The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 10

pilD THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 1995 EDITORIALS THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 1995 "It was only of late as I began raising my own, that I began to realize that my little giant of a mother had a rock-steady center, and though I might have bruised myself upon it, it was a great gift in my life, as, it was to all who knew her." Eleanor Bingham Miller, speaking Tuesday at the Rotary dinner where her mother died. (More on Mary Bingham, facing page and below.) Mary Bingham's grand stage earth aw dumping Vice President Wallace in favor of Harry Truman. The President smarted so from the sting of her words that he summoned her and publisher Mark Ethridge to Washington. A truce was declared, but the President was duly chastised. Mrs.

Bingham's interests were as broad as the range of subjects covered in the newspapers she and her husband owned. She was dedicated to the waterfront and to river THE INDISPENSABLE MARY BINGHAM BY ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER JR. Kentuckians active in liberal Democratic politics the magnificent Ed Prichard, a close friend who overcame youthful indiscretions to become the first citizen of Kentucky; the witty and irrepressible Paul Porter; the calm and resourceful Wilson Wyatt, who managed Stevenson's 1952 campaign; later those two fine governors, Bert Combs and Ned Breathitt; later still, Harvey and Kathy Sloane, who did so much for Louisville. The rise of such public-spirited citizens was She never faltered in the struggle for racial justice.

And after Barry Bingham's death, she showed great discrimination as well as great generosity in the use of the Bingham Fund to improve the quality of life in Kentucky. I spoke to her last on her 90th birthday. Her voice was as resonant and clear as ever, and her lovely zest for life was undimmed. She always looked to the future. It is characteristic that she should have died while giving a speech calling for the modernization of the Louisville Free Public Library in order FOR MOST of her long, productive life, Mary Caper-ton Bingham lived in the substantial public shadow of her husband, Barry Bingham Sr.

And that seemed to be the way she liked it. But for those who understood the remarkable partnership that shaped this region's intellectual, political and cultural climate for a half-century, Mary Bingham's own stature and contributions were never in doubt. Indeed, it was in the times of Mr. Bingham's absences during World War II, when she took charge of the editorial pages of The Courier-Journal and The Louisville Times, and in the seven years after his death in 1988 that her awesome intellect, unflinching standards and razor-sharp wit were most palpable. In her way, and STAFF Mary C.

Bingham "The Binghams used The Courier-Journal to create a climate of Opinion in Kentucky favorable to reform, to education, to the arts, to civil liberties and civil rights," I TO INSPECT Ml fPB PHOTO BY BILL LUSTER (1904-1995) The writer is the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who served as a special adviser to President John F. Kennedy. He lives in New York. THE DEATH of Mary Bingham signals the end of an era. She represented a classic but, alas, vanishing American type.

She was a patrician who fought for the poor and the powerless and a fighter who conducted battles with style and courtesy. She showed that it is possible to hold strong opinions and present them with impeccable civility. She was a liberated woman who never lost her femininity. She mobilized intelligence, knowledge, charm and courage in the service of her city, state and nation. I first met Mary Bingham more than a half-century ago.

Mary and Barry were loyal graduates, respectively, of Radcliffe and Harvard. My father, a professor of history at Harvard, had a special interest in Radcliffe, now memorialized in the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America; and he had a special interest in the Nieman Fellowships that provided a year's sabbatical leave at Harvard for promising journalists. These twin interests were the basis for long and close friendships with Mary and Barry Bingham. They were often in our house when I was young. Indeed, in 1940-41, the Binghams proposed that I come to Louisville for a term on The Courier-Journal's editorial staff.

I was much tempted, but war was impending, and I guess I wanted to be closer to the scene of action. Those were great days on The Courier-Journal. Herbert Agar, the eloquent historian and publicist, was editing the editorial page; the enormously shrewd and capable Mark Ethridge was publisher. I would have learned a lot had I been able to accept their offer. After the war, our friendship resumed in Adlai Stevenson's two campaigns for the presidency.

I found myself particularly drawn to the NO DAYE TODAY Today's Forum page has been devoted to tributes to Mary Bingham. Betty Winston Baye's column will be published tomorrow. made possible to a considerable degree by the way the Binghams used The Courier-Journal to create a climate of opinion in Kentucky favorable to reform, to education, to the arts, to civil liberties and civil rights. In all of this, Mary Bingham was her husband's indispensable and dynamic partner. She was one of the first in the nation to note and diagnose the decline of public education and to agitate for better schools and higher standards.

She was an early activist in the campaign to protect the environment against strip mines and other man-made scourges. Barry and Mary Bingham, in one of their favorite p'ctures, taken at a party In 1986. POWER AND GRACE READERS' FORUM EMPATHY AND SENSITIVITY BY WILSON W. WYATT SR. The writer, a friend of Mary Bingham for more than 50 years, is a retired Courier-Journal editorial and feature writer.

His column appears Sundays In The Forum. Illness prevented him from serving as master of ceremonies at the event where she died on Tuesday evening. WE WHO live by words lean on shaky reeds, for how, with only words, do you speak the truth of all the memories and emotions that attend the death of one you love? And there were so many of us who loved Mary Bingham, for so many good reasons, in so many ways. She was a delightful woman, and lovely, but not one to be taken lightly and on the surface of her. Beneath that smiling grace there was a tough will and a strong heart, strong beyond retreat or discouragement at temporary failure, quick to defend the causes she believed were right, impatient with selfishness or lack of vision.

And yet there was the gentler, loving part of Mary Bingham, and it was the greater part. Mary was a loving person because she was blessed with the ability to love beyond the need for JOHN PEARCE in her era, Mrs. Bingham was a decidedly liberated woman, "a bluestocking" in the term of the times, someone dissatisfied with the suffocating social and political strictures of her native Richmond, and, until the night she died, determined to change the world for the better. That's why, as a young woman, she chose to head north to Radcliffe rather than study in the South. Why she followed a career as a literary editor in Boston before she married.

Why, after she wed Barry Bingham in 1931, her time was spent on civic and political ventures that often were unpopular in her conservative adopted city, Louisville. And why she championed such notable liberals as Adlai Stevenson, Wilson Wyatt and Henry A. Wallace. Issues and principles mattered most to her, as those who differed soon learned. Franklin Roosevelt was not accustomed to criticism, but he flinched when Mrs.

Bingham's Courier-Journal editorial page took him to task in 1944 for Jail realism ANEW proposal for expanding Jefferson County jail space sounds almost too good to be true, but, if it pans out, it would be worth the interminable wait. The sweeping proposal advanced by Jefferson County Judge-Executive Dave Armstrong and new Corrections Chief Ron Bishop is more of a broad concept for changes, which would take several years to forge, than it is a blueprint for immediate action. It calls for nu-merous operational adjustments, including some that would The plan promise, commissioners it to the to with open MARY BINGHAM IN HER OWN WORDS conservation. She was appalled by environmental degradation, especially strip mining, and she cared deeply about the needs of the educationally disadvantaged. She was unabashedly a Democrat, and she reserved her greatest scorn for mindless, and heartless, conservatism.

It would not be exactly on point to say that Mrs. Bingham was a much beloved figure at the family newspaper, as was her husband. It would be nearer to a complicated truth to say that she was widely regarded with respect and awe, and occasionally with fear. Still, those who knew her well saw a gentler side: the friend who arrived with armfuls of flowers cut from her own beloved garden, the hostess whose dinners sparkled with provocative conversation, the speaker whose comments at any meeting charged the air with excitement. Deeply affected by the tragic early deaths of two sons, and the cancer of another son and a granddaughter, her attention to others in need was legendary.

With her husband, she lived life on a grand stage; they set standards for the community and for the newspaper business that may yet be equaled, but will be very difficult to exceed, although her desire certainly would be that others try. That challenge, we predict, will be her greatest legacy. tain that the $23 million cost could be covered largely by ending the county's contracts with two private jails and making major operational changes. Is their assertion realistic? That's hard to say, because the draft of their proposal offers little in the way of economic analysis. If the plan worked as envisioned, it would get Jefferson County out from under the stifling, and galling, con sent decree that annually produces the early release of thousands of inmates.

Another major selling point is the possibility that the county's capacity to house violent offenders could be enlarged without incurring the expense of constructing a new jail. The proposal to create a "weekender" program for non-violent offenders with three months or less to serve is appealing, too, but almost certain to generate controversy. Many people would say those offenders were getting off too easily. By almost any measure, however, the plan has promise, and county commissioners owe it to the community to put aside old rancor and approach it with open minds. Then they should demand to see data that support the cost estimates and ask tough questions.

Stephen J. Ford, managing editor Rochelle Riley, deputy managing editor Arthur B. Post Jr. and Sandra Duerr, assistant managing editors William L. Ellison Jr.

and Mervin Aubespin, associate editors Keith L. Runyon, editor of opinion pages Edward A. Bennett, editor of editorials Bert Emke, chief editorial writer Warren Buckler, Laurel Shackelford, Jill Johnson Keeney and Betty Winston Baye, editorial writers Hugh Haynie and Nick Anderson, cartoonists Fletcher J. Clarke, associate editor of The Forum ED COURIER-JOURNAL COLUMNIST to prepare her fellow citizens for the age of the microchip and the computer. It was also characteristic that she should have addressed with appropriate scorn the cynicism industry that afflicts the American press, television and radio.

She was of the generation that regarded civility and decorum as an essential part of the ground rules of democracy. She bore the latter-day troubles within her own family with incom parable grace and dignity. Her last words expressed her confidence that education was the long-run cure for the ailments of a democratic polity. Mary Bingham's serenity concealed an iron determination to hold America up to its oldest and noblest ideals. Her motto could have been suaviter in modo, fortiter in re.

She was a gallant lady in a notably ungallant age. One must hope that her example will guide and inspire generations to come. Special to The Courier-Journal sionate, concerned, and with a wonderful mind. She was strong in her convictions and clear in her expression. I place high value on her judgment.

She was interested in all things for the betterment of the community, the state, and the nation and with a special concern for books, the library, and education. She was one of my closest and dearest friends for more than half a century. Special to The Courier-Journal ing. If even a modicum of the irretrievably lost hours (how lonely, how isolated a child seems catatonically fixed before the television tube!) can be rescued for reading, what a benison that would be! From "Granny Gifts," in the Christmas 1972 issue of Town and Country When Hercules cleaned up the Augean stables by diverting a river from its channel and flushing it through the stalls, the myth does not tell us what he did with the ordure. One hopes that he sent it coursing out over the fields where, following the orderly rhythms of nature, it became a part of what Homer calls the "all nourishing" earth! Today, the whole world, over-populated and heavily industrialized, is becoming an Augean stable.

The composition of that waste, however, would have overwhelmed the ingenuity even of Hercules. For what could the hero have done with throw-away bottles and cans, Clorox containers, spent Kleenex, old refrigerators, cannibalized automobiles, in addition to human and feed lot wastes? The sludge made from the garbage of the scows of New York City, deposited by the billions of tons outside Ambrose Light, is beginning to creep back toward the Long Island beaches. Our lakes and rivers are polluted with the detritus of our throw away economy. Almost too late we are awakening to the nightmare possibility of our teeming world strangling in its own excrement and garbage Foreword to Handbook of Solid Waste Disposal (1974) The news that Queen Elizabeth II will attend the 11:15 service at St. John's Episcopal Church in Versailles next Sunday raises some interesting questions.

Will the service follow Rite I or Rite II or perhaps the unadulterated liturgy of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer? Non-Episcopalians may not at once grasp the serious nature of the question. Both of the new Rites are wrenching revisions of the great Cranmer masterpiece, but Rite II, especially, might present a considerable protocol dilemma. For at a point in the service when the "Peace" is passed, it is now customary for members of the congregation to embrace everybody within reach, including perfect strangers. Indeed, I have been shrinkingly present when the priest, in an excess of bold and fervent zeal, advances down the aisle hugging and kissing all hapless, and accessible, parishoners. Will Majesty thus be affronted? Letter, May 21, 1986 know the really successful human endeavors are those where everybody wins, and that includes the fans of The Louisville Orchestra.

MICHAEL WILLIAMS Louisville 40203 Why reward teachers? Nonsense! KERA nonsense. Taxpayers are again the losers in this state. How many of us would love to be rewarded with a bonus for paying taxes? Why should teachers be rewarded for doing a job they are paid to do? Education reform? Hogwash! The true losers are the students and the taxpayers. This "reward" money could have and should have been reinvested in the schools, not the teachers' pockets. If the state wants to hand out rewards, hand them to the taxpayers who financed this fiasco! DARRYL WILKINS Louisville 40204 'Contaminated seafood' Your report that a six-year Harvard University study of nearly 45,000 health professionals found no relation between fish consumption and reduced risk of heart disease points out the folly of seeking improved health by changing from one kind of meat to another.

Public concern with health hazards of red meat during the past decade has raised per capita fish consumption by 25 percent to more than 15 pounds a year. But fish and other "seafood" animals spend their entire life filtering industrial waste, agricultural runoff, and urban sewage. Though lower in fat and cholesterol, their flesh contains ample supplies of heavy metals and pesticides, responsible for several forms of cancer and birth defects, as well as agents of infectious disease. Remedies are few. Thorough cooking destroys most pathogens, but does nothing to the toxic substances.

Federal agencies monitor incidence of seafood-borne diseases, but do little to protect consumers from contaminated seafood. The only effective long-term remedy to high risk of chronic and infectious diseases is the diet recommended by a succession of U. S. health authorities: whole grains, vegetables, and fresh fruit. CAROL PONDER New Albany, Ind.

47150 Election deadline Letters discussing candidates in the May 23 election must be received by Wednesday, May 3, to be considered for publication. A writer should include a phone number where he or she can be reached during the day for verification. We lack space to publish every letter received, but we will attempt to run a cross-section of views. community, there has not been a single execution. People are no longer held accountable for their actions.

If you are a drug addict, it is an illness. If you are a mugger or a burglar, you are underprivileged. If you are a rapist, it's because your father left you or abused you. Society had better wake up and smell reality. Deviant behavior should have a prescribed penalty.

If you do the crime, expect to do the time. If you commit a crime on Monday, expect to be caught on Tuesday, tried on Wednesday, convicted on Thursday and executed on Friday! THEODORE R. WADE Jr. Louisville 40220 Solution for orchestra? I'm surprised at what has not been discussed in The Courier-Journal and among the different parties involved in the current orchestra fiasco. Much of the conflict appears to be each side's view of forecasted revenues, yet no one has opted for revenue sharing as a possible alternative.

Would it not be reasonable for both musicians and management to make wage concessions? Then, based on revenues, each could take a percentage bonus in addition to a base salary. Or all wages could be frozen dependent upon reaching their financial goals. The functionality of this type of arrangement is that it turns management and musicians in the same direction. Obviously, accounting procedures would have to be agreed on. Revenue sharing gives the musicians a vested interest in marketing for growth, while giving management increased incentive towards cost containment and effective management strategies.

Both musicians and management would have an increased interest in the welfare of the other I don't know a lot about music, and I know less about accounting, but I do DOONESBURY BY GARRY TRUDEAU 'For Better or Worse' I was quite surprised to read the April 15 letter writer's complaints about "For Better or Worse." The strip is about a typical Canadian family a husband, a wife, three children and two dogs. As in any family, sometimes you get the "better" and sometimes you get the "worse." DAVID J. BULLIS Crestwood, Ky. 40014 (A safety lesson' It was a very good comic with April falling in the river. It may make someone who reads it realize how fragile a small child's life is! Small children need to be watched closely.

Also, the children of today are smart. The way April opened the gate should give parents a clue as to what kind of latch not to have! Hooray for Farley! Some kids read only the comics, so they may get a safety lesson. I hope the comics stay funny, but they should teach also. LYNN LEE Louisville 40203 No longer accountable I do not understand why the television and newspaper media got their knickers in a twist about the school personnel not reporting the gun incident for three hours, while at the same time being so passive about teen molestation, rape, and other heinous crimes being committed and being allowed to be hidden from the community (as in the Jessica Ann Thornsberry case). I agree that the gun incident should have been reported sooner than it was.

I agree that it should have been reported to police headquarters instead of to a visiting parentpolice officer. But it was reported. When our community allows a rapist to go unpunished and unannounced with no warning whatsoever, I don't understand why anyone would be surprised that the perpetrator would eventually strike again against an unsuspecting community. Our society has been sending a message for the last 30 years that deviant behavior can be conducted and little or no repercussion can be expected to occur. Just look at the community history.

Since I have been living in this community (since late 1984), I am aware of about 15 murders. Since I have been living in this LOOK, KID, IJUST THINK YOU'D BE MORE COMFORTABLE IN '50MB OTHER lrtiH- SETTING THAN A CROWDED 50 MY DID "has and county owe community approach it minds." the woman's scope and range of knowledge, the many facets of her personality and the pleasure of her company. And yet, as I feel tempted to indulge in the self-pity that must come with the loss of a friend, I feel that I will not mourn her death but celebrate her life. To paraphrase Shakespeare, nothing in her life became her more than her leaving of it; she died as one who had been studied in her death. She was attending, as you know, a Rotary Club dinner in her honor, and was responding to tributes paid her by communi ty leaders wnen sne collapsed and died of a massive heart attack.

I trust it will not sound less than reverent if I say that she could not have chosen a finer way to go, surrounded by admirers and devoted friends, people who held her in esteem and respect, whose words were recognition of her achievements and contributions to our community and our lives. And she had just heard her daughter, Eleanor Miller, may God bless her, de- scribe the privilege of having Mary Bingham as her mother: "It was only of late," she said, "as I began raising my own, that I began to realize that my little giant of a mother had a rocksteady center, and though I might have bruised myself upon it, it was a great gift in my life, as it was to all who knew her. I know that what I am that I like the most came straight from her. And I would like to thank this amazing woman that she never gave up on me." Nor did she ever give up on life, as her last words showed. She worried that our schools were not teaching our children history or government, and that they were lowering standards so much in order to accommodate the less intelligent that they were neglecting the bright children who must be tomorrow's leaders.

She agonized over the failure of Americans to vote, and to learn about the unique blessings of self-government. She worried that voter neglect could lead to the decay of democracy. And, in her garden or on her travels, she was reverent of nature, concerned lest people fail to appreciate the beauty of the earth, and the need for its conservation. I will never know how Eleanor's "amazing woman," seemingly so small and frail, though made of steel and nerve, could do all the things she did. I will treasure always her notes, always on those small blue sheets of stationery, written in that precise, steady, unvarying script, complimenting me on something I had written, suggesting facts or topics, taking me to task, inviting me to dinner with the likes of Arthur Schlesinger or John Kenneth Galbraith, always making me feel more than I am.

I am sorry that I was not there for her final moments. (I had to be in the hospital.) I am sorry to lose her, but I am glad she could go the way she did, feisty and fighting to the end, attacking in her beautiful, articulate English our schools, our politicians, talk-show rabble-rousers, the "primates of the far religious right," and even indeed especially the media, charging that "all regard for civility and decorum disappears with the press' malicious treatment of public figures." She had prefaced her remarks, as if by premonition, by saying that she was so flattered by the remarks of those who had come to do her honor, that "the best thing would be for a big, pink cloud to come down and take me away." And God was listening to his good and faithful servant. Special to The Courier-Journal The writer is a founding partner of the Louisville law firm of Wyatt, Tarrant and Combs; until 1986, he was chief legal adviser to The Courier-Journal and Louisville Times Co. He served as mayor of Louisville, lieutenant governor of Kentucky, and was chief of Adlai E. Stevenson's 1952 campaign for president.

MARY BINGHAM was a patrician lady with great empathy and sensitivity for the common man. She was one of the greatest Kentuckians of this century compas beth" (Act IV, Scene I) and is a quite deli-ciously appropriate characterization of the about-to-be Speaker of the House: Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder's fork, and blind worm's sting, Lizard's leg, and howlet's wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble." Letter, Nov. 20, 1994 One of the proudest traditions in our history is the guarantee of a free press, the stalwart rejection of censorship in the circulation by book, magazine or newspaper of opinion and fact. From the majestic periods of John Milton against the licensing of books down to the somewhat less Olympian defense of the freedom of drug-store book racks, we have taken our stand for the uncensored exchange of ideas This is as it should be. It is not as it should be that for 80 percent of Kentucky's rural families the freedom to read is an empty privilege because they have nothing to read.

This is the practical result of the bloodless statistic that 60 percent of all Kentuckians (80 percent in rural areas) have no access to free public libraries "Books for Kentucky," an article supporting bookmobiles, published in in Kentucky Business, March 1953. The greatest gift one generation can give the next is the love of books and read- Kennedy at the White House In 1961. Over the years, the late Mary Caperton Bingham shared her thoughts and interests with readers of The Courier-Journal and The Louisville Times, as well as other publications. She reviewed books for the newspapers for nearly a half century, and spent 25 years as book editor. After her husband retired as publisher, she engaged In an active correspondence in the letters column, and she made many speeches for various organizations.

Here are some selections: A most unspeakable case of intellectual child abuse has come to hand. Let parents, teachers, librarians, godparents and all friends of children beware of this horrendous effluvium: Shakespeare for Children: Romeo and Juliet With a Happy Ending. Not content with his more appropriate calling as a producer of rock-and-roll records, this shameless author has assaulted Romeo and Juliet and we are warned that other plays in the canon will be the next victims This most extreme example of 'dumbing down' texts for children was concocted by one Frank J. Guida, who spent $10,000 to publish (inane illustrations included) and distribute it free to 30 libraries and schools in his native city of Norfolk, Va. The only ray of light in this miasma of vulgarity is that as of March 21, no copies had been sold.

Review of Shakespeare for Children, June 2, 1990 I wonder how many readers recognized and savored the allusive wit of the headline on Tony Lewis' column (Courier-Journal, Nov. 15), "Eye of This is a direct quotation from "Mac- Mary C. Bingham visiting Jacqueline U.MJ. M. it or cause, because love was part of her, the spark that lit her bright, hard intellect.

And as she was a woman of such elegant intellect, her love was compliment and comfort multiplied. And she was a woman whose love shed its light broadly, love for her husband, her children, the friends whose circle ever widened, and first perhaps of all, her love of God. And because of her abiding faith and love of God, she fought with gentle but unyielding ferocity for the earth and its wonders that He has given to our stewardship. And as she gave to others, so she drew from them the strength that at times amazed us. Her life-long love for her husband, Barry Bingham was a thing to gladden and inspire.

So open and happy, so enveloping and sustaining was her love that a biographer once quoted from her letters to Barry in an almost derisive manner, as if in this day passionate love and encompassing devotion were somehow out of fashion, as if she should have shielded from other eyes the words that told of the deep intensity, the feminine passion, of her love for him. It was a love that carried them through the tragedies and deaths that seemed to haunt them, and that enabled them to come through each successive tragedy with dignity and a surface calm that cloaked the anguish. And when he died, despite her prayers and pleadings, there were many and I was one who feared that she would not long survive him. We feared that he had been her strength, and that without him she would be but the half person that love often leaves behind. Little did we know, for little had we appreciated the steel beneath that velvet smile, the love of life, the will to live that lighted up her later years with a brilliance that bespoke a mind and spirit determined not just to carry on but to do as one what the two had done.

Indeed, it was when time and circumstances fell most heavily upon her that she showed those talents that became so familiar to us the wit, the astonishing range of knowledge, the power of her precise, articulate speech, the grace of her writing. I had had a glimpse of her unusual thoughtfulness when she visited me, only another underling on the paper's staff, when I was in the hospital, and how she remembered with kind humor little things I had said or written, giving me an undeserved feeling of importance. And when, after Barry's death, she called upon me more, and we had more activities in common, I came into a fuller rppreciation of require legislative approval and others that would hinge on the willingness of District Court judges to make significant procedural changes. The crux of the proposal involves doubling the number of county beds for violent offenders. That would be accomplished by converting a downtown office building into a jail, adding secure beds to the existing jail and expanding the capacity of a corrections center.

The component that seems overly wishful and calls out for the strictest possible scrutiny is the contention that the changes could be made without costing the county an arm and a leg. Indeed, Judge Armstrong and Mr. Bishop main- alc (mtmr-3mmtal A GANNETT NEWSPAPER Founded 1826 Edward E. Manassah, president and publisher David V. Hawpe, editor IF YOU'RE' lYS VERY COMPLICATED.

YOUR MOTHER AND I JUST SHE WAS SHE UM. CONCERNED ABOUT WELFARE, WHY who's your MOTHER A6A1N? I AND PEOPLE wonder why I FIRE5. you LEAVE MY MOTHER?.