European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - June 13, 1985, Darmstadt, Hesse                                10 the stars and stripes june 1985 columns comments Mary Mcgrory dynamics Meef the truck the voice of John was uncharacteristically even As he inquired of general dynamics chairman David Lewis if he knew a it was John doing his Edward Bonnet Williams says Gerry a Junior member of the oversight and investigations subcommittee of the House Energy and com Merce which Dingell when Lewis pleaded Dingell furs Len turned out to be a whose Kennel Bill at an establish ment called Silver Maple farm in Louis had been paid by the since that things have not been quite the and there is talk that when the House votes on the 1986 defense spending will be Furston the dog said it All about the curious practice of encouraging defense contractors to reach for the stars in Billing and of auditing Bills years after they have been Dingell is getting credit for a reversal of the natural order of which meant that the president annually requested Bil Lions More for defense and Congress meekly went the Pentagon has so much Money stashed away against inflation As was revealed when defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger confessed the other Day that he had come up with billion he didst know he had that no immediate effects will be William of the House budget committee thinks that the House will find the courage to vote Down an in crease because of what Dingell unearthed about defense contractors cosmic the Dingell hearings were the shot in the Back of the he the peo ple arc Reagan promised to end fraud and abuse in government and now they Sec that he Only Means it for welfare and nutrition but not for general after years of mostly con ducted by William about defense contracts that would make a mafioso Blush and about products that dont shoot or the country is up in Dingell modestly says that without the spare parts horror stories brought out by his colleagues the toilet the National defense facture re  Bucks the it would be business As a former Wayne county Dingell is a huge Man with a booming he has been in the House for 30 Ever since he succeeded his a much smaller and less truculent who taught him important skills such As being Nice to republicans and giving Back benches a Dingell is a his office Walls Are Hung with trophies of the the horns and Heads of animals unlucky enough to venture into his he has the same zest for stalking he is now the most formidable investigator on Capitol and his Foottit Lefloor approach and thunderous Demeanour with naughty witnesses have earned him the nickname the up Here we dont mess with the says a colleague who watched Dingell wrest from a resisting White House the Epa documents he required when Rita Lavelle and Anne Burford were his who will testify later be fore and the corporations still have not gotten the word about the defense department inspector Gener Al recommended the disbarment of the three top executives of general which does 94 percent of its business with the but they Are still in and Weinberger insists he turned Over All the rocks with the help of his Ace chief i Vestiga Peter Dingell has been on the Trail of general dynamics for a he on a Volunteer three serious Pentagon auditors Leslie Thomas Ansley and Ernest Fitzgerald to assist in what he delicately called an Sec our Bosses were delighted to get us out of the says who was fired by Richard Nixon for talking in pub Lic about a billion Cost overrun on the c5a transport it was in a sense a securities and Exchange commission since general dynamics made More or less full disclosure in its reports to the turning the Penta gon auditors Loose on these papers was like unleashing bloodhounds in a meat they sniffed out All sorts of scandals charges for country club Mem junkets to mattresses for aching executive backs most Egre a contribution to the Grace commission on waste and fraud in Dingell will hold More hearings on general the democrats Are at last they see a Way of being hard on the Pentagon without being soft on defense and of maybe doing something about the which the Public has at last decided it Doest James Reston his death befitted his life As a great country editor marthas one of the most interesting things about journalism in America is that so Many of its memorable characters were country from Tom Paine to Mark and the Balti More crowd from Henry Mencken to Russell it in a funny the Hicks from the Sticks who took Over the big City even the television news heroes of recent years Haven been dominated by the City or by the Ivy league but by Walter Cronkite out of the Middle West and Eric Sevareid out of Mineso Tom Brokaw out of and among David Brinkley and Roger Mudd out of the University of North Carolina in Chapel i mention this merely to note the passing of a great country Henry Beetle who died the other Day on marthas Vineyard Island at the age of after 65 years As editor of the Vineyard he in my a Symbol of this country journalism that has been and still is the school where most of these prominent modern reporters got their Hough was an old fashioned Man who believed that sticking to the news of the Island was More important than worrying about the confusions on the he reported on the Central questions of life Here in this Community and but he want interested in unless it was an unavoidable is land his main concern was the preservation of the privacy and Beauty of this in 65 he Seldom left it except once in a while to meet his responsibilities As the head of the Thoreau foundation in or Check in at the Massachusetts general hos Pital in Boston when he was in one of his Young colleagues on the Gazette asked him one Day if he didst Long occasionally to see the world beyond the Waters of the not he but when i feel the urge coming i collect a Bunch of old National geographic climb up to the attic of the stick my feet in a bucket of cold water until the feeling wears Henry Hough worried about death and i he wrote in his famous Book country that death is the most characteristic of All the forces in a country because there Are always so Many old people living and the passing of an individual is so much More important than it is the a town has a time to the obituary notice is a distinctive Story forum for the country weekly because it has to Tell not Only the Stark fact of some body but it has to Tell also a Little of what that somebody was and what his career seemed to stand it has to Tell even what a nobody was for the poorest citizen is in the eyes of the town a but in some he was and too thirty five years he worried about retirement and in he wrote the following on the Page of a Lovely Book called once More the How to resign the duties of a country editor that is what we should like to know apparently there is no Way to taper off As there is some worldly occupy it is All or until the whatever the end of country Editorship May presents itself like the press time of a Friday How to sweep the papers from the desk that have been there so and leave the Heap of exchanges and hear the Telephone ringing but let it go unanswered As one Steps through the door As an editor for the last into a Street of Mellow Twilight Twilight of course because quitting time must be with the White houses of the town Early in Shadow and the stores already lighted As one walks Home through the aromatic new England that he wrote 30 years ago but he has gone on Ever since until just a few Days ago when he wrote his last editorials and then he did what was very typical of he was always a punctual and he died at 4 o clock on thursday afternoon just before deadline on his Friday he had always said that he would get his copy in on time and that precisely what he cw85 times news Syndicate