The Lowell Sun from Lowell, Massachusetts • Page 37

Vol. 30, Nov. 27, 1977, No. 11 Sevareid comes home By JAMES RESTON 'New York Times WASHINGTON Eric Sevareid is leaving Uie CBS Evening News program in a few days, and while he insists (bat the Republic will survive the shock, a few prejudiced and dissenting words from an old buddy may not be entirely out of order. This is a news event of more than passing interest in Washington.

We are always losing prominent columnists senators, and even presidents around here, usually with a sigh of relief, but none of them came into our living rooms like Sevareid every other night explaining the unexplainable, just when it al) seemed beyond us. To many television viewers Sevareid was a puzzle, sometimes on the liberal and other times on the conservative side of issues. Ke didn't think news should be quite as simple or dogmatic as the advertising commercials. He had the old fashioned notion that life was a little complicated, that politicians were neither crooks nor saints, most of them being a little of both. He also had the firm conviction that his job was to serve (he truth rather than opinion, regardless of whether this promoted his career or raised his popularity ratings, which usually it didn't.

SEVAREID seems to have picked up this idea at the University of Minnesota luring the Depression. For some quirky reason, that institution produced a remarkable crop of good reporters at that particular time, among them Hedley Donovan, the editor of Time Magazine, Harrison Salisbury of The New York Times, Phil Potter of the Baltimore Sun, and Dill Costello of the Minneapolis Journal and Tribune and later of CBS and ABC. All of these seem to have had the unusual advantages and none of the disadvantages of poverty. There was also a bit of luck in Sevareid's age, for as the 19th Century was the century of, the novelist, clearly these past 40 years, with their wars and crashing empires and revolutions, were the epic years of the journalist. Sevareid brought to this ers the three essentials of a great reporter: a good pair of legs, a sense of history, and, though he looks excessively gloomy on the tube, a sense of humor that usually, but not always, overcame a bad temper.

Perhaps his greatest achievement is that he sur vived the wars that is to say, not the Second World War or the Korean and Vietnam Wars, though he did that too but the guerrilla wars of television in New York and politics in Washington. MANY HAVE fought on these battlefields, but few have survived for many years at the top of the television news networks and still retained the honor of the mind. Oddly, most of them came from places far from the Eastern Establishment Sevareid from Velva, N.D.; Walter Cronkite from St. Joseph, Dan Rather from Wharton, Roger Mudd and David Brinkley from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Some big city folks of course, made it Into the big time on the networks like Barbara Walters of New York at ABC and John Chancellor of Chicago at NBC, they were the exceptions who overcame their handicaps.

I am not a great admirer of television editorials. It is hard enough to have to read a man's opinions without having to watch him scanning a TV teleprompter and pretending that he just thought it all up, but somehow Sevareid managed to do it, and it is interesting that even Bill Movers decided he didn't want to try to replace Sevareid, and CBS couldn't find another resident philosopher. So CBS announced that Sevareid was "retiring" on Nov. 30, but for anybody who knows him, this is not only inaccurate but ridiculous, Sevareid is not the retiring sort. CBS is not "retiring" him but liberating him.

He is not going away but coming home to the written word, which has always been his greatest strength. HE IS A good broadcaster, a sensitive quiet questioner but he is too tall and deep and complex to fit comfortably into the mathematic and time frames of the television screen. He has the novelist's gift of catching the echoes or inward mutterings of the age, and maybe he will now take time to pmve it. Twice before in recent years, at least some people in Washington have felt vapely amputated when Elmer Davis and Ed Morrow left the air, and at that time, Sevareid wrote something about Davis that could very well be said of himself. "Elmer," he wrote, "is the whole man and the complete American.

He is a man from Indiana, and he is also a classical scholar. And there is in him, therefore, a rare synthesis; an awareness of life's tragedy, of the bleak glory of man's ancient pilgrimage, and still, through it all, the warm and eager hope of the American THE WORLD TODA THE SUNDAY SUN Lowell, Massoehusetfc Crowded' dMmai Watted I 1949 Editorial The high school CITY MANAGER William Taupierhas taken a Firm position against exceeding the $14 million limit imposed by the City Council on the Lowell High school building project. He Is well advised to dc so. He is determined that the amount will not he exceeded; he has said that he will not seek any Coimr.il authorization for additional funding. He has been reading the numbers lately, and he knows that the City is earning dangerously close to the limit debt that it can afford to carry.

He is aware that the figure now stands at $16.5 million exclusive of what the City will have to borrow to pay for construction of the High school addition and the new water filtration plant. He knows that this municipal deht represents about $175 for every man, woman and child living in Lowell, and he doesn't want to see this figure rise any mure than absolutely necessary in the future. HE IS AWARE, as we all are, that the High school project (as well as the water plant expansion) is going to be carried to a conclusion in the near future but he is determined to keep the price tag down to acceptable levels. He should receive the support of the Council and the public in his efforts. There have been a number of ideas advanced on how to keep the construction at the original $14 million figure.

There has been input from certain Councilors (especially, Armand IMay who has been a leader in the fight) and even, surprisingly enough, from the Suporintendant of Schools, Patrick Mogan, and the Headmaster of (he High School, Peter Stamas. The last two men could be expected to advocate the expenditure of whatever it might take to complete the project as first designed by the architects regardless of cost but they have showed themselves to be amenable to suggestions on how to cut hack and to stay within the figure authorized by the Council. Court reform faces uncertain future in House BY LOKING SWAM Sun State House Bureau STATE HOUSE Court reorganization, Una year's most significant reform, now laces an uncertain future in die House. The duy before Thanksgiving the Senate put through its version of reform. The vote was 31 to 6.

Sens. Carol Amick, Chester Atkins, B. Joseph Tully and William X. Wall supported the package. Tomorrow the Hnuse takes up its own set of Gov.

Dukakis is monitoring progress tram Ihe sidelines, ambling those participants wits whom he has influence His most recent in volvement la futile gesture) was to get Sen. James Kelly to move lo limit accompanying salary hikes for judges lo (5000 1 (he Senate bill as it stands would hand district court judges SII.OOO hikes, Just for being available for ser vice in oiler courls). Tic Senate blocked this amendment, IS lo 19. THE PTJBIJC'S chief interest in these com On target THAT FIGUltE, as mentioned, is S14 million. If the cost is permitted to exceed that limit, the excess should be counted in pennies, not millions.

The High school prujeel must mil become another Middlesex County (East Cambridge) Court Hnuse that donhleil, tripled and even quadrupled in cost over the term of conduction. That fiasco resulted in the removal rum public of tier of two county commissioners (John Dever and Frederick Connors). Recollection of that should inspire those associated with Lowell's project to redouble their efforts tu keep il within bounds. Another Court House could easily happen here unless our officials are constantly on guard to prevent it from taking place. AS THE ritOJECT now stands, there is much reason to believe that it has been overdesigned.

There are two kitchens, for example, excessive classroom spare, two bridges over the canal in back of the present building (just one is enough to destroy the panorama from Merrimack Street to the mills at the foot of the canal, a fact that should be considered by those concerned with preserving the aesthetics of downtown Lowell as envisioned by the planners of the state Heritage Park and its sister development, the Urban National Park) and unnecessary development in a number of other areas. It is normal enough that the architects in charge should be interested in creating overdevelopment. For every dime spent, they are remunerated on a percentage basis, so it is in their own interest to see that the project goes from $14 million to million and on up to the highest point possible. THE ARCHITECTS (Perley Gilbert Associates of Lowell) already have a handsome fSOO.OOO Fee in the bag, and many people have wondered why City plicated proposals to overhaul Ihe fragmented judicial system is probably because it uiil produce faster administration nf justice. Court calendars in Massachusetts are among He most clogged in Ihe United States.

Civil cases in Middlesex County, for instance, are notoriously backed up, for up. to four years. Court reform should speed up the disposal of cases by making maximum use nf all available resources with someone in charge to crack the whip. Additionally, the cost of running the courls can be shitted from local property taxes, already overburdened, to a slate tax base which has the capacity to grow. The cost of jiislice in Massachusetts won't be lessened by reform; it will presumably be easier to hear.

But Ihe interest in court reform from the perspective nf your average politician on Deacon Hill is somewhat different. Courts have traditionally been a fertile field for patronage. II is a (urf legislators arc reluctant to give up. Manager Taupicr acquiesced to such a high sum fnr the designing and supervision of construction of the project. The answer, presumably, is that this is the standard fee required by some sort of national association of architects but such an explanation doesn't impress taxpayers who have to pay the fat fee just because some architects say that such is "standard The circumstances are similar to those evoked by lawyers in Ihe past who used to summon up the sacred image of the Massachusetts Bar Association to sustain demands for exorbitant fees.

The lawyers used to say they couldn't charge less than their professional association wduIJ permit for certain types of work but much of that sort of highway robbery via cartel has gone by the boards lately, especially since the government started inisisting upon the right of lawyers to advertise their services and fees. THE PERLEY GILBERT Associates got in on the ground floor on this High school project and sold our officials a bill of goods whereby the design fee had to he a percentage of the total construction cost. Little can be done to change that now but the Manager and the Council can, at least, keep a wary eye open to see that the price doesn't soar to the advantage of the architects. It is interesting to note that a suggestion has already been made that the City hire its own Clerk of the Works to supervise construction when it does get underway which would seem to indicate a certain uneasiness relative to the manner in which such supervision will, eventually, be carried out by the architects although this task ordinarily falls to them as part of tbeir duties The architects should never have been permitted to get away witb an $800,000 fee for this project (wilh more in sight). It shouldn't cost that much to design a new building, rehabilitate another and put in a bridge or two over a canal but the die is ADD TO this the personal bitterness among several central characters in this court reform drama and you have a major reason lor fie iootdragging.

Harvard's Hrof. Archibald Cox filed far it aching reform proposals nine months ago, nn behalf or a distinguished panel of experts. They have languished in committee ever since. "Everyone knows the terrible hatred between the Governor and Sen. (Alan) Sisilsky (Senate chairman of the judiciary commllleei," observed Minority leader Sen.

John Parker bluntly during Wednesday's debate, "and between Sisitsky and (Rep. Michael Flaherty (House judiciary "THE HOUSE'S attitude is now. I understand, 'the Senate be growled Sisitsky as he abniplly scratched seven further he had planned lo propose lo accomodate the House. Sisitsky had just been in. formed that whatever the Senate produced would be Ignored ly Ihe House.

cast, The City must now live with this arrangement or find another arclliteci and lose what the City is already committed to pay (which is out of the question). THERE HAVE been storm warnings raised in Boston by the state's School Building Assistance Bureau which will huve a role to play in state reimbursement to the city for the cost of the project at a rate of 65 per cent. If the project is cut back too far. SBAB says, this reimbursement could be endangered. No doubt, the warning must be given weight but nut enough to persuade city officials to abandon their efforts to keep the construction at the 14 million limit.

Thai's enough for Lowell to pay for a ne High school, and if we can't satisfy the state that the needs of our declining student population can be met quite satisfactorily with that kind of money, then there's something wrong with the stale, we would have to think. The state has to realize that we rtoti't have access to big money in Lowell, that we are willing to spend a large sum to update our High school but that we are not willing to be driven to the wall by a School Building Assistance Bureau Uiat may be overly imbued with a school establishment mentality that thinks that the only use taxpayers can ever (ind tor their money is tu defray the cost of maintaining the local school department. WE STRONGLY support the determination of Manager Taapier (o whittle this High school project down to size so that not one dime more than the original 514 million will he spent (architectural tees included), and all concerned (including those who may be asked to serve on any construction committee) should he anxious lu assist hint in his effort to keep this potentially high flying high sehoul project down lo earth where it belongs. (iiveu Ibis atmosphere, il iE no wonder Sisitsky hail to net Sen. Pres Kevin Harrington's support to pet anything moving.

The joint judiciary committee has been snarled by wrangling and denunciations, amongst lluuse members themselves and hptween Hnuse and Senate members. A Tew conscientious members iiave tried In proceed through (he minefield of tension, but it lias been slow going, given lie clashing personalities. The foremost difference between Flaherty's version, due on the Hnuse floor tomorrow, and Sisitsky's lies low Ihe Chief Administrative Justice Ihe new and indispensable ramrod for any unified court structure is to he chosen. THE SENATE version gives Ihe Supreme Judicial Court die power lo choose this individual. The House is proposing that each ot the court's seven divisions nominate three of (Continued on page E2).