Journal and Courier from Lafayette, Indiana (2024)

April 20, 1982

Publication:

Journal and Courieri

Location:

Lafayette, Indiana

Issue Date:

Tuesday, April 20, 1982

Page:

8

Extracted Article Text (OCR)

A 8 Opinions Journal and Courier Lafayette lnd Tuos April 20v 1982 Journal and Courier Member of the Gannett Newspaper Group The Journal founded in 1829 The Courier founded in 1 845 Journal and Courier since 1 920 there is much desire to learn there of 'necessity will be much argument much writing many opinions for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the John Milton Areopagitica 1644 Relocation project lesson is valuable one When you take up the question of proposed $80 miHion railroad relocation project you are forced to assign yourself to one of two positions: Home town pride or common sense about as simple as that or several years the Journal and Courier believed the project was necessary and affor dable and said so But in the past year and a half since the election of President Reagan the increasing difficulty wit the economy and the out of balance nature of the federal budget and its effect on interest rates we have expressed willingless to shelve the project and urged others to do the same It was basically a case of forgoing home town pride and taking up common sense and nothing against Lafayette nor Mayor James administration which we have heartily supported in the last two elections was ever meant by it Now we see that Congressman John Myers who in all probability will be Tip pecanoe US representative after 1982 has similarly set aside his support un til the federal budget is balanced That was a courageous act by the con gressman and we salute him for it It may cost him political support in Greater Lafayette as he seeks re election this year in a newly designed district that now includes Tippecanoe County But it was unques tionably a common sense move Is the Journal and Courier now fully against railroad relocation? Not at all We long for the day it becomes reality But the times which seemed so decidedly right for it just a few years ago seem just as definitely wrong for it now and for the foreseeable future Sen Dan Quayle too has apparently begun to lose enthusiasm for the Lafayette project His press secretary said last week the staff is urging officials in com munities like Greater Lafayette to look for alternative sources of funding or else scale down projects because future federal fun ding is iffy IRONICALLY THIS BECOMES the third bitter pill for Greater Lafayette to swallow in its experience with truly big federal aid Back in the 1960s after much controversy downtown renewal was shelved because the federal government the fountain from which the money flowed decided emphasis should change to housing withdrawing available money and guidelines for urban redevelopment Then in the 1970s the proposed Lafayette Lake project which would have involved tens of millions of federal dollars had to be shelved because opponents successfully delayed things until inflation pulled the pro ject entirely out of the realm of being worth the investment Now railroad relocation If there is a lesson for communities in the past 15 experiences it is this: You are better off doing thing for yourself with your own funding under your own control And that incidentally is what the Reagan Administration has been trying to get across to America for the last 15 months news department editors JUDITH AUSTIN Regional State Editor SHERRY BROWN eatures Editor CHARLES CRUMBO Sports Editor RANK KOONTZ News Editor RICHARD PADDEN Photo Editor THOMAS A RUSSELL Metro Editor JOURNAL AND COURIER EDITORIALBOARD MALCOLM APPLEGATE Publisher ROBERT KRIEBEL Editor ANGELYN RIZZO Managing Editor GEORGEW LAMB Assistant Managing EditorAdministration DEPARTMENT HEADS ALBERT BONNER Jr General Manager JOHN KRETZSCHMAR Controller DAVID SIWEK Circulation Manager JOHN SANSON Production Manager JOAN BACKO Promotion Manager DOUGLAS RANKIN Advertising Director Harder season TH i Wil MIS ujl Letters March of Dimes effort worth supporting fants born in the US every year 12 million people are hospitalized year because of birth defects and over Laura Stopp said in her letter she be donating to the March of Dim es this year I plan to donate twice as much to help make up for the one be maid ng If Mrs Stopp is so terribly concerned about the lives and health of the unborn and newborn how can she withdraw her support of a group that has worked for over 20 years to protect them? The polio vaccine which has saved countless lives and prevented many disabilities over the last two decades was developed as a result of the funding of the original March The focus of the March of Dimes is the prevention of birth defects Birth 60000 people in this country die yearly as a result of birth defects The March of Dimes through contributions is try ing to change those statistics The research they have sponsored has resulted in increasing knowledge of the causes of birth defects and ways to pre vent them So much more needs to be done How can anyone refuse to donate to a group that is doing such important VERONICA LANN West Lafayette defects affect mqre than 250000 in service unique but not obsolete! means slow melt in life storms too BOSTON In my backyard the struggle between winter and spring is coming to a close Even the flowers stopped in their tracks by an April bliz zard have begun their delayed adolescence One tulip trapped under a pine branch brought down by the wind has found a detour to the surface It will I suspect survive Another tulip open before the storm was badly shaken by its eagerness and excess It will also survive But in the shady corner of this New England garden a patch of snow still hangs on It is covered now with the ug ly licorice frosting of urban life It sits there as a visible remnant of the stormy past rom my kitchen window I measure the shrinking snow patch each morn ing I find myself checking up on this departing bit of winter the way others check on the arriving spring I still muddle in some absurd state of preparedness ready for yet another relapse prepared for the worst cautiously moving into a new season with one eye on the last I LEAVE THE HOUSE these morn ings wearing just a suit But in sync with the mixed messages of my yard I carry my coat The snow is my patch of caution The coat is my protection I drag it along with me into spring The garden scene has become my miniature of all the awkward ways things change in nature and in human nature During the thaws of my childhood winters I was the first on the block to put on summer clothes I accepted the spring without suspicion without withholding commitment Today my daughter still sheds snow jackets at the first sign of warmth with Ellen Goodman Washington Post Writers Group sounds almost superstitious If she takes off the snow tire makes a com mitment to this new life she tells me another storm may take her by sur prise Above all else my friend doeshot want surprises A man I know a father has been through a season of trouble with his daughter or years he talk to her without receiving icy sarcasm The atmosphere of their home was heavy with her hostility anger disapproval Now the girl is open but the father is careful When they meet he is still braced against the chill of disappoint ment He keeps his expectations low and his dukes high During all the years he wished that she would soften towards him he never knew how hard it would be to believe in it There are others I know who carry symbols memories patches from the past even when times change Others who find transitions slower and trickier than they used to One brings an old il lness with her into good health she can not yet say she is cured Another goes to work at a new job taking with him the anxieties of his unemployed months A third carries his childhood on his shoulders like a chip 742 1212 we need you! This phone number in operation since 1953 plus temperature since 1959 has now reached a figure of 10000 calls per day When General Telephone held their open house in 1968 they said you dial 742 1212 and it is busy it means you are the 11th call as Time and Temperature has 10 trunk lines that I thought that an interesting bit of information While newspapers publish the temperatures high and low 742 1212 gives it like it is Cable TV help because our household have it and radio reports give time and temperature when you need it The 10 second messages also made me one of your banking customers Lafayette National's service to the community is unique but not ob solete Please continue LUCILE MOSES West Lafayette Let JC profits help needy students Your editorial cutting federal aid for education is most interesting You are certainly backing our President and Sen Lugar in their efforts to balance the budget In the spirit of letting the private sector make up the differences as advocated by the President you ad mire I propose that the Journal and Courier donate their profits for a five year period to help students who can not afford to pay the increasing costs of obtaining an education Moreover Sen Lugar may wish to donate his speaking fees to assist you DENNIS NOBLE Delphi EDITOR'S NOTE: The Journal and Courier owned by the Gannett Co in Stop all future Baby I Rochester has been doing precise ly what writer Dennis Noble suggests for 11 years through the Gannett ounda tion More than $500000 worth of educational and community service grants have been directed to Greater Lafayette alone in the past several years $250000 worth in the last year The foundation also sponsors millions of dollars' worth of college scholarships and several Journal and Courier employees' youngsters are among the recipients The foundation's national grants have averaged more than $7 million in each of the last five years Including $95 million last year We could go on and an with this but the point is made oe decisions I am a 23 year old housewife and mother of three and I would like to ex press my feelings on the matter of Baby Doe in Bloomington and hope that others share my feelings Ij was sickened to hear anyone could have the heart to let a baby suffer as this one did I feel someone should have been able to step in adopt the baby and allow his needed surgery They say the parents loved the baby and why they did it No way! Loving parents would have attempted to save the baby in any way possible Even if it meant giving it up for adoption I know what love is because two of my children have been adopted and not out of hate but out of love because I want them to suffer as I was made to The youngest a boy was born premature at seven months and had to undergo several operations for heart and stomach problems Without his adopted parents he would not of surviv ed Today he is a healthy and happy lit tle boy Please get together as a nation and write our senators and represen tatives and anyone else who will listen and see if we might be able to stop this from happening again to any baby Is it not true this innocent baby was sentenced to Death Row and was not given the chance to defend himself? Where is the American way when we need it? BECKY VIBBERT lora Baby decision was an atrocity secutor Lawrence Broder and Mr Baby decision was appalling Yet it does eventually Eventually we feel safe enough to store the storm gear Sooner or later if warm enough even skepticism evaporates I was appalled to learn of the decision of the Supreme Court of Indiana which effectively sentenced a six day old baby boy to a tortuous and certain death This was done without any considera the clergy against the decision Due process of law cannot constitu tionally ever justify killing an innocent winter wm oe over 1 am sure oi tnat Almost sure of that I KNOW if it is universal But for many of us disappointments accumulate like snowflakes each dif ferent until they settle into a cold mass in the dark comer of our lives The harder the season the longer it takes to melt The focal point in making this hideous and murderous decision was that the baby was bom with Syndrome There have been hundreds of thousands of babies bom with this condition of mental retardation and many if not most have been afforded the right to life to be loved to be wanted and to be cared for Just think of all of the executions this country would have witnessed had every baby who was bom mentally retarded been sentenced to death by withholding all food and nourishment The decision is a dangerous and foreboding precedent The reasoning can be readily extended to withholding medication from people af flicted with diabetes heart disease high blood pressure and other illnesses which are manageable and controllable with the medication The government and the courts are opening the door to mass murder under the guise of due process of law Through this the government can be allowed to kill off any citizen with an ailment because it want to pro vide comprehensive Medicaid Medicare or basic health services We believe that there should be a hue easy optimism But I now carry a coat in the car read signs in the snow and wonder whether it comes with the age territory Do we get more cautious are we overprepared for the worst as we grow older? ew of my friends make speedy tran sitions anymore They seemed slowed down by their histories They even enter good times cautiously I have a friend who survived a predic table weather pattern of mid life: a cold marriage followed by a stormy divorce and an unsettled single life inally she moved by glacial increments into a new relationship Her days with this man are more than comfortable with needed medical care the parents the doctors and hospital personnel elected to withhold as well all food in travenous feeding and basic sustenance with death being the sought after result I heard they successfully ac Phillip Hill who intervened in an at tempt to save the infant Oh that we had more public servants like them in our country! ormer US Atty Gen Griffin Bell has some interesting opinions and in formation regarding the steady decline of the majority of the judiciary I know there are many who join me in the hope there is never a repeat of this atrocity anywhere ever again BETTE A OSBORN Rt 1 Clarks Hill complished this when it was reported that the baby died at 10:03 pm It is very obvious why the decision was made to withhold surgical repair of the esophagus so he could not tion for the say so concerning receive needed food and nourishment ms fundamental and constitutional right to life It is indeed a strange construction of the 14th Amendment of the US Con stitution which guarantees against the state depriving any person of life liber ty or property without due process of law How can the court possibly justify its death sentence upon this baby under the guise of due process of law? The decision is reminiscent of Nazi Germany where feeble minded people the aged and the physically weak were annihilated in! furtherance of the plan to create a Jew and non Jew alike were sub jected to this governmentally spon sored mass plan of murder The Bible calls this the product of a reprobate mind where there is no distinction bet ween good and evil right or wrong etc The end justifies the means! THE DECISION goes well beyond the abortion issue Here we had a baby who went full term and was given birth" by1 bis mother If the parents want this child and they obviously did not then the state should have in tervened to properly protect him with the view of placing him in an adoptive home with adoptive parents who could have loved and cared for him While it is true that the baby was oom with Down Syndrome and an obstructed esophagus the latter condi tion appeared to be correctable with surgery Instead of providing this baby baby boy who broke no laws and com mitted no offense deserving of medical and court sponsored capital BETTY LAOON RICHARD BOVEY diplomacy fc an art Al It was a sad day in history A baby died the other night in Bloom ington as a result of the 3 1 decision by Indiana Supreme Court justices who ruled death over life in spite of 16 families who had expressed their desire to care for the baby All of us who deem life precious though it be not perfect owe a debt of gratitude to the Monroe County Pro My yard has almost finished its tran secutor Barry Brown Deputy Pro sition By tomorrow the snow patch will have become mud Within a week leave my coat at home And by next YET THERE IS still a prevailing wk at the latest this most tenacious wmd from her past Her memories are also expectations When we talk she "I 4.

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