Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 7 December 1951 — Page 27

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In Indianapolis

By Ed Sovola

IT'S EABY to lose tite perspective of important thingg in“fite during any season of the During the Christmas season it seems to be easier,

In 1940, a young man barely in hig 20's, vowed he would never forget the words a nurse said on a wonderful day when he took Sha two tiny steps and almost col- a» pA #2 lapsed. Two steps mfter eight. — ‘months in a hospital bed. Those AN

were special words. 7 Na “One little boy cried because 7 ! NR he didn’t have’ shoes until he #7): N\ saw anothér “ little boy who i \} they were taken under his own I of power. That was achievement. . Tomorrow there would be four and then eight. eS 2 TWO PUNY steps weren't enough. I wanted to run. What kind of a deal was this polio stuff? Why did it have to happen? That's when the nurse let me have it. The hours are long in a hospital. You can think deeply and the sales for evaluating are sensitive. In a couple of days I-had the perspective for progress, for living. Time will ruin,a perspective as it will an automobile battery. You have to take it in every so often and have it charged. That's why I went to see my old friend Dr. Donald J. Caseley, medical director of the Indiana, University Medical Center, We went to Riley Hospital. We saw a 2-year-old boy with his pelvis in a cast. He looked at us and said, “I want to go home and stay home.” It would have been difficult to talk about Santa Claus to the boy. A 14-year-old boy, In bed since last June, stared at the ceiling. When the fractured verte-

brae will heal is anyone's guess, He won't be home for Christmas.

It Hap By Earl Wilson

The nurse was speaking to a bitter young man, He was disappointed with two halting steps after so long a time. The nurse explained excitedly that

pened Last Night

Hours Are Long . In a Hospita HOLDING THE top edge af her bed and bouncing up and down was an 18-month-old girl. A nurse walked over to briish the curls out of her eyes. The tiny tot laughed and cooed and tried to rub her cheek against the nurse's hand. One leg -came below the gay little frock. The other was gone. She was“born with one normal leg. The bther was a tiny stump. It was removed at the hip. The little girl is being taught how to. walk on crutches and someday she will have an artificial leg. : There is a déep kinship with polio cases. It's impossible to describe the feeling you have talking with a post-polio case who has undergone surgery on her hands with the hope that there will eventually be movement. Only the finer movements. You're told someday she will be able to leave her wheelchair and walk with long leg braces. Did someone hear you say you have troubles? «How can you describe how it feels to have your heart squeezed until it misses a beat?

> @

MRS. RICHARD WALL, Lebanon, was in the hall .of Riley. Steve, her 15-year-old son, was in a physical therapy room. Since October, 1950, Steve -has been in a respirator. He used to be in one 24 hours a day. Now he is out 18 to 20 hours a day. y Steve, when weslooked in on him, was talking about the “B” he was going to get in algebra. Steve goes to school by telephone. He is brought to Riley once a week by ambulance for treatment. : I asked Steve what he wanted for Christmas. He was in a good mood. “I would llke to be able to walk for Christmas,” Steve answered. Mrs. Wall's eyes meet yours and there is that long moment of silence. A therapist mercifully breaks the silence and you tell Steve he can walk again if he makes up his mind to do it. How much would it cost, if it were possible, to get Steve to walk on Christmas? Dr. Caseley and I were silent almost all the way to his office where we parted. I said, “Doctor . . .?” and nothing else came out. I had shoes.

From Barber To Baritone

NEW YORK, Dee: -7~—We-- stumbled onto--a-town; Carmonsburg; “Pa.; from the time I was

big story the other day—one that'll probably drive the clothiers into a sulk. It was “revealed” to us—“exclusively,” of course—that Perry Como, one of the wealthiest members of the Laryngitis Set, does not possess a- dinner jacket. “I haven't had one for 15 years,” the man said. Broad-shouldered Mr. Como’s shameless confession was made the more horrendous be-

time in a pork pie hat, tieless sports shirt and raincoat. “So when I get an invitation that says black tie,” stated the villain, “I make up an excuse not to go. I miss more dull parties that way.” This is the kind of story that should, of course, go on Page 1. But as long as editors continue putting war news, explosions and Franchot Tone's expectorations out there, whatcha gonna do? woo ob “I HAD TO wear one every night for so long when I was out with Ted Weems, Always with the stiff front,” groaned Perry. “I gave them up. But I'm going to have to buy one one of these days.” Como 1s just an nonconformist, that's all. Frank Sinatra's dinner jackets are sheer poetry and Tony Martin even indorses one. But Como is so different he doesn't get into fights—he doesn’t get his name in the papers—he just makes money. With his home at Sands Point and his lush offices in the RKO Building, he’s one of the richest—but 10 years ago he was ready to give it all up and go back to barbering. Perry told of the turning point when we saw him at a CBS rehearsal on this recent rainy day. “As of yesterday, I got a. chest cold,” he explained first. “So we took a couple of pretty hard songs out of the program and put in a couple of easy jobs. I went down to my doctor for a couple of jabs. He's a great doctor but when he jabs you he must do it with a screwdriver. “So now I don’t féel so good.” SD HE WANDERED around on stage seeing how things were going, then came back to us. _ “When I left Ted Weems,” he remembered, “I was tired as hell from one-nighters and all that routine. “I figured instead of going back to that life with some other band, I might as well return to barbering. I had my own shop in my home

Mr. Como

Americana By Robert C. Ruark

NEW YORK, Dec. 7—This day we write of, Dec. 7, 1951, seems sadly to be a commemoration of waste, a decade of dedicated desperation, of frustration,” and of such pitifully small accomplishment. We will meet some chums this day we speak of, and we will toss a little toddy, and we will pretend that we are not 10 years older and 10 years fatter and 10 years tireder than we were that day we all remember—that Sunday afternoon the Japs came to call on Pearl and everybody rejiggered his life. oe is bound to remember the girl in Sydney or the barroom cleanout in Tunis or the whatever in the wherever. And everybody will laugh. But we are a collection of sad heroes, a dreary and discouraged bunch of conquerors iy. > BY asgnter will be devoted to a pleasant intermission in a serious business that most of us thought would settle most of the questions of this giddy globe. You see, we were young, then, and over-optimistic. > & ob OUT in a jet-fighter field in Michigan a young colonel grooms his fresh flock of crew-cuts. The colonel had 180 missions—one hundred and eighty is the figure—in the last war, which some people already call the middle war. The colonel is 33. He fought in the Mediterranean and in the CBL He was shot down twice. He has a family now. “But I like to live,” the colonel told me, “So I went back in the Air ih I wan} 1o know about jets, against the day they sen and Ee me ga and there is a dirty MIG looking

Dishing the Dirt By Marguerite Smith

Q—We have a lot of weeds and leaves and Ie want to improve our soil. How shall we go about making compost out of them? Mrs. Ruth Gleich,

+ 5159 Atherton, South Drive.

A-—If you do no more than pile up these materials and let them rot you will have compost of a sort. Or you can save time and improve

Read Marguerite Smith's Garden Column in The Sunday Times soll simply by covering your garden with

materials. Let them begin to decay this winter, Spade them under and chop them into the

soil next spting. If yol have the time and want.

to make a compost pile in a‘ corner of your gars den start with either a dug pit or a top-of-goil platform of some coarse material such as corn stalks to absorb dissolved plant foods. Then layer your garden rubble with manure, top-soil, 3 SpEmE ling of lime, bone meal or chemical fertiar yet you use in the compost depends on what you can get easily. Important

te and keep it moist orb and hold plant food; add such fe

ow at top so rains accumu= bist; layer Rubble with #oil to

about 14 ’til I was 21.

“In my town the barber was sort of like the doctor. You lived in the better section of town and were important.

“I went home the week before Christmas and laid off three months. Well . . .”

That was about the time the country was hit by a storm of crooners starting with Frank Sinatra. There were nine crooners crooning in nine New York night clubs. Dick Haymes got his start about that time, as one of the Sinatra competitors.

So Cannonsburg, Pa., lost a potential barber and Como came back to New York to resume singing.

“THEY SAID I should go into a night club and suffer a little, So I went into the Copacabana and suffered a lot, “Went in for a couple of weeks and stayed 16. Tell you who was on one of the shows with me—Willie Howard.” From that came movies and then big-time stuff on the air. There was a time when Perry thought of being a comedian, too, but he finally decided he should open his mouth primarily to sing. He and Sinatra became good friends. ~ “When my dad passed away, he came over and did the radio show for me for a whole week, without even being asked.” Married about 19 years, the father of three children, Como leads a model home life. He's the close friend of several priests and you can usually see one or two around his rehearsals waiting to chat with him. : :

> 0.0

AT AROUND 42, he must find it difficult to be adored by the giggling bobby-soxers but he shows great patience with them. A dozen were standing in the doorway just waiting to touch him and he stopped and listened to them for several minutes. They could hardly believe that they were to have the great good luck of being allowed to watch him rehearse. “They want me to come to a fan ¢lub meeting,” he said, “which they wanted to have In a funeral parlor.” “How was that?” we said. “They know I know a man who has a funeral parlor out near where they live. They thought I could come to his funeral. parlor to see him and they could meet me there. Oh,” he said, with a shake of his head, “they're g-o-n-e. “With this cold; maybe I belong in a funeral parlor, at that.” That's Earl, brother:

Since Pearl Harbor— Decade of Desperation

at me. So I am back with the peashooters, purely for self-preservation.” The spirit tends to slouch when we consider that today, this 10th. anniversary of Pearl, our stoutest allies seem to be the nations we were forced to'whip from a standing start of nothing. We lean on Germany and Japan—and we look afrightedly at the Russians, our former friends, and tsk-tsk at the impoverishment and impotence of gallant, weary, threadbare.England. LR THE SPIRIT droops some more when we glance at the wreckage of our economy, at the stench of rottenness in our government, of the absence of a single big man in our formal structure of state. We practiced, the other day, a mock air raid in New York, and we got an “A” for effort, because the citizens are scared of catching the big casino right on top of their heads. We have seen our taxes go to provide slush funds here, and abroad, and we have reaped hatred from some of the people we have helped, and contempt from all. As we look at Dec. 7, our top local story is a story of corruption’ in high places, and a low-octane corruption, at that. We have chicken thieves in offices where thievery could be computed in terms of turkeys. It is a sad commentary that even our thieves are second rate. eS @ WE MASSED the greatest armed force the world has ever seen and busted it up to satisfy a congressional fear of mother's wrath at the polls. Ten years have passed, and we still have gotten nowhere with universal military training. We exempt raw college youths and send tired ud men back to-war, thus disrupting their lives ce. We have diluted our dollar, and inflated our prices, and have shrunken our thrift. We have discouraged effort, individual effort, by a cynical insistence on a socialist state which buys votes and damn-all tomorrow. We have placed such a penalty on success from a tax standpoint that a common phrase

says: “I can't afford to make that much money.” And then we see daily, in the tax-fraud hearings,

that the collectors of our mighty tithes have accepted bribes to enable the wg offenders to steal. : “> WE "ARE the greatest producers of every-

thing in the world, but we cannot implement a |

tiny army in Korea with énough planes and guns. We do not even know what we want to do with a war which is not a war-—we cannot seem to say we want to win it, lose it, or just let it sit there, War ‘in Korea is now in the same light as a

disease that is reputed to be no worse than a

bad cold. We cannot even gouge enough blood from our citizens to make us secure in the blood bank. 5 Ten -Day, I knew I had to.go to war and maybe I

_ the architects of peace.

CHAPTER 5—

MURDER, INC.

8 ago this day, this Pearl Harbor .

would have to die. I felt a lot better about things |

i»

The India

OS aR —

napolis Times

By BURTON B. TURKUS and SID FEDER ~ AS FAR as those 2300 unsolved murders in Brooklyn

were concerned, we had a man on first base but we were

a long way from scoring.

on what a few small-shots had told us. We had, however, produced an excellent effect. Brooklyn mob society was tense and stewing. Each hoodlum was wracking his brain trying. to recall whether our minor informers had been close when he had committed murder. We let little things drop here and there .-, . Pittsburgh Phil is talking . . . “Buggsy offered to " sing.” And then Mrs. Kid Twist Reles walked in our office and said: + “My husband wants an interview with the law.” s = ” WE HAD Kid Twist Reles in jail and under indictment but he let us know he wasn't*afraid. «But he was willing to make a deal. 2 About the best you could say for Reles was that he was an animal in human guise. Eyes that were shiny agates, hard and piercing. Round face, thick lips, flat nose, small ears stuck close to kinky hair. His arms dangled to his knees. But his mind was tough—and cunning.

That's why he was a big shot."

“You ain't got mo corroboration,” he sneered. And he was right. “But I'm the guy can tell you where to get it.” He had us and it hurt. “I can make you the biggest man in the country” he promised District Attorney Bill O'Dwyer. He said he could “break” a string of murders that would electrify the country. He repeated, “the entire country.” “But I got to make a deal,” he stipulated. He pointed to O'Dwyer. “I want to talk to you about it—alone.” ” ” ”

THE BOASTFUL badman had picked the anniversary of the Crucifixion, Good Friday, to tell about throat-cutting and murder the country over.

No convictions could be had against the big bosses

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is another installment of a series that shows the extent of organized crime in the USA and how it. has been combated. Mr. Turkus, known as “Mr, Arsenic” sent seven killers’ to the electric chair, in the famous Brooklyn investigation. Mr, Feder is a former newspaperman, now a writer on his own, These chapters are from: the book, MURDER, INC, just published by Farrar, Straus and Young.

to the underworld,’

It seemed as if hours passed. Actually it was but a few minutes when the District Attorney walked out.

“He wants to drive a hard bargain,” said O'Dwyer. “He can tell plenty. I'm convinced he can break a lot of murders, But he wants to walk out, clean. Should we deal with him? What do you think?” The problem stirred up a heated debate. What would be the public reaction to a District

Attorney making a bargain: witha -murgererdI-fouad~myrns

self a minority of one. Granting all the Kid's evil, I wanted to get him to talk, if some deal could be made.

Finally the District Attorney went back to Kid Twist to make a bargain. All he demanded was to be entirely excused by society for committing more than a dozen murders and ordering, the Lord only knows, how many more. How brazen could he get? n ” ”

A COUNTER - OFFER was made: “We'll let you plead guilty to second degree murder and ask the court for consideration for you.” Reles’ fist hammered the desk. = “Nothing doing” was his ultimatum. I

FORMOSA . .. No. 1—

‘Thank God We

By JIM G. LUCAS Soripps-Howard Staff Writer

TAIPEH, Formosa, Dec. 7—There’s new life and new hope on Formosa.

It's hard to put your finger on what's happened. It may be that, after standing aloné so long, the Chinese Nationalists fi- sg . nally can say: “Thank God, at last we have allies again.” Perhaps it's satisfaction of ‘a proud people in their own solid accomplishments. It may stem § from living ? day by day under the threat of invasion and death, and finding you can keep going. Formosa never forgets that the Communists “are poised

Mr, Lucas

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first of a series of four articles on Formosa written by Jim G. Lucas. Mr. Lucas finds there is new life and new hope among the Chinese Nationalists who have been standing -alone so long in the face of Red terrorism.

across the straits on the mainland. But Free China | also knows it has made a remarkable comeback. Driven from the mainland in 1948, it still has one of the biggest and best anti-Communist armies in Asia. Formosa is the calmest, most peaceful area anywhere on the rim of the Bamboo Curtain. It isn’t that the Communists haven't tried to infiltrate. They have, and they've failed. There are no organized guerrillas and the few Red cells here are

known, isolated and ineffectual.

There are no marauding armies here, as in Korea; no Huks, as in the Philippines; no insufrections, as in Burma and Indonesia, and no political assassinations, as in ‘Malaya and Indo-China. Formosa is one of the few places in nonCommunist Asia where it's safe to go where you want at any hour. .

@ » CHINA. Sea

Invasion is still the main conversation piece. Invasion— the form it'll take, when it'll come, what it'll mean—is discussed at every breakfast table, at every lunch, in every street stall, But the discussions now are largely academie. You miss the note of fear and apprehension of a year ago. rw. THE SHOPS are full and the Japanese now in progress—promises even greater supplies of essentials.

THE SONGS OF CHRISTMAS

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1951

Ee NRA HOR -

Another factor was explained to him. He would appear before a grand jury on a number of cases and would not be re-

quired to sign a waiver of immunity. By not signing, the witness reserves his immunity to prosecution based on information he provides. Reles could not incriminate himself in murders he revealed to the grand jury. There would, of course, be nothing to prevent us from prosecuting him on any other killings—if we got the information and corroboration. At last the hoodlum was satisfied. It was 4 a. m. I still feel it was the most valuable deal the law ever made.

RRC 0 AS) RP A er

OPERA SINGER—Abe (Kid Twist) Reles was tough, but he talked.

Reles’ song was a full-length opera. He started right out on a high note:

“I can tell you all about 50 guys that got hit; I was on the inside.” » ” » HE TOSSED it off with an “I don't want to brag, but....” He was a skilled artisan, proud of his craft, He was, he went on, on the inside of homicide in Los Angeles and New Jersey,” Detroit and Sullivan County, Louisville and Kansas City. . In two days, he had taken a trail of triggers and rackets to cities a thousand miles away. In five days he was wearing out

How the Law Made a Bargain With a Murderer To ‘Break’ the Evidence on 200 Killings—

stenographers and they had to be put on in relays,

By the eleventh day he was going at such a rate that ine vestigation of extortions he exposed had to be set aside in order to keep up with his listing of homicides. . At the end of the twelfth day he had confessed the incredible total of twenty-five notebooks chock-full of shorthand record. Several stenographers were vir-

tually exhausted.

He was a Victrola with kinky hair and a nonstop switch, He had the most amazing memory I have ever encoun-

‘* tered. He could recount minute-

ly what he ate at a particular meal years before, or where he was and with whom, and -all without a single reference or reminder of any kind, And investigation proved him entirely accurate, down to the last pinpoint check, on every detail he mentioned. » ” »

YOU MIGHT argue that when a man commits murder, every incident of the crime would be engraved on his memory. But not with these hoodlums. With them, dealing out death was commonplace. I asked Reles how he ever brought himself to take human life so. casually. “Did: your conscience ever

|. bother you?” I inquired. “Didn't... ...... NEE.

you feel anything?” His agate eyes showed no expression. . ° “How did you feel when you

" tried your first law case?” he

countered coldly; * =»

“I WAS rather nervous,” I admitted. “And how about your second case?” : “It wasn't so bad, but I was still a little nervous,” "S “And after that?” “Oh . .. after that, I was all right; I was used to it.” “You answered your own question,” the Kid rasped. "It's the same with murder, I got used to it.! (Copyright, Jost, by Burton B. Turkus

3 TOMORROW: Murder 1s’ Not So Expensive.

‘Have Allies Again’

Trade Fair — .

There seems to be enough—if no oversupply—of food. Sidewalk stalls are full of native cooking and customers: The Nationalists are grimly proud of their “rice lift” to the mainland during last year's famine. On Oct, 10—the anniversary of the Chinese Republic—three smart Nationalist divisions marched in Taipeh. They seemed better armed and better equipped; the soldiers were better fed and better clothed. Those who once claimed the Chinese Reds weren't Reds at

all, but “agrarian reformers” discovered after Korea that they were out on a limb. So they changed their tune, These same people now have three lines: That there must be a change in leadership and Chiang Kai-shek — the symbol of Asian resistance to communism —must go. That the Nationalists won't fight when they return to the mainland. And, finally, that we must back some ‘third force" — whatever that {s—after ditehing Chiang. Such arguments crop wp in too many places to be accidental, They make as much sense ae the old agrarian reformer theory. ” » » PREMIER Chen Cheng was able to announce recently that his government had achieved a large measure of economic stability. But the Free Chinese

are not kidding themselves; .

they know they can’t go it without American aid. Their use of the aid given has been

' effective and honest. o Ministers work 12 to 16 hours - a day for less than most Amer=—"

fcan firms pay their janitors, The Chinese are resentful of

- the: frequently parroted allega-

tion that all Nationalist office holders are ‘corrupt and ininefficient.” To them their postwar record looks better with every scandal reported from Washington. But they make no comparisons in public. An American correspondent who has been with the. Nationalists many years told me: “This is the best, most honest government any Asian country has had since 1927.” Most of Taipeh’s few automobiles belong to foreigners. Government ministers ride bicycles. ” ” ” THERE still are scar tissues on Nationalist memories. Recently, a turncoat general who once surrendered his division intact to the Reds, decided to defect back to Free China. He expected a prodigal son's welcome on Formosa. He was sent before a firing squad. It would be too much to expect the Free Chinese to for. get that we also abandoned them when they needed us most. They are grateful for

present help, but not convinced we'll stick. They hope so. In their minds, the need for confi-

top military ‘men talk more earnestly about moral support than about guns, tanks and planes, as badly as these are needed. “We trust the Chinese more than they trust us,” a top-rank-ing American officer said re-

CHIANG KAI.SHEK , , ,

symbol of Asian resistance.

cently. “It could hardly be otherwise. We know wheres they stand-—today, tomorrow and forever. They know only where we ‘stand today; they have no idea where we'll be tomorrow.”

TOMORROW-—One of the

best fighting potentials in Asia.

lllustrated .by Walt Scott

Boe "Wi

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