The Coral Gables Times

THE CORAL GABLES TIMES

Established Jan. 16, 1926 Published Weekly at 364 Sevilla Ave., Coral Gables, Fla. Second Class Postage Paid at Miami, Fla. ROLFE NEILL | Editor & Publisher JOHN T. WATTERS | President ROBERT M. SLANE | Advertising Manager ROY SPEIER | Circulation Manager MAURICE LABELLE, RAYMOND LANG, BECKY DOYLE-QUINN | Reporters Subscription: $3.00 year by mail anywhere

You Asked Us, Mrs. B.

Mrs. Clarence Brandes called us one morning recently and asked what stand the Times intended to take on the matter of rezoning Le Jeune Road from residential to commercial now that the widened street is becoming a traffic artery. The Brandes' home, at the corner of Malaga and Le Jeune, is virtually in the revised roadway. There is no question but that it is undesirable to live in with vehicles whizzing by within a few feet. The family has sought to have their property changed to commercial, a classification it once was. Well, Mrs. Brandes, having researched the matter in the meantime, we take our stand: The Times backs the Zoning Board's decision to leave zoning on Le Jeune as it is. We do so with full sympathy for your beleaguered dwelling but make our choice on the grounds that a greater number of home owners would be discommoded by any change. What happens to adjacent dwellings on streets leading into Le Jeune if the Le Jeune-side property becomes commercial? We think the Zoning Board wise to try to preserve areas intact and avoid spot zoning. We don't think it's impossible to have a heavily-trafficked road and still maintain residences, witness Bird Road and Coral Way. If the complaint is that Le Jeune is too busy a roadway then certainly it makes no sense to increase congestion by creating more business-shades of 27th Avenue and its ugly strip. There is something to be said for both sides in this matter. We like the suggestion of City Commissioner Joe Murphy who indicated at a recent commission meeting that perhaps tax relief might be in order. But as for the zoning itself, leave it as is.

Come Now, Mr. Hodges

We sort of gagged over a statement of Luther Hodges' in the Sunday tabloids of last week end. Br'er Hodges, you remember, is the U.S. Secretary of Commerce now and has quite a talent for selling, proved first for Marshall Field and later as governor of North Carolina. He excelled in both jobs. What Hodges said that irked us was this: He pointed out that 93-odd per cent of disposal income was disposed of in 1960 and only 92-odd per cent was disposed of in 1961. His point was that just this 1+ difference rated in billions and would be quite a boost to the economy. Whatever happened to the idea, Mr. Hodges, of saving something? Have you clean forgotten your log cabin raisin'?

UM: From Playboy ship To Scholarship

Time magazine acknowledgeds formally in this week's issue what local folks have known for some time: The University of Miami is on the move into better academic circles. Says the news weekly, in part: "For most of its 35 years, the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Fla., turned out many expert playboys, few true scholars. But the University of Miami has lately grown up, both in scholarship and civic responsibility. "This week a group of 50 Negroes, mostly undergraduate students, started summer session in the first lowering of the color bar at the largest independent school in the Southeast..." The article so refreshingly free of sneer or bias as to be almost unTimely-goes on to note the crackdown of the University on some of the student cavorting (a la Roney Plaza) and the school's awarding of its first two PhD degrees this month. The Times takes this opportunity to applaud UM's board of trustees for its decision earlier this year to make the school open to any student, irrespective of the pigmentation of his skin. The first item of business of a university is wisdom, although there are still many which maintain segregated student bodies in the face of incontrovertible knowledge they themselves dispense through the classroom. Cheers, UM, for doing what's right and for getting national note while you're about it.

THE MAILBOX

May I, through your newspaper, thank five Coral Gables policemen? This is long overdue, but anytime is a good time to say "thank you" for a kindness which will never be forgotten. I am an old lady... and I am very frail. On Dec. 1, while waiting for my daughter to finish her shopping in one of the food stores, I was struck by a heavy food cart and a finger on my right hand was broken. The hurt and surprise came at once. I simply shook like a leaf in a strong wind and was so weak and nervous I could not stop crying. Into the store walked five Coral Gables policemen who came directly to me. This frightened me even more... So I cried louder. The men held me up while attempting to aid my daughter... How kind these men were to me, a strange old lady. I ruined several clean, white shirts worn by the men who held me in their arms. Then my long hair fell down and one of these policemen pinned it up so carefully. They made a rest for my broken finger and held my hand up so as to restrict the flow of blood and just let me cry and cry, not once showing anything except sympathetic concern for me. How grateful both my daughter and family and I feel toward these kind policemen. I hope each one is happily married and that God's blessings will often be theirs. I do not know the names of any of those men, but to each, I wish to express my sincere thanks. MRS. MARY S. GREER 1037 Alfonso Ave. THE TIMES looked into the matter and has the names of the five men who came to your assistance. Three are Gables policemen and two are with the rescue squad of the Fire Department. The policemen are Russell H. Jones, George W. Limbey and Robert L. Seebee. The firemen are Jerome S. Kirk and Thomas W. Wilkerson.

'Rotten To The Core'

Bob Cousy says it is not basketball that is rotten. It's American society. Cousy is a star player for the professional Celtics of Boston. He was speaking of the basketball gambling revelations that have not yet ended. "To my way of thinking," he said, "the players involved are the least guilty of any one at all involved in creating their environment." His final verdict was: "Our American society has become rotten to the core." He added that "this is the society that these players have been brought up in." It's an old argument as to what determines character, heredity or environment. Cousy leaves no doubt as to where he stands. He supports his accusation by reference to income tax shaving, illegal insurance rebates and other business practices. He might have mentioned the jailing of several officials of the big electrical companies for illegal price fixing. "Illegal but not criminal," said one of the accused officials in a hurt voice, implying that so long as one is not caught he is not an evil doer. In our society evil is a relative thing. Undoubtedly many persons do not consider it wrong to defraud the government or to gouge the public. They deem the government and the public to be abstractions, or mere words. Or they defend themselves by arguing that "everybody does it." What Cousy has done is to chronicle the death of an old code. A new code will have to be built up in which lines must be clear. For a civilization cannot rest on crookedness or blurred lines. Strange that this truth comes through basketball. -PHILLIPS RUSSELL

-Reprinted from The New Yorker "I've just completed a sort of survey. Every single person here has now told me that he despises cocktail parties."

And Grace Kelly Was a Girl The Day My Private World Ended

By ELVA CHARLTON Correspondent The stock market crashed and so did Joy, and the grandfather's clock could tell the tale. We thought in '26 when we named our baby Joy, that no pain or grief could ever touch us; and for six years after her birth, Bill and I lived in a gossamer fairyland. It was a period of gaiety... poker... roulette wheels and bridge. Orchestras for private use... gardeners (not yard men) ... full time sleep-in-help and cocktail parties with "bathtub gin." Jack Kelly was not so famous then. He was just a nice guy with a child named Grace, and Bobby Jones played on the golf course adjoining our house. A period of extensive entertaining, when no evening was complete without a party, and a famous Italian opera star joined us in our inebriated singing. The Lindbergh kidnapping plastered the front pages of the newspapers. Our house in Merion Golf Manor was on Philadelphia's Main Line, and bordered the Merion golf and cricket club. Bill managed three businesses at once and held directors' meetings in our large play room below stairs. As you entered the house through the massive oak door, the grandfather's clock greeted you. It stood gracefully in the well of the winding stairway. The stairway had a wrought iron rail, and the center hall had a marble floor. The bedroom was not very private, unless the lights were out. Two whole sides were opened by French doors. On one side was a balcony overlooking the golf course, and on the other side was an awninged sun porch. The bedroom was the scene of all our disagreements, but also the scene of many sweet reconciliations. This one Sunday morning, it was the scene of tragedy. The morning of the accident Bill and I were playing golf, but not together. It was the maid's day off, and my mother and father were minding Joy. The ranger came to get us and Bill got home first. My mother met me at the door. When I looked at her face, I could not see the terror in her heart, for feeling it in mine. "Joy's still alive," she blurted. "The doctor is with her. She was climbing on the stair railing and fell over." But I heard no more for I was up the stairs. Joy lay prone on our double bed, where she had laughed just a few hours before as we read her the funnies. Her screams were temporarily stilled as she dozed in fits of unconsciousness. The doctor sat beside her, fingers on her pulse. A basin was at her head. I stood frozen in the doorway, not understanding and afraid to ask. I felt the doctor's accusation when he said, "It is a head injury." "It's impossible to tell yet what damage has been done to the brain." He shook his head as though there was no hope and said, "That marble floor! Your husband is calling the ambulance." Things when they happen strike us with such impact, that-each tiny detail is etched upon our mind; and I can never forget that night as Bill and I sat outside the Bryn Mawr Hospital and waited for the X-ray reports. I felt I did not exist at all for Bill when he said with a sob, "If Joy dies, I just don't want to live." When the reports showed a clean fracture of the skull from front to back with no indication of any damage to the brain, the relief was overwhelming. We went back home in the soft, silent night, hands clasped in thankfulness. Lying on the floor in the center hall was the spiral top of the grandfather's clock. The soft light of the lamps made the mahogany glew with almost human warmth. The chimes sounded 2 o'clock and seemed to say what no words could ever say. "I tried to catch her, at least I broke the fall." The stockmarket crash was a harbinger of the Depression to come. But no shock of the financial ruin that immediately followed could touch us with quite the impact that it did the rest of you. Bill and I had each other and we had Joy, and we still have the grandfather's clock. (Come see it and have coffee and we'll reminisce over the Depression.)