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TO RELIEVE DISCOMFORTS OF COLDS Get. S O L T I C E The Modern Quick-Rub Chattanooga federal SAVINGS " 817 Broad Street 3875 Hixon Pike 5300 Brainerd Road CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE SUNNYLAND PACKING COMPANY •SUNNYLAND” MEAT PACKERS P.O. Box 1280 Dothan, Alabama Telephone 792-4151 lieving in progressive com promise. “I cannot be a good cru sader,” he once said, “because I have been cursed all my life with the ability to see both sides.” Those who call McGill a “legend in his own time” do so with justice ( though he himself might object to the honor and wince at the cliche). Others saw him as just a pundit—but he con sidered reporting one of the highest callings and he was on the scene at major fires, wars, presidential conven tions, and, most recently, at the first opening of the trial of James Earl Ray, con victed as the assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. But to ignore the puckish, prankster dimensions of Mc Gill is to permit a limited view of this multidimensional man. He was fond of writing of fice memos to top members of ■the editorial staff. One, to Eugene Patterson (now with The Washington Post), read: “One of your columns has cost me $2. I don’t know which one it was, but an old alcoholic came in this morn ing, said he hadn’t had a drink for two months, but a day or two ago he got mad at something you had written and he fell off the wagon. He needed $2. So do I. This is a unique excuse for getting drunk, and I shudder to think what you and I may be do ing to the alcoholics.” McGill’s office walls reflec ted some of his dimensions. Centered on one was a framed front page of a news paper hate sheet. Across from it was a water color by the late Robert F. Kennedy’s daughter, Courtney. Nearby was a framed note from Robert Kennedy, who had visited McGill’s office when the latter was out. Ken nedy, referring to a framed letter from John F. Kennedy, left a message: “Dear Ralph: Where are you? Put Pres. Kennedy’s letter up a little higher or will come down and get you. I enjoyed Confederate Mem orial Day—even without you. Best regards. A Yankee from Boston.” McGill’s death brought grief and tribute. The fun eral was attended by many prominent Americans, includ ing former Vice President Hubert Humphrey. An Atlanta television sta tion aired a half hour docu mentary tracing the high- points of McGill’s charismatic and dedicated life. In its detail, it mentioned that McGill would be missed not only by the mighty, to whom he was conffdant, but by the lesser known—includ ing an Atlantan who, leaving jail the day after McGill died, spent his last fifteen cents on a sympathy card for the Mc Gill family. The loss of Ralph McGill recalled lines he himself had written after visiting the deathbed of a beloved profes sor: “It was comforting to have him living in this world of which he was so unafraid. It seems a little darker with out hirp.” McGill’s death closed an era —for he had been among the first and the most courageous to assault with all the force of his voice and pen those cancers in American life which drain the nation of its strength. But Ralph McGill is gone only* if w$ let him go—for a man dies only if we fail to re member. Rabbis in South . . . . from page 29 band survives his environs so handsomely, despite his freely and frequently expr e s s e d view that all men are equal, because he sees no man as his enemy ... If you are good enough, you can say and do what you believe anywhere.” Evaluating his information, Rabbi Krause commented that “it is easy for those who sit in Northern cities to con demn the Southern rabbis as a disgrace to prophetic Juda ism” and many have done so.” Disagreeing with that verdict, Rabbi Krause con cluded that “if we must con demn those who minister” to the 200,000 Jews in the South, “it should not be because they have not been outspoken lib erals, leading the picket lines in their Deep-South commun ities. It should be because they have not done what it was within their power to do.” He asserted that “there is only so much passivity which can be excused by the atmosphere” of the Southern community in which a rabbi serves. The rabbi “who sees his hands ut terly tied, his mouth complete ly muted, is rightfully open to criticism—his master is as much within as without. The Southern Reform rabbi has done a good deal, but he could do much more.” The Southern Israelite 33