Newsday from New York, New York • 19

Stiff Regulations On Building OKd Route Extended For Queens Bus The Associated Press The Transit Authority extended its Q-28 Inis route by two blocks yesterday to provide direct service to the Bay Terrace Shopping Center in the Flushing section of Queens. The bus line, linking the Main Street subway terminal to the Bay Terrace community during off-peak hours from 10 AM to 4 PM daily, will continue along 23rd Avenue to 213th Place instead of terminating at 211th Street. By Bruce Lambert Jr. Citing construction accidents in which pedestrians have been killed or maimed by falling building materials, a City Council committee approved tougher as ftty regulations yesterday. "It can be dangerous to walk past construction sites, and this goes a long way to giving people confidence they will not be mt with a falling piece of masonry or equipment, said Housing and Building Committee Chairman Thomas J.

Man, ton (D-Quuens.) "Its a marked improvement over what we have now. The proposed changes were prompted by an inquiry that was begun when a crane atop a 44-floor project at 520 Madison Ave. collapsed July 21, 1982. The eouipment knocked off pieces of granite, which fell unhindered into the street because protective scaffolds bad beat removed from the nearly finished building. One man was and 16 other pedestrians were hurt The planned regulations, which named committee unanimously and have the support of Mayor Edward Koch, are expected to be enacted into law by the Council.

'Die proposal carries penalties consisting of stop-work orders snd $500-a-day civil fines for each violation. The provisions would: city before work The precautions include an evacuation pin, communications set up between supervisors and workers moving materisls over the street or sidewslk, end establishing telephone contact with city officials. "Removal of sidewalk sheds too early in the construction process jeopardises the public safety," said Buildings De-partment Commissioner Robert Esnard, who was among those testifying in favor of the regulations. There was some critidmi, such as an ironworkers union objection to a proposal limiting the crane supervision to master riggers. That provision was amended to permit supervision by other qualified persons.

Manton noted a personal interest in the legislation as be recalled a friend who was partially paralyzed 10 years ago when a cinder block foil 40 stories and crashed through a scaffold. "This legislation might have helped him, Manton said. Require stronger protective scaffolding over sidewalks. The load strength for scaffolding would be doubled to hold SOOpounds per square foot. In addition, scaffolds would be extended to 20 feet beyond the construction zone, and would be kept in place until the con struction ends.

upinot Christmas Cheer Arrives Early Unvoting a poster-size version of a commemorative stamp ha designed for the hofldey season is 8-year-okJ Danny LaBocoatta of the Richmond HiB section of Queans and Postmaster General Wiliam F. Botger. The cheerful deelgn drawn by the third-grader from Our Lady of Perpetual Help School in Jamaica Santa Claus toting a bulging sack of toys was selected from more than 500,000 entries in a project sponsored by the U.S. Postal Service and other agendas. LaBocoatta, In Washington, D.C., for the presentation ceremony, is the first student to have designed a traditional holday postal stamp.

limit the persons allowed to erect or dismantle cranes to those licensed by the city. Require that each construction project have a safety officer on site and a safety plan approved by the To the End, Wechsler Had Passion One of the leaser shocks of the death of James A. Wechsler, the New York Post columnist, was the obitfiaiy note that he was 67 veers old. He had a long distance run out life and he readied the last ly write the editorials but ran the news desk. What must have pleased him most in those days was to be functioning almost as an anonymous artisan in a commune; it may be foolish to confuse the putting together of a newspaper with the building of a cathedral; but it waa Jimmys and it is a divine fooliah- only He learned that he waa terribly ill only in late July, and be was dead in barely six weeks.

Jimmy Wechsler was the unyielding antagonist of every i that killed him. There have been heroic passages in individual sort of malignancy except the one i passages theirs is an inward-look- struggles with ing heroism. mg He was relieved of these chores and a chief editorial writer and a columnist. That was a great sorrow, extinguished only by die infinitely greater sorrow of his sons death. I do not think writing a column quite suited him; he was wanting in the requisite powers of self-obsession; but all the same he employed himself more nobly than any of the rest of us, and was until the end the refiige of all those to whose troubles no one else bothered to attend.

I see him now in the memory as George Orwell saw Charles Dickens in the imagination: "I see the feceof a man who is always fighting against some evil but who fights in the open and is not frightened the face of a man generously a free intelligence, a type hated with hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxies are now anmianding for our souls. His glory was that he never grew up and out of the high visions of his youth. When Modigliani died, there was found in his hand a slip of paper that read: "life is the gift of the few to the many, of the few who have and know to the many who do not have and do not know. Such was Jimmy Wechslers gift to us all. It was, I suspect, a lifetime pang that he had never belonged to a radical party he could remember with pride and gratitude even after he had outgrown it He became quite swiftly a Roosevelt Democrat and stayed that way for the rest of his life.

Except for his friend Joseph P. Rauh, I know no one else who never lost the fire and purity of purpose that the young New Dealers brought to their initiation. I suppose that I quarreled with him more frequently than with anyone I held so dose to my heart; and our differences usually had to do with the parade of liberal politicians he looked at with undiminished hope while I waited for the inevitable onset of despair. But then Wechsler wss what Whittaker Chambers meant to describe when he called himmlf an "org" man. Jimmy had to have an organisation to belong to and believe in.

That is why I am sure that his editor! is happiest years were the 10 or 12 he spent as liter of the New York Post, where he did not mere- The soldier draws in his pickets, turns his face from the world, and fights his war against his own body. Wars fought for the self alone wen the only form of combat for which Wechaler's temperament was not fit. He had too long forgotten the self in his battle for others. I cannot have known him less than 45 years. He was a famous student radical well before we met The New York Times obituary mentioned "a flirtation with the Communist movement; but it is impossible to think of Wechsler flirting with anything; his was one of those rare natures that brings the whole heart to every encounter.

I do not doubt that he was a devoted Communist during the short span of his commitment. But he was also a poor one because he could not fit his boundless affection for all the human species into the bleak and narrow compass of the partyh certainties. 7l.