Banner Graphic, Volume 10, Number 230, Greencastle, Putnam County, 2 June 1980 — Page 3

Carter visits Fort Wayne hospital

Police get chance Tuesday to question woman who was with Jordan

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (API - Investigators looked toward Tuesday’s long-awaited interview with the only eyewitness to the shooting of National Urban League President Vernon E. Jordan Jr. to provide new sharks to an investigation gone cold Meanwhile, race relations in Indiana’s second largest city also showed signs of heating up. as a group of young blacks demonstrated Sunday for the second consecutive day. President Carter, visiting

Strikers picket Northern Indiana Public Service as talks collapse

HAMMOND, Ind. (AP) - Picket lines went up just after midnight Sunday at Northern Indiana Public Service Co. when officials representing more than 4,000 workers refused to accept the company’s offer. The strike culminated a marathon bargaining session with federal mediators that keep NTPSCO management and United Steelworkers’ officials at the negotiating table since Tuesday. The strike involves United Steelworkers Locals 12775 and 13796, which include 3,279 con-

Times are especially hard for Indiana's 'RV' Industry

By REGINALD STUART c. 1980 N.Y. Times News Service ELKHART, Ind. When America’s appetite for recreational vehicles surged in the last decade, a multitude of related businesses strung across northern Indiana and across the border in Michigan were so busy at times that they rivaled the bustle of the spring planting season in this state’s agricultural regions. From South Bend to Angola and dipping as far south as Fort Wayne, a vibrant new industry grew up, ranging from the hundreds of family retail operations like Lazy Bee RV Sales 'in Mishawaka, run by Burton and Mary Lou Bennett, to the scores of manufacturers like Coachmen Industries in Middlebury, which started in a garage and mushroomed into the nation’s largest full-line manufacturer of recreational vehicles. ( . By 1978, this part of the country was the home of more than 50 percent of the nation’s recreational vehicle industry. It seemed that the sky was the limit. „ Today, as hard times set in around the country, even harder times have hit “RV” land. Area residents fear that the recreational vehicle business, now only about half the size it was three years ago, will never rebound to past levels. They also believe that the area’s overall economy will never be the same. , “Closed” and “For Sale” signs bedeck small businesses. The big plants that have not already been closed are barely operating in towns like Wakarusa, home of Holiday Rambler; Topeka, home of Starcraft, and Middlebury, where Coachmen and Jayco Inc., a smaller competitor, have headquarters. The unemployment rate in the Elkhart area alone was 10.2 percent in April, as against 6.6 percent nationwide. Local residents say that it would have been higher hajd many laid-off workers not returned to farm work and many others moved to other parts of the country. “The only thing worse than being out of business is being in,” said Bennett of Mishawaka, who early last month liquidated the last of the motor homes and trailers at Lazy Bee. “I look around and wonder how anybody is .staying in business,” he said. It was in the spring of 1977 that the industry, then recovered from a slump related to the Arab oil embargo, received another jolt: President Carter’s first major energy message, in which he proposed a program to increase fuel costs and to reduce energy consumption. New automobiles survived Carter’s gloomy pronouncements, Bennett said, but sales of recreational vehicles dropped sharply. Despite a rebound in 1978, the industry has not been the same again and business has continued to erode. Last year the industry was hurt by soaring fuel prices and concern about

Jordan at Parkview Memorial Hospital Sunday, said the shooting could prompt renewed efforts to improve conditions for the country’s minorities. “This is obviously a time for us to recommit ourselves to the protection of poor and minority groups,” Carter told reporters outside the hospital’s intensive care unit. “It certainly is a reminder that we need to redouble our efforts.” The black civil rights activist was gunned down by a sniper Thursday after speaking at the

state

struction, maintenance, operating and laboratory workers and 959 clerical employees. Union spokesman Jerry Phelps said pay, increased pension benefits, seniority, sick leave and medical care are among the major issues still unsettled. NIPSCO president Edmund A. Schroer said the company offered to extend the current contract and negotiations, but the union refused to do that unless NIPSCO met the union’s demands on pensions and insurance. Schroer said the company is

gasoline shortages. This year, tight credit has been a major problem. Recalling how he and his wife started their business in 1972 with a $2,000 loan, Bennett said: “By 1978 we had grossed $1.3 million. Last year it was half of that and this year we quit.” The Bennetts have been trying to sell their property since January to help settle remaining debts of SIB,OOO. But even selling real estate has been difficult, he said, because “people just don’t know what’s coming next.” The Bennetts say that their dream was to give Lazy Bee to their four children. But the dream has been shattered and they are now headed for Florida in search of jobs. Jayco Inc., one of the region’s well-known manufacturers, is operating at 40 percent of capacity, according to Lloyd J. Bontrager, who started the business on his farm in 1968 with 40 employees. By 1978, the number of employees had grown to 320. Today only 143 people are on the payroll and most of them are not working full-time, Bontrager said. The average line worker’s income this year is only a third to half of what it was in 1978, he said. Executives at other big manufacturing concerns in the area paint the same gloomy picture. The situation has created hardships for scores of young Amish men who reluctantly left their family farms to work in the plants so that they save enough money to buy their own farms. Vernon Slabach, a 22-year-old Amish utility worker at Jayco, left his father’s farm five years ago to work for the concern. “I had a couple of younger brothers and we only had 80 acres,” he said. “Dad told me to get a job if I can, so I started out as a cushion stuffer. “I’d like to farm if I could, but I can’t afford to buy my horse and stuff I need to go out and doit.” No one, from the chief executives to the line workers, expects the industry to be as vibrant as it once was. Douglas W. Toms, president of Holiday Rambler, where employment related to recreational vehicles drpjped from 1,300 two years ago to about 300, including part-time workers, said that the industry’s problems had “cost a lot of people their jobs” and created “a great mood of pessimism and bitterness toward President Carter because we don’t have a stable economy.” Toms, like other executives in the industry, believes that the bottom of the slump may have been reached. But he does not expect a business turnaround like the one in 1978, when the industry produced more than 500,000 vehicles. “We’ll be lucky to reach half that in the 1980 s ” he said.

local Urban League’s annual dinner at the Marriott Hotel. Police say they have no suspects and are aware of only one eyewitness to the shooting, 36-year-old Martha C. Coleman of Fort Wayne, who was among those joining Jordan for drinks after his speech. About 1 a.m., police said, Mrs. Coleman and Jordan left the ho‘pl bar and headed to her home for coffee. They returned to the hotel an hour later. Jordan was shot as he walked from Mrs. Coleman’s car to his

willing to bargain both wages and benefits within President Carter’s guidelines provided that work rules are revised. “The company cannot bargain wages when the union refuses to bargain related work rules and productivity, particularly when the union’s wage demands are greatly in excess of the maximum allowed under the President’s guidelines,” Schroer said. The NIPSCO president said “every effort will be made to maintain normal service to customers throught northern indiana by the 2,060 technical.

motel room, police said. A sniper fired the shot from a grassy gully across an interstate offramp about 60 yards from the hotel. Mrs. Coleman was questioned by local police for about Vk hours immediately following the shooting before going into seclusion. Since then, all contact with the witness has been through her attorneys, despite repeated attempts by police to arrange a meeting. Police submitted questions to Mrs. Coleman’s attorneys Sunday, and they provided some informattion about both her personal life and her actions immediately after the shooting. Investigators refused to comment on those questions. Carter also talked with investigators during his 50-minute visit to Fort Wayne, but said he didn’t have “any information I want to divulge concerning the investigation.” The president was driven past

professional and supervisory employees who will be on the job.” Phelps said the company was well prepared for the strike, noting that trailers have been set up at generating stations in Wheatfield, Gary, Michigan City and Hammond for supervisory personnel. He said the company has one supervisor for every 2 workers, with supervisors earning an average salary of $24,015. Linemen earn an average $16,103. NIPSCO serves customers in 30 northern Indiana counties.

Anderson signatures drive set By The Associated Press Hoosier political workers supporting independent presidential candidate John B. Anderson will be turned loose Saturday to collect the signatures needed to put their man on the November ballot. The petition drive will begin on Saturday, Anderson volunteers say, following a meeting at Indianapolis of volunteers from around the state. Anderson supporters must submit petitions with the signatures of 6,991 registered voters to state election officials to secure the independent a spot on the November ballot in Indiana. “There are some really nice people calling and asking if they can help,” said Sally Bosworth, a volunteer heading the Indianapolis Anderson effort. “We take their names and promise to get back to them, and we will.” She continued, “Some people want to help, but they don’t even know where we are located. We get letters addressed ‘Anderson for President, somewhere on the Circle.’ It makes us feel good that the letters are delivered.” “I have between 40 and 60 volunteers, and we are trying to keep their interest up,” John L. Warmack Jr., Anderson’s Evansville coordinator, said. “As soon as we can begin the drive to gather the signatures of 6,991 registered voters, we will be able to use their talents.” Ernest M. Beal Jr., 27, a Fort Wayne lawyer who will coordinate the Allen County effort, says he joined Anderson’s campaign because of the candidate’s direct, honest approach. “He doesn’t tell you what you want to hear, he tells you what you need to know,” Beal said. “He has shown a refreshing candor and my associates say they are tuned off by the political party’s control and structure.” In addition to the petition drive, Anderson supporters also will seek a surrogate vice-presi-dential candidate until the Illinois congressman names his own.

the hotel for a first hand look at the scene of the shooting. Carter said he talked with Jordan about “the necessity for him to carry out doctors’ orders,” and the concern that has been expressed across the country for the black leader. Jordan’s condition was still listed as serious but stable Sunday night. Hospital officials and visitors said his health and spirits were improving rapidly. He has even made light of the attempt on his life, according to Walter Leonard, a national Urban League board member who spoke with Jordan Sunday. Leonard, who is president of Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn., said Jordan quipped that “he feels sorry for the guy who did it, because if he got paid to do it, he’s not going to get paid.” Jordan has not yet been permitted to read newspapers but has watched television, hospital officalssaid. In the days following the shooting, local black leaders

had maintained the position that Fort Wayne, which has an 11 percent black population is a city virtually free of racial tension. “There’s been strife here in the past but it’s certainly not here now,” said John Nuckols, a four term black city councilman. It is a view that has been echoed by Robert Williams Jr., Fort Wayane’s Urban League’s executive director. But there was growing evidence Sunday that not all the city’s blacks agree. Gary Hatch of FortWajAie, who led a group of about 40 demonstators called Black Youth in Action in a march outside the hospital, said the group was formed after “a man with that great leadership wasshot in the back with a hunting rifle that you would shoot a deer with. “What made the Young Blacks angry is the clergymen and others saying there is no racial tension in Fort Wayne,” Hatch said. “There is a whole

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June 2,1980, The Putnam County Banner Graphic

lot of racial tension.” Among the signs carried by the demonstrators was one reading “bring forth Martha Coleman.” Hatch said his group shares the frustration of investigators at the delays encountered in efforts to interview her. But Fort Wayne Chief of Detectives Kenneth Van Ryn said Sunday that Mrs. Coleman “wants to cooperate completely with us.” He said she has been urged to remain in hiding by her lawyers. “I absolutely know she’s not responsible for anything, but knowing that absolutely is not enough,” said Charles F. Leonard, who is representing Mrs. Coleman. “ I’m trying to figure out where everyone else is coming from.” Police said Sunday that Mrs. Coleman called Leonard from a pay telephone in the hotel lobby “within a few minutes of the shooting,” Police also said that no fin-

gerprints were found on the shell casing that was recovered' after the shooting. Fort Wayne police spokesman Dan Gibson said local police believe at least two shots were fired at Jordan. But FBI special agent WAayne G. DAvis said his bureau is focusing on a single shot theory. “Only one shell casing has been found. It’s a very good possibility only one shot was fired,” Davis said. Authorities are also probing the selection of Jordan’s hotel room. The corner room provided a clear shot for the sniper, said Gibson, who added “That’S definitely something we’re looking at.” Williams said the reservation was made by a local Urban League worker who was asked by National Urban League officals to get Jordan a queensize bed.

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