertolino stole her purse but left her violin behind. "I know she wouldn't resist" a robber, said Peter Bertolino, her husband of 30 years. Peter Bertolino plays the viola for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. "We'd talked about it before and I know she'd just have given them what they wanted.

I know she wouldn't take chances. She's not that kind of person. "What makes this ironic is that usually she just uses street parking when she does a job downtown," Bertolino said Sunday. "But she was worried so she used valet parking at the Omni. She had just finished and was walking back to the lobby to have her car picked up when it happened." At 3 a.m.

Sunday, a police officer had knocked on the door of the Bertolinos' two-story, red brick house at 3568 Pin Oak Circle in Doraville. He told Bertolino what had happened and asked him to go identify the body of his wife. See VIOLINIST, Page 11-A By Bob Dart Conttitutlon Staff Wriltr It's a clean, well-lighted place. Bamboo grows in planters and ferns flourish in hanging baskets. The furniture is modern and muted.

One whole wall is glass. This is the last place Ann Bertolino ever saw. She was stabbed there on the walkway between the Omni International Hotel's ballroom and lobby on Saturday night. She screamed, then died on the patterned brown carpet "She was a tiny woman. She couldn't have weighed more than 100 pounds, probably not more than 95 pounds," a friend recalled on Sunday.

"She was 48 years old but kept herself up very well. She dressed very nicely. She probably looked like a rich woman to somebody. But she wasn't a rich woman. She was a housewife and mother.

And Elizabeth Ann Bertolino was a devoted, lifelong musician. She'd been performing Saturday night a solo job as a strolling violinist for a convention gathering in one of the Omni STABBING VICTIM Elizabeth Ann Bertolino I Watt, Supreme Court will hear voting rights arguments Tuesday Reagan Policy Eever Burke County Iderness On Wi Blacks Take Their Case ToWashih By Paul Lieberman Conilllutton Stiff Writ through the year 2003, a position that environmentalists and others had opposed. "It's a real victory for wilderness preservation," said Bill Turnage, executive director of the Wilderness Society, a group that had sought Watt's resignation. "This is a complete turnaround in the 1 administration's policy." Watt, speaking on NBCs "Meet the Press" program, said the legislation will include a provision that -would- allow a president, with the consent of Congress, to withdraw whatever acreage might be needed to meet "a national need" for oil natural gas, strategic minerals or timber. "We would be asking that the secretary of the interior report every five yean to the Congress on the values within the wilderness that might be available to the American people if an See WATT, Page 10-A From Prtu Diuutchn WASHINGTON Interior Secretary James Watt, in what appeared to be a major policy reversal, said Sunday that the Reagan administration wants a moratorium on drilling and mining in wilderness areas until the end of the cen- Catching environmentalists off guard, Watt said the administration would propose legislation this week to amend the 1964 Wilderness Act to protect the 80 million acres of land from developers until the year 2000.

Under the present law, the land would be permanently off limits for exploration and development after Dec. 31, 1983. But Watt said the nation's "vulnerability to a natural resources attack or war" requires a new look in 2000. Watt previously had advocated letting the Interior Department issue leases for wilderness exploration and development Reagan Offers Concessions In Talks With Governors Herman Lodge, whose name is carried on a case scheduled to be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday in Washington, D.C., planned to arrive a day early on the bus from Waynesboro.

Lodge and 40 other black residents of Burke County were scheduled to board the bus at midnight Sunday for the 12-hour ride. They intend to sit in the court gallery for the proceedings, which not only will determine the profile of their local government, but also may shape the future of voting-rights lawsuits in the South. Lodge, a rotund, slightly graying man of 53 who works as a corrective therapist at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Augusta, claimed no nervousness over the deliberations on his case in the marble fortress that houses the nation's highest court. "By now I've been before enough judges on this. I'm not nervous," he said.

"I am respectful," Lodge added after a pause. "I've got to have respect of this court This is important to us." Lodge was the lead plaintiff in 1976 when a group of eight blacks filed suit in federal court challenging the countywide voting system used to elect the five-member Burke County commission. Although blacks constitute a majority of the population in the agricultural county of 18,000 in east Georgia, they are a minority of the registered voters. With racially polarized voting still a fact of Southern political life, a black has never been elected to the commission. Lodge and the, others claimed a black never could win under countywide voting and asked the courts to order voting by series of districts, one or two of which would likely have black voting majorities.

While the suit Lodge vs. Buxton raises complex legal issues over what type of evidence of racial discrimination is required to topple a voting system, it is to Lodge himself less a legal treatise than an emotional challenge to the history of his home county. By Andrew Mollison Constitution Wtihinglon Burtau WASHINGTON The Reagan administration Sunday offered governors major concessions as three-way bargaining between the governors, the president and Congress over details of the president's New Federalism plan got under way. But many governors were preoccupied by Reagan's proposal to cut federal aid to the states by another $10 billion next year, and they were divided badly along party, regional and ideological lines on methods of redividing state and federal responsibilities between 1984 and 1991. The governors were able to agree, however, that the proposed fiscal 1983 budget cuts are inseparable from the ii'j A i Gov.

Busbee says its time lor gover Bors and congressmen to "put up or shut up" on Reagan's "new federalism" plan. Page 8-A. New Federalism debate, despite the administration's appeal that the issues be considered separately. "The 1983 budget is in the judgment of many governors very tied to the capacity of states to undertake the new federal-state relationship," Gov. Richard Snelling of Vermont, a Republican who is chairman of the National Governors Association, said after a closed session.

Snelling said the group agreed unanimously that the association would take See GOVERNORS, Page 8-A Ihhmwmhu oomima Sp4cll PMto-MldiMl Uwli See BURKE, Page 10-A Plaintiff Herman Lodge Is Fighting 'The Vestiges Of Racism' Exit Exam Raises Njew Questions Mexican Chief Calls For Salvador Talks Eass an exit exam before they (receive a igh school diploma. The policy is aimed at ensuring that students will have mastered certain basic reading and math skills before they graduate. In short, state Board of Education memben hope the policy will make By Sharon J. Salyer ConHltullon Stiff Wriltr Time is running out for the, class of 85. The state Board of Education has mandated that all public high school students, beginning with the class of 1985, Inside mJf Monday In Georgia will be sunny, with highs near 60 in the extreme north to near 70 in the extreme south.

Overnight lows will be in the 30s. Details on Page 2-A a high school diploma, diluted in the pas; by social promotions, stand for something again. But when next year's sophomores get their first chance to take the exam, an estimated 14,000 may have problems passing it And state leaders are now faced with the decision of what responsibility the state has to help these students pass the test. In his budget pitch to legislators this year, Gov. George Busbee argued that it is time for the legislature either to "fish or cut bait" on the issue of competency-based education.

Last year, the governor requested S5.9 million for remedial or compensatory help for high school students, but the legislature refused to allocate any. money for the program. This year, Busbee asked the legislature to allocate $7.2 million for a new program to give remedial help to next, year's freshman and sophomore students whose basic reading and math skills are not up to par. in a year when state lawmakers are faced with mammoth budget problems, some legislators question whether any money should be allocated to high SCHOOLS, Page 10-A' From Prttt Dispatctws MANAGUA, Nicaragua Mexican President Jose Lopez Portillo Sunday launched a major initiative to reduce political tensions in Central America with the warning that this could be the "last opportunity" to avoid a "conflagration" in the region. Speaking before an estimated 40,000 people in Managua's Plaza of the Revolution, Lopez Portillo called for a broad process of negotiations to bring peace to El Salvador and to improve U.S.

relations with both Nicaragua and Cuba. He added that Mexico was willing to act as a conduit to promote detente in the area. Addressing "my. good friends of the United States," the Mexican president said that U.S. intervention in the region would be a "gigantic historical error" and he stressed that events in El Salvador and Nicaragua "do not represent an intolerable danger for the fundamental interests and national security of the United States." I He urged the Reagan administration to disarm Nicara-guan rebels that Nicaragua's left-wing government claims are being trained in the United States.

Nlcaraguan junta leader, Daniel Ortega Saavedra, told the crowd that a dynamite explosion that killed four baggage handlers at Managua's airport Saturday night was part of a U.S. plot to undermine his Sandinista government and discourage Lopez Portillo's visit People, etc. 7 Fund-faitm hep to sell people on the value of urban restoration and urban Me at the April celebration called Midtown Connection. Page 1-5. Business Ford President Donald Petersen says the auto dealers call for permanent 5 'Hiiwisti'iii'iy' reduction in car prices is unrealistic.

Page l-C Movies. Newsmakers. 2-B 1-D Sports 5-B 2-A Gulliver. 4-A Horoscope. 7-C 1-B Comics.

7-C 7-C 8-C Doonesbury. 5-A 4-A Abby. 4-B 7-C l-C City 13-A 9-C Sen. Patrick Leahy (left), back from a recent trip to El Salvador, and former U.S. ambassador Robert White called Sunday for negotiations to replace next month's "flawed and urged a major reassessment of U.S.

policy in El Salvador. Story, Page 8-A. (Associated Press Photo) Today' Weathef 2-A See PORTILLO, Page 8-A 4.