Newsday (Nassau Edition) from Hempstead, New York • 47

Jack Altshul 'Inform the Dook Dat Platnick Is Here' The passing of the Duke of Windsor reminds me of. a story. Call it "The Commoner and the King" and make the hero a newspaper photographer whose version of the language was at variance with the king's English. The photographer's was classically fractured with a Yiddish idiom. Sam Platnick was a Russian immigrant who came to this country just in time to be drafted for World War I.

They sent him out to old Camp Mills and he Immediately came to the attention of a general. The commander couldn't figure out how his toughest topkick could ever make Sam understand an order like "over the top, men." So Sam got the assignment to take identification pictures of the doughboys beaded for France. That gave him a trade, and after the war he settled in Hempstead and opened a photo studio. He also hustled his tail to the accidents and fires and police busts and peddled the pictures to the wire services and the New York tabloids. Sam took pictures of the most celebrated people of the day and his reputation grew.

It wasn't so much that he always managed to be where the news was breaking but that his subjects never forgot the non-sequiturs he dropped on every assignment. They tell the story about the late Cardinal Hayes returning from Rome after his elevation to that rank. The shipboard photographers crowded around the prelate, but Sam never lifted his camera. He waited until the competition dispersed, walked over to the cardinal and said, "Now they're all gone, your worship, let's go to your cabin and make a picture of the wife and the kiddies." One day in 1947, I got a tip at our news desk that the Duke and Duchess had arrived on the North Shore for their first visit to the states since before World War II. I dispatched reporter Virginia Sheward and photographer Edna Murray to track them down.

The girls were smart They headed immediately for Freddie Caminari's joint in Locust Valley. That was the hangout for the society crowd and If anybody knew the Duke's location, Freddie was the man. He told the girls the Duke and Duchess had The girls not only lost Drennan, Platnick's chief competitor in the Long Island free-lance photography business, they lost Sam, too. They came to the Robertson estate and were stopped by a security guard. Could they interview the Duke and Duchess and take pictures? The guard checked by phone.

"The Duke will grant an interview," he said, "but only when all the representatives of the press arrive." That was when Sam bustled up, out of breath, looking to the right and left, visibly relieved that no Drennan was in sight. "My good man," he said to the guard, "You'll inform, please, the dook dot' Platnick is here. He knows me already from the Palace where I took his picture before even he was a king." The answer came back: "Show Mr. Platnick in. And whoever else is there." They walked in, the three of them, shortly followed by reporters from AP, UP and INS.

The Duke and Duchess emerged from the door of the French chateau and stood in the brick-paved courtyard, waiting to be interviewed. The press conference had to wait a minute, however. Platnick walked over to the king who had abdicated his throne for his sweetheart. "Dook," he said, "you'll remember me from when I was in London before the war. I would like to please present Miss Murray and Miss Sheward from Newsday end all the bendits from New York." The little duke accepted the introductions as if they had been prepared at 10 Downing Street, with no deviation from protocol.

He shook hands all around and then submitted to the poses ordered by Platnick. As they departed, Sam said, "I'll send a couple prints. No charge, of course." The duke nodded his acceptance, a former king who had found something in common with a commoner. Sam died a few years ago and his son, Ray, now runs the family business. He has a story, too.

Sam had gone to Miami on vacation and his bridgework had fallen from a wash basin and broken. He was sad when Ray greeted him on his return. Ray told him not to worry; it wouldn't take long for a new set of dentures. "But until then," Sam groaned, "I'll hev to talk so funny." Martin Buskin A Way Out of the Fiscal Darkness The chestnut about the crisis in private higher education is such that no one who is not paying tuition or trying to run a college on tuition funds really thinks about it any more. It is much easier to Ignore this nagging mess than to worry about it.

And there are cynics who say that nothing will ever be done about this problem until some private colleges actually shut down. So now it appears that this is about to happen. Legislation has been approved to permit New York Uiversity to sell its Bronx campus to City University. And a task force at NYU has recommended closing down the university's graduate school of social work, cutting the faculty by about 200 and selling university-owned Town Hall. In Washington, Congress still agonizes over the most ambitious aid to higher education bill ever devised: Anti-busing amendments are tied to it.

In Albany, the Legislature has passed the same amount of aid to private universities as was authorized last year. The money has been repeatedly criticized as completely inadequate for the needs of the schools eligible for such assistance. Last month four private colleges on Long -C. W. Post, Southampton, Molloy and Brooklyn Poly--announced tuition increases.

How long the other institutions will be able to avoid raising their charges is an unsettling question. A few weeks ago the presidents of the major Long Island colleges met and acknowledged that students would continue to face regular tuition increases unless new sources of money were found. They also described preliminary efforts at regional cooperation that all Sam the Commoner in 1954 just checked in as guests of the T. Markoe Robertsons in Lattingtown. The Newsday team hurried to the assignment and ran into Sam Platnick.

He was looking for the Duke, too. Apprised of his whereabouts, Sam said, "You know how to get there? I'll follow you in my car. But make a hurry. John Drennan, who sleeps with his pants on he shouldn't miss a fire, must be looking, too. We'll lose him." consider necessary if the competing institutions are all to survive.

They acknowledged that any dramatic efforts at cooperation were probably several years away. In the meantime, college presidents are hungrily awaiting the massive federal aid bill, which could provide colleges with more than $600,000,000 in annual aid for the next three years. In addition, students could obtain, depending on need, up to 60 per cent of the amount needed to attend college. Somehow, in the near future, the conflict over the antibusing amendments will be resolved, and the money will begin flowing. It will ease the pressure, but it will not end the crisis.

The federal aid may not come in time to prevent the dismemberment of New York University. And it may not be enough to stop tuition increases at Long Island colleges in the next few years. And it certainly will not be enough to stop the unprecedented pressure for admission to overcrowded, factory-like State University units throughout the state. Much more than the dole of federal aid is needed -although at this stage of the chaos such a program is essential. There is already the beginnings of a blueprint for the needed change in the talk of regional cooperation going on among private institutions and among public and private colleges.

A master plan for growth in higher education has to become a living force rather than just another piece of paper occasionally referred to by the State Board of Regents. The reality of true regional cooperation would turn all of Long Island into one college campus with credits and courses recognized by all colleges. Adelphi, Post and Hofstra could eliminate expensive, competing graduate programs; the engineering programs at Stony Brook and Brooklyn Poly could be coordinated to make the best use of expensive facilities; the crush for admission to Nassau Community College might be siphoned off to nearby Hofstra; technical programs at New York Institute of Technology and the State University at Farmingdale could be coordinated to avoid duplication. There would be massive commuting of students and faculty from campus to campus, and a system formulated to have tuition costs charged back to a student's home campus. None of it would be easy.

There would be as there is now--petty bickering and jealousy. There would be trampling of institutional pride and traditions. There would be an enormous overhaul of archaic administrative machinery. But what could result would be a dynamic new system that would offer a wealth of opportunity to students- -at reduced costwithout sacrificing the diversity of various institutions. Hopefully, what would be eliminated in the new BYEtem would be costly duplication of services that exist because of the present academic jungle.

Higher education on Long Island- -and throughout most of New York State -is at present an archaic, wasteful and inefficient contraption that can no longer justify its existence. One wonders which Long Island college will have to collapse before a sense of urgent change emerges. A master plan for growth in higher education has to become a living force rather than just another piece of paper occasionally referred to by the State Board of Regents. Wednesday, May 31, 1972 47.