Daily hansan
nd na.
Lawrence, Kansas
61st Year, No. 57
Monday, Dec. 9, 1963
Storm Hits Boeing 707 Killing All 81 Aboard
ELKTON, Md. — (UPI) — A Pan American World Airways Jetliner enroute from Puerto Rico to Philadelphia crashed in flames last night, apparently during a thunderstorm, bringing fiery death to 81 persons.
About two dozen policemen and a like number of sailors moved out with the first light of dawn today to pick up the remains of the 73 passengers and 8 crewmen from the frost-covered cornfield where the Boeing 707 crashed at 8:28 p.m. EST.
It was at this precise moment last night that the plane's pilot radioed the Philadelphia control tower; "We're going down in flames."
NUMEROUS eyewitnesses insisted they saw lightning strike the plane or flash near it. But, investigators said, if it were lightning that destroyed the plane, it was a 1-in-10 million shot.
JFK Books To Be Sold
The giant plane began its flight in
A limited order—1,000 copies—of "Four Days--The Historical Record of President Kennedy's Death" will arrive on the University campus early in January, and members of Sigma Delta Chi, professional journalistic society, will take orders in the two weeks before Christmas vacation.
The book, published by United Press International and the American Heritage Company, will be in the Heritage format with a four-color hard cover and will cost $2. This will be a first edition and copies will not be available in book-stores until February.
BRUCE CATTON, editor of the American Heritage and Civil War historian, has written the preface for the book.
The cover will carry a four-color picture of John F. Kennedy taken shortly before he was killed. The book will consist of 128 pages.
The Daily Kansan will announce the date of the arrival of the books in January. Orders may be placed in 112 Flint, or through the coupon to be carried in the Kansan.
An Juan, P.R. with 144 persons aboard, according to the airline. It discharged 71 persons in Baltimore and left for Philadelphia with 73 passengers and the crew of 8 aboard
It was early today before Pan American was able to set the death toll precisely at 81, finally confirming that the 48-day-old infant daughter of Mrs. Carmen Davila of Philadelphia, one of the victims, perished with the mother.
THE PASSENGER list had contained the name of Gilberto Padro, but it later developed that he had gotten off the plane in Baltimore.
The search party of cab investigators, state troopers and sailors moved over the wreckage-strewn area, placing yellow stakes beside each body or piece of a body they found. Piles of plastic bags on the hard-surface road that runs through the scene waited to receive the bodies when the count was finished
The FBI in Washington announced that it was dispatching its disaster squad of fingerprint experts to help in identification of the bodies.
PIECES OF wreckage littered the area along with children's books and the clothing that seemed to be everywhere.
A piece of a body could be seen on the roof of one house. A shoe lay beside the road. A sweater hung from a tree; a pair of trousers from another.
A nose wheel lay on the road along with a door and what appeared to be the pilot's or co-pilot's seat.
Authorities set up emergency headquarters in the garage of one home and strung telephone lines to it. Only investigators, policemen, sailors from Baltimore Naval Station and newsmen were allowed in the vicinity and everyone except those searching for bodies and parts of the plane was confined to the road itself.
BLACK HEARSES waited on the road to take the bodies to a temporary morgue set up in the Elkton National Guard Armory.
As whole bodies were found, they were lined up neatly on the road in the bags. As of mid-morning there were only eight that fit this classification.
While the big four-engine jet was en route northward, the FAA Air
Traffic Control Center ordered it into a circling holding pattern over New Castle, Del., to await the final approach clearance it never received.
THE JET FELL in a cornfield near the Maryland-Delaware state line, missing a suburban home by 100 feet. Part of the wreckage dug a shell-like crater 15 feet wide and six feet deep in a two-lane Macadam Road next to the cornfield. The U.S. weather bureau said a thunder-storm accompanied by lightning, thunder and heavy rain swept the Wilmington, Del., area shortly after the crash.
The Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) took over the investigation, aided by representatives of the Airline, Boeing Co., the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) and the Air Line Pilots Association. FBI agents also were present to aid in victim identification as well as investigating any possibility of sabotage.
BUT WEATHER, not sabotage, appeared to offer the most obvious clues to the crash which ruined what was shaping up as the second safest year in the history of the nation's scheduled airlines.
Until last night's disaster, the passenger fatality rate since the beginning of the year stood at 0.09 per 100 million miles of flight—a safety record exceeded only by the 0.07 rate achieved in 1954.
Clay Holland a gas station owner on heavily traveled U.S. Route 40 near the crash site, said he saw lightning hit the plane followed immediately by two explosions.
Robert T. Gregg, whose home was almost hit by the plunging jet, said his brother saw a flash of lightning which he believed struck the plane. Other eyewitnesses who were not so positive of an actual lightning strike reported seeing flashes about the time of the crash and there was no doubt the jet was in or near an electrical storm. Two said the plane was "a ball of fire" before it hit the ground and one woman told reporters "it looked like the sky was falling apart."
The CAB's accident files contain no previous case in which lightning itself has destroyed a modern metal airliner. Planes are protected from bolts by tiny impregnated strips on the wings and tail which act as tiny lightning rods.
Thieves and Vandals Destroy Christmas Decorations. Trees
By Charles Corcoran
The holiday season is approaching rapidly. But the spirit of giving, it seems, always misses a few individuals according to the records of past years.
"We hadn't even finished stringing the lights last Friday," Buchholz said, "when my men reported that seventy had been taken."
Annually, KU buildings and grounds department personnel decorate the campus with strings of colored, electric lights.
AND, EACH YEAR about half of those 3,500 light bulbs are stolen. Harry Buchholz, superintendent of the KU physical plant, said.
THE LIGHTS, however, may not be much to see by the weekend. Buchholz said that replacing last year's stolen bulbs left few replacements for any that are stolen this year.
The stolen bulbs were replaced and, Buchholz said, "if all goes well, they'll all be turned on tonight."
Buchholz said that over half of the bulbs and decorations on the tree in
"We had complaints about the shabby appearance of the tree. People said we did a bad job of decorating, because we didn't replace the things that were stolen. If people desecrate the decorations, if that's the way they want it," Buchholz said, "that's the way it will be."
ACTING CHIEF of the KU police, Capt. Willard Anderson, said he knew of no arrests in past years for the thefts.
the rotunda of Strong Hall were stolen last year.
MRS. CHARLES B. HOLMES, widow of the late vice-president of the KU Alumni Association, said the trees, which stand on her property about 50 yards from her home, were stripped between midnight and dawn last Friday morning.
Capt. Anderson said, however, that his men are familiar with the areas where the thefts occur, and they will be alert for any unusual activities in these areas.
Thefts took on the air of vandalism in the Lawrence area last week when three Austrian pine trees were stripped of their branches.
JUDGE WILLIAM B. PENDLETON of the Lawrence Police Court said he thought a case involving destroyed property of such value would be tried in the County Court.
Mrs. Holmes said the trees were
Judge Pendleton said that it would probably be tried as a felony. "With restitution," he said, "there would most likely be a jail term."
Detectives of the Lawrence Police Department are investigating.
chosen by her late husband, and planted six years ago. In trying to locate replacements for the dead trees, she said as far as she knows pines of the same size and type are available only in Kansas City at $175 apiece.
"I can't understand why anyone would want to do such a thing," she said.
Weather
It will be partly cloudy tonight and tomorrow. The low tonight is expected to be near 25. The high tomorrow will be in the middle 40s.
KU Junior Elected By Big 8 Delegates
By Fred Frailey
Ray Edwards, Bethesda, Md., junior, was elected president of the Big Eight Student Government Association Saturday at the close of the group's annual two-day convention at Stillwater. Okla.
Edwards, a newly elected member of the KU All Student Council, defeated his opponent, Doug Whitney of Iowa State University, 21-11.
In selecting Edwards as its president, the association automatically chose KU as the site for the 1964 convention.
"We need more ideas going around among the schools during the year so that we can have continuing discussion and thought," Edwards said.
EDWARDS pledged to delegates that he will try to improve communications among Big Eight schools. He called contact among the universities vital if the BESGA is to function on a year-round basis.
Besides discussions on such topics as the role of campus political parties, parking and traffic, apportionment on student councils and student publication practices, the convention also passed legislation on a number of topics. They included:
- Establishment of a Big Eight travel service to provide low cost jet transportation to Europe in summers.
- NAMING of a Big Eight cultural exchange director to coordinate the BESGA Quiz Bowl, the scheduling of performers and guest speakers on Big Eight campuses and to promote the forming of BESGA seminars to emphasize the goals of higher education.
- An investigation of new student orientation programs on Big Eight campuses, a summary of which is to be sent to the member schools.
- Encouragement to student councils of Big Eight schools to take stands on national issues—especially those pending before Congress.
The resolution concerning student council stands on national issues was the outgrowth of an unsuccessful attempt by University of Missouri delegates to pass a resolution putting the delegates on record as approving the civil rights bill now in Congress. The delegates defeated the resolution, 24-7, with one abstention.
DELEGATES from at least two schools—KU and the University of Colorado—refused to support the move because they said they could not speak for students of their schools on such a controversial issue.
Charles Elder, MU student body president, said the delegates would be speaking only for themselves in passing the resolution, and not on behalf of their schools.
"It reads, 'We, the delegates to the BESGA,' not just 'The BESGA,'" Elder said.
Reuben McCormack, Abilene senior and KU student body president, said his delegation would vote against the resolution because "it is unfair to bind some student governments to policy stands such as this if they are opposed."
A KU delegate, John Stuckey, Pittsburg senior, proposed that Big Eight student councils take individual stands on such issues and submit them to the BESGA president, who would send a composite of the decisions to congressmen from the six states. Stuckey's motion passed unanimously.
The travel program initiated at the convention will serve as a complement to KU's own program, McCormack said afterward.
"This will mainly benefit the schools which don't have a program for flying students to Europe," McCornack said. "However, should we have an overflow of reservations for our own flight, this program will enable us to insure all of those who are interested a seat."
McCornack added that negotiations with a major airline are underway at KU.
Delegates to the conference were McCornack; Stuckey; Edwards; John Underwood, Parsons senior and student body vicepresident; Sandee Garvey, St. Louis senior and All Student Council secretary, and Fred Frailey, Sulphur Springs, Tex., sophomore
The six alternates were Bob Stewart, Bartlesville, Okla., junior; Dick King, Kansas City sophomore; Charles Portwood, Shawnee Mission senior and ASC treasurer; Carolyn Power, Kansas City, Mo., junior; Jackie Caesar, St. Louis sophomore, and Bill Brier, Overland Park junior.
Plans are nearing completion for another conference, the Kansas Conference on Higher Education, to be held here Friday. Speakers at the meeting of state-operated colleges and universities in Kansas will include Gov. John Anderson and Henry Bubb of Topeka, chairman of the State Board of Regents.
Sen. Morse Cancels
Senator Wayne Morse, D-Ore., has cancelled his appearance this week at KU because of pressing business in Washington.
Sen. Morse, who was to speak on "Foreign Policy Under the New President" Wednesday in Hoch Auditorium, said he deeply regretted the cancellation, but he must be present in the Senate for roll call voting on important legislation.
"I shall be a major participant in debate on many of the bills now before the Senate," the senator said.
Sen. Morse said he has cancelled all of his outside speaking engagements for the near future. He said he would like to come to KU, but it would not be possible until early next year.