Friday, Aug. 19, 1966
The Texas Killer
Sir: The fact that Charles Whitman [Aug. 12] was psychotic and is now dead is unimportant to the unaccountable, unbalanced, whacked-up bunch of people who will strive to perpetrate any crime for the sake of the publicity, as you well know. How can you elevate such a person to that extent? Charles Whitman may be "news"--but isn't there someone in this country who deserved enough commendation last week to have appeared on your cover? You could always resort to a picture of Niagara Falls.
Jo RENNER
Ambler, Pa.
Sir: Whitman told his psychiatrist he had a desire to shoot people from high places. That nothing was done in the light of this threat I consider to be a gross moral, if not professional, lapse on the part of the psychiatrist. It is criminal that this boy could have seen a psychiatrist and not have had basic tests done, such as an encephalogram, which could have spotted the cause of his suffering and led to control of his antisocial behavior.
KATHERINE HOWARD
Minneapolis
Sir: In these times of euphemism--of a softening of language as soft as the brains of those who are softening it--let us not forget that Whitman was a bully, a pervert and a coward. He was a pervert in that he enjoyed murdering more than not murdering. He was a coward in that he fled his problems through death--and had not the courage to take his own life, but forced the responsibility on another.
Louis P. SHEPHERD
Associate Professor of English State College
Fitchburg, Mass.
Sir: I trust Officers Martinez and McCoy of the Austin police will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law for the way they conducted themselves during the slaughter on August 1. It would appear that these policemen went to the University of Texas tower and shot that nice young man without even extending to him the courtesy of first informing him of his rights, such as his right to refuse to be questioned if he didn't feel like being questioned, his right to have a lawyer at his side, etc. Didn't this constitute police brutality at its worst?
JACK C. DEAGAN
Chicago
Sir: TIME is to be commended for setting the record straight as to the meaning of "the right to bear arms." That phrase has been used out of context by the gun lobby in its fight against a reasonable firearms law to suggest that every man, woman and child has a right to be armed to the teeth. The Founding Fathers never sought to inject such a remarkable concept into the Second Amendment. The Kennedy assassination, the attack on James Meredith, the University of Texas rampage must arouse Congress to enact laws aimed at keeping firearms out of the hands of the unstable, the immature and the antisocial.
PETER BUCK FELLER
Washington, B.C.
Sir: You are correct when you say, in reviewing Carl Bakal's The Right to Bear Arms [July 29], that the U.S. of 1966 has no marauding redcoats or redskins. But unfortunately we do have the Black Muslims, Hell's Angels, the Ku Klux Klan, etc. Since the beginning of time, man has needed to defend himself. To deny the honest citizen easy access to firearms is to deny him a life without fear.
VANCE MCLAUGHLIN
Pittsburgh
Old Shoes & Rice
Sir: You must have searched endlessly to find any possible justification for the Pat and Luci cover story [Aug. 5]. American soldiers are being killed in Viet Nam, many of our major cities are riot-torn, Britain's financial crisis is in its most crucial hour, and this country is faced with inflation and with crippling strikes. Although you may consider the marriage of Luci Johnson of paramount significance, I think I speak for the overwhelming majority of people who saw your story--who needs it?
W. HOLLIS PETERSEN
Bronxville, N.Y.
Sir: If Women's Wear Baily was barred from the reception merely for revealing the wedding-dress design, TIME'S people must have been maxima non grata after printing that 1956 snapshot. Even we Lyndonphobes thought it ungentlemanly to remind the swan there was a duckling.
J. P. POWERS
Boonton, N.J.
Sir: If Luci's Secret Service code name is Venus, Lynda's Velvet, and Lady Bird's Victoria, then what does that make L.B.J.? Vicissitudinous? Your cover story on Luci and Pat was enjoyable and the cover itself was beautiful.
CAROLYN HESTER New York City
Not Tales But Truth
Sir: Temple University's "Encore Club" applauds TIME'S cover story, "The Command Generation" [July 29]. We "coeds over 21" applaud Temple for permitting us to toil amidst flaming youth--some of them our own offspring.
Last June our cofounder, Mrs. Cora Myers, mother of three, graduated summa cum laude. She will continue her studies on a scholarship at Bryn Mawr Graduate School of Social Work. This month our president, Mrs. Mary Krassen, mother of two college students, is completing her undergraduate work in the record time of 2 1/2. years. She will teach in Philadelphia.
Everybody join in rousing cheers for our wonderful husbands and families, who are making it possible for us to begin a new life at 40 or thereabouts.
ILSA R. KATZ
Philadelphia
Sir: Pertinent to your excellent article on middle age are those lines from Chesterton's great epic, The Ballad of the White Horse: "But the hour shall come after his youth,/ When a man shall know not tales but truth,/ And his heart fail thereat."
FREDERICK C. DYER, 48
Panajachel, Solola, Guatemala
Harvest of Hope
Sir: As one who considers "The Struggle to End Hunger" [Aug. 12] as important a problem as any in our time, I am impressed by the balance and comprehensiveness of your fine Essay. I agree that only by combining expanded U.S. output with agricultural self-help in developing lands can we hope to avert world famine.
WALTER F. MONO ALE
U.S. Senator from Minnesota
Washington, D.C.
History Lesson
Sir: Harold Stassen's letter [Aug. 5] proposing a "Fourth Alternative" in Viet Nam is based on two inaccurate observations. He asserts that "historically, the North, known as Tongking, and the South, known as Annam, were separate," and that "the North and South each have a viable economic base."
Viet Nam was a political entity in the 18th century, though plagued by North-South conflict. With the penetration of the French, it was divided into the colonial units of Tongking, Annam and Cochinchina. Today's South Viet Nam consists of most of Annam plus Cochinchina, a fact that has profound political implications because of historical differences between the regions.
The economies of North and South are complementary, not self-sufficient. In the colonial period, the North was the industrial area with "mineral resources, and the South was the agricultural region. According to Bernard Fall, "The division of Viet Nam in 1954 left deep scars in the economic field as well as in the political field."
ERROL M. CLAUSS
ssistant Professor of History Salem College
Winston-Salem, N.C.
With Grace
Sir: "Cautious" we may be, and "old" we are, as you suggest in your excellent story on Peru [Aug. 5], but "packing our hags" in Latin America we surely are not. On the contrary, we are more active in more countries there than ever before. In 1961-65, our capital expenditures in Latin America totaled $73 million, an alltime high. This year they will be close to $30 million. Now that we have reached the $1 billion sales mark, our Latin American investment is a smaller percentage of our entire structure, and the "mix" has changed toward high-technology enterprises. The whole company is bigger, and so is our stake in Latin America--and growing. We like it that way.
PETER GRACE
President
W. R. Grace & Co. New York City
The Real McCoy
Sir: TIME'S story "McCoy's Navy" [Aug. 5] recalls my first meeting with Roy McCoy. He was building a bicycle rack for a school in Coronado, Calif. In contrast to the pickets who express their discontent by merely marching in circles, the McCoys are the kind of people who actively meet the needs of community life. Should hostilities cease tomorrow, McCoy would be looking for ways to build bridges of good will and mutual understanding. Ingenuity and creative action are part of his life style. HAROLD A. MACNEILL Chaplain, U.S.N. Portsmouth, Va.
Spiking the Ball
Sir: "Little played" indeed! Both indignation and surprise result from your monumental inaccuracy in describing volleyball in your L'Equipe story as a little-played minor sport [Aug. 5].
Volleyball is the No. 1 sport of the world from the standpoint of actual participation. It beckons both sexes, all ages from eight to 80, involves grammar school children on all continents, entices the octogenarians of the Himalayas, delights beach bathers throughout the world, has become a varsity sport in the armed services, and in 1964 became an official Olympic sport. The news media thrive on the spectator interests in the sports world, but it is the doer rather than the watcher who is the real sportsman.
HARRY PINCUS JR.
Tidewater Volleyball Association
Norfolk, Va.
Crash Reports
Sir: Your statement, "Flying doctors had a fatal-accident rate four times as high as the average for all other private pilots" [Aug. 5] is misleading. Physicians with better-than-average incomes have high-performance aircraft, fly more than other groups, and therefore have greater exposure to accidents. Even so, members of the Flying Physicians Association, numbering 2,000 (about half the known U.S. and Canadian physician pilots), have an accident rate approximately the same as the average. We believe that our requirements of certification of higher aviation skills, such as basic instrument ability as a requirement for membership renewal, result in more responsible and safer flying.
H. D. VICKERS, M.D.
Editor
The Flying Physician Little Falls, N.Y.
Sir: Your story on flying physicians comes as no great surprise to any commercial flight instructor. Two years ago, at an instructor refresher course, instructors from all over the U.S. were unanimous in believing that doctors were their worst students. They were also unanimously of the opinion that once a doctor received a private license, he represented the poorest product of the instructor's efforts. The cause? You simply cannot tell an M.D. anything. The good doctor knows it all. The FAA official hit the nail on the head when he said, "Doctors fly with the feeling that they are omnipotent."
ROBERT B. LOGAN
Commercial Flight Instructor
Smyrna, Ga.
Don't Go Near the Water
Sir: Of Tropical Fish Hobbyist Herbert Axelrod [July 29], TIME says "he delights in swimming in piranha-infested rivers just to prove that piranhas are not man-eaters." This is not in accord with my childhood memories of placing my hand against the glass wall of the piranha tank in the hometown aquarium for the thrill of watching these aggressive Lilliputians try to attack the hand.
A piranha-fishing trip last month in the headwaters of the Amazon River confirmed my impressions. The ferocity with which these creatures went after the bait was remarkable. The hands of our Indian guides were covered with scars of old piranha bites. Upon catching one of these tiny demons, the guides immediately had to cut certain nerves about the piranha's mouth to prevent its biting us.
A hog tossed from the boat was devoured by a school of piranhas in 15 minutes. When the local people wish to drive cattle across these rivers, they sacrifice the oldest cow, driving it into the river first as bait. While the attention of the piranhas is focused on consuming that animal, the rest of the cattle cross in relative safety a few feet upstream. It is not difficult to see how, given the proper opportunity, a school of piranhas could devour a human being.
Swimming in these rivers proves nothing about piranhas; not every square foot of the Amazon River system is infested by them, any more than every patch of our Rockies is covered with mountain lions. Our guides also bathed every day--generally toward the middle of the rivers where the water flowed freely.
BEVERLY MAY CARL
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Not Guilty
Sir: As Cynthia Ozick's ill-fed, unkempt, rumpled and generally undusted husband, I deny your characterization of her--in your otherwise shining review of Trust [Aug. 12]--as a "housewife." That, God knows, she is not.
BERNARD HALLOTE
New Rochelle, N.Y.
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