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Northeast Mississippi
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A Locally Owned Newspaper Dedicated to the SeNice of God and Mankind
Sunday,August7, 1994
Vol. 121 , No. 1292
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Last link of U.S. 78 opens After 29 years, four-lane crosses N.E. Mississippi By JANE IDLL Daily Joumal
Fairy tales can come true Fairy tales can come true. Just ask Tupelo native Tracey Savery Davis. She began working with porcelain in 1990 after moving to Pensacola, Fla. and today has turned her love of mythical fairies into a career that not only gives her joy and satisfaction but is financially rewarding as well. Davis creates elaborate costumes for her porcelain fairy creatures from items such as feathers, silk, and real butterfly and picada wings. Her work will soon be on display at the Albert Museum in London. Learn more about the Tracey Davis collection in Sunday's Living section.
-See LIVING
What's in a TV name? Wilbur: "Ed? What kind of name is Ed for a horse?" Mister Ed: "What kind of a name is Wilbur for a man?" That's the question that has burned in the minds of anyone who has ever created a television show. Movie producers and novelists ponder the names of characters, also, of course. But given the competitive paranoia that reigns in the TV industry, television writers are more likely to spend sleepless nights worrying about whether a character should be named Raven or Jane. So why is it that TV is currently awash in a wave of Jacks? If Hollywood writers lose so much sleep trying to decide on names for their characters, what is it about the name Jack that has pervaded so many creative brains lately?
Photo by Kar1 Floyd
Many of the 700 Northeast Mississippians present at Saturday's ribbon-cutting ceremony on four-lane U.S. Highway 78 take a whack at the 26 strands of ribbon strung acr ss the westbound lane.
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The final link /ir{t.f 78 TENN .
Th; f in a l s ectio n i of U.S. 78 four lane Leng th: 6.6 miles bE)tween Hicko ry Flat and Potts C{lmp; 8 miles between Potts Camp and Holly Springs. Cost: $43.2 million. Begun: Aug . 27 , 1991. Four-lane U.S. 78 Length: 118.8 m iles fro m the Alaba ma state line to the Tennessee state line. Cost: $262.1 million (not including engineering and right of way purchases). Begun: Jan. 16, 1965. Completed: Aug. 6, 1994.
POTIS CAMP - The blades of more than 400 pairs of scissors shone in the morning sun as Mississippians who came to celebrate the dedication of the last fourlane section of U.S. Highway 78 prepared to break through the last barrier to easier and safer highway Inside . ·,. ·. travel across the northeastern sec tion of the •The U.S. 78 Stostate. Cheers went up from ry: You lived to the crowd after everyone see it made the cut. Four-lane • 78 revisited: Sights, 78 was now open road. The bits of red, white signs and blue ribbon created a long by the unique ceremony the long instantly became so u- winding venirs of 29 years of road working and waiting for • Life after the a four-lane Highway 78. bypass:Cities Many of the almost weather changes 700 people present at the • Hazardous, ceremony had participat- hair-raising ride ed in an early morning - See Insight parade of vehicles beginning at the Alabama state line to the Potts Camp interchange where the ceremony took place Saturday. Northern District Hi g hway Commissioner Zack Stewart said the highway, which cost more than $300 million to construct, was a dream come true for many Mississippians, a dream which had survived numerous attempts to begin and sustai n a four-lane highway program in Mississippi before being realized in the 1987 Advocating Highways for Economic Advancement and Development program. "I am celebrating the fact that the question I have been asked most often, 'Will I live long enough to see Highway 78 four-laned?' will never be asked again," Stewart said. The last two ections of the highway to be opened, an 8-mile section between Potts Camp and Holly Springs and a 6.6-mile section which was opened Saturday, were bid in 1991 at a cost of $43.2 million. The 8-mile
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-See VIEW
Juvenile jail one year later A year ago, two 18-wheelers rolled into Tupelo :~ith a cargo many people had long been waiting for - a juvenile jail. Before one of the truck drivers could even unload, one beaming Tupelo police officer had jumped onto the rig to welcome him and his cargo to town.
-See LOCAL
State payments fall short First hearings of inmate costs at Lee jail evolved into By PHILIP MOULDEN Daily Journal
Reich to rub elbows with fans Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who has offered to help resolve the major league baseball labor dispute, .viii attend a Boston Red Sox game today "to see what the hometown fans have to say about all this," a :;pokesman said. Reich, a former Yale professor and longtime Red Sox fan , will take his son, Adam, 13, to watch Boston ' :>lay the Cleveland Indians when they meet for a dou:>leheader in Fenway Park, Assistant Deputy Secretary 3teve Rosenthal said Saturday. Reich planned to meet Nith union representatives from both teams, along with m aide to union head Donald Fehr. "He wants to kind of rub elbows with the fans - to ake their temperature on this," Rosenthal said. Reich met recent(y with Fehr and management 1egotiator Richard Ravitch, offering the Clinton adminstration's help in resolving the labor dispute. Neither ;ide has accepted the offer.
>artly cloudy .........................................38 Skies will be partly cloudy today with ~ ,olated afternoon thunderstorms. Highs ~ viii be in the mid-80s with less than a 20 ,ercent chance of precipitation. Lows ::might will be in the mid-60s.
7 sections, 52 pages Business/Page 7A
Local/Page 1B
Classified/Page 1E
Movies/Page 9C
Crossword/Pageac
Obituaries/Page 28
Education/Page 8A
Opinion/Page 2F
FYI/Page3B
People/Pa@ BC
Insight/Page 1F
Review/Page 4F
Living/Page 1C
Sports/Page 1D
t C1994 Journal Publishing Co.
Printed on recycled and recyclable paper
Lee County would be roughly $300,000 richer this year if the state Department of Corrections paid as much for housing its prisoners in county jails as it does its own facilities. The state pays counties $10 a day, plus medical expenses , for each convict retained at local jails until prison beds become available. Lee County records for July 1993 through June 1994 show the overcrowded local jail held an average of about 35 state prisoners a day. The county was paid $127,060 for housing, plus $6,672 in medical costs. However, records produced by
state Auditor Steve Patterson this week showed it costs the state more than $3 0 a day to house inmates at Mississippi's three major correctional facilities. T~e state also pays more than $20 a day per prisoner for its low-security community work centers and restitution centers . The difference for Lee County amounts to roughly $312,000, almost one mill on the county tax rate. Lee County supervisors recently joined several other counties in approval of a resolution asking the state to pay $40 a day each for housing state prisoners. "That's pretty close to what we' re paying," Lee County adminislrator Ronnie Bell said. The Mississippi Association of Supervisors, at its convention last month in Biloxi, demanded at least $30 a day. ·
"They were hoping to get $30," Lee County Board of Supervisors president Billy Davis said. "That's not enough, but it would help a lot. "Yes sir, we sure could use the money," Under ideal conditions, inmates would be sent to a state prison immediately upon conviction. But the state's detention facilities are also crammed to capacity and there is no way counties can force the state to take excess prisoners. Patterson's report, based on a study conducted by Smith, Turner & Reeves, a Jackson certified public accounting firm, showed it costs an average $33.47 a day to keep an inmate in !he state's main penitentiary at Parchman. The cost at the Central Mississippi Correction Facility in Rankin County was even higher, $36.79 a day , while
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Serbs return weapons seized from U.N. depot By DAVID CRARY Associated Press
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) - Stung by a NA TO air strike, Bosnian Serbs returned weapons they had seized from a U.N.-guarded depot and peacekeepers turned on Saturday to ferreting out snipers terrifying the city. Fighting raged elsewhere in Bosnia, ome of the most severe in Vares, just 20 miles from the capital of Sarajevo. The air strike, in which two U.S. A-lOs destroyed an anti-tank vehicle, came after Bosnian Serbs took a tank, two annored personnel carriers and a mobile anti-aircraft gun from a U.N. depot just west of Sarajevo. Serbs fired at a U.N. helicopter sent to check on the tank.
There were no casualties reported in the air strike. The Bosnian Serbs, facing increasingly strong resistance from the government army and abandonment by their patrons in Serbia, said they needed the weapons for the Vares battle. The seizures violated a NA TO ultimatum banning heavy weapons in a 12.5-mile zone around Sarajevo. NATO and U.N. officials threatened further air strikes if the Serbs again violated the exclusion zone. U.N. spokesman Maj. Rob Annink made clear that the overall issue of heavy weapons in the exclusion zone had not been resolved, and that the United Nations was protesting to the Serbs about mortar rounds fired recently near Sarajevo, including three
rounds fired Friday. The exclusion zone, established in February, had brought a semblance of normalcy to the city that had been under siege for nearly two years . But truce violations have increased recently, notably sniper fire . Annink said peacekeeper patrols would start house-to-house searches of suspected sniper positions , including high-rise buildings from which snipers have targeted streetcar passengers. One rider was killed and 20 wounded in the past week. Authorities shut down the streetcar Saturday, a logistical inconvenience and blow to morale in the capital. Restoration of streetcar service in March had been seen as an omen that Sarajevo 's suffering might soon be over.
inquest on truthfulness By JOHN SOLOMON Associated Press
WASHINGTON - In a turn that blindsided the White Hou e, the first congressional Whitewater hearings evolved into a dramatic inquest into the honesty of high officials in the Clinton administration. They left the administration with a black eye - compliments, in part, of members of its own party - and a fallen Analysis star: Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman.
Whitewater
H RINGS
With rare bipartisan unity , - - - - - - members of the House and Senate Banking Committees deliv• Fiske ran ered a verbal thrashing to Altman for violating a cardinal aggressive inrule: Never mislead Congress. vestigation. Altman failed to g ive the • New indeSenate comp! and accun ~ testimony on .1itewater lasl pendent counFebruary. Evidence showed last se I promises week that when advi sed of his mi sc ue, he failed to make 'even-handed' amends in a timely fashion, probe. de s pite the urging of col-SeePage3A leagues. Lawmakers took it personally. At the outset, the hearings that ended Friday were designed to review the propriety of discussions in which Treasury regulators divulged confidential information to presidential aides about a Whitewater-related investigation with ties to the Clintons. On that point, the White House prepared well. Aides were rehearsed to give a uniform story, and they came armed with three independent reviews that
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