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Troubled Shuttle Landing Today
briefly weather Fair; high in the mid 60s; low will be near 30; sunrise 6:43; suns~t4:45. Page 18.
The 'hand' As a ring on the arm's "--" "end effector mechanism" rotates, wires close on payload grapple, securing 1t to arm.
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smith to perform Soprano Susan Smith will perform with the Tupelo Symphony Orchestra at 8 tonight at the Civic Auditorium . Tickets for the Tupelo performance are $7.50. She and the symphony will travel to Corinth to perform at 2 p.m. Sunday in the Coliseum Theater.
Medical care is a rare commodity in the state of Gracias A Dios in the northeastern corner of Honduras. In this isolated section of one of the poorest Central American nations , there are no hospitals, no doctors. But the people of Gracias A Dios are getting aid from an unusual source hundreds of United States volunteers, most of them Mississippians. Page 7.
nation
Vol. 108 No. 195
Tupelo, Mississippi, Weekend Edition, November 14-15, 1981
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Wrist-mounted television camera and light
Space shuttle's robot 'arm' Dimensions of arm 15" diameter b01t,' long 900 lb. weight Payload bay doors Torque tube Storage area
Chte190 Tnb<JM G,apnlc by Oem.1 Odom, SotJ~ Notional Aeronaut,co and Spece Mmln1ttra11on
ONE OF THE vital experiments Columbia performed · Friday was t he first testing of the ship's robot arm. This device will deploy and retrieve satellites.
rickover to retire Adm. Hyman Rickover, the 81-year-old father of the atom-powered Navy, will be retired Jan. 31 and become a White House adviser on nuclear science , the Pentagon announced Friday. Page 15.
" The pro mpt submission of the money would have been appropriate." "I didn't accept it ... I received it!" Richard Allen
mortgage rates down
stockm an days numbered Despite his abject apologies, Republican leaders Friday said David Stockman's days as President Reagan 's budget director are numbered because of the damage to his credibility suffered from interviews report ed in Atlantic Monthly. Page 2.
football today National rankings are on the line when No. 10 Southern Mississippi visits No. 19 Florida State on r_egional TV at 3:50 p.m. today. Ole Miss is at Tennessee and Mississippi State is at LSU in SEC confrontations. Pages 21 and 22.
UPI Telephoto
MISSISSIPPI MESSAGE -In this picture transmitted to Earth from the orbiting space shuttle Friday, astronaut Dick Truly holds a sign in the cargo bay window which reads "Hi Mom. " Truly's mom lives in Forest. (More pictures on Page 9.) Space Center, joked with Engle and Truly and asked them to pick him up on their way over Washington so he could take a California vacation. "We'd be glad to, sir," Engle replied. "Let me just say I'm sure you · know how proud everyone down here is," Reagan said in a space hookup over a simple black telephone. "The whole nation, I'm sure the world, but certainly America has got its eyes and its heart on you."
"Thank you very much, " Truly responded . "We ' re awfully honored that we've got the opportunity to take part in this." The forecast at Edwards called for broken clouds, winds of 10 miles an hour and no rain for the Columbia landing. But the weather was expected to "deteriorate rapidly" at the beginning of the week. Engle and Trulv were Continued on P a,e 18
White House Interview 'Bribe' Investigated
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The rate for federal insured mortgage loans fell to 15.5 percent Friday, reflecting a widespread decline in interest rates. But other economic news was less encouraging. The Federal Reserve Board reported the spreading effects of auto. and housing slumps reached deeper into the economy, with factories cutting another 1.5 percent of their production during October. Page 31.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla . (UPI) - With President Reagan saying they're in "America's heart," astronauts Joe Engle and Richard Truly wrapped up space shuttle Columbia's experiments Friday and prepar~d for an early return home Saturday. The decision was made Friday to cut the voyage short by three days and land it at Edwards Air Force Base in California at 3:22 p.m. CST Saturday rather than risk a second electrical generator failure that could make landing difficult. "It was the prudent thing to do," said Christopher Kraft, director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston. after officials decided that with one of the ship's three fuel cell generators dead, loss of another might present a problem on return. The ship can fly with two fuel cells that provide its electricity, but flight director Neil Hutchinson said landing on one would be a "pretty tough" operation. Late Friday night, another problem developed aboard the shuttle - power went out in one of three video display terminals that provide flight and l'anding information to the crew. Officials were considering asking the astronauts to fix the terminal, which sits in front of Engle . Reagan, talking with the astronauts from the Johnson
WASHINGTON (UPI) - The Justice Department said Friday it is investigating an allegation national security adviser Richard Allen accepted a $1,000 bribe from a Japanese journalist for arranging an interview with Nancy Reagan. Allen said he had done nothing wrong, and President Reagan told reporters he knew of no evidence of ;..rongdoing. The White House acted quickly to end . the controversy by immediately denying that the $1,000 cash payment, first disclosed in the Japanese press, was a bribe. "As far as I know, there is no evidence of any wrongdoing,"
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Reagan told reporters as he departed the White House for a trip to Texas. Asked if he was satisfied with Allen, Reagan said, "On the basis of all that I know - on the basis of what I know, yes. " Deputy White House press secretary Larry Speakes told reporters an FBI investigation . had determined no laws or regulations had been broken. He described the situation as an episode motivated by courtesy and prolonged by forgetfulness . But Justice Department spokesman Tom DeCair later said, " The allegation regarding Mr . Allen is still under investigation. We cannot and will
not have any further comment at this time." Allen told reporters it was :in " innocent" incident and "the intent was always to comply" with regulations. However, he admitted "the prompt submission of the money ... would have been appropriate." The White House then issued a clarifying statement that Fred Fielding, counsel to the president, had indicated to Speakes the matter was closed without checking with the FBI or the Justice Department. "The FBI has submitted a report to the Justice Continued on Page 18
It Was Close Balloonists Compkre Pacific Flighl COVELO, Calif. (UPI) - Four hardy crew men who completed a historic balloon journey across the Pacific Ocean emerged from the Northern California coastal wilderness Friday and said their frail craft barely made it. "The balloon was falling apart during the last five miles," said the captain, Ben Abruzzo, 51, after he and his crew crashlanded in remote Northern California mountains following their nearly 6,000-mile flight from Japan. It was the first time a manned balioon had flown across the Pacific and was the longest nonstop balloon ride ever made. Abruzzo said the crew was preparing to bail out from the crippled craft in a heavy storm near the end. "We put on our parachutes, but
w e were surrounded· by moun tains and there was tremendous drag," he said. As the Double Eagle V landed at 12:36 a.m. CST Friday on 2,300foot-high mountain ridge, the gondola disconnected from the balloon, listed sharply and sent the crew all sliding to one end, he said. "A tree came right through the floor and joined us," Abruzzo said. The four balloonists were evacuated from the landing site by helicopter after an overnight stay on the ground in the rugged terrain. With Abruzzo, a real estate developer, were Larry Newman, 33, and Ron Clark, 41, all of Albuquerque, N.M., and Rocky Aoki, owner of the Benihana
restaurant chain, who put up $250,000 to help finance the trip. All four addressed a crowd of newsmen, relatives and townspeople at a ·school . auditorium after being flown out from their crash site. Newman said Thursday night was "the closest anyone flying a balloon will come to meeting their maker." As they approached the California coast, he said, the options included "to go under the Golden Gate Bridge and land in (San Francisco) bay, but unfortunately mother nature took that one away from us." He said the other possibilities were to go down in the ocean or, the toughest one, · to find solid Continued on Page 18
Photo bJ' Kite T1p1COtt
COUNTY CLEANUP - Pierce Street Elementary School principal Paul Pate, left, and student Chuck Bussler pick up trash near the school Friday as the massive Lee County Cleanup Campaign gets under way. The cleanup continues today as volunteers spread across the county collecting trash, sprucing up homes and cleaning vacant lots. Tupelo residents are asked to put trash bags on their curbs, while county residents can take bags to the nearest voting pre"incts.
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Kudzu - Mirack Vine Gone Astray... And Astray••• And
index About People ............... 16 Church Notices .......... 10-11 Classified ................ 27-33 Comics ..................... 28 Editorial .......•............ 6 Look At Lee ........ ... ...... 3 Markets . ....... .... . ...... . 32 Mississippi Living •.. •..•. 12-13 Movies •.....• . ........•.... 17 Obituaries .................. 18 Sports . .................. 21-25 What's Happening ....... . .. 15
National Geographic News CHARLOTTE, N.C. - The house Vernon Goode bought at auction turned out to have one big drawback: The back yard wa s strangled by a vine know as kudzu. It was a struggle, but Goode cleared the kudzu and was rewarded. He found a full-size swimming pool underneath. And then there are those funnyshaped green lumps at the Hi-
Way Junkyard near York, S.C. The lumps - kudzu·covered cars - have proved too much for the billy goat whose job is to keep the junk yard free of the vine . "It grows faster than he eats it," owner Clyde Norman says. " If I let Billy run free he'd eat himself dead." Battles with kudzu are common in the Southeast. Creeping up to a foot a day · under ideal conditions, kudzu has
no mercy for whatever is in its path. It suffocates trees, climbs utility poles, devours gardens, cracks roads, and covers buildings. People attack it with hatchets, chain saws, fire and chemicals, only to look out the next morning on hundreds of new tendrils nodding in the Dixie dew. Poet James Dickey has called kudzu a "vegetal form of cancer. Kudzu is a perennial legume 11
with broad leaves. small purple flowers and a thick, woody stem. In early spring tendrils shoot out from nodes along the stems; during one summer a single stem can expand 60 feet in all directions and cover the ground to a depth of 4 feet. Its growth halted by first frost , the vine picks up where it left off with the first breath of spring air. Native to China and Japan, kudzu was introduced to and
hailed as the savior of an erosiontorn South 50 years ago. "Cotton is no longer king, kudzu is king! became a rallying cry for comm unity kudzu planting projects. Given away free to farmers by the Soil Conservation Service, the plant's long tendrils and deep roots gripped . .the soil, and it 11
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