Banner Graphic, Volume 15, Number 21, Greencastle, Putnam County, 27 September 1984 — Page 7

Outrageous? 10-year sentence for 27th drunken-driving conviction is appealed

LOS ANGELES (AP) One month before Gary Christopher was to join the ranks of professional bowlers, a punch press crushed three fingers on his bowling hand so badly they had to be amputated. The day the doctor gave him that news 19 years ago, Christopher went out and got drunk. And he kept on drinking, eventually running up a total of 27 drunken-driving convictions. Christopher, 38, is now in jail, where he has been on seven other occasions. Unless the state Court of Appeal reduces a term ordered Sept. 10, he will serve a prison sentence of nearly 10 years, one of the stiffest ever delivered in a drunken-driving case where nobody was injured. “These were all victimless misdemeanors,” said his attorney, Leonard Chaitin, who called the sentence “outrageous” and is appealing it as excessive. In an interview last week, Chaitin said Christopher makes a “good salary,” is a “capable worker” and works hard writing up bids for a solar construction firm. “I myself think the guy’s not really a criminal. He’s a very gentle person,” he said. But City Attorney Ira Reiner said Christopher got what he deserves “the largest sentence imposed anywhere for drunk driving, as far as we know.”

opinion

LARRY GIBBS Publisher

Letters to the Editor

Thanks for IBM open house

To the Editor: I have long felt that Putnam County, and particularly Greencastle, is a special place to live; witness our family has resided here for six generations. The selective type of industry together with DePauw University gives our agricultural community many advantages not available in other areas. A recent example of this was the IBM

Competitive ride a success

To the Editor: On Saturday, Sept. 22, the Putnam County Saddle Club sponsored for the first time a competitive horse ride sanctioned by the Upper Midwest Endurance Competitive Ride Association (UMECRA). Twenty-six horses and riders competed in the two rides, one 30 miles and the other 12.5 miles in length. Due to the rules and regulations set by the UMERCA, and the number of participants and observers in attendance, months of preparation were taken for this event. Praises were numerous from those who were visiting our county for the first time. Compliments were given on everything from the beauty of our coun-

Signed letters are welcome

Send your letter* to: Letters to the Editor, The Banner-Graphic, P.O. Box 509, Greencastle, Indiana 46135. Letters also may be brought to the newspaper at 100 N. Jackson St., Greencastle.

'Merit schools'

Key to education is the staff in each building, Florida believes

By GENE I. MAEROFF c. 1984 N.Y. Times News Serv ice TALLAHASSEE, Fla. Many experts believe that the key to improving education rests not with national commissions nor even with local school boards, but with the staff in each individual school building. Unless a school has good leadership, monitors pupil achievement and provides a safe and supportive atmosphere, they say, education is not likely to improve. In keeping with this theory, Florida is embarking on one of the country’s first comprehensive programs to identify and reward “merit schools.” The Florida Legislature authorized the program in June as part of its Ominibus Education Act, providing S2O million, much of which will be distributed as bonuses next year to teachers, principals and other staff members in merit schools around the state. Bonuses in the first year of the program are expected to range from S2OO to $1,500, depending on how many schools participate and how they divide up the money. But the venture is already enmeshed in controversy, indicating that it may not be as easy as the Legislature thought to select deserving schools and to motivate other schools to aspire toward merit school status. Guidelines that rely mostly on improvement in students’ test scores will be used to choose the merit schools, but the rules are so complex that some officials

The seven previous jail sentences ranged from a “five-day slap on the wrist” to one year, he said. “Nothing works,” Reiner said. “The only thing you can do now is worry more about the public and warehouse him.... It’s clear he has driven thousands of times under the influence of alcohol to have been caught and convicted on 27 separate occasions. It’s astonishing he hasn’t killed someone, but he’s just a homicide waiting to happen.” But Chaitin said Christopher is a man devastated, a sad story, a problem in need of a solution. “He was a pro bowler, and his whole life went out the window,” said his wife, Brenda. A pre-sentencing court psychiatric report said Christopher had bowled “in the high 200 s in high school with an occasional perfect game” and had qualified to join the pro tour in September or October 1965. The accident occurred that August. “Within 24 hours of learning of the amputation, the patient went with a friend and drank quite heavily,” the report said. “...Mr. Christopher has never accepted the loss of the fingers on his right hand. He is reluctant to discuss it.” Chaitin said his client has refused all news interviews. “Everybody has a story,” said Reiner, “and how much there is to that who knows? Secondly, we’re talking 20 years later. Lots of people have industrial accidents where they lose a finger

ERIC BERNSEE Managing Editor

Greencastle Open House offered to the public Sept. 15. It was a super effort on the part of the personnel. I do thank IBM for both the tour and entertainment; coincidentally, Mrs. Durham appreciated not having to prepare an evening meal. J. Frank Durham Greencastle

ty to the friendly people who live here. Special thanks are always in order to merchants who give so willingly of their time and efforts to make events such as ours a success. And a very special thank you goes to the residents and motorists on Saddle Club Road and the Madison Twp. area for their consideration on the day of our ride. Again, our thanks to members of the Saddle Club and organizers of this successful event. Lisa Larkin, assistant ride manager Lee Noble, ride manager and vice president, Putnam County Saddle Club

The Banner-Graphic welcomes your views on any public issue. Letters must bear the writer’s signature and printed or typed name, full address and telephone number.

are skeptical about the practicability of the plan, which must be ratified in each district by the teachers’ bargaining organization and the school board. Teachers in some of Florida’s 67 school districts believe the program is illconceived and are refusing to help formulate the proposals that must be submitted by Oct. 1 for a school system to be eligible for the competition. Furthermore, the plan has heated up a longstanding dispute between the Florida affiliates of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, which merged within the state a decade ago only to break apart and convert Florida into one of the main battlegrounds of the two large teachers’ unions. Bargaining units in the teachers federation tend to support the merit school idea, but units that are part of the education association are generally hostile to the plan. “The way of deciding which schools are merit schools relies heavily on things we have no control over, factors like students’ test scores and parental involvement in the school,” said Ruth Holmes, president of Florida Teaching Professions-NEA, the state affiliate of the National Education Association. The first two counties to submit merit school plans are Dade, which includes Miami and is Florida’s biggest county, and Pasco, a rural county on the Gulf of Mexico. It remains to be seen how many

Reagan should stop wallowing in victimization

No means to protect embassy? Close it

By WILLIAM SAFIRE c. 1984 N.Y. Times News Service WASHINGTON - If you were the commander of the Islamic Jihad, victor in Beirut three times over the incompetent American military, what would you do next? First, from your sanctuary in the Syrianoccupied Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, you would request permission from Damascus to import another 3,000-pound truckload of explosives from Iran. That permission would surely be given. Richard Murphy, the Reagan administration official in charge of cluckclucking when a U.S. Embassy is destroyed in Beirut, recently praised Syria for being “helpful” to America; because he is so ready to turn the other cheek, Damascus has a reason to let continue the loading of the Jihad's trucks with explosives. Next, you would publicly state your intention to blast the Americans again soon, just as you did before the most recent bombing. This displays your contempt for American might, and it has never stimulated any special urgency in security countermeasures. Certainly such notice did not stop your suicide bomber from detonating his charge from within 10 yards of the embassy last week. Finally, you would pick a politically suitable date and aim your truck bomb at the U.S. ambassador’s residence in the Beirut suburb of Yarze, or if the Americans elect to re-establish their presence in West Beirut at the embassy, whose easily penetrable defenses were exposed on CBS the other night. Americans are coming to the realization that the Reagan response to these continued outrages will be even more pusillanimous than Jimmy Carter’s protracted hand-wringing at the seizure of hostages in Tehran. Every time the United States has been humiliated by the Syrian-Iranian-PLO suicide squad, Reagan has posed before cameras to say we are not going to pull out under fire. And then he has left our frontline diplomats hostage to terrorists. His defense secretary, Viscount Weinberger of Grenada, stripped our embassy of its 80 Marine guards a few months ;?go because he was afraid they might provoke trouble. The Pentagon argues that

other counties will cooperate. The plans are subject to state approval. Despite the reservations among some teachers, Ralph D. Turlington, Florida’s education commissioner, is an enthusiastic advocate of the plan. “This is a fundamentally sound concept to stimulate the school as a unit, 1 * said Turlington, a former college professor and state legislator who was Speaker of the House before assuming the educational post. “We have never before had an activity to identify schools based on improvement and achievement in their teaching and learning mission,” Turlington continued. “Once you set up a measurement system that rewards people with money, it will stimulate performance. No measure is perfect, but you have to make a beginning.” Improvement in test scores over the course of a year will be the basic yardstick for identifying Florida’s merit schools. The aim is to decide not which schools have the highest scores, but which show the greatest gains. Thus, schools in poor neighborhoods may edge out those in affluent neighborhoods if the disadvantaged students exceed the performance level that might normally be expected of them. It is possible, for example, that the highest achieving school in a district may not become a merit school if its test scores remain at the plateau of the previous year. Elementary schools, junior high schools

or two. That does not excuse a lifetime of endangering other people’s lives.” Reiner consolidated four drunken driving arrests over eight months into one case, which also included four counts of driving with a restricted or revoked license. Still pending is a July 27 drunken-driving offense that Chaitin said occurred while Christopher was free on bail one reason Reiner opposed bail reduction from $500,000 pending appeal in the case. The son of a career soldier, Christopher “describes his parents as strict but not cruel disciplinarians,” the psychiatric report said. Christopher drinks, it said, to cover up intense feelings about his injury that well up during times of stress. The highest blood-alcohol concentrations Christopher showed in any of his cases were 0.30 and 0.28 percent, Chaitin said. California’s tough 1981 drunken-driving law makes it a crime to drive with 0.10 blood-alcohol and increases sentences according to the number of prior convictions. A 0.30 was the highest official blood-alcohol reading that could be remembered by Clay Hall, chief of program development for the federal Office of Alcohol Countermeasures at the Department of Transportation in Washington, though he’s heard unofficial reports of higher levels.

security of embassies is a matter for the “host country,’* and suggests we hire local mercenaries to protect American civilians. The State Department joins in with the alibi that “an embassy is not a fort.” But we have learned that not even our forts are forts. We have always known that Amin Gemayel’s rickety regime was not an effective “host” and that what passes as a Lebanese government was not capable of defending our embassy from attack. The only way we can stop terrorists from driving us out of Lebanon is to stop them ourselves. The president should stop nibbling his nails and make the tough choice. If his decision is to bug out, he should put the embassy on a ship offshore right away; if his decision is to stay, he is duty-bound to put in the power and the anti-tank traps to

and high schools will each be grouped separately and the top 25 percent will be selected from each of the three groups as potential merit schools. They will then be classified as merit schools if they show outstanding progress in at least one of the following ways; student participation in school organizations and such special events as science fairs; achievement in state, regional and national academic competition; maintenance of discipline or standardized test scores besides those oir the test used to determine eligibility. The S2O million will be allocated to school districts according to their enrollments and at least half the funds must go to personnel in the merit schools. The other half of the money may also be given those who work in the merit schools or it may be distributed as incentive awards to teachers in the other schools. Each year the competition is to start anew. Thus, winning a bonus one year is no assurance that teachers in a particular school will wthe following year. In each merit school, Dade County plans to provide a bonus of $1,500 to teachers and administrators, $750 to teacher aides, $375 to secretaries and $225 to custodians and cafeteria workers. “We’re looking for a team approach and we want to motivate everyone in the school and make them feel a part of the effort,” said Yvonne B. Burkholz, legislative director of the United Teachers of Dade.

A 0.50 reading is generally considered the threshhold where coma or death may occur. “We estimate that at least 50 percent of all highway fatalities are the result of drinking and driving,” National Safety Council spokesman Dick Tippie said in Chicago. Last year, there were 44,600 highway fatalities nationwide. What can be done about chronic cases like Christopher, Reiner was asked. “Not a thing,” he said. “When someone is such a recidivist as this person is, only he can deal with that. Obviously such a person as this has to go to A A (Alcoholics Anonymous). ” Hall, commenting on the general problem but not Christopher’s case specifically, said, “I think AA is very good, but for a person to go to AA he must want to go to AA.” Abby Baker, Los Angeles assistant director of Mothers Against Drunk Drivers, called Christopher “a timebomb waiting to explode.” Ms. Baker, who like many MADD members was the victim of a drunken driver, suffered broken bones, internal injuries ar.d “couldn’t walk for about six months" after a drunken driver struck the disabled car in which she was sitting 11 years ago. “The drunk driver saw the hazard lights and crashed right into it. He didn’t go to jail,” she said. “It’s MADD’s general position (to impose) punishment first, rehabilitation second.”

"AMERICAN EIAOASSY,PLEASE..."

guarantee our citizens’ safety. That means Ronald Reagan, personally, should call in the director of Central Intelligence and demand to know who murdered 260 American diplomats and Marines in the last 18 months, and through whose checkpoints the explosives have passed. He needs to direct the defense secretary to make good on his promise to punish the murderers. And he must act now, today, to make certain that American diplomats in Beirut get the protection they should have been getting from the government they serve. All we have seen so far is impotence and incompetence, posture posing as policy. Can you imagine what Reagan would have said about weakness and lack of leadership if Carter’s CIA were shrugging helplessly; if Carter’s Pentagon wanted to hide the Marine Corps and hire local gun-

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Little else to add on the issue of z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z

c. 1984 N.Y. Times WASHINGTON - Michael K. Deaver, the deputy chief of staff at the White House, affirmed in a recent television interview that President Reagan sometimes seemed to doze off at boring Cabinet meetings. That caused some consternation at the White House, although it is not known whether Reagan ever reprimanded Deaver privately. Finally, however, the president needled Deaver gently but deftly in public. His z-z-z-inger came at

September 27,1984, The Putnam County Banner-Graphic

men to defend American honor; if Carter had compared fatal military construction delays to the normal foot-dragging in fixing his kitchen? The moment a truck-bomb threat was suspected at the White House, trucks loaded with sand blocked all the entrances until concrete barriers were put in place on Pennsylvania Avenue and the side streets. No tragic delays, no Weinberger defeatism about helicopters appearing if trucks were stopped. If the president can protect the White House so quickly and effectively, he can order the airlift of similar protection of the place the American flag flies in Beirut. Reagan should stop wallowing in his victimization; if he does not have the means or guts to defend our embassy, he should have the good grace to close it down.

a Washington dinner “roast” of Howard H. Baker Jr., the Senate majority leader. “This is quite an assembly,” the president said. “I know there are dozens of senators and representatives, and I believe that virtually the entire Cabinet is here, which explains why Mike Deaver has gone to sleep already.” That being said, there seemed little else to add on the issue of zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

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