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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (June 2, 1998)
The Battalion TfITE Baptist church makes history by naming female senior pastor WACO, Texas (AP) — Calvary Bap tist Church members voted to hire a 37-year-old senior pastor who de nominational officials believe is the first female ever named senior pastor in a Southern Baptist church in Texas. Members voted, 1 90-73, to call the Rev. julie Pennington-Russell Sunday after hearing her preach. "It's exciting to be a part of this," said member C. Sam Smith. "I think it's historical. God is going be glori fied even more in this church than ever before." Pennington-Russell is now senior pastor at Nineteenth Avenue Baptist Church in San Francisco — where Pennington-Russell said gender is a non-issue. Not all members of Calvary, a tradi tional mainstream Baptist church, agree that a woman should be senior pastor. Church member Rick Scott said he and his wife will have to do some serious soul searching about staying at Calvary. "I just don't feel that biblically a precedent has been set for a women to be a senior pastor in a church," he said. Scott said the vote will prove divi sive even though Pennington-Russell was praised for her preaching and pas toral care skills. "You're going to see a little bit of a shake-out, a pruning I've heard it called," Scott said Sunday afternoon. Pennington-Russell said although the congregational vote for her was lower than the 90 percent gauge used by many male pastors when consider ing a position, it will not stop her from accepting the job. "The 70 percent was really right in the ballpark of what we thought be cause it's so new," she said. Approximately 90 Southern Baptist women are serving as senior pastors or co-pastors nationwide with fewer than 1,300 women ordained in Southern Baptist Convention churches, said a Southern Baptist ministry historian, Sarah Frances Anders. The new senior pastor replaces the Rev. Ken Massey, who left Cal vary last summer. El Nino New radios sought for better weather alet DALLAS (AP) — El Nino-fueled demand for latest-gen eration weather radios that alert listeners to tornado, hurri cane and other warnings has caused a nationwide shortage of the devices. After the first deadly twisters hit Florida, Texas-based Ra dio Shack went through a year's inventory in just weeks and has had to reorder from an overseas manufacturer. "The El Nino effect wreaked havoc not only with trying to forecast the weather, but also for us to predict what the de mand is for these radios," Rick Borinstein, Radio Shack senior vice president of merchandising, said. "We have had a run on weather alert radios since February of this year when the first tornados hit Florida." The National Weather Service said other tornadoes this year in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee helped fuel the run. "We are pleased there was demand that has increased," said Skip Ely, National Weather Service chief meteorologist in Fort Worth. "About 10 years ago, the service was underutilized. Not that many people listened to weather radios." The radios are made to receive FM broadcasts of forecasts, watches, warnings and general weather information from the nearest National Weather Service transmitting station. They also can be set to sound an alarm when the weath er service issues a severe weather watch or warning, such as a tornado warning. Then, a loud tone is followed by the alert broadcast. Ely said his mother, who lives in Florida, bought one of the radios after killer tornadoes swept through the state's central section in February while many people slept. "She got one of the last ones," he said. Tony Magoulas, spokesman for Fort Worth,Texa Tandy Corp., parent company of Radio Shack stores company anticipated sales would be brisk for therai But he would not say how many radios had been "We are now air shipping more of them frorc where they are built to our specifications," said Bo: "We are trying to get them in stock. We anticipate 30 to 60 days, we will be back in flush inventoryx across the country." El Nino, the intense warming of the Pacific Ocean# America, has shifted south the jet stream's wintei bringing floods to southern California and tornadii and heavy rains to Florida. That's the kind of situation the radios were desi? said Nathan McCollum of the Indian River Count) ment of Emergency Services. "The people who were in Central Florida in Febni, about 10 to 12 minutes warning if they had their rad said. "If they didn't have their radios, the first warm: had was their structures collapsing." Nate Hunt, manager of a Radio Shack store inFlor pects to be restocked in late July. "We haven't had them for about two months now,"H; Sales in other parts of the country have been hot. "I had heard the same thing in Alabama and evei area," said Ely. "There has been an increase indemar City councilman seeks denouncement of Waco Horroi WACO, Texas (AP) — A councilman wants Waco to officially denounce the 1916 lynching of a African-American man who was hanged over a bonfire and mu tilated on the City Hall lawn after his con viction in the murder of a white woman. Five-term councilman Lawrence Johnson told fellow council members that the lynching, known as the "Waco Horror," remains a blot on city history. Johnson said Waco should draft a statement denouncing the incident and proclaiming a commitment to racial har mony, and he'd like to see a plaque placed on City Hall grounds. "I would like something to show that even though it took 80 years, we've ac knowledged it, and that we're past that now," he told the Waco Tribune-Herald for a story in Sunday's editions. According to newspaper accounts of the time, Jesse Washington, 17, was a field hand on the farm of George and Lucy Fryer. Washington confessed and later apol ogized in court for the slaying of Fryer's wife, 53, whose body was found in a cot tonseed shed, the reports said. In a one-day trial, Washington was convicted and sentenced to hang by a jury that deliberated in five minutes. Court spectators then surged forward and seized the defendant, dragging him to an alley behind the courthouse. There, according to the reports, Wash ington was attacked with bricks, knives, clubs and shovels, stripped and taken to the front lawn of City Hall, where another mob had built a bonfire beneath a hanging tree. A crowd of 15,000, including the may or and police chief, were said to have watched as the man was doused with coal oil, hanged and lowered into the bonfire. Onlookers cut off body parts to keep as souvenirs. Washington's charred remains were put in a bag and hung from a telephone pole, the reports said. The May 1916 incident was not Waco's first or last racially motivated lynching nor was it unusual among thousands of lynchings in the South be tween the Civil War and World War II. But the incident brought national at tention at the time, and the NAACP used it in a pitch for a federal anti-lynching law that eventually passed in 1921. Johnson, a Waco native and president of the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said he hadn't heard of the 1916 lynching un til he visited the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis two years ago. There he saw a picture of the burned and disfigured corpse dangling from a tree and surrounded by a grinning white men. "What brought it home to me is that it happened on the lawn of City Hall," he said. "It became to me an act that was dif- $ s Re $ $ t < v> s , <v;\ > , i wm, s i 4 > v<. ?kiM m * igif i"" „ | p. ♦ '• <. Kf - 117 Holleman Drive West College Station,Texas 77840 COIUGIATS RESIDENCES Tel.; (409) 696-5711 Fax: (409) 696-5661 Office Hours Mon-Sat 10-6 Sunday 12-6 ferent from other lynchings of tl "There are indications thatc cials were watching it happen; nothing to stop it. I thought itw we did something to purge thati: to gain a sense of atonement.” I Councilwoman Linda Ethridfl she would like to hear a specific;^ al from Johnson and would we council discussion about it. "It will raise an interestir.l tion," she said. "How do with history? We like totalkabJ good things in our history, bu:| kind of discussion and rememl» s | is appropriate for things t» v shameful in history?" " I 8>' ; I ft ■ bi The Texas A&M University College of Liberal Arts, in cooperation with the University of Houston Moores School of Musk h > lat ml ierou| ■Ml ■«ula| iuntil esonl Fve| qve, ] presents 1:30 p.m. • Rudder theatre A |Ji arj Festival Cimcert! Tickets available at the MSC Box Office 845-1234 Adults $10.00 Season $40.00 Sr. Citizens $8.00 Season $32.00 Students $5.00 Season $20.00 Monday Evening. June 8,1998 Moores Brass Quintet and Beethoven Piano & Wind Quintet^ Monday Evening, June 15,1998 An Evening with Violist, Karen Ritscher, & Friends Monday Evening, June 22,1998 An Evening With Celllet, Laezlo Varga, & Friends Monday Evening, June 29,1998 A Whale of a Concert Mozart, Shostakovich, & Crumb Friday Evening, June 12,1998 Texas Music Festival Symphony Orchestra Maxim Shostakovich, conductor Nicholas Jones, cellist Check Us Out on the World Wide Web: www.dmcmgmt.com PLf. 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