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University Daily Kansan Thursday. Dec. 15. 1960
Stop and Think
As you tear down the highway in your hotrod joyously bound for home and Christmas, take a minute to think about friends or acquaintances who met death on the road.
We hear so many traffic death statistics and police pleas for safe driving that we are sometimes deaf to them. The impersonal lists of black figures do not seem to affect our lives, as we go on living and driving. They do not have meaning to us until friends or relatives swell the totals.
How many of your friends have been added to the list? We remember three who met violent death in crumpled steel and shattered glass.
Charlene and her fiance were killed together in a head-on crash as they drove home from a party. Charlene was a vivacious girl with curly auburn hair and brown eyes. She loved to sing "Ave Maria" in her clear soprano voice. She liked suede jackets and colors of rust and gold and cinnamon toast. She had a little brother two months old and eagerly anticipated the day she would see him play on the football team. She loved horses.
Keith loved horses, too. He grew up with them on a ranch in the Flint Hills and he began to rodeo when he was still in high school. He loved western dances and steel guitar music. He was a good calf roper and easily rode broncs and Brahman bulls. He went to college and was going to be a lawyer some day. He never made it.
He died with his mother, father and brother when their car crashed into a train.
Roy was a lover of sports cars. His whole life was centered about sports cars . . . driving sports cars, trading them, rebuilding their motors and painting them, planning hill climbs, sports car clubs. He died when his sports car crashed into the back of a truck.
Roy was quiet and studious. He was so tall that his head always bumped the light hanging from our living room ceiling. One day he hiked the light chain up two feet and tied it in a knot near the ceiling. The knot is still there. No one else could reach it.
And after you think about your friends who met death on the highway, remember how your own heart pounded the day your car slid back and forth on an icy road, the time you misjudged the passing distance and narrowly missed a head-on collision, the time a car nearly hit you broadside when it ran a stop sign.
We hope this tones down your high spirits as you step on the accelerator.
We hope it makes you decide to wait until you get home to open that six-pack, turn the music up loud and cut up in glee.
We hope it makes you feel responsible for the five students who chipped in on gasoline expenses for a ride home.
We hope you don't become a statistic.
—Carol Heller
Our Christmas Thanks
It was almost 2,000 years ago that Jesus Christ, the son of God was born. In less than two weeks we will be celebrating his birth, Christmas Day. Few people probably realize, that while they are drinking their eggnog and opening presents, they will be celebrating the most important occurrence in the history of mankind.
Christianity has dominated nations, overthrown empires and today is, according to many students of religion and history, one of the fundamental cornerstones of Western civilization. But to speak of Christmas in terms of its effect upon man and history sounds odd and unfamiliar. Much more appropriate would be a discussion of what Christmas means to countless millions of people this Dec. 25.
Many nations are just now awakening to the
great possibilities that this technological age holds in prospect. To them Christmas must certainly signify the everlasting hopes of people of all ages for peace and good will. Many nations and people are under the yoke of Communism and don't know the meaning of Christianity or don't have the freedom to celebrate it. They are to be pitied.
Here in the United States most families will pause before their Christmas dinner and offer thanks to God—thanks for our boundless prosperity, peace, freedom, and unlimited opportunities. In many cases an additional prayer will be said for the peoples of the underdeveloped nations and also those under the Communist rule. But for us in America the celebration is a joyous affair. Indeed, there are thanks to be given.
- John Peterson
New Orleans Rioters Atypical Editor:
In John Peterson's recent editorial concerning the South's ever-rising problem of integration, he stated that "The Southerners care little what the idealistic points of integration are." You are right—they are primarily concerned with what the realistic points of such a system are, and what the results would be in their own communities. They know how disastrous these results would be if integration were forced, as it has been in the past.
However, the South is willing, though perhaps reluctantly, to proceed with caution toward eventual integration. To cite an example which has not been brought to light in the recent issue in New Orleans: the N.O. School Board took a poll this past summer, in which all parents who had their
Dailu Hansan
... Letters ...
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904,
trifweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Telephone VIKing 3-2700 Extension 711. news room Extension 376. business office
Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service, 40 St. New York 22, news service University national. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and examination periods. Entered second-class matter Sept. 17, 1910, at Lawrence. Kan., post office under act of March 3, 1879.
children enrolled in N.O. public schools were asked to indicate whether they would prefer sending their children to an integrated public school or closing the school system. The majority of parents voted to keep the public education system running, regardless of its status in relation to integration. Therefore, the School Board (not the legislature, which is composed, as you well know, of politicians) by the people's consent, moved to keep the schools open.
I would like to point out one more item of interest; it is true that 1,000 mothers and teenagers were "rioting" in New Orleans; but it is also true that New Orleans has a population of over 600,000. This rabble of 1,000 represents only a minute percentage of the total population of New Orleans Southerners. Do you still believe, Mr. Peterson, that these people are being obstinately "Old South" in their attempt to deal realistically with the socio-economic levels as well as educational problems of a fast-growing society?
Marilyn Mitchell
New Orleans freshman
Any More Thanks Needed?
Editor:
I extend my congratulations to all of the house organizations that entertained the more than 100 underprivileged children of Lawrence last week. This is a meager start for a campus of 9,000, however. I would not like to believe that this meager beginning reflects the total spirit of brotherhood and giving KU students have in this Christmas occasion. But I
must report that this spirit of giving has been dormant throughout the campaign of the "Toys For Tots" program to give toys to underprivileged children of Lawrence. The campaign that represents all of the generosity of K.U. students as a university and a student body.
I have seen cigarette butts, rumpled Kleenex, beer cans, and dead tree boughs in the yellow barrels for the "Toys For Tots." Is this trash, rather than the simple $1.00-or-under exchange gifts or the inexpensive toy that is purchased specifically for the "Toys For Tots" drive, to be given to the children this Christmas?
It takes so little -$50, an unwanted exchange gift, a group gift—to reserve Christmas happiness and joy that means so much to these children. Is there need for a description of a child almost hungrelly opening a gift on Christmas Day? Is there need for the account of human feeling of satisfaction at seeing this child and hearing his warming appreciation? Is there need to save more?
Must the students of the University of Kansas be reminded that the needy children of Lawrence are depending largely on them for their Christmas. Reminding also that it would be physically cruel to deny these children their Christmas joy by leaving these yellow barrels empty of toys when the students return home to celebrate their Christmas.
andon Hills, Ill., Freshman Eric M. Hall Chairman, "Toys For Tots"
EATON-DAILY DANSA
"You know, Kris, this is my busy season, too!"
By.Calder M. Pickett
Acting Dean, School of Journalism
AMERICAN HERITAGE, December 1960. $3.95.
Everyone's taste in historical reading matter is different. Some lean to a financial or religious treatise; others prefer writing with a Currier and Ives flavor. This is the catholic approach under which American Heritage operates, and the approach is well illustrated in the new issue of the publication.
In this potpourri, I find a semi-poetic treatment of the Civil War by Bruce Catton of most interest. Entitling it "Names from the War," and illustrating it with contemporary views of Antietam and Vicksburg, the editor of American Heritage dwells on an old theme of his—the assumption of historical significance by little crossroads places named Chancellorsville, Cold Harbor or Manassas and soldier-named places like the Bloody Angle, the Wheatfield and Devil's Den.
THIS VOLUME is one of the best I have seen in years. The most representative something-for-everybody article is a portfolio of pictures and verses from an 1821 booklet called "The Children's Friend." This is the first picturing of Santa Claus in America, and it is an entertaining and of course very seasonal thing to read.
Early American history contrasts in these pages with later American. The first gives us an article about Lord Jeffery Amherst, with a beautiful color reproduction of a portrait by Reynolds. Amherst was the British officer who rose from obscurity at the siege of Louisbourg, and gave his name to a famous city and a famous institution.
FROM THE MODERN PERIOD is an entertaining article called "Saint Jane and the Ward Boss," which describes the long war of Jane Addams against Alderman John Powers of the 19th Ward of Chicago. And a truly recent story details an almost legendary American institution—the beloved jeep of World War II.
Another story from the first years of the republic describes a dreary Christmas eve when a peace delegation that included such names as John Quincy Adams, Albert Gallatin and Henry Clay dickered with the British to bring about terms following the War of 1812.
"The Ordeal of Cabez de Vaca"—the story of an ill-fated expedition by Spaniards on the Texas coast 12 years before the explorations of De Soto and Coronado.
Other articles this month:
"A Lesson in Civics"—a new look at that time-honored institution, the New England Town Meeting, by a native son who finds much to criticize in that very symbol of democracy.
"SEWARD'S WISE FOLLY"—an exceptionally good article in the series called "America and Russia," describing the purchase of Alaska by the then-unpopular secretary of state.
"Ah-h, B-l-o-o-w-si," an article with several pages of views from a huge panorama on whaling.
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"THE SHAM BATTLE of Manila," an excerpt from a coming book by Leon Wolff called "Little Brown Brother," describing the somewhat comic opera war that America fought with Spain in '98.
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"A Vanished America in Stereo"—several pages of views from the wonderful era of parlor stereoscopes: a ballroom ascension, Blondin on the tightrope at Niagara, Teddy Roosevelt in the cab of a locomotive, Brady's scenes of Civil War battlefields, "Reveries of a Bachelor." cluttered Victorian parlors, dentists at work, farming in the West, sleighing in the East, Glacier Point in Yosemite, and Pulpit Rock on the Union Pacific.