Daily News from New York, New York • 139

DAILY NEWS? lOESD'iEMBE 4Vl979 "(Thumbs vrr oiiM oci 2 city aides restore landmark lunch hour we 1 A JE33 ti -t 1 It arranged with an outside broker for a $500,000 policy to cover body injury and property damage. Preserving city history "We thought it was important to help a concerned citizen who volunteered his services to preserve a part of the city's history, especially since it was also a part of the company's history," said MacKay. The General Services Department has been helpful in providing repaired parts and Commissioner Capalino, after visiting the tower last week, promised help in providing necessary scaffolding work. Said a GSA spokesman of the visit, "It's a small event, but it is significant because it represents the commission- er's over-all commitment to recycling valuable public structures." Schneider, a program research analyst in the Office of Budget and Fiscal Affairs of the Human Resources Administration, and Reiner, an administrative manager in the Division of Fair Hearings of the Department of Social Services, discovered their mutual interest in the clock one lunch hour last March. A resolve to act "The more we discussed the hard times that the building and the clock had fallen into," said Schneider, "the more annoyed we got with the state of affairs and resolved to do something about made a deal that he (Reiner) would work with me if I could get the project approved with the city.

He didn't have any' hope that the bureacracy could be overcome. So I undertook to get approval." The classical, Greek-style building is under consideration for landmark status. The city began to use it for some of its agencies in 1967. Schneider, who wears an old doctor's frock for the repairs, said, "Essentially, I'm a private person. Normally I wouldn't seek publicity.

Repairing the clock is its own satisfaction. Walking by and seeing it work would be enough. But I think New York Life deserves publicity for being there at the right time and the people at General Services deserve a lot of credit, once they realized it was a viable project." By GEORGE JAMES Two city workers, precise men, men with mechanical ability who delight in fixing things, have met each lunch hour for the last month in the clock tower of a deteriorating but once elegant city office building to try to repair an old, landmark clock. They are contributing their time and effort. The four-sided clock, at 346 Broadway, near Leonard is of another time in the city's history.

Built by the E. Howard Watch Clock Co. of New York, Boston and Chicago, it was installed in 1895 in a building that was constructed for the New York Life Insurance Co. in 1870. That the clock hasn't worked, probably for decades, went against the sense of order of city employes Marvin Schneider, 40, and Eric Reiner, 43, the son of a watchmaker.

A symbol of the city "In a way, the building is symbolic of New York," says Schneider. "It is firm and majestic, but it has been allowed through neglect-some of which is within our control-to be allowed to become decrepit." With the support of New York Life, which owned the building until 1928, and Commissioner James Capalino of the city's Department of General Services, who has made the project an agency priority, the repairmen hope to have the clock working in time to usher in the New Year. Repairing the clock -with its broken drive shafts, bent gears, overwound works, deteriorating wooden dials and one broken face-has been the easy part compared to the early problems, beginning six months ago, of convincing the city of the worthiness of the undertaking and then freeing it from a bureaucratic snag that developed over insurance for the project. When Schneider, in his research, discovered New York Life's connection with the building, he got in touch with George Trapp, an assistant vice president for public relations, who took the insurance problem to Malcolm MacKay, senior vice president. MacKay 'A Willie AndtrtonDailv Newt Marvin Schneider (in cap) and Eric Reiner adjust clock in tower atop 346 Broadway (top).

Leaped from Landed here A plaza here named for Meir The plaza at 39th St. and Broadway, site of the old Metropolitan Opera House, was named Golda Meir Memorial Square yesterday in honor of the late Israeli prime minister. At dedication ceremonies attended by Mayor Koch, former Israeli Defense Minister Shimon Peres and Richard Ravitch, president of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, the midtown plaza became the first American memorial to Meir. By ROBERT CRANE and DONALD FLYNN Two top officials of a Harlem-based antipoverty agency that helped the poor winterize their homes were indicted yesterday on charges of theft of $24,000 in city funds. John Bess 3d, 27, and Eileen Lee, 47, formerly chairman of the board of directors and executive director, respectively, of Operation Open City were slapped with a 30-count indictment accusing them of swiping the money from the city's Community Development Agency.

Bess, of 500 W. 111th and Lee, of 5240 Broadway, ran the Open City agency at 103 E. 125th providing a variety of services including job training, youth programs and "weatherization and energy conservation services" for low-income persons. As part of the "weatherization" program, the agency recommended the installation of insulation, storm windows and improved heating systems in the homes of the poor, and hired unemployed youths with federal funds to do the work Claim consultants were phony According to the indictment announced by Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau and assistant prosecutor Robert White of the Frauds Bureau, Bess and Lee paid three "consultants" to help them. One of the consultants was fictitious What made Elvita jump from tower? By MICHAEL DALY There is an endless file of people who have made a desperate bid for attention with a half-hearted attempt with a dull razor or a handful, of pills.

Then there are the ones who climb out on a ledge, threaten to leap and then wait for somebody to save them. But yesterday at Bellevue Hospital, the psychiatrists were faced with a 29-year-old Bronx mother who had apparently made a silent, determined effort to end her life. If it had not been for a 30-mph gust of wind and a two-and-a-half -foot ledge, the psychiatrists knew, this patient named Elvita Adams would be in the morgue. Says she was serious "We get the ones who cut their wrists or take barbiturates and then call an ambulance all the time," one doctor said yesterday. "But there's no doubt this young lady was serious.

She.wasn't looking for anybody to save her." Listed in stable condition, Elvita Adams lay in a lOth-floor ward yesterday and underwent a lengthy psychiatric examination designed to determine why she climbed over the four-foot guard rail on the 86th-floor observation platform at the Empire State Building. The family told the doctors that Adams had been "depressed for a few days." It was her birthday Sunday, the family said, and at 6:10 p.m. Adams had said she was "going for a walk" What, the doctors now wanted to know, were Adams' thoughts as the "walk" took her to the top of the Empire State Building? What were her feelings as she leaned into the cold wind and. took that final desperate step? Were there panicked and the other two had never been contacted by the agency, according to the indictment. "They pocketed the money," said Morgenthau.

The alleged scheme operated from April 1977 through October 1978, the indictment charged, and it said an attempt was made to cover up the theft by submitting phony contracts and vouchers to document the nonexistent payments. In October 1978, a public hearing was held by former Community Development Commissioner' Haskell Ward into "a number of possible fiscal irregularities," bringing from Bess a blast that the probe was "politically motivated." Shortly after, Bess and Lee resigned and the inspector general of the city's Human Resources Administration turned the matter over to the district attorney. Among charges included in the indictment are grand larceny and forgery, both felonies punishable by up to seven years in prison. Both defendants were arrested yesterday and arraigned on the charges. Operation Open City received $1.34 million in Community Development Agency funds in fiscal 1978.

Woman Jumped from 86th-floor observation tower and landed on ledge one floor below. regrets in that split second between the leap and when the wind slapped her onto the ledge on the 85th floor? Why, lying on the ledge, did she scream for help? Did the pain of the shattered pelvis wake her from the numbing passions of suicide? When she was dragged back into the building, when she knew she would survive, did the magnitude of her good fortune dwarf her desperation? Did she know, as the ambulance took her to the emergency room at Bellevue, how close she had come to being splattered on the sidewalk. Police said they were not sure at first whether Adams had jumped or fallen. New Jersey Lottery Pick It: 681 Straight Payoff: $301 Connecticut Lottery Daily: 521.