O/T Hard to believe 02/09 Part 1 of 2
Billie
By Maria Glod
Washington Post Staff Writer
Loudoun County Sheriff's Sgt. Ed Leonard pulled into a popular "lovers' lane"
near the Potomac River just after midnight yesterday and flashed his blue
lights to warn the couple in the parked car to be on their way.
That was all it took for the startled man in the driver's seat, who hit the
accelerator and drove about 100 feet before plunging off a boat ramp into the
frigid, rushing water at Whites Ferry.
"He was spooked, and he just took off," Leonard said yesterday. "The car
started up. The headlights came on and he just drove down the ramp into the
water. They knew the police were here."
Leonard yelled to the pair to hold tight to the red Dodge Colt, which was
drifting and starting to sink in about 8 feet of 35-degree water as he radioed
for help. Within minutes, rescuers pulled the cold and embarrassed--but
uninjured--pair from the river and took them to Loudoun Hospital Center.
Regina Lindsey, 36, who was still shivering yesterday after her swim, said it
was no romantic tryst, just two old acquaintances sitting and talking.
Lindsey, who lives in Leesburg and works for the Loudoun Times Mirror, said she
ran into Jeremy Allen, 20, of Swoope, Va., at Shooters, a Leesburg bar, earlier
that evening. Lindsey said that she met Allen about a year ago and that he was
in town on a business trip.
Sgt. Bruce Lecrone said the winding, wooded roadway leading to the ferry is a
popular hangout for teenagers after dark, which is why deputies regularly
patrol the area. "It has been for years," Lecrone said. "After the ferry closes
up, it's like a big parking lot."
Lindsey said she doesn't recall the police cruiser pulling up behind Allen's
car or much about the trip into the water.
"It all happened so fast," she said. "The car went down into the water. That's
the only thing I remember. I was so out of it. . . . I seen all that water
coming up towards me. I thought I was dead. I really did."
Allen could not be located for comment yesterday. Lindsey said she thought
Allen may have believed that the ferry was open and that he was driving onto
the boat. But Leonard said Allen later told him that he wasn't familiar with
the area and didn't know that the road led to the river.
In any case, Leonard said neither faces charges. Yesterday afternoon, divers
helped fish the car from the river.
"They didn't break any law," Leonard said, adding that Allen "is more or less
embarrassed. But at least they are okay."
* * *
http://www.sptimes.com/News/020900/State/Couple_sues_bus_line_.shtml
By MIKE BRASSFIELD
A Clearwater couple is suing Greyhound Bus Lines for discrimination, alleging
that the husband was denied a bus ticket after he was seen urinating behind a
garbage bin.
Norman and Gloria Hoppie, who are black, say the way they were treated is an
example of systematic racial discrimination by the bus line. Norman Hoppie says
the restroom was out of order at a Greyhound terminal in Port Charlotte and
that he was merely following the advice of a Greyhound employee.
The couple says the incident happened last March 24. The lawsuit filed Tuesday
afternoon in federal court in Tampa asks for damages of at least $15,000.
Greyhound officials couldn't be reached for comment Tuesday night.
The lawsuit, filed by Clearwater lawyer James A. Staack, gives the following
account:
The Hoppies went to the Greyhound station to take a bus from Port Charlotte to
Clearwater. Gloria Hoppie already had a ticket, and her husband planned to buy
one.
Norman Hoppie asked where the bathroom was. An employee told him the restroom
was out of order but that other customers had been urinating behind a garbage
bin behind the business. She told him he could do that as well.
Another Greyhound employee, Patricia Mindykowski, noticed Hoppie urinating and
yelled, "Hey, you can't do that," or something to that effect.
Norman Hoppie zipped up his pants. He says Mindykowski didn't let him explain
but instead yelled expletives at him and told him he was "nothing but black
trash."
Hoppie told her that he needed to get to Clearwater to report for work the next
day, but Mindykowski refused to sell him a ticket and told him, "You can die
for all I care."
Deputies escorted Hoppie from the bus terminal and arranged for him to take a
cab to Clearwater the next morning -- at his expense. The suit alleges that the
Greyhound station files complaints only against minorities. It purports to be a
class action lawsuit filed on behalf of everyone who has been discriminated
against by Greyhound. The Hoppies are the only plaintiffs named.
* * *
http://www.phillynews.com/inquirer/2000/Feb/09/city/WMURAL09.htm
By Erin Carroll/INQUIRER SUBURBAN STAFF
RADNOR - The recent discovery that a potentially valuable piece of art once
hung in the Radnor Middle School auditorium has school officials racking their
collective memory.
How could a mural vanish? they are asking.
Though it was a student's creation, done on panels of Masonite, this was not
just another art class throwaway.
The artist, Charles Cajori, 78, went on to fame in the art world, and his works
today hang in New York's Metropolitan Museum and Whitney Museum of American
Art.
That puts paintings he made while a student in Radnor in the late 1930s in a
different light.
School officials, who learned only Friday that Cajori's mural had once existed,
are worried - especially because a completely different mural of the same
dimensions hangs in the same spot today.
So far, the district's sleuthing leads to one plausible, if discomfiting,
conclusion.
"Our best guess is that it was painted over," district spokeswoman Jennifer
Blake said this week.
"We took off a panel, and there was nothing under there and nothing on the back
of it."
Cajori, an abstract expressionist whose work has been shown with pieces by
Jackson Pollack, said the likelihood that the mural was lost was not terribly
traumatic.
"It was extremely corny," Cajori said Monday from his home in Connecticut. "But
I must say, in defense of myself, that it was quite a project for a kid to
undertake."
For Cajori - he had not thought about the mural in years - and school
officials, who never knew it existed, the mystery of the missing mural began
Friday, two days before a show of Cajori's work opened at the Wayne Art Center.
That day, some of the artist's admirers arrived at the middle school, looking
for the mural. They found a different one in its place, one showing images of
the history of Wayne.
School officials questioned the existence of any other painting but were shown
an undated black-and-white photograph from a book on the history of Radnor. In
it, Cajori's mural occupies the same spot as the present mural. The mural in
the photograph shows doors opening outward onto school scenes - exactly what
Cajori says he painted 60 years ago.
School officials say that Cajori's mural must not have hung in the auditorium
of what was once the high school for a long time.
"We have teachers who have been here for 30 years, and this is the only thing
that they have ever seen on the wall," Assistant Principal Marianne DiGiglia
said yesterday.
Cajori says he has no idea when his mural was hung or when it disappeared. He
hardly remembers what it looked like.
He does remember, however, that he surprised many when he finally completed
work on the four panels two days before his graduation in 1939. "There were
bets as to whether I would finish it," he said.
In 1936, the school board, at the request of an art teacher, commissioned
Cajori to do the project and gave him $2,600 for materials - a large sum during
the Great Depression, Cajori pointed out.
He picked the education theme, he said, "because I figured that was safe. I
could have thought of other things," he said and laughed.
The mural ended up a much bigger undertaking than Cajori had bargained for, he
admitted. The size was immense, and the teenager chose to paint with a
cumbersome Renaissance technique that uses glazes and egg tempera.
The whole project meant that he ended up spending more time at school than he
might have liked. "They gave me a key to the building so I could work on it on
weekends," he said.
But since graduation, Cajori said, he had not thought about the mural much - he
didn't care to. "I have thought of it occasionally, with a certain twinge and
grimace. . . . I just don't know how good it was," he said.
He admitted that now he wonders.
School officials said they would keep looking for answers. "Somebody is around
that probably knows exactly what happened to it," Principal Bill Laffey said
yesterday.
Even if the Cajori mural is lost forever, Laffey said it has made him realize
the potential value of the anonymous mural on the wall now.
Looking at it from a seat in the auditorium, he said, "You can bet I'm not
going to paint over this one."
~Just remember...if the world didn't suck, we'd all fall off.~
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