The Pantagraph from Bloomington, Illinois • Page 6

THE PANTAGRAPH, TUESDAY, MARCH 31, 1981 A5 Shooting of Reagan shocks hometowns -w 1 II MIIIHilHIHI III Mllllllll IJIillWumMIl I MtWpiJjM MIWLWI JWINiiJiJUgHliglLmiUJBUUPBUIMU'ai I If 7 I A li crew from Rockford at her home Monday night. She did take time to mention, however, there was an effort to preserve the first Reagan family home in Dixon as an historical attraction. Two dozen miles away in Tampico, where he lived until he was 9, a couple of very determined people are single-handedly attempting to restore Reagan's birthplace in a store building in downtown Tampico. "The town is just unbelievably shocked," said Paul Nicely, who with his wife, Helen, owns and operates the Reagan birthplace, which is open daily and draws up to 500 visitors a day. On Monday afternoon, the birthplace was Hooded with visitors who got an envelope with a presidential seal and a copy of Reagan's signature and then went to the post office to get it postmarked on the day of the would-be assassination.

The list of visitors Monday afternoon filled six pages which accounted for about a third of the crowd, because people who have been there before do not register a second time. But the crowds mean nothing in terms of funds to help restore the building, because admission is free. Nicely, a farmer and retired teacher, said he did not think Reagan would approve of charging people to see where he was born. And Nicely has not tried to apply for any federal grant to clean, restore and refurbish the building, which once housed a bakery on the first floor and Reagan's family on the second. "It's against Reagan philosophy to have government grants," he said.

The first floor contains early photographs of Reagan, newspaper articles and election materials. Nicely hopes to get the second floor restored and furnished appropriatly in the upstairs later this year. Nicely's affinity for Reagan stems back to the early 1900's. The family left in 1920. "My wife's father a banker) thought so much of the Reagan family," Nicely said.

The building has been in the family about 60 years. And Nicely said the family knew the building would be important even if Reagan had never been elected president, so they left it standing. There is little left in downtown Tampico that Reagan could now recognize, with 13 old buildings lost recently. Three were torn down for a new restaurant, four for a bank, two were condemned and five burned in a major fire, he said. By Sharon Gilfand The village of Tampic6, population about 900, is 25 miles away from Dixon, which has a population about 20 times larger.

But the towns share a special tie that has placed both in the limelight from time to time both were places where Ronald Reagan spent his boyhood. So when the news of the assassination attempt broke into the lives of those townspeople Monday afternoon, they felt one of their own had had a close brush with death. "I'm sure the general tenor of the community is one of concern and support," said Dixon Mayor George W. Lindquist. "He spent a good part of his formative life (ages 9 through 18) in this community.

It's going to be very upsetting to community sentiment," he said. Helen Lawton of Dixon was watching a soap opera when the news bulletin broke. "I was terribly shocked," said Mrs. Lawton, a former next-door neighbor of Reagan. She said the family lived in five different houses in Dixon, and she lived next door to the to the family at their third residence.

But she did not have much time to talk. After four reporters called her earlier Monday, there was a television Area officials say protection difficult Washington An unidentified Secret Service agent, automatic weapon drawn, yelled orders after shots were fired at President Ronald Reagan Mon- Restoring order Assassination try the 9th day outside a Washington hotel. Reagan and three others were injured in the attack, in which six shots were fired. (AP Laserphoto) State reacts with sorrow By The Associated Press Politicians, religious leaders and the "man in the street" in Illinois reacted with shock, then sorrow Monday after that President Reagan and his press secretary, James S. Brady both native Illinoisans had been wounded in an assassination attempt.

The Secret Service agent injured in the attack in Washington, Timothy J. McCarthy, is also an Illinoisan. McCarthy is the son of a Chicago police sergeant, Norman McCarthy, and a graduate of the University of Illinois at Champaign. Police said the elder McCarthy was on patrol when he learned of the shooting via a radio broadcast and left for Washington immediately. John Anderson, the former Rockford congressman who ran against Reagan as an independent in the 1980 presidential campaign, called the attack "cruel and violent" and expressed sorrow and grief.

"You can't help but feel that as the news is flashed around the world of another attempted assassination of an American president that we are all diminished, we are all demeaned by an act of violence of that kind," said Anderson, now a television news commentator in Chicago. U.S. Sen. Charles H. Percy, said the assassination attempt was "tragic (it) renews my feeling that something must be done about the senseless violence and the ability for someone to terrorize the president." ity people are paranoid as hell.

We'd like to set the person to hide behind a glass shield." Much of the time, public officials won't go along with that type of security. President Kennedy's tendency to break away from his security people and plunge into a crowd to shake hands, and President Carter's inaugural walk down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House when he took office are classic cases of security people's nightmares. In Monday's attempt on President Reagan's life, O'Farrell said, the assailant either was very close or a very good shut with a gun. "The maximum range with that size gun would be 100 feet, and that would be a very good shot. A person would have to be a better than average shot to put a bullet in a man's chest at 50 feet," he said.

"This is going to be a tough situation," O'Farrell said of the assassination attempt. Normal Police Chief Richard McGuire agreed. "This will shake everybody up. It shakes up the whole country." McGuire said he hasn't had much experience with providing security for public officials. That is a job for experts.

"I've noticed when we have had dignitaries here, like when Reagan was here last year for ISU's homecoming parade, before lie was elected, when the security people get the person through a public situation and back-in the car" or on the plane, they just breathe a sigh of relief. "They got him through another one." WASHINGTON (AP) The attempt on President Reagan's life Monday was the ninth assassination attempt against a president of the United States. The shooting attack came 5'2 years after the last shots were fired at a president, Gerald R. Ford, who was twice the target of attempts on his life. Four American chief executives have been murdered in office, and attempts had been made on the lives of four others, including Reagan.

One former president and one presidentelect also were the targets of assassination attempts. Ford was shot at by a would-be assassin, Sara Jane Moore, in San Francisco on Sept. 22, 1975. Seventeen days earlier, on Sept. 5.

1975, Secret Service agents wrestled a revolver away from another woman, Lynette Alice "Squeaky" Fromme, who tried to shoot Ford in Sacramento. Both women are now serving life prison terms at the Federal Correctional Institution in Alderson, W.Va. The four presidents assassinated in office were Abraham Lincoln, James A Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy. Attempts were made on the lives of Andrew Jackson and Harry S.

Truman, in addition to Ford. Kennedy was felled by a sniper's bullet in a Dallas motorcade on Nov. 22, 1963. The Warren Commission said the killer was Lee Harvey Oswald, who was murdered himself while in police custody on Nov. 24, 1963.

Lincoln was killed while watching a play at Ford's Theater in Washington on April 15. 1865. His assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was tracked down and Garfield was mortally wounded by a disgrunlfcvd job-seeker who fired at him close range in a railroad station Haig alters command, takes over WASHINGTON (AP) In the first anxious hours after President Reagan was felled by an assailant's bullet Monday, Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. told reporters he had assumed command of the government.

"As of now, I am in control, here in the White House, pending the return of the vice president and (I am) in close touch with him," Haig said. "The crisis management is in effect," Haig told reporters, alluding to last week's row between Haig and the White House over whether he or Vice President George Bush should be in charge of a team Reagan created to handle foreign or national emergencies. When Reagan gave the job to Bush, Haig was pictured by his associates as pounding the table in frustration and anger. Haig made his White House appearance while Bush was in Texas, where he had planned to make two speeches. Bush hurried back to Washington to take charge of the crisis, but the power of the presidency never left Reagan.

Lyn Nofziger, an adviser to the president, told reporters he did not want to comment on Haig's assertion that he was in charge. "I just can't picture somebody hating him enough to do that. What are they going to accomplish by doing that?" Upstairs at the law and justice center, in the circuit clerk's office, one secretary said she didn't vote for him, but "things could be a lot worse if he did die" because of the confusion of a transition in government. Work went on as usual in some county offices after word that a shooting had occurred had sunk in. But at 2:16 p.m., when word came over the radio that Reagan was among the victims, about a dozen faces dropped into solemnity and listened as the radio was turned up.

Silence, except for network reports, prevailed for a few minutes until the wheels of work started turning again. Before he knew the president was one of those shot, McLean County Circuit Clerk Paul Kelly said word of the shooting caused him "amazement" and "surprise." He said he's noticed that Reagan has often been out in public. "I have my doubts about being exposed too much," he said. "I realize you can't crawl into a shell, but there are all kinds of people roaming the streets, as was seen out here at the post office not too long ago." One postal employee was killed and another wounded in a shooting at the Bloomington Post Office, 1511 E. Empire on Jan.

7. A fellow employee is charged with the shootings. By Kathy McKinney It is difficult, if not impossible, to protect public officials from someone determined to shoot them, McLean County police officials said Monday in the wake of an attempt to assassinate President Reagan. "I just heard an analysis that's very true," said Bloomington Police Chief Donald Story. "No matter what type of protection you provide, if a person is determined enough to shoot someone, and is willing to offer his life in the bargain, you probably can't protect the person." Compounding the problem, police say, is a trait of public officials.

"It is the very nature of a public official to go to the public," said Edward O'Farrell, chief deputy of McLean County. "They want to speak in front of people, mingle with people, shake hands." That attitude of public officials, Story said, may no longer be realistic in this age of electronic journalism. "But I guess I can understand the political realities." The technique for providing security for public officials, O'Farrell said, includes providing "cordoned zones," that is. areas that hold crowds back 25 to 50 feet from the official. Outside that area, the chief deputy said, police are placed in a ring to watch the crowd, and other police are scattered through the crowd.

The same type of action is used in moving a public official from one place to another. "It's difficult at times for public officials to be cognizant of the need for security," O'Farrell said. "We secur Drive, Normal. "Shock, I suppose, but it doesn't really surprise me." "I've just been waiting for something like this," said Brian Dawson. Maroa.

"I said the day he (Reagan) was elected that with his ideas, he would be shot. "People were afraid of Kennedy and they shot him. People were afraid of Bobby (Kennedy) and they shot him. And now this." "Surprise me? No," said Kevin Adams, Kappa, while watching a row of television sets at Montgomery Ward, College Hills Mall. "The only thing that surprises me is that four people were shot." Reactions were basically the same everywhere, from shopping malls to the McLean County Law Justice Center.

At one mall, Wavia Rheim, 1108 S. Clayton Bloomington, said it was "horrible," but something Americans apparently have to put up with. "You never know when someone will go off the deep end," she said. Added Anna Mae, a cashier at Ward's: "This gave me goose bumps and cold chills, but you know they've been saying it was going to happen. I remember them talking that every so many presidents die who take office the first year of a decade." "That's lousy news, said Bloomington Mayor Richard Buchanan.

"I guess I'm one who tries to react as rationally as I can. It's not startling that, out of 230 million, there is a handful out there that is capable of Area residents not surprised in 1881. The assassin was hanged. McKinley was shot twice while shaking hands in a reception line at an international exposition in Buffalo, N.Y., on Sept. 6, 1901.

He died eight days latr and his killer was electrocuted. After the Kennedy assassination, Congress passed a law on Aug. 28, 1965, making it a federal crime to kill, kidnap or assault the president, the vice-president or the president-elect. The first attempt on an American president's life was in 1835, when a deranged painted named Richard Lawrence fired two pistols from six feet away at Jackson in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington. Jackson was not injured.

Theodore Roosevelt was shot and wounded twice in the chest as he left a Milwaukee, hotel on Oct. 14, 1912, after he left office. He survived and his assailant, a saloon-keeper named John N. Schrank, died years later in a mental hospital. In 1950, a group of Puerto Rican separatists tried to storm the Blair House, where Truman was living while the White House was redecorated.

The president was not hurt, but one guard and one gunman were killed and three guards and one gunman wounded. In 1954. members of a Puerto Rican group fired shots in the House of Representatives, wounding five members. In September 1979, then-President Jimmy Carter granted clemency to Oscar Collazo, who was involved in the attack on Truman, and to three of the Puerto Rican nationalists involved in the 1954 attack. On Feb.

15, 1933. a sniper tried to kill President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt at a political rally in Miami. His long-range shot missed and instead hit Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, fatally wounding him. "I don't know what would possess a man to try to kill another.

It's a dirty shame." Shortly after President Kennedy was shot, people in stores crowded around television sets or radios. Others on the street grabbed phones to call home to get details on the shooting. Similar sentiments and reactions were voiced after the shootings of Robert Kennedy and King. The possibility of assassination is something every president has to learn to face, as President Ford found out in 197b. Within 17 days, two attempts were made on his life.

In one case, a woman pointed a gun at the president, but it did not discharge; and in the other, a woman fired a shot from a handgun, but missed the president. Ford said he would not be held "hostage in the White House" because of assassination attempts, and continued to mingle with the people he met when in public. Other shootings recalled this. I think it's a statement of the greatness of our country that it doesn't happen more often. "It's frustrating to ask why it happens and what you do about it.

I just pray about it." "I'm just terribly shocked by another attack on a public official," said Normal Mayor Richard Godfrey. "I'm just shocked and hope that President Reagan will be all right." "I think it's terrible," said Mrs. James ISurch. 1200 Martha Normal. "I hope they can deter these people in the future from attempting this all the time.

President Reagan hasn't even had a chance to accomplish anything yet." "There he is. there's Reagan," a woman said pointing to the president as once again the slow motion replay played to people at Sears. They watched, the lines of concern showing on their faces. As they were told Reagan was unharmed, their expressions changed. Some even moved from the sets.

But the situation changed dramatically minutes later. The crowds grew around the sets at Bergner's when people learned that Reagan had indeed been shot. Employees in the McLean County state's attorney's office didn't hear word of the shooting until a repairman walked into the office. "We didn't believe it." said Phyllis Norfleet, a secretary. "I can remember having the same reaction when (John Kennedy was shot.

By Pantagraph staff writers The scenes were familiar. Familiar as in November 1963, Kennedy slain by assassin. Familiar as in April 1968, Martin Luther King is dead. Familiar as in June 1968, Robert Kennedy killed. Monday, the scenes were created again.

Shoppers surrounded television sets in Central Illinois stores watching replays of the attempted assassination. At Bergner's in Eastland Shopping Center, people stood silently, staring at the myriad of television sets lining the appliance department wall. And at K-mart, patrons listened to a radio account of the latest news yes, President Ronald Reagan had been shot. But it was unlike the Kennedys and King. Reactions seemed to be different this time.

"Americans have sobered up, I think. You just wait to hear news like this," said John Murray, Wapella, who took a break from farming chores to shop with his wife. "Back in the 1960s, something like this would shock you. It shocks you now, too but it's not as surprising. "I think we've almost come to expect things like this." Murray was not alone in his opinion.

The general attitude of shoppers Monday was shock and dismay, but not particularly surprise. "I don't really know how I feel right now," said Mike Morrone, 103 N. Orr The bullet that struck President Reagan Monday did not take his life, but nevertheless, it shocked the country. Many people's thoughts turned to the assassinations of three major public figures: President John F. Kennedy on Nov.

22, 1963; his brother, Robert, who was shot June 5, 1968, and died the next morning; and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968. Two assassination attempts also were made on President Gerald Ford's life during September 1975. Newspaper accounts of those assassinations and attempted assassinations show a country shocked and in grief.

Those same newspaper accounts also show a certain timeless element. Comments voiced by Central Illinois residents 17 years ago after President Kennedy's death could have been repeated today: "It couldn't have made me feel worse if it had happened to a member of my own family.".