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BACK IN THE DAY - 06/29/2008
Chief’s son shot, civil rights leader slain, missile guard shot and pulp fiction
NORTH JERSEY – Here’s a look at what was published in Suburban Trends around the end of June 1963 over the years.
1963 – Son of a gun
A reader called me last week and said she wanted to know more about the Kinnelon police chief’s son being shot that was in the June 15 “Back in the Day.” I told her that I’d write more about that story when I uncovered more about it, and I did, so here’s more.
The story as reported so far was that the police chief of Kinnelon, Gifford Whitmore, wanted to press charges of attempted murder against his grown son, Clifford, who lived in Butler. Clifford was allegedly drunk, came to his dad’s house in Kinnelon, fired two shots into the front door, and then sat down with his old man at the kitchen table and menaced him with a rifle and a hunting knife for over two hours. Eventually the two men struggled, and the police chief’s housekeeper allegedly shot the son with the police chief’s own gun after he told her to.
Chief Whitmore called the local, county and state police to the scene and was researching thick law books about how to best throw the book at his son, but the county police took the case away from him and would only charge his son with assault with a deadly weapon. Then they charged his housekeeper with the same crime. That was the story as reported so far. Here are more developments.
It turned out that the housekeeper, Muriel Hermann, was indeed more than just the hired help, although that was not reported until late June about the early-June drama. She was, in fact, the new Mrs. Whitmore.
Clifford’s mom, Gifford’s deceased wife, had been gone about seven years. That was when the father and son’s relationship really deteriorated. The chief had had his son arrested back then when the son allegedly came to his father’s house, that time also brandishing a gun.
Attorney Frank Russell said he was going to visit son Clifford at the county jail and decide if he would represent him at his grand jury hearing that was scheduled about two weeks later. He confessed that he had little background in criminal law, and was primarily a military lawyer.
Son Clifford had been in critical condition with a .38-caliber bullet in his chest. His condition improved, even though he still had the bullet inside of him, and he was put in county jail.
His stepmother, with whom there was apparently no love lost, was released on her own recognizance, despite being charged with the same crime as her stepson. She said she was unaware of any court date for herself.
The county prosecutor’s office said that there was a possibility that Mrs. Whitmore could have her grand jury session in a few days. The prosecuting attorney said he was still determining if he could pursue the assault charges lodged against the stepmother.
Clifford’s brother Howard, who lived in Bloomingdale, said that Clifford still had pain in his left hand and in the side of his body where the bullet was still lodged.
Clifford was “all right” otherwise, reported Howard, but eager “to get out.” Clifford said he had no objection to taking a lie detector test, according to his brother.
I’ll keep following this story through the archives since it seems to have grabbed new attention 45 years after it happened.
Donation to slain leader
Medgar Evers, a black civil rights activist, was killed on June 12, 1963 by a KKK member. A local Girl Scout sent the NAACP about $50 that she saved up to visit a dude ranch in Washington.
A sergeant in the US Army who fought in WWII, Evers started his civil rights campaign after he returned home to Mississippi and registered to vote. When he and other blacks showed up at the polling location, armed white men intimidated them into going home without pulling the lever.
“I made up my mind then that it would not be like that again – at least not for me. I was committed, in a way, to change things,” he said about that incident.
He enrolled in university and got more heavily involved with the civil rights movement. He was a leader of desegregation campaigns and legal injustices, and drew thousands to his cause. The KKK member who shot and killed him was at first acquitted, but three decades later in 1994, new evidence surfaced, and he was tried again and found guilty and spent the rest of his life in prison.
On the front page of the June 27, 1963 Suburban Trends is a story about the Ringwood Girl Scout, 11-year-old Katie Ehrlich.
“It is a shame that people don’t realize that the color of a person doesn’t make them necessarily good or bad,” said Katie about why she decided to start over on her vacation fund by giving up her savings.
“The Negro is on the march. His movement appears to be general rather than sporadic. The NAACP and CORE are not isolated, minor groups crying for recognition while the masses remain docile,” we said in an editorial. “They represent the colored masses and their actions are backed by the millions.”
“A wind which started in Africa at the time of the slave-traders and increased in intensity with the Emancipation Proclamation is rapidly whipping, up a full-size hurricane. How much of a swath will it cut before all the people of this nation ride with it rather than erect the flimsy bulwarks of bigotry, intolerance and outmoded tradition in its path?” we asked.
1963 – Weird Army shooting
An army private stationed at the Nike missile base in Franklin Lakes/Mahwah allegedly goofed off and taunted a base guard, who then shot and killed him.
“Go ahead and shoot,” were allegedly the last words of Pfc. Richard E. McClish, 21.
“McClish died on the way to Valley Hospital in Ridgewood after he was fatally shot in what Army authorities term ‘an accident,’ when he snarled the taunting words at a sentry. His body was taken to New York and the Army Mortuary service there to determine the exact location of the fatal carbine charge,” it was reported.
Pfc. Arthur Cunningham, 20, was put in a stockade at Fort Jay on Governors Island.
A military investigation team was at the Nike base, trying to reconstruct the events that led to the fatal shooting.
The story so far was that McClish (also referred to as “McClive”) in the article, was arguing with a third man when Cunningham shot him. Cunningham was guarding his post and told the arguing men to move it along.
He reportedly warned McClish/McClive several times before loading a magazine into his gun and preparing it to fire. He allegedly pointed the gun at McClive and it just “went off.”
Army officials said that depending on the type of weapon Cunningham was holding, it could have fired “with a slight movement, and even if it were grabbed wrong. Cunningham’s gun could accidentally have gone off.”
Cunningham remained incarcerated as the Army continued its investigation.
1963 – Pulp fiction writer’s story
Brave frontiersmen rescuing sexy cowgirls from savage Indians. Rolling out west with a sexy blonde frontierswoman who can handle a whip as she drives a wagon. Those types of images were on the covers of romanticized pulp fiction magazines about the mythical American West.
A man from Riverdale made a living writing these kinds of stories for magazines like “Frontier Stories.” Starting in 1940, DeWitt Newbury authored over two dozen published pulp magazine stories from his house on the Newark-Pompton Turnpike. He stopped doing it in 1958 when the pulp industry dwindled.
“Paperback books and television killed the pulp magazine,” said DeWitt. “Only one of those magazines I wrote for is still in print, and that one has changed its style completely.”
Newbury also wrote stories with a Revolutionary War setting, but DeWitt said those wouldn’t sell until WWII was over, because the “special relationship” between the U.S. and the U.K. made stories about war between the two later allies unpopular. He also wrote stories with the French and Indian War as a setting.
His least-popular stories? The ones with a Civil War setting.
Newbury reportedly exhaustively researched history. He wrote the story “The Luck of the Viking: The Rousing, Blood Warming Tale of a Viking who Believed in and Followed the Omens of his Gods” after reading the ancient writings of Icelandic chieftain Snori Sturluson. He also wrote about French frontiersman in Canada and beaver trappers of the Rocky Mountains.
Although most of his published stories took place in the American West, Newbury confessed, “I didn’t like writing Westerns.”
A photograph showed the 74-year-old man at a typewriter smoking a pipe that reportedly rarely left his mouth. That typewriter had been given to him by his father when he was in high school.
“I have a new typewriter too, but I like this old one better,” he said.
Newbury was born in Brooklyn and then his family moved to Montclair where he graduated high school. That was the extent of his schooling.
“I haven’t had much formal education,” he said. “After high school, I didn’t want to go to college. I studied sculpture in New York, but I never did much with it.”
Instead, he managed the family farm that had been 38 acres. Then he fought in WWI, was poisoned by mustard gas, hospitalized, and then sent home to the farm to recuperate.
Then he worked as a claims adjuster before the Great Depression closed down his company. It was then that he began writing.
“I never got rich doing it, but I always made a living,” said Newbury.
He was a bachelor who lived alone after his sister had died about a year before this article about him was published.
His neighbors cared about the old man. One made him install a phone by his bed so that she could call to check up on him every night.
“All my neighbors are very kind,” he said.
Neighborhood children reportedly visited all the time to have him relate to them the history of the area for school projects.
He also liked to go camping when he was younger and collect Indian artifacts along the Delaware River.
Newbury said his favorite stuff to read were history books and historical fiction. His favorite book was “Lorna Doone.”
We asked the fiction writer what he thought of the space race between the US and Soviet Union. He said he really didn’t think much about outer space, and didn’t feel too strongly about it.
“I’m old-fashioned. I’m from the horse and buggy days.”
One giant leap we didn’t want to happen
That was a particularly weird way to end the article -– by asking the old author about outer space, getting a noncommittal answer, but publishing it anyway. Apparently, we had the enormous expense of the space race on our minds. In an editorial, we lashed out against the money being spent on the space program while poor children did not even have shoes in our country.
“Somehow or other, we just can't take these space jaunts, Russian, American or otherwise, very seriously. We can, however, quite seriously deplore the money that is being spent in chasing the stars,” we said.
The US had “nothing to show for its efforts” in space exploration yet, but had more immediate problems on this planet, we said.
“The United States seems to be in the grip of a school which dictates that we must follow the Russians in an attempt to surpass them. Thus far, we've fallen far short of this objective. Nevertheless, much money has been spent on space flights, some successful and others based on devices which never left the ground,” we said. “Funds expended for the space project could have better been used for schools, welfare and the development and expansion of our natural resources. Few voices are raised in protest. This may be because the ‘follow Russia’ philosophy has been so firmly implanted in society that contrary thoughts are taboo.”
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