Newspaper Page Text
Elbert Blocker Blacks, Jews agree A.G. Gaston, Jesse’s campaign
among the heroes on need for unity, at 92, can’t end with
of D-Day landing clash on Jesse planst imaries
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Augusta Nnws-tßeuttui
VOLUME 14 NUMBER 6
Evelyn G. Etheridge last month
won the Miss Wheelchair Georiga
Pageant. In August, Delta
Airlines will provide her and a
companion with first-class ac
comodations to Shreveport, La.
where she will compete for Miss
Wheelchair America.
The Augusta native and Paine
College graduate lost the use of her
legs and hands in auto accident
in 1956 when as member of the
Lucy Laney High School junior
varsity basketball team, she was en
route to a basketball tournament
in Atlanta. The car in which she
and three other persons were riding
crashed head-on with another auto
being chased by a police car.
All of the Augusta passengers
were thrown from the car upon
impact. “My immediate reac
tion,” she recalled in an interview
this week, “I knew something was
broken but I didn’t understand why
1 felt no pain.
“It wasn’t until I was in the
hospital that I was told that mj
neck was broken and my spinal
cord was injured.
“It wasn’t until three or four
months later that I realized that I
was not going to walk again. 1
stumbled upon the information by
accident.
Jesse Jackson’s
campaign can’t end
with June 5 primaries
WASHINGTON— Normally a
Democratic presidential candidate
going into the final week of
primaries with a total of 308 of the
1,967 delegates needed for victor
would be pretty much finished
stumping for 1984.
But not the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
With less money and orgaization
than anyone else, Jackson has ou
tlasted all but two of the can
didates who started the race and
will be counted on heavily by the
winner of the nomination to help
trun out Democratic votes in
November.
Unless Jackson unexpectedly
decides to ensure former vice
president Walter Mondale he 11 get
the nomination without a major
fight at the convention, he’ll go in
to the San Francisco session in July
in a can’t lose position.
Although the Black vote across
the country is expected to be con
vincingly Democratic in Novem
ber, the question of how big the
turnout is may be the deciding
point.
In view of the showing Jackson
has made in the primaries and in
getting voters registered, his value
to the Democratic candidate can
not be minimized.
Jackson has continued to hit
hard at the issues. Last week he
made another trip abroad, going to
Miss Wheelchair Ga.
wins with Christain faith
“I received some mail that in
dicated that my condition was
permanent. They thought I already
knew, but I didn’t. The doctors
had not mentioned permanent. My
parents had not. They were
looking for the most opportune
time. It shattered me.
“That’s when the depression
came. I was very depressed. I was
despondent. I considered suicide. I
went through all of the changes.
“The difference for me was that
1 had Christian parents who had
faith in God and faith in me and
would not give up on me and
wouldn’t let me give up on myself.
“It is very easy to give up. you
need someone back there pushing
you, someone encouraging you,”
said Mrs. Etheridge who was
Professional Handicapped
Woman of the year in 1980 and fir
st runner-up in the 1982 Miss
Wheelchair Georgia pageant.
“One thing I tell people—after
the period of depression which you
inevitably go through—concen
trate on the one thing you enjoy
doing that is within your capcity
that you do well. Become a
superior person in that area, sim
ply because of the fact the fact that
you have more time to concentrate
on that area than the average per-
Mexico to fortify his criticism of
Reagan administration policies in
Latin America.
He banged away at foreign
policy issues week before last.
At a “Black Heritage Day”
parade in Newark, the largest city
in New Jersey, charged that
spiraling U.S. arms sales abroad
have turned the nation into a “pit
ful, boasting, gragging giant.” im
potent to deal with the Iran-Iraq
war.
“Being the arms merchant of the
world does not allow us to inter
vene in the war between Iraq and
Iran.” Jackson said, “No one
respects us. No one listens to us
and just what we most feared is
happening. The oil resources of the
Mideast are threatened by war.
•We need a new foreign
policy...that would allow us to in
tervene in the interests of peace, in
the interests of our national
seceurity, of international
security,” said Jackson, who left
Moday for Mexico to discuss the
troubles in Central America.
Africa’s apartheid racial
separatists policies as “the shame
of the international community of
nations, and yet the United States
remains the number one trading
partner of South Africa.”
“No more Tarzan! no more! A
new Africa!” Jackson said.
son would. You can use the time as
defeat or as an impetus to do bet
ter.”
One of her concerns is that
people do realize that handicapped
people are normal except for their
handicap. “Quadripalegics aren’t
supposed to be able to get in an out
of bed alone. I’ve been able to do it
for a long time. I dress myself,
groom myself, drive, write, do my
hair.
“I still swim quite frequently.
That’s something I can do and feel
like I’m good at it.”
Another thing that she is good at
is expressing herself. She expects to
get her master’s degree in English
from the University of Georgia in
August. And she wants to teach
American Literature on the college
level. She has worked at Paine
College for 13 years as a real estate
bookkeeper, switchboard
operator, and receptionist for
then-Business Manager Quincy
Robertson. She said that she wants
to return to Paine, but is not
limiting her options to Paine.
In the judging for Miss
Wheelchair Georgia, she said the
contestants had to be “spon
taneous, quick, and articulate.
One of the questions the judges
A.G. Gaston, 92, with no plans to retire
BIRMINGHAM, Ala.-
Multimillionaire A.G. Gaston squin
ted behind his dark-rimmed glasses
and a smile crossed his face when
he was asked about the peculiar
poem that graces a prominent
place in his downtown office.
The anonymous poem equates a
person’s impact on life with put
ting one’s hand in a bucket of
water: Splash all you please, stir up
the water galore, but stop and
you’ll find in a minute that it looks
quite the same as before. There are
no indispensible men.”
Gaston, a small Black man with
a shock of white whiskers just
below his bottom lip, leaned for
ward/ in chair and confided,
“That’s for the benefit of my em
ployees, you know.”
Gaston has been splashing
“galore” for 92 years and has no
plans to retire. He admits the poem
probably doesn’t apply in every
case. Certainly not in his. The
water has changed, and his part in
D-Day
hero
by Phil Waring
As the nation observe the 40 an
niversary of the Allies D-Day lan
ding on the beaches of Normandy
in France this week, Augusta may
express pride in that one of its very
own participated in this bloody
operation which freeded Europe
from Hitler.
Former Sgt-Major Elbert
“Spunkum” Blocker, was with the
June 8,1984
asked her was,' “If there was one
thing you missed after becoming
disabled what was it?
Answer: Participating in
physical activities such as sports
basketball, tennis. But I don’t con
cetrate on missing anything. I find
other avenues of amusement. I at
tend basketball games, play cards,
or attend concerts. My philosophy
is not |o dwell on the past, but
compensate for any losses by sub
stituting other areas of recreastion.
Os all the things that have hap
pened to you in your life, what do
you consider to be the most impor
tant?
Answer: That I was born in a
Christain home where both parents
were Christains. It was Christain
faith that carried me through my
exhabilitation. Without it I don’t
think I would have been able to ad
just at all.
“One of the things my father
had told me was: that on of two
things would happen to me in my
life. ‘You will either walk again or
life will become so comfortable in
the wheel chair that walking won’t
matter.’ The second is what hap
pened, and I’m a very happy and
contented person.” But the
question that she feels won the
See Miss Wheelchair page 2
that change caused more than a
ripple.
From his third floor office in the
Citizens Federal Savings and Loan
Building, Gaston directed a finan
cial empire that includes interests
in banking, insurance, a cemetery
and a radio station. Some 3,00
workers owe their jobs to the
splash he’s made.
The man recently voted one of
Birmingham’s most influential
citizens is quick with a laugh and
an anecdote about all he’s seen and
done. And if you don’t believe him,
he’ll invite you to visit a room set
aside just for the memorabilia of
his life.
Os all the honors in that room,
the one he says he’s most proud of
is a small plaque that sits behind a
jar of shredded money. It’s an
honorary doctorate of law from
the University of Alabama dated
May 13, 1979.
“That’s the school where (Gov.
• George) Wallace stood in the door
502 Transport Battalion, and went
in on the famous D-Day landings,
and won a hero’s laurels.
In recalling this bloody
operation to the News-Review,
Blocker, 75, said that his assign
ment was to help direct the landing
of tanks, artillery and supplies on
to the beaches in support of com
bat infantry forces.
He said that for several hours
the German forces poured
muderous fire onto the American
landing party. Blocker said, “I had
to swim under two dead soliders
before reaching land. We finally
were able to get our vehicles, guns,
and ammunition, on dry ground
despite the fire from the German
divisions there.”
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Mrs. Evelyn Etheridge
and wouldn’t let Blacks in,” he
said with a chuckle.
It might have been easier for
Gaston to enjoy the fruits of his
labor if he were white. But for a
basically conservative Black man,
being wealthy during a time when
fellow Blacks were calling for
radical change earned him ill-will
from both races.
“I was middle of the road.
Blacks were calling me an Uncle
Tom, whites were calling me a
radical,” Gaston says. “Militant
Blacks didn’t like me because I
wouldn’t march up and down the
street, and that annoyed them. But
I was financing it (the civil rights
movement), putting them up in my
hotel, feeding them,” he said.
Gaston, an entrepreneur by
avocation, had learned in his early
years to make do and to make a
buck in what was a white man’s
world. His book, “Green Power,”
he says he feels the same today.
“I’ve always been terrified of
Blocker was wounded and had to be
evacuated to England. He received
the Purple Heart medal for his
wounds in combat and the Bronze
Star medal for outstanding
courage on the battlefeild. He is
the only known Black Augustan to
receive similar military honors in
the Normandy landings in June of
1944.
He returned to Augusta in 1971
after 45 years in New York where
he was an accountant for Piels
Brewery. Blocker is a past com
mander of the local post 10 of the
Disabled American War Veterans.
A member of the veterans of
foreign wars, he is a degree Prince
Hall Mason, and has been local
See D-Day page 3
breaking the law. I was always
careful to keep out of trouble,” he
says.
Gaston had his first taste of en
trepreneurial success four decades
after slavery ended, when as a
child in the Black belt area of
south-central Alabama, he sold
rides on his swing to the children
of Demopolis.The buttons he took
as currency he later sold to adults
for real money.
When he returned from Europe
after serving in the army during
world war I, he began his business
career in earnest. He started a
burial society that eventually
became Booker T. Washington In
surance Co., the parent firm of all
his other financial undertakings.
By the time the civil rights
movement got into full swing in
tne ivous, uaston touna nimseii in
the delicate position of being a part
of the establishment, yet not al
part because of his skin color.
tißl
Elbert Blocker
30€