Image provided by: Texas A&M University
About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 8, 1976)
'tends hebrok °urs, 2 mijin 1 Houstonk; an. ' supp orteil J du nngRuei, die Columtjjj, >r Commerce ed tobuyCfe der Pnvileg e J ’ in hosp\ odfrey, 73, a r , patient, isin^ 'tal getting fe. ; 1 a few days 5 see myfiiaiij Codfrey yes|i ; is referring k specialist Drj an of Chii ■tal listed idc^ n personality le checked 'mi naff I medical exam ‘t under waymi n January, be conducted tal or clinic, ye r a NIOSH e. rocedures be darkel said be free, federal invests nding oring Phosvel of the regior Protection J he new wan found in sontl a warehouse j d the pesticide not know 3 A would inspec nake certain Ik raping, 'ported after week that pea asadena ward hape and no cials have he investigatii company ice in Chic? t also said lk er marketed J md that the. cing leptopb \ : RI. Top of the News Campus “WE’VE NEVER BEEN LICKED,” A&M’s epic motion pic ture will be shown at 8:30 tonight in Rudder Auditorium. Admission is Texas A TEEN-AGE sniper has been turned over to juvenile authorities in Garland, Texas. Maggie Claudine Sanchez, 5, was killed while riding in her uncle’s pickup when a bullet hit her in the head. A 14-year-old boy has admitted to the shooting. Police Lt. Robert Sherrard said that the boy fired his father’s rifle in a field 50 yards from the street and he did not know that he had shot anyone until the police came. AN EXPLOSION killed a man at an Exxon Gas System natural gas compressor station near Orange Grove, Tex., yesterday. The explo sion was followed by a fire that sent flames as high as 300 feet. The cause of the explosion has not yet been determined. National THE STUDENTS in Groveport, Ohio have another month of vaca tion now that the voters have re jected for the second time an at tempt to raise property taxes. The voters defeated yesterday a five year levy that would have allowed the schools to reopen today by adding $13.80 to the current $44.40 in taxes for every $1,000 of a proptety own er’s assessed valuation. RICHARD M. NIXON has come to terms with the Watergate scandal and “wants to confront his past ’ in public David Frost said to the Hol lywood Radio and Television Soci ety. The entertainer said that he would begin taping a series of TV interviews at Nixon’s San Clemente estate next March. THE WIFE of the man who had the first confirmed case of swine flu since the nation wide inoculation program started said that she won’t bother to get the shots for herself or her year-old son. The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta said that Don Harris, now fully recovered, was ill last month with the disease that health officials feared could be come an epidemic this winter unless millions of Americans were im munized. THOUGHTFUL BUREAUC RATS in the Department of Agricul ture, due to the transition between administrations, have been boning up on worm farming, which, it de velops, is another of the Carter fami ly’s enterprises . A brochure from the Hugh Carter worm farm in Plains, Ga. has been making the rounds at Agriculture Department headquar ters. It tells would-be worm mag nates that there are ‘billions of fishvvorms needed yearly and not half enough people are raising them. PRESIDENT-ELECT Jimmy Car ter hopes to win tentative approval from congress for a major portion of his 1978 budget proposals even be fore he formally submits them to the legislators, his advisors say. They decline to call it a joint Carter-Congress budget, but his ad visors say that Garter’s staff is already working closely with congressional budget committees in preparing the proposals for the 1978 fiscal year that begins next Oct. 1. World POLICE battled leftists in Milan, Italy who were trying to prevent the opening of the opera season at La Scala Theatre. The leftists protested the opening as a display of wealth during an acute economic crisis by overturning cars, hurling fire bombs and fighting the police. La Scala opened on schedule. weather Fair today and tonight and partly cloudy tomorrow. High today in the low 60s. Low tonight in the upper 30s. High tomorrow in the mid-60s. Winds variable at 5 m.p.h. No pre cipitation in sight. The Battalion Page Vol. 70 No. 55 18 Pages In 2 Sections Wednesday, December 8, 1976 College Station, Texas News Dept. 845-2611 Business Dept. 845-2611 Dead week is olive and well Theoretically, this school week is labeled as “dead” because there is supposed to be a lack of activity around the campus — no organi zational meetings, tests, etc. But the term probably relates better to the way many students feel at the end of the week or even sooner for some. At left Cadet Mark Owens, a junior history major, and Luz Montes, a junior in the modern language depart ment, seem to be going strong here while studying for finals, but with time they may end up like this junior pre-med major, Bryan Frank (right) and Lisa Adams (be low), a second-year political sci ence student. Battalion photos by Mike Willy and Kevin Venner Berti ’jfiarriaj ^ the 2( lay- / NBC js leav j,e loca JjOW t< c docu kesmar Supreme Court decision outrages feminists By RICHARD CARELLI Associated Press WASHINGTON —The Supreme Court decision on disability benefits for preg nancy outraged feminists, hut left the way open for legislative changes that would nul lify the ruling’s impact. An employer may legally refuse to pay disability or sick-leave benefits to pregnant women, the court said yesterday in a 6 to 3 decision. There is no sex discrimination “simply because an employer’s . . . plan is less than all-inclusive,” said the majority opinion written by Justice William H. Rehnquist. The justices overturned the findings of a lower court by saying that General Electric Corp. (GE) does not violate the rights of any of its 100,000 women employes by making them take unpaid leaves of absence to have babies. The decision does not mean that those employers now offering pregnancy disabil ity coverage as part of their over-all com pensation package must stop doing so. The Waldheim gets 2nd U.N. term Associated Press UNITED NATIONS, N.Y. — The U.N. General Assembly today formally ap proved Kurt Waldheim as U.N. secretary-general by acclamation for another five-year term. The assembly ratified a recommendation by the security council Tuesday that the 57-year-old Austrian be given another term, China vetoed him on the first ballot Tuesday, then voted him in on the second. All other council members except Panama voted for Waldheim on both bal lots, and the final vote was 14 to 0, with Panama abstaining. The secretary-general told reporters the support he got from all five permanent council members “gives me a good basis for conducting my work. It’s a good feeling. ” court said, however, that existing laws such as the 1964 Civil Rights Act do not compel employers to offer that coverage. Congress is free to pass legislation mak ing such exclusions illegal, the court said. One group which had supported the GE women employes, the International Union of Electric Workers, said it planned to seek such legislation. It was through the electrical workers union that 43 women GE workers, repre senting themselves and all other GE female employes, first filed grievances against the company. Later, they sued. Their challenge was enthusiastically backed by women’s rights groups. Karen DeCrow, president of the Na tional Organization for Women, called the ruling “insulting to every mother in the country.” While labor and women’s rights groups teamed up on one side, employers lined up on the other. The Chamber of Commerce praised the court’s decision for upholding the “right of employers to determine which risks they will insure their employes against.” A&M to graduate 1,400 Approximately 1,400 students will receive their degrees Saturday at Texas A&M University. "This years totals will almost cer tainly represent another record for mid-term graduates,” Registrar Robert A. Lacey said. The commencement exercise will be held at 9 a.m. in G. Rollie White Coliseum. Alvin I. Thomas, Prairie View A&M University Presi dent, will speak. General Samuel Jaskilka, assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, will address the new officers. The Commissioning ceremonies for 55 of the new graduates are set for 1:30 p.m. in the coliseum. Roller, biology professor, joins science academy Dr. Hebert Roller, a Texas A&M Uni versity professor, has become the first Texas scientist in residence ever elected to the Academy Leopoldina. Roller, a professor of biology, biochemis try and biophysics, has joined such august company as Charles Darwin, the English evolutionist, and Anders Celsius, Swedish astronomer and inventor of the Centigrade thermometer, by being elected a full member of the natural science academy headquartered in Germany. Roller, also director of the Institute of Developmental Biology at Texas A&M, has become the 5,731st member of this society since its formation in 1659. It was the royal academy for the Holy Roman Empire and was later named for Leopold I. The membership is restricted to about 900. Presently there ai'e 69 members from the U.S. Roller was elected by his peers world wide for his “contributions in fundamental research in developmental biology and his contributions to the international scientific community and various international agen cies.” Roller’s work has been in the control of developmental processes by hormones. Part of this work has led to new concepts and strategies in pest controls. “Lightcrust Doughboy” now at A&M Tucked away on the third floor of the Systems. Building is Hal Harris’ office. Today he’s a photographer and audio visual specialist for the Texas Forest Service, but 30 years ago he was a radio performer and a member of the popular Lightcrust Doughboys. For those of you too young to remember the days of live radio, the Lightcrust Doughboys, sponsored by Lightcrust flour, had a daily half-hour program of Western swing music starting at 12:30 p.m. on Fort Worth’s WBAP radio. They played several songs followed by a plug for Light crust flour. Some of the early members of the band were bandleader Bob Wills and Pappy Lee O’Daniels, a man who used the band’s popularity to spring him into the office of governor. Harris began his music career at home where his father sang and played har monica, his mother played piano, and his uncles played guitars and banjos. At family gatherings Harris would play the guitar and banjo. “In the small country town of Gas City, Indiana, music was the only entertainment we had,” he said, adding, “When I got older I joined the band in high school and learned to read music.” “While in high school about 1929 I started playing guitar and singing on the radio,” he said. A few years later in 1933 he formed a western trio called the Flying X Cowboys, with Red Kidwell and Mel Cox. The trio stayed together until the mid-sixties when they broke up to take other jobs outside of the music field. In those early depression years the band toured the country in travel trailers, play ing radio stations during the day and com munity dances at night. "Those were carefree days when we di dn’t care about money but only travel and excitement, ” Harris said. “Once we joined a wild west circus and spent the summer performing western music with them,” he added. The trio was usually sponsored for 13 to 26 weeks and spent that time playing radio stations, but spent the remaining weeks playing for dances and picnics. “We used to get together with eight or ten other bands and play all day like Willie Nelson does now, except back then they called it singing and picking all day or di nner on the grounds,” he said. Harris said if they were lucky they might draw 500 people at a dollar per person. In 1935 he married his wife of 41 years, Delores, and two years later the band moved to Texas. By 1938 the band changed its name to the Flying X Boys and made its home base in Fort Worth. “We traveled across the state doing one night stands and parking our trailers in a gas station to sleep. We did all of our cook ing on a two burner Coleman stove and most of what we ate were beans, and rab bits that we shot off the road, ” he said. During the war, Harris was in the Army as an entertainment director, putting on shows in the combat areas of India, China, and Burma. After the war Harris and the Flying X Ranchboys added Four other bandsmen and became the Lightcrust Doughboys. “We could only use the name Lightcrust Doughboys on the radio and during spon sored programs, so the rest of the time when we played dances we were the Flying X Ranchboys,” Harris said. The Lightcrust Doughboys would sing on live radio from WBAP and would travel to small towns performing and advertising Lightcrust flour. “We played Western swing music like Asleep at the Wheel does today, ” he said. In 1948 the Lightcrust Doughboys went off the air because the sponsor pulled out, but the Flying X Ranchboys remained on the radio as steady favorites. Later that year the Flying X Ranchboys had the distinction to be the first enter tainment shown on WBAP-TV shortly after the station went on the air in Dallas and Fort Worth. They played the popular music of the day such as the “Beer Barrel Polka, and “Put Your Little Foot. “ During the time I was performing I took up photography as a hobby, and over the years I wanted to do less playing and more shooting,” Harris said. “In 1967 I was offered a job here in Col lege Station taking both still pictures and making movies,” he said that since he liked the challenge, he took the job. Thumbing through a faded and yellowed scrapbook, Harris said those years he spent in the band were some of the best in his life.