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University Daily Kansan
Wednesday, May 5, 1965
Early Bird
It was a lazy morning last Sunday when I tuned in the start of a bull fight in Spain.
This in itself was not so unusual. Television has brought remote events into my living room before as movie cameras have scanned the globe. But these have been taped films which had to be processed and flown back to the States for broadcasting.
The bull fight in Spain brought me out of my Sunday morning lethargy. It was being broadcast live. The event was actually taking place at the same time that I was watching it.
I WAS NOT THE ONLY ONE GLUED to the set that morning. My companion viewers were in Canada, Mexico, Austria, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, Czechoslovakia, Finland, France, West Germany, and other European nations.
While I watched, the screen of my set was split in two parts, and with one eye I watched a delicate heart operation performed by surgeons
in Dallas, Tex., and with the other eye I watched doctors and medical students across the Atlantic in Geneva observe the same operation on a large screen.
THE MECHANISM THAT PERFORMED this feat was Early Bird, the world's first commercial communications satellite. Rotating at the same speed as the earth and hovering in a spot over the Atlantic, Early Bird can provide instantaneous and continuous communication between Europe and America. Two more Early Birds will make possible instantaneous world-wide communication.
Such communication devices, if used wisely will increase understanding among men of all nations. Such understanding as Early Bird makes possible is the best assurance the world has for peace.
Gary Noland
The People Say..
Dear Sir:
AT THIS POINT THERE ARE few Kansans who do not know that my uncle, Bill Easton, was fired from the University of Kansas as the result of a petty financial squabble with the Athletic Director, Wade Stinson. Mr. Stinson's action has been deplored by the student body (who burned him in effigy), by many of the KU faculty and most of its alumni, and also by hundreds of phone calls from all over the country.
I make no apologies for writing a wail on behalf of a relative—my uncle can get another job—but there is so much more to this issue than that.
At the root of the matter is Chancellor Clarke Wescoe who appointed Mr. Stinson, a former insurance agent with no athletic experience except as a college halfback, despite the wishes of the rest of the athletic department and the alumni. This whole episode is another example of the prima donna attitude of the college leadership in many of our public institutions of learning, an attitude of complete disregard for the wishes of the student body, faculty members, alumni and the public in general. It seems that none of us outside the ivy-covered walls know anything anymore—we just pay the bills. Since this action is hurting the reputation of the University of Kansas only, it's hard to believe that the Chancellor has the best interests of the University at heart.
Just for the record I would like to state again the success that Bill Easton has had at KU. Over the past 18 years he has coached his boys to 38 Big Eight Championships, two NCAA titles and eight Olympic gold medals. This despite an inadequate budget, poor track equipment, and few scholarships.
There are few schools in this country today which are producing the kind of excellence that KU has enjoyed in its track endeavor. Bill Easton is the acknowledged best middle-distance coach in the world, therefore it is highly doubtful that
Bill had the opportunity to go the University of Southern California, which has a top-flight track program, a few years back. Chancellor Clarke Wescoc was the man who convinced him that his future was at Kansas and since "home is where the heart is" the Easton family elected to stay in Kansas. That future and Clarke Wescoc's word have proved to be short-lived.
KU will continue to enjoy the prestige that it has in this area, and it's an awkward situation to ask any other coach to walk into.
The chief complaint seems to be that track, including the KU Relays, runs in the red—but track does bring nation-wide publicity to the University. It is hard to believe that a school whose alums are such faithful givers and which receives as many millions in government grants as KU does cannot manage to make up a small deficit in their athletic program.
Football is being advertised as the "Sport That Pays Its Way" at the University, emphasizing the fact that track does not. I like football too but when was the last time that the KU football squad made news in California, or Florida, or Europe, or Southeast Asia? Surely there is still some reward in greatness—does everything at KU have to be paid for in the material gain of dollars and cents when most of us are living on credit in order to pay our taxes to keep, among other things, KU going? It is the achievements of these great track athletes that have brought KU so much recognition in the sports field, the type of recognition and publicity that money can't buy because it has to be earned.
It some of you taxpayers agree with me (especially you alumni who like football) that KU should continue to produce some of the best track athletes this country has had and if you would like to continue to see KU men making the race for the United States in the Olympics, please let the Board of Regents at KU hear from you. Let them know that you support
the track program at KU, the excellent coaching of Bill Easton, and are in favor of the track squad's petition to re-instate their coach. It may not do any good but at least we tried and that's American.
Respectfully,
Sandra Funston (Mrs.)
Emporia, Kan.
Thank you.
Dear Sir:
I AM A SENIOR AT THE UNIVERSITY of Oklahoma. I have been running track for a total of eight years and am a three-year varsity letterman in both indoor and outdoor track at OU.
Through high school teammates who competed for Kansas University in track, football, and other sports, and through my own collegiate competition, I have become acquainted with Mr. Bill Easton and his track program at Lawrence.
I can think of no other individual who would merit as much concern of the entire athletic world if placed in a situation similar to this as does Coach Easton.
Dismissal of such an outstanding developer of men and talents for anything less than a criminal act, denouncing of "motherhood," or something along these lines is a tragedy within itself.
Dailij Ifänsan
This appears to be part of a recent trend noticed even here at the University of Oklahoma of attempts to substitute administrative and bureaucratic elements into the athletic sphere at the University of Kansas. It appears as if the emphasis has shifted from development and results to those who can operate with the "most credits and least debits," or who can act to serve every "whim and desire" of him who holds the key to their contracts.
111 Flint Hall
University 4-3644, newsroom
University 4-3108, business office
University of Kansas student newspaper
rounded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triekwelly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Member Inland Daily Press Association, Associated Collegiate Press.
Represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 50 St., New York
22, N.Y. News service: United Press International. Mail subscription rates:
$3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon
during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays, University
holidays, and examination periods. Second class postage paid at Law-
rence, Kansas. Accommodations, goods, services, and employment advertised
in the University Daily Kansan are offered to all students without
regard to color, creed, or national origin.
From the information available at Norman, I believe Coach Easton was fired because of his "unwillingness to follow administrative and financial procedure necessary to successful functioning of the athletic program." One honestly wonders what constitutes "successful functioning of the athletic program" if Bill Easton has not done his part.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT Leta Roth and Gary Noland Co-Editorial Editors
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Don Black ... Managing Editor
Bobbie Bartelt, Clare Casey, Marshall Caskey, Fred Frailey, Assistant Managing Editors; Judy Farrell, City Editor; Karen Lambert, Feature-Society Editor; Glen Phillips, Sports Editor; Janet Chartier, Telegraph Editor; Harry Krause, Picture Editor.
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
It has also been noted throughout the Big Eight Conference that Coach Easton is certainly not blessed with an abundance of financial support from the Kansas Athletic Department.
Tom Fisher ... Business Manager
Nancy Holland, Advertising Manager; Ed Vaughn, National Advertising Manager; Dale Reinecker, Classified Advertising Manager; Russ Calkins, Merchandising Manager; Bob Monk, Promotion Manager; Gary Grazda, Circulation Manager.
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Last week while a competitor at the Kansas Relays, one of the nation's greatest athletic events, it was pathetic to note the equipment provided. Of particular notice and discussion among the visiting athletes were the "antiquated" standards used for the pole vault.
I am sure the least to suffer from these latest developments will be Coach Easton himself, for there are those who respect him for the man he is. However, Kansas will never have the distinction of being the pillar of production it has enjoyed for the past 18 years. The age of the Billy Mills, Al Oerters, Bill Nieders, Bill Allews and all the rest is apparently out for the least of all reasons. I am afraid Kansas and the Big Eight Athletic Conference have suffered a tremendous blow.
Earl W. (Woody) Young Oklahoma '65
Oklahoma '65
BOOK REVIEWS
A TRIBUTE TO JOHN F. KENNEDY, edited by Pierre Salinger and Sander Vanocur (Dell, 60 cents).
Add to the growing Kennedy books and souvenirs a worthwhile little volume assembled by two who knew the late President well and with a foreword by Theodore C. Sorenson and dedicated by Lyndon B. Johnson. It is a compilation of tributes given Kennedy in the days following the assassination.
Many of these have become familiar—the Molly Kazan poem, the tribute on Britain's "That Was the Week That Was," the Theodore White article in Life magazine, the little tribute by John Masefield, the Saturday Review editorial by Norman Cousins. Many other tributes are not so well known. If the reader has not become saturated by this time he will welcome the opportunity to spend a quite evening looking through this book.
Accompanying the tributes are some excellent photographs, plus the Bill Mauldin cartoon of the distraught Lincoln and a moving cartoon of two crying children, published in El Tiempo in Bogota. Best of the photographs is one which probably will become symbolic—the young President, thoughtful, bowed over with work, one guesses, his back to the camera in the quiet of his White House office.—CMP
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A CANDLE FOR ST. JUDE, by Rumer Godden (Dell, 50 cents).—A novel of 1948 whose appearance today undoubtedly owes its success to "The Battle of the Villa Fiorita." As in most of this writer's earlier works there is a slight framework on which to hang a slight story—a young girl aspiring for success in the ballet, her relationship to the older teacher, the routine of a day in ballet school.
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BEDFORD VILLAGE. by Hervey Allen (Dell, 75 cents).
Hervey Allen published in the forties a trilogy that came to be known as "The City in the Dawn." The first of these was "The Forest and the Fort," the last was "Toward the Morning." "Bedford Village" was the second. With a brief summary at the beginning, the book has unity linking it to the first in the series.
Allen envisioned a story of the transition of the frontier by taking his central character, Salathiel Albine, and bringing him from his early background with the Indians into the civilization—relatively speaking—of the third book. This volume concerns the adventures of Sal in 1764, in the clearing of Bedford Village east of Pittsburgh, as he comes into contact with his own people and begins to learn their ways.
The book, like the others in the trilogy, is vivid, accurate and documented, sometimes slow-moving, frequently heavy with local color and dialect. The reader perhaps should go to the entire trilogy for the best impression of what Allen was trying to do.
DON QUIXOTE, by Miguel de Cervantes (Signet Classics, $1.25).
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Students who have labored and stumbled through some translations of Cervantes will cheer this new one, which is by Walter Starkie, a visiting professor on this campus several years ago. Starkie is professor of romance languages at the University of California, and he translated an earlier edition for Mentor books.
It's a giant volume, and it's unabridged, but it's manageable. Gone are the literal translations, the complicated punctuation of Cervantes' time. It is not as rapid reading as "The Carpetbaggers" or "The Man," but it may draw readers to the book that generally is recognized as one of the supreme classics of all time. Don Quixote is the original picaresque adventurer, and the adventures of himself and Sancho Panza in 16th century Spain have become one of the most familiar works in the western tradition.
"You've Got To Admit He's Certainly Brought India And Pakistan Closer Together"