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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 Page 1 Page 7 1 | j JJL 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.” Less than 75 percent Advertising ftp/ "i W’ <—r- '. ' ' '■ 't’ r ' ' • < t -<l-. - r* ' : - r > Wz-tf*'■< •Hbi " - t JSrw 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€