Daily News from New York, New York • 30

58 SUNDAY-NEWS, JULY -15, 1973 jl3TJ POIHT OF VIED By OWEN MORITZ A sflroflfl ditd frhe AvaDkomi ihlhe wild sidle MORNINGSIDE PARK may be the only urban park in America that remains in seclusion. What do you do with a park so primeval that an outraged priest declared it off-limits in 1910, so defiant that even Fiorello LaGuardia couldn't lick it, so dangerous that people in Morningside Heights call it Mugging-side Park. Only the foolhardy would dare iread its treacherous length. And a hardy fool did. Morningside Park is a block wide and 13 blocks long, extending from W.

110th St. north. It is a sharply sloping park that separates central Harlem from Morningside Heights. Down at its lower length is a well-trafficked recreational area. The trouble comes at the western, or Morningside Heights, end where a ridge looks down on Harlem.

The walks are broad and smooth, still bearing the earmarks of its Gaslight Era design. But the walkways are surrounded by thick foliage, craggy cliffs and clumps of trees that camouflage it from Morningside Drive, which sits abova. To get into the park and to eross it, you must climb down broad steps. Easy in, it's not always easy to leave the place, intact. A gray-suited member of the Morningside Community Patrol, a private neighborhood patrol, looked slightly incredulous when asked if many souls march through the park.

"It's dead down there," he counseled. "Dead." Undaunted, 1 marched to the 110th St. end and into the park's shaggy depths, mindful of its sordid past. From the altar of the Church of St. Thomas the Apostle daring the messes yesterday, the women und children were warned by the Rev.

John B. McGrath, pastor, and his assistants against frequenting Morningside Park. "It is really unsafe for women and children, to venture alone in this public park because of the persons who infest, and to refrain from visiting it until Heh time o. conditions improve and the evil which exists has been eradiated." Xew York World, July IS, 1910 Our expedition to see who and what inhabits the most primitive park in Xew York found the first 100 feet or so of walkway to bear the city's conventional physical uniform: Strewn glass, litter and graffiti. But quickly the walkway dips under huge, leafy trees, a perfect cover for muggers.

Then, abruptly, at a point corres- lieve that day and night, this locality has become one of the most dangerous in New York City. Neighborhood petition to Mayor LaGuardia, 1937. Down, down the wide steps of the 112th St. entrance into the park, we climb. Only the roof line of St John the Divine is visible from this pointy 100 feet below street level.

Finally, footsteps; and ahead is the first soul we've seen after walking the equivalent of three blocks. He is tall, wearing paint-splattered pants, and is amazed that anyone else would travel the path. But he is nonchalant and can afford to be; he is escorted by a Doberman pinscher. Onward we move and, by 116th the sensation Is eerie. Up on Morningside Drive, it was hot and sweltering; now, in the bowels of the park, it Is cool, refreshingly so, and deceptively peaceful.

The book "Deliverance" used the wrong locale, we thought; why not a safari through a park Landlubbers would love it. Still, that one paint-splattered man Is the only soul to be seen. A good omen, perhaps, because meeting unfriendly people and yelling, at them would only cause an echo. Besides the greenery, there's just busted old lamps and a police call box out of service, its wires dangling. You look up and all you see is a precipitious cliff.

.4 footpad murder in Morningside Park gave fresh impetus to charges that police are unable to cope with an alarming outburst of robbery, rape and assault throughout the city's park system. The body of a 82-year-pld laundry worker was found at 7 a.m. on a park path near 12Srd with most of his clothes stripped from him and his empty wallet lying nearby. Daily News, Nov. 7, 1941.

Now, at 118th a couple bolts in viewr; -he is lanky, she rather frumpy. There is a fork in the walkway, one continuing on a higher plane, the other falling away and leading toward a glade. The couple takes the low road; I follow, as far as about 119th St. Suddenly, the couple duck into a clump of bushes to do their own thing. I elect for safety, heading up a long staircase that leads into the 120th St.

exit on Morningside Drive. What should be done with Morningside Park? The first thought is to keep it a preserve, a kind of urban Badlands, for use by the National Guard on maneuvers. But long-range, the Architects Renewal Committee for Harlem may have the best idea: They are sifting ideas from various architects on ways to dress up the park and make it more habitable. It couldn't be' soon enough. The body of an unidentified man was discovered hanging from a tree today in a heavily-- wooded area of Morningside Park, police reported.

A pa.sse.r-by found the body near W. 118th St. and Morningside Drive, about 2:15 p.m. Associated Press, Tuesday, July 10, 197S NEWS photo by Jack Smith Morningside Park Beyond the broken gates, the forbidding foliage. ponding- with 112th the footpath ends at a massive hunk of rock; there is no passage beyond.

So, we backstepped to start anew elsewhere. Crimes of violence are of almost daily occurrence, and include purse snatching, robbery, burglary, stabbing and even murder; and be-cause of the ready access to Morningside Park, the criminals almost invariably escape. We be Speaking of health, the talk is mostly about money Ey EDWARD EDELSON ANYONE WHO WONDERED what the Nixon administration had planned in the way of new health policies now has an answer not much. That comes out of a two-day brief-Iflg that featured almost every leading sd ministration executive in the field of health. Casper W.

Weinberger, secretary of Health, Education and Welfare was there. Sc were Dr. Charles C. Edwards, th assistant secretary for health; Dr. Kobert S.

Stone, new head of the National Institutes of Health, and even Melvin K. Laird, the President's counselor on dcmestie affairs. The dominant implessijn given by xcost cf the speakers was that, as far as health advances are concerned, the administration's main interest is in keep-leg the federal budget as low as possible. Throughout the briefing, there was precious little talk of major new initiatives and a great deal of talk about costs, cf both medical care and of research. Even when something relatively new was announced, the emphasis always seemed to be more en money than cn medicine.

The most noticeable example was "Weinberger's statement that an administration plan for rational health insurance ivoDld be sent Congress late thai, jbe jlaa action over the next few years. As explained by other speakers at the briefing, the new. blood program would involve mostly heavy federal pressure on -private blood banks to work together and avoid waste of blood. A recent government study estimated that about 25 of the 8.8 million units of blood donated in this country annually are wasted, primarily because blood banks work at cross-purposes instead of cooperating they'd rather throw blood away, in many cases, than ask if a competing private agency could use it. The method chosen to end this situation was a conference to be held later this summer at which the private blood-collecting agencies will be pressured to work together, under threats of new.

federal legislation if they don't. Some federal money will be spent, mostly to improve inspection of blood banks, but the main effort will go into earnest talk, which has a relatively low eost. And so it went. What barely seeped into the briefing room in the 03d Executive Office Building was the feeling of gloom that has spread through the biomedical community under the pressure of federal budget cuts and the new federal view cf the. J-a si, few years, the amount Is far from complete, and that several options are still being studied.

But aside from saying that the program would "assure that all Americans have access to basic comprehensive health insurance" through a partnership between private insurance companies and the federal government, Weinberger made it clear that any administration program would lean heavily on cost-cutting features. That applies to both patients and doctors, he said. For example For patients, Weinberger said, will be judicious use of co-insurance and deductibles" methods of making the patient pay part of the bill to keep down use of medical facilities. For doctors, payment methods will be structured to "create new incentives for both more efficiency and better quality," Weinberger said. Elaborating, Weinberger said the administration is considering such devices as a flat limit some payments or a ban against payment for some services, as a way cf iolding down eosts.

There was a variation on the general theme when Weinberger announced a new federal bleed policy designed to dc away, blod' donors' by oaqeiXed. of federal spending on biomedical research has remained flat, while inflation nibbles away relentlessly. In addition, more and more government money is going into contract work, where a scientist or corporation works toward a fixed goal, instead of the kind of free-wheeling research that scientists say is more effective in the long run. No direct answers Reporters brought the subject up ence or twice, but the officials who were asked about it always seemed to sidestep a direct answer. The gloomy atmosphere in many of the nation's laboratories did not seem to have reached the people who govern the federal research budget.

Very little else said at the briefing was new. The national plan for fighting cancer, long in the works, will soon be made public, but that was expected. So 13 medical programs, extended for a year by Congress over administration opposition, are still opposed by the administration, of course. There was lip service to basic research, but no sign of a major increase in spending. In short, it was a health conference that seemed more concerned with money than with anything else, and whose tbrnne could be' summed -up as: More of the same but lessb'.