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BACK IN THE DAY - 4/13/2008
Protesting, hitchhiking and gardening
NORTH JERSEY – Here’s a look at what was published in Suburban Trends around mid-April over the years.
1988 - Missing pilot’s body recovered
It took four months for authorities to pull the body of 66-year-old William McCullum Jr. from the water of the Wanaque Reservoir.
His Cessna 172 had crashed into the west shore during a snowstorm on Dec. 18. He was returning to his home in Somerset after flying to Maine to deliver Christmas presents to his grandchildren.
Divers searched in the frigid waters for 14 days after the crash. They only found a coat and a single shoe.
When they found the body months later, it was wearing the matching shoe, and had some identification papers, allowing authorities to positively identify the body as being that of the missing pilot.
1968 - Boy Scout returns draft card
Butler resident David Ingerson, 21, the winner of a Boy Scout God and Country award, returned his draft card to the government to protest what he called an “immoral, illegal and impractical” war.
Ingerson, who was a senior philosophy major at Baldwin Wallace College in Ohio, was watched by nearly 100 supporters as he mailed the card back to US Attorney General Ramsey Clark.
Before mailing the card, Ingerson held a press conference in which he cited his motives in returning the card. In addition to the above, he said that killing another person or condoning such an action is “unjustifiable,” as well as involuntary servitude.
A 1964 graduate of Butler High School, Ingerson was given the support of the Rev. Charles Post, pastor of the Butler Methodist Church; the Rev. Preston K. Mears Jr., curate at St. Peters Episcopal Church, Morristown and the Rev. Steve Coxhead, curate at the Morris Plains Episcopal Church.
The Chairman of the Morris County Committee to End the War in Vietnam, Asa Watkins, and veteran John Duffay also lent Ingerson support.
Mailed along with the draft card was a statement signed by 13 of Ingerson’s supporters, who pledged to “aid and abet” him.
The photograph that ran with the story showed Ingerson being served dinner by his mother.
We caught hell for running the story, and a few days later responded to the critics who lashed out at us for publicizing Ingerson’s protest. We said we didn’t make the news, just reported it.
A cartoon published alongside the editorial shows a picture of a longhair trying to drop his draft card in a mailbox where a soldier with a bayonet is hiding out. He greets the longhair with a punch on the chin.
“If someone up in Butler thinks little enough of his country to return his draft card when we are at war, we’ll print the story because it is news – BUT, we don’t necessarily agree with it. In point of fact, we abhor the whole sordid thing. We think that everyone has to pay a price for living in a country like this one,” we said.
Then here is a nice little gem of wisdom, courtesy of your local paper: “We think that it is as much a man’s duty to fight as it is for women to have children – neither is the most pleasant thing in the world, but they have to be done.”
We said we recognized everyone’s right to disagree with the current administration, but added that as long as it was in democratically in power, that we would back it.
We also said we would fight for the right of this newspaper to publish any sort of news.
No home for returning soldier
A Wanaque couple was about to celebrate their first wedding anniversary, but it was not a happy occasion. He was in Vietnam fighting the war, and she was living in Haskell waiting for him to return home in a month.
Worse than missing his first anniversary was that when PFC Rodney L. DeFreese returned from Vietnam, he would not have a home to go back to.
“Any and all attempts to get the couple a place to live have been unsuccessful because Rod is ‘Indian, Portuguese, English, and colored,’ as his mother says, and his wife is white,” it was reported.
Rod’s mother sent a letter and a picture of the couple to Suburban Trends.
The letter reads, in part, “Here is a photograph of the young couple… still seeking a home. Their first anniversary is Tuesday, April 9. So maybe it is possible to print this for me to send my son and show him that his home town still remembers he exists and will perhaps help his readjustment on his return home… especially if he still has no home to come to…”
We appealed to anyone out there who had a line on an apartment where the mixed-race couple could live.
Letter to the Widow King
An eighth grade student at the Haskell School wrote a heartfelt letter to Coretta Scott King, the wife of Martin Luther King Jr. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968.
Unfortunately, the student’s name is illegible in our microfilm, but the letter is not. Here it is:
Dear Mrs. King,
Why is it that a man’s greatness is not realized until after his death? It happened with Abraham Lincoln, with John F. Kennedy, and now with your departed husband, Dr. Martin Luther King.
Words alone cannot express the deep sorrow that I know everyone feels in his heart. It is a noble cause that your husband strove for. Many compare him to Mahatma Gandhi. I, however, feel that he surpassed Gandhi in greatness because of the many obstacles he had to overcome.
I pray that the violence your husband fought against will not seize the nation because of his death. I hope that Negroes everywhere will achieve their goal of civil rights through the peace work of your late husband.
Although I am only 13, I mourn as your family and the whole world mourns the tragedy that has deprived the Earth of your husband Dr. Martin Luther King.
1963 – Gardening without work
George J. Manning of Midvale was a gardener who had hung up his hoe and let nature help him raise three-pound heads of lettuce, bumper crops of beans, and various other edibles with a minimum of effort.
He liked gardening but not the long, tedious hours of cultivating, the aches and pains of weeding, or paying for fertilizer.
Manning, who was retired, had worked as guard at the DuPont Plant in Pompton Lakes. He started planting without doing much work in 1950.
“I like to make gardens, and have found a way most of the work can be done in the autumn, when the weather is cool and pleasant. I only use a hoe once a year to make rows to plant the seeds in; I don’t do much after that but gather the vegetables. I can lie under a tree and enjoy life,” he said.
He explained his process: “I started making gardens this way in 1950. I had a soddy piece of ground that had not been used for several years. I covered it thickly with maple leaves, and the next spring the ground was so soft I didn’t even have to dig it – just set out lettuce plants. The way these plants grew was a wonder! Every head weighed over three pounds. The same year I covered the rest of my garden with cheap hay for a mulch, and had the best crops I’d had in years.”
He cited the book “Gardening Without Work: For the Aging, the Busy and the Indolent,” by Margaret Stout.
“She’s found a new way to grow carrots and such things in a small plot, and how to pulverize leaves to mulch without an expensive grinder. I believe I have a better way to grow carrots then she has, but I won’t tell, because her book is copyrighted,” said Manning.
Among the produce Manning was proudest of was a tomato plant he had grown on an old brick wall. This plant produced tomatoes with no fertilizer other than the dirt imbedded in the crumbling brick that held its roots.
“Save your leaves,” advised Manning. “Just let them accumulate.”
Manning said his next invention would be to develop a way to seed without bending.
But he died suddenly before he could even see the article about him in print. His obituary appeared in the subsequent edition. He was 78.
I been everywhere, man
A 20-year-old college student from Towaco travelled 6,000 miles from Fairbanks, Alaska, to his home on Peace Valley Road all by hitchhiking. The total trip cost the youth $70 (About $500 in today’s money).
Mortimer L. Henry said that the best way to travel was by thumb, and added that he was going to return to Alaska in May by the same way he had left.
He started out from Alaska on Feb. 5 and reached home by March 5.
“I only spent about two-and-a-half weeks traveling,” said Henry. “I stopped for some time in Seattle, San Francisco and St. Louis.”
A sophomore majoring in wildlife management at the University of Alaska, Henry made the trip to be an usher in his sister’s wedding that was held in early April.
“I got one ride from Flagstaff, Arizona, to Wichita, Kansas,” he said (that’s a 1,000-mile trip these days, probably longer back then).
“The fastest was 18-and-a-half hours from Chicago to New Brunswick. The only money I spent for travel was about $2 for buses and subways on the last leg from New Brunswick to New York and then to Towaco,” Henry said.
The trip was not without hazards, according to Henry. He said that the highway east of Albuquerque, New Mexico, was blocked by snow. “That delayed me a little,” he said, adding that after that there was a landslide along the Fraser River in Canada.
“The truck I was travelling in took a shortcut down the mountainside to get around the slide area,” he said.
1958 – Prefer test patterns
"Teenagers, it appears, are getting bored with TV. The results of a poll conducted among high school seniors indicates that the average teener now spends about eight hours a week in front of the TV set. This compares with ten hours last year and 14 hours four years ago,” it was reported.
Some statisticians claim teenagers watch almost 40 hours of television a week these days, but 50 years ago, viewership among the younger crowd was down.
“Chief gripes among those quizzed were that the medium lacks enterprise and originality. As soon as a new show is a success, many of the youngsters pointed out, there are flocks of imitators,” says the old article. “There are too few new and different ideas, was a common complaint.”
Other complaints teenagers had about television was the bad writing, Arthur Godfrey, Lawrence Welk, commercials, canned applause and personal plugs.
Teenagers especially hated Westerns and quiz shows. They liked variety and drama programs. They liked Perry Como and “Playhouse 90” the best.
We asked if the moms and dads would have the same responses if polled about television.
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