The Argus Observes By Don Lynch
From the May 13, 1954 issue of The Ontario Argus-Observer
News stories this week have made me glad to be a country editor rather than a high school principal.
A fatal accident on the Nampa senior sneak day and subsequent action of the school board there to abolish the annual senior outing brought back to me painful memories of an accident on a student outing ten years ago when I was principal at Roswell high school in Idaho.
With a student body of fifty we lacked athletic resources and so we’d had a terrible year in school sports. Lost all of our football games, most of basketball; but we had won about half of our baseball games and the kids were proud of finally doing something in sports.
We had a wet spring in 1944 and we had a lot of cancelled baseball games but they were finally all made up except for one game with Marsing.
The game day game, a beautiful May day like we’ve been having this week, and we excused all of the students who wanted to go to the game.
Most of the players and many of the students including a number of girls piled into the back of a farm truck early in the afternoon and left for Marsing.
Agnes (this columnist’s wife who taught at Roswell high) and I stayed with the pupils who remained in classes. It was a warm, drowsy afternoon. We settled down to just marking time until the end of the day.
The team had only been gone a few minutes when the first dazed victims began to stumble in. Agnes met the first of them in the hall
She came running. “Don, the kids have had a wreck.”
I refused to believe it. But when I saw them I realized with considerable shock that it was true.
The effervescent load of youngsters had shifted the truck off balance on a curve a mile from the schoolhouse. It had flipped off the road, smashed through a fence and turned over in a field.
Our wartime Red Cross first aid training paid off that day. We filled our beds and davenport with youngsters suffering from shock and minor injuries. We improvised a stretcher for a boy who apparently had a serious back injury. We carefully transported the injured to a doctor’s office.
I’d have treated myself for shock if we’d had the time. That was about the most unnerving day I ever put in.
However we were lucky. The youngsters all recovered fine except for one girl who had trouble with a leg injury for a considerable time after the accident.
We forfeited the ball game. It was too late and we were too hurt to play it….
In addition to this year’s fatal accident, Nampa’s problem was further complicated by a student beer drinking riot that wrecked some private party at McCall on the senior sneak a year ago. Although it involved a relatively few people it embarrassed and humiliated the entire class, the school and the community.
The Nampa school board has my sympathy. I hope abolishing the senior sneak day solves their problem. But it won’t be easy. Seniors are capable of being pretty headstrong and defiant, especially if they think that they are being treated as youngsters
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
Argus reports on shootout at Weiser
One man was killed, another wounded when a service station operator at Weiser Station north of Ontario turned his gun on three armed men who tried to drive off without paying for $2.48 worth of gas, the Argus-Observer reported on July 20, 1953.
Doyle C. Fulton, 23, was fatally wounded the previous Friday evening when he was struck in the back of the head by one of three shots that service station operator Frank Rembert fired into the rear of the escaping car.
Rembert told police that the front seat passenger in the car, John M. Kimball, pulled a gun from his shirt and used it to order Rembert into the service station building after he pumped gas into the car.
Rembert then retrieved a .38 revolver from his office.
According to the newspaper account, Rembert said he’d planned to shoot at the car’s tires but realized he was being fired on and aimed into the car.
Kimball, 27, was wounded by one of Rembert’s shots and the escaping car stalled a few miles down the road. From there, the would-be bandits pressed a passing motorist, C.W. Davis of Ontario, into their service to take Fulton to a hospital in Ontario, where Fulton died.
State police, alerted by Rembert and called to the hospital by hospital authorities, soon arrived to place Kimball under arrest.
Four men total were in the escaping car during shoot-out. Oregon authorities said they were from Los Angeles and that one of the men in the car was AWOL from the Army and another had served time for car theft. But neither the dead man nor the gunman had any kind of police record, according to testimony at a quickly convened coroner’s inquest.
The inquest resulted in Rembert being exonerated of any criminal responsibility in the shootings
Doyle C. Fulton, 23, was fatally wounded the previous Friday evening when he was struck in the back of the head by one of three shots that service station operator Frank Rembert fired into the rear of the escaping car.
Rembert told police that the front seat passenger in the car, John M. Kimball, pulled a gun from his shirt and used it to order Rembert into the service station building after he pumped gas into the car.
Rembert then retrieved a .38 revolver from his office.
According to the newspaper account, Rembert said he’d planned to shoot at the car’s tires but realized he was being fired on and aimed into the car.
Kimball, 27, was wounded by one of Rembert’s shots and the escaping car stalled a few miles down the road. From there, the would-be bandits pressed a passing motorist, C.W. Davis of Ontario, into their service to take Fulton to a hospital in Ontario, where Fulton died.
State police, alerted by Rembert and called to the hospital by hospital authorities, soon arrived to place Kimball under arrest.
Four men total were in the escaping car during shoot-out. Oregon authorities said they were from Los Angeles and that one of the men in the car was AWOL from the Army and another had served time for car theft. But neither the dead man nor the gunman had any kind of police record, according to testimony at a quickly convened coroner’s inquest.
The inquest resulted in Rembert being exonerated of any criminal responsibility in the shootings
Sunday, May 1, 2011
The Argus Observes: High school basketball, beer and what to do?
By Don Lynch
From The Argus Observes,
in the Argus-Observer for Dec. 18, 1952
“There was no evidence that the athletes in question actually drank any beer,” high school principal Robert McConnaha told me Tuesday.
He was explaining last week’s incident in which several basketball players were temporarily suspended from the team because of their association with an alleged student beer-drinking episode. I had told him that on the basis of the information we had gained in reporting the news, it appeared the affair had been mishandled by school authorities.
Here briefly is what we knew of what had happened:
School officials permitted police to use an office at the high school to question students in connection with the sale of beer to juveniles. Thus the school became by association entangled in a problem that was not a school responsibility except in so far as the violation of athletic training rules might have been involved.
A few athletes were in the party which was said to have had beer in possession. Members of the team were consulted on their opinion and they voted unanimously, according to report, to drop the players, three of whom were first team basketball men.
Two days later the school officials announced that the players had been returned to the squad and said the incident was “closed.”
Many basketball fans and school patrons were concerned with the appearance of the whole affair. Dropping of the players certainly made it appear that they were guilty of some infraction. Their quick return to the team indicated they had received little discipline.
I was concerned along with other people. Tuesday I told the school principal so and sought a further explanation.
It was then that McConnaha explained to me that there was actually no evidence the athletes had participated in any drinking. They were caught in the familiar and often disastrous situation of “guilt by association.”
He further revealed that the school authorities did not overrule the vote of the team to suspend the players. The team members reconsidered their decision and came to the principal asking that the suspended players be returned to the squad, he said.
It developed, McConnaha reported, that the original decision of the team to suspend the players was based not on the incident in question but on a succession of grievances accumulated over a period of a year or so. On reflection, the voting team members concluded many of them had themselves been guilty of shortcomings similar to those used as a basis for suspending the players. They reconsidered and decided the players should be returned to the team.
This is all a somewhat involved situation and it apparently never occurred to the school officials that any further public explanation was needed. They felt the situation had been satisfactorily solved and the matter settled so no further comment was needed.
Normally they might have been right. They are used to handling similar disciplinary problems that occur frequently and never come to the light of public attention.
The difference this time lay in the fact that this incident had come to public attention by a mere coincidence. There was a story of police investigation of the alleged sale of beer to miners. At the same time a sports story noted that some basketball players had been suspended or alleged infraction of training rules. The two stories automatically fitted together and revealed an incident of apparent involvement of athletes in a beer drinking party.
I hope that this further explanation which completes the information will help to answer doubts as to how the matter was handled.
During our discussion “Mac” and I disagreed on one point. I thought it a mistake to permit police to use a school office for investigating an incident that itself had no relation to the schools.
The principal said he would rather have such an investigation run where he would watch it than under police questioning elsewhere. He thought that within the school the matter could thus be better handled for the youngsters involved. He also thought it might be good for the other youngsters to see how easily an apparently trivial escapade could come to police attention.
I doubt it. An unnecessary police investigation in the school --- upsetting the atmosphere within the school and coluding the reputation of the school through needless “guilt by association” --- seems to me to be more damaging than helpful.
But that is simply a matter of opinion. The important thing is that the public had only half truths for its judgment of the basketball player discipline, and then the incident was considered “closed” by the school men.
The public is entitled to know what goes on it its schools. When chance reveals half of the information in an awkward situation, the full information should be provided in order to clarify public understanding.
From The Argus Observes,
in the Argus-Observer for Dec. 18, 1952
“There was no evidence that the athletes in question actually drank any beer,” high school principal Robert McConnaha told me Tuesday.
He was explaining last week’s incident in which several basketball players were temporarily suspended from the team because of their association with an alleged student beer-drinking episode. I had told him that on the basis of the information we had gained in reporting the news, it appeared the affair had been mishandled by school authorities.
Here briefly is what we knew of what had happened:
School officials permitted police to use an office at the high school to question students in connection with the sale of beer to juveniles. Thus the school became by association entangled in a problem that was not a school responsibility except in so far as the violation of athletic training rules might have been involved.
A few athletes were in the party which was said to have had beer in possession. Members of the team were consulted on their opinion and they voted unanimously, according to report, to drop the players, three of whom were first team basketball men.
Two days later the school officials announced that the players had been returned to the squad and said the incident was “closed.”
Many basketball fans and school patrons were concerned with the appearance of the whole affair. Dropping of the players certainly made it appear that they were guilty of some infraction. Their quick return to the team indicated they had received little discipline.
I was concerned along with other people. Tuesday I told the school principal so and sought a further explanation.
It was then that McConnaha explained to me that there was actually no evidence the athletes had participated in any drinking. They were caught in the familiar and often disastrous situation of “guilt by association.”
He further revealed that the school authorities did not overrule the vote of the team to suspend the players. The team members reconsidered their decision and came to the principal asking that the suspended players be returned to the squad, he said.
It developed, McConnaha reported, that the original decision of the team to suspend the players was based not on the incident in question but on a succession of grievances accumulated over a period of a year or so. On reflection, the voting team members concluded many of them had themselves been guilty of shortcomings similar to those used as a basis for suspending the players. They reconsidered and decided the players should be returned to the team.
This is all a somewhat involved situation and it apparently never occurred to the school officials that any further public explanation was needed. They felt the situation had been satisfactorily solved and the matter settled so no further comment was needed.
Normally they might have been right. They are used to handling similar disciplinary problems that occur frequently and never come to the light of public attention.
The difference this time lay in the fact that this incident had come to public attention by a mere coincidence. There was a story of police investigation of the alleged sale of beer to miners. At the same time a sports story noted that some basketball players had been suspended or alleged infraction of training rules. The two stories automatically fitted together and revealed an incident of apparent involvement of athletes in a beer drinking party.
I hope that this further explanation which completes the information will help to answer doubts as to how the matter was handled.
During our discussion “Mac” and I disagreed on one point. I thought it a mistake to permit police to use a school office for investigating an incident that itself had no relation to the schools.
The principal said he would rather have such an investigation run where he would watch it than under police questioning elsewhere. He thought that within the school the matter could thus be better handled for the youngsters involved. He also thought it might be good for the other youngsters to see how easily an apparently trivial escapade could come to police attention.
I doubt it. An unnecessary police investigation in the school --- upsetting the atmosphere within the school and coluding the reputation of the school through needless “guilt by association” --- seems to me to be more damaging than helpful.
But that is simply a matter of opinion. The important thing is that the public had only half truths for its judgment of the basketball player discipline, and then the incident was considered “closed” by the school men.
The public is entitled to know what goes on it its schools. When chance reveals half of the information in an awkward situation, the full information should be provided in order to clarify public understanding.
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