Page 2 • The Battalion • Monday, July 8, 1996
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Parson’s Mounted Cavalry
fights cutbacks with fundraising
By Ann Marie Hauser
The Battalion
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Budget cutbacks by Texas
A&M motivated the Parson’s
Mounted Cavalry (PMC) to be
gin fund-raising efforts this
past spring.
University funding was re
duced by about 75 percent last
year for the cavalry and other
University-wide organizations.
Jim McFadin, PMC comman
der and a senior agricultural eco
nomics major, said the cavalry
needs $30,000 per year to cover
expenses for the unit.
“Without this money the caval
ry would not function,” McFadin
said. “We are raising this money
now so three or four years from
now we will still be in existence.”
Members have begun a letter
writing campaign targeting for
mer cavalry and Corps of Cadets
members for donations.
Aggie Moms’ Clubs and former
students from cavalry members’
hometowns are also receiving let
ters. This method was modeled
after the fund-raising efforts uti
lized by the redpots for Bonfire.
Donors have the option to
give their money to two separate
funds, operational or endow
ment. Operational funds go to
wards everyday expenses such
as feed and hay for the horses.
The endowment funds will re
main untouched until a goal of
$500,000 is reached.
Mickey Gerdes, a junior histo
ry and political science major,
said his efforts for fund-raising
are worthwhile for the cavalry.
“I love it,” Gerdes said. “Being
in the cavalry gives you some
thing to work for, and it moti
vates me to study.”
McFadin said the Parson’s
Mounted Cavalry began in
1974 to help publicize A&M
and the Corps.
“It was formed to keep the old
traditions alive and give favorable
publicity to A&M and the Corps,”
McFadin said.
The cavalry is one of the last
mounted ROTC units left in the
United States. The members of
the cavalry participate in various
parades and drill and ceremony
functions and A&M football —
they fire the cannon.
McFadin said he hopes the
cavalry can continue because of
all the unit has done for him
and others.
“Caring for the animals teach
es us responsibility and respect,”
McFadin said. “A special bond ex
ists between us (the cavalry).”
Luna’s case against UT
System begins this week
AUSTIN — A trial is
slated to begin this week
for a former accountant who
sued claiming he lost his
job after alleging the Uni
versity of Texas System was
being ripped off by millions
of dollars.
Jose “Joe” Luna contends
he was “tortured” out of his
job with the UT System in
August 1994 after reporting
that gas companies operat
ing on university land were
underpaying royalties to the
Permanent University Fund.
That endowment helps sup
port the UT and Texas A&M
University systems.
Luna, who is seeking $2
million in damages, claims
the underpayments amount
ed to between $25 million
and $50 million.
Instead of being reward
ed, Luna said, he was
threatened with being beat
en with a two-by-four, told
to change his audit findings
and, ultimately, stripped of
his duties — all of which led
him to leave his job and seek
psychiatric care. His bosses
included an official who once
had an interest in a well
with a gas company that
Luna audited.
UT lawyers say there is
no substance to Luna’s alle
gations, including the
charges that his bosses re
taliated against him in vio
lation of the Texas Whistle
blower Act. That law, which
is designed to protect public
servants who report wrong
doing, is the basis for Lu
na’s suit.
UT auditors did not un
cover any improprieties af
ter Luna’s bosses ordered an
in-house audit of Luna’s al
legations, UT officials said.
UT plans to produce doc
tors who will say Luna’s
mental trauma was of his
own making — that the ac
tions he perceived as retalia
tion were “ordinary and be
nign personnel measures"
aimed at improving his per-
formance. UT says Luna
walked off his job one day
and never came back.
Luna will produce his own
doctor to disagree with UT’s.
He also will argue that he
effectively was fired and had
little choice but to leave. It
will be up to a Williamson
County jury, which is ex
pected to be seated Tuesday
or Wednesday, to decide
whether Luna has a claim
under the law.
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Investigators work to determine cause of Delta mishap
PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP) — Shattered pieces of jet
engine were gathered off an airport runway Sunday,
remnants of shrapnel that shredded part of an air
liner’s fuselage and devastated a vacationing family.
Investigators had yet to determine why the left
engine on a Delta Air Lines jet blew apart during
takeoff, whether there was some internal problem
or whether it sucked in a foreign object such as a
bird, said George Black, a member of the National
Transportation Safety Board.
Metal pieces flying from the engine, mounted on
the side of the fuselage near the tail, ripped a gash
about a foot wide and more than 4 feet long across the
side of the plane, killing Anita Saxton, 39, her son
Nolan, 12, and injuring two of her other children.
Mrs. Saxton, of Scottville, Mich., had been vaca
tioning with three of her five children in the Pen
sacola area.
The two injured children were discharged
from Sacred Heart Hospital on Sunday and
joined with their father, Randy Saxton, who flew
to Pensacola late Saturday.
Although dazed and burned, 15-year-old Der
rick Saxton carried his sister, 9-year-old
Spencer, from the plane after the pilot made an
emergency stop on the runway, said their grand
father, William Saxton. Spencer had leg and fa
cial injuries.
“Then he wanted to go back inside to get his
mother and brother,” said William Saxton, who
said he spoke with Derrick by telephone soon af
ter the accident from his home at Pentwater,
Mich. “He seems all right now, as much as he
can be after this.”
Five of the other 142 passengers aboard the jet
liner also were injured, but only one remained hos
pitalized Sunday, listed in critical condition after
surgery for a broken leg. None of the five crew
members was hurt.
Delta officials said Sunday there was no connec
tion between the accident and deep cost-cutting
that has pruned about 12,000 jobs from the At
lanta-based carrier since 1994.
Delta has had four engine-disabling incidents
since April, according to NTSB records, The Tam
pa Tribune reported Sunday.
No one was hurt in any of those cases. Two of
them involved MD-88 airliners, the same model in
volved in Saturday’s accident.
In one of those engine accidents on June 22, a
turbine blade punched a hole in the engine case
and made a small hole in the engine’s exterior
metal covering.
While the cause of the latest engine failure is not
yet known. Black explained what made it so lethal.
“Any engine has a lot of fairly massive parts ro
tating very rapidly,” he said. “It’s just like slinging
keys around on a chain. If something happens to
that object it has to dissipate that energy. So it
would be a violent event.”
The seven-member NTSB team was assisted by
experts from Delta, the Federal Aviation Adminis
tration, plane manufacturer McDonnell Douglas
and Pratt & Whitney, which made the two JT8D-
219 engines that powered the MD-88 jetliner.
They were checking all of the plane’s systems,
maintenance records and its flight data and cock
pit voice recorders, the so-called “black boxes.”
They also were interviewing the pilot and co-pilot.
Black said experts would try to reconstruct the
failed engine to find out what went wrong.
The runway where the accident happened could
not be reopened until all the debris was removed,
but airport operations continued uninterrupted on
an alternate runway.
Also Saturday, another Pratt & Whitney engine
failed, on TWA’s Flight 114 from Seattle to St.
Louis, prompting the pilot to land the MD-80 at
Omaha, Neb. However, no debris escaped from
that engine, a slightly less powerful model called
the JT8D-217, Pratt & Whitney spokesman Mark
Sullivan said Sunday.
The JT8D is one of the most common and reli
able types of engines used on commercial air
craft, said Pratt & Whitney spokesman Mark
Sullivan from the company’s East Hartford,
Conn., headquarters.
The engine powers 4,000 passenger and cargo
jets. About a quarter of the engines are from the
200 series that was in the Delta plane.
This type of engine accident is “very unusual —
catastrophic and unusual,” said NTSB spokesman
Michael Benson.
A similar failure involving a JT8D-9A engine,
an earlier version of the type that failed here, pen
etrated the cabin of a ValuJet DC-9 preparing to
ALA.
GA.
©
Atlantic
Ocean
Tallahassee
Pensacola
Delta jet
aborts takeoff
Gulf of
Mexico
100 miles
100 km
V
Associated Prts
take off from Atlanta on June 8, 1995. A flight at
tendant and six passengers were injured; a result
ing fire destroyed the plane.
NTSB investigators found evidence that com
sion on a piece of that engine called a compressor
disc had been plated over during a 1991 overhaul
in Turkey. The agency then conducted special in
spections of other engines that ValuJet had pur
chased from a Turkish airline.
Winds top 80 mph as Tropical Storm Bertha bears down on Caribbean
CHARLOTTE AMALIE, U.S. Virgin Islands (AP)
— Tropical Storm Bertha bore down on a swath of
Caribbean islands Sunday, heading directly for the
U.S. Virgin Islands with gusts of up to 80 mph.
Hurricane warnings were issued for all of the
Caribbean’s northeastern islands. The eye of the
storm is expected to cross directly over St. Thomas,
the main U.S. Virgin Island, sometime Monday.
Bertha should become a hurricane before mid
night and advance on the British and U.S. Virgin Is
lands early Monday.
“They now have it passing right over the Virgin
Islands and just north of Puerto Rico,” said Miles
Lawrence, a specialist at the U.S. National Hurri
cane Center in Miami.
The U.S. National Weather Service posted hurri
cane warnings from Puerto Rico east and south to Do
minica, warning residents to expect winds of at least
74 mph and high waters in the next 24 hours.
Gov. Roy L. Schneider ordered shelters to open
Sunday on St. Thomas, where hundreds of residents
are still living under tarpaulins covering roofs dam
aged and destroyed in last year’s storms.
Puerto Rican Gov. Pedro Rossello activated his
disaster plan, which fixes prices on hurricane-relat
ed items and bans alcohol sales.
Bertha raced toward the islands at 22 mph Sun
day — fast for a tropical storm — packing sustained
winds of 70 mph and gusts up to 80 mph. Tropical
storms become hurricanes when their maximum
sustained winds reach 74 mph.
At 2 p.m. EDT Sunday, the storm was 210 miles
east of Antigua. Hammers rang out on that island
Sunday afternoon, as people hastily boarded up win
dows and tried to secure roofs unrepaired since last
year’s storms.
Two hurricane aircraft flew into the eye of the storm
early Sunday, enabling the National Weather Service to
estimate the storm could first hit land around Antigua
and Barbuda about 10 p.m. EDT Sunday.
Bertha, which has tropical-force winds extending
145 miles from its center, is then projected to cross
numerous Caribbean islands, from St. Martin, St.
Kitts and Nevis, to Montserrat, where residents
have also been dealing with threat of a volcano erup
tion for more than a year.
On St. Thomas, residents shopping for emergency
supplies created traffic jams Saturday around the
main shopping area. The governor asked bottled wa
ter companies to open Sunday because so many
stores had run out of supplies.
People loaded shopping carts with batteries, matches,
propane, lanterns — all the things they didn’t have
enough of when Hurricane Marilyn struck last Septem
ber. Others sat near radios and televisions, anxious for
news as Bertha approached.
Nigel John, a 34-year-old police officer, ham
mered away at a blue tarpaulin covering what used
to be the roof of his trailer home in Charlotte
Amalie, the main city on St. Thomas.
“He’s trying to make it stronger,” said his wife,
Janet. “I’m just sick of it,” she declared as she
wrapped in plastic the new television and microwave
oven that replaced ones destroyed by Hurricane
Marilyn last year.
Forecasters predict Bertha will turn into a Catego
ry 1 hurricane — the least dangerous of five cate
gories of hurricanes. But since many people have not
recovered from last year’s storms, and fewer sound
shelters are available, even a low-grade storm could
cause great damage.
Hurricane warnings were broadcast in Antigua,
Barbuda, Nevis, Montserrat, St. Kitts, Anguilla,
Saba, St. Eustatius, Dominica, Guadeloupe, St.
Barthelemy, St. Martin, the U.S. Virgin Islands and
Puerto Rico.
Most of those islands were hard-hit last year,
when Hurricanes Marilyn and Luis pummeled
through within days of each other, destroying thou
sands of homes in the worst Atlantic hurricane sea
son in 60 years.
Eighty percent of homes on St. Thomas were de
stroyed or damaged by Hurricane Marilyn and fewer
than half have been repaired.
Forecasters said Bertha was following the same
trajectory as Marilyn and Hurricane Hugo, which
devastated Puerto Rico in 1989.
The Atlantic hurricane season’s first tropical
storm doused coastal areas of the Carolinas with
rains and gusty winds last month.
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