University Daily Kansan
Page 3
Friday, Feb. 28, 1964
OCTOBER 18TH
HERBLOCK
THE WASHINGTON POST
"Don't Think I'm Resisting-I Just Want To Get Away And Think Things Over A Couple Of Years"
No Premonitions Of Death for JFK
WASHINGTON — (UPI) After the death of a world leader there frequently occurs an occult phenomenon. Friends, associates and others begin to talk about how the fallen leader had a premonition of death.
By Merriam Smith UPI White House Repor
They take scraps of his conversation, obscure passages from letters and other signs, blend these together and come up with so-called proof of a premonition.
Such is the legacy of President John F. Kennedy. Stories are starting to crop up in Washington and other parts of the country about signs, pertents and moods that indicated Kennedy had a premonition of danger, if not death.
SUCH EVIDENCE, however, is a matter of hindsight and a bit of historical tea-reading.
Those closest to the late Chief Executive say he gave no outward evidence whatever of fearing or expecting death in office from either natural causes or the type of violence he suffered last Nov. 22 in Dallas.
One of the best possible sources on Kennedy's moods and thoughts said, "It was quite the other way around—he talked often of activities he planned to undertake after leaving office, and these conversations were in the context of his belief he would be elected to and serve out a second term."
U. N. Ambassador Adlai E. Stevenson said after the assassination that he was apprehensive about Kennedy's trip to Dallas. But he made clear this was based on his own previous trip to the Texas city when he was spat upon and was not in any way a premonition.
ONE CLOSE FRIEND said Kennedy, after coming through World War II and the dreadful trials of PT-109, felt in a sense that he was a man of destiny and could withstand tribulations of any sort.
What may give rise, however, to stories that he expected to be killed in office is that Kennedy during bull sessions with intimates was known to speculate on the best way to kill a President. One friend who heard such references swears that Kennedy was talking in the abstract and not thinking of his imaginary circumstances as applying to himself.
Once in a crowd, a package sailed over the heads of massed, cheering bystanders and landed near the president. Secret Service agents quickly pounced on the bundle. It turned out to be a gift for John Jr. The donor saw no other way of getting it to Kennedy.
Being quite pragmatic about such things, Kennedy observed later that no protective force in the world could have saved him had the package been a bomb.
FRIENDS POINT OUT,however, that incidents such as this had not led Kennedy to believe he would be killed in office. He merely saw the possibilities.
"It's a good game and fine exercise, but it takes up entirely too much time for a man in my job," the President is supposed to have said. "I'll get back to it afterwards."
One close friend cites another piece of evidence to disprove rumors that Kennedy had a premonition of destructive danger. This friend says that shortly before Dallas, Kennedy was discussing golf.
He also was looking forward to activities with his family five, ten and fifteen years hence.
"This doesn't sound like a man with a death premonition," a competent source said. "Of course, he knew he lived under danger. Any president does. But after PT-109, I'm sure he felt he could come through anything and survive."
Race-Strife Slums Fought
Editor's Note: The mayor of Trenton and his family move into a deteriorating, racially-mixed neighborhood today in hope of reversing the movement of whites to the suburbs. Here is a close-up look at the mayor's street and its problems gathered from interviews with the mayor, his wife and their new neighbors.
TRENTON, N.J.—(UPI)—There are four trees cracking on Mercer Street, sprouting defiantly out of the cold, cracked concrete.
They are distinctive because they have withstood the ravages of time. On Mercer Street, that is an accomplishment.
The once respectable, middle-class neighborhood where Mayor Arthur J. Holland, his wife Elizabeth, and his 10-month old daughter, Cynthia, will live has not reached the slum stage, but it's getting there.
ITS TALL, narrow brick houses are too young to be antiques, too old to be very comfortable or serviceable.
Heavy traffic flows along Mercer Street from the city to the railroad station and U.S. Route 1. It is so close to town, shoppers park there. Residents have to pay exorbitant rates to a private lot to assure themselves a place to park.
At night, the street is dimly lit and there have been frequent police calls. The Assunpink Creek, which flows behind the mayor's new home, is unsightly and dirty. There has been trouble with a sewage plant upstream.
But the mayor and other Trenton officials think Mercer Street is worth saving. The mayor is willing to move to prove it. There are no factories nearby and the air is clean. It is a five-minute walk to the center of town, 10 minutes to the railroad station for an hour's ride to New York.
THE HOLLANDS' NEW neighbors are from a variety of nationalities and races. Holland says about half are whites and the remainder are Negroes or Puerto Ricans.
Many whites on the street express bitterness at the influx of Negroes which started 15 to 20 years ago and blame the deterioration of the neighborhood on them. Others say they do not know the Negroes or Puerto Ricans on the street.
"They don't bother us and we don't bother them" was a frequent comment.
Most of the individual apartment houses are either all-white or all-Negro.
"We moved in election day 1919," she said, pulling a shawl around her neck. "It was a wonderful neighborhood then. Everybody owned their own homes. There's just Kathryn Sullivan and Mrs. Wagner and myself left."
THE HOLLANDS' NEXT door neighbor will be Janey Giblin, an elderly Irish spinster who has lived there since 1919.
There is a for sale sign in the window. He said he is taking his family to Florida soon not because of racial difficulties but because part of his family lives there.
Three doors down the street, Leonard J. Kedzierski Jr., a construction worker, said he lived in his house since he was five.
THERE ARE CONFLICTING stories why whites have moved out of the area. Kedzierski said all those he knew lost their homes because of financial reasons.
from the morgue
In 1951, the All Student Council received a bill for $110 from the student council of Kansas State College for the repair of a goal post that was demolished after the KU football game at Manhattan.
E. L. Falkenstein, business manager of the KU athletic department, estimated that $30 would repair a torn down goal post. He told the ASC that only erection of a new one should exceed this amount.
Mrs. Elizabeth Wagner, who lives six doors up the street from the Holland house, said high taxes and the decay of the neighborhood eventually will force her to return to County Mayo, Ireland. She said she will probably have to sell her home at a loss.
Mary Howard, a Negro, lives across the street from the Hollands with her four children in a house divided into four apartments. She is pregnant. She said she receives aid to dependent children benefits and pays $85 a month for three rooms. *
Next door to Mrs. Howard, Jose Santiago owns an attractive, clean brick house.
"WHEN THE MAYOR bought that house, one of my friends say, 'he's not gonna move in. It's politics.' I told him he was wrong. The mayor a good man."
Actually, the Hollands contemplated buying a home on Mercer Street two years ago, before they were married.
The major, who is 45, had lived in a quiet, white neighborhood on the other side of town all his life. But his wife, Elizabeth, said it wasn't the type of house she wanted. They bought the home at 86 Mercer St. for $7,000 from 'its Negro owner and spent $10,000 remodeling it.
"My friends, the people I went to college with and the people of my own age group, think it's a wonderful idea," Mrs. Holland said. "But the people in our neighborhood—their initial reaction was that we prefer Negroes and Puerto Ricans to them, which wasn't our attitude at all."
By bucking the movement of whites to the suburbs, Holland feels "it might cause people who might otherwise flee to ask themselves why should I flee, the major is moving in the other direction?"
"As far as I'm concerned," he says, "this new house is going to be my home and I'll die there."
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