Sulphur Springs News-Telegram (Sulphur Springs, Tex.), Vol. 102, No. 134, Ed. 1 Thursday, June 5, 1980 Page: 1 of 20
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Sulphur Springs
Thursday
VOL. 102—NO. 134.
Nnu0-Srlrnram
15 Cents
JUNES, 1980.
Texans die on ' suicide curve'
Bus plunges into
i ravine; 20 killed
V ’
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Getting a license
One summer school class that always has enough students here
is the driver education course — and Thursday the 144 students
taking the 42 hours of instruction took their written e^am at
Sulphur Springs High School under the direction of Department
of Public safety employees. Trooper Bill Brewer checks birth
certificates and forms (top photo) while Katy Gulley handles the
eye examination (lower photo). Instead of using trainer
simulators, this year students will be spending more time in
actual driving. There are 32 hours of classroom instruction
coupled with six hours of driving and six hours of observation,
according to Burford Scott, administrator of the course.
—Staff Photos
More than 70 still missing
Grand Island licks wounds
GRAND ISLAND, Neb. (AP) - More
National Guard troops arrived today to
help police guard against looting in this
stricken Plains city where at least four
people were killed and about 700 homes
Weather front
holds steady
The weather is in a holding pattern
according to the National Weather
Service forecast.
Forecasters continue to predict fair
to partly cloudy skies and warm
temperatures through the weekend.
Daytime high temperature
readings should be in the upper 80s to
lower 90s with overnight lows in the
70a.
The official observation station in
Sulphur Springs recorded 88 degrees
Wednesday as the high reading. The
temperature dropped to 71 early
Thursday morning and stood at 74
degrees at Sam.
and businesses were splintered by tor-
nadoes.
Federal assistance was on the way with
President Carter declaring it a disaster
area while estimates of the damage
continued to escalate.
At least four people were killed and
nearly 200 people were injured — at least
four critically — when as many as seven
twisters tore through the city of 40,000
residents during a three-hour period
Tuesday night. The body of one teenage
girl was blown nearly a block.
City officials said today emergency
teams had completed a house-to-house
search but more than 70 people were still
unaccounted for.
With little water in the city, officials
today feared that a fire might break out in
the shattered buildings and battered
automobiles leaking gasoline.
State Fire Marshal Wally Barnett said a
large fire now “would be a disaster. All we
have is tankers.”
After making aerial surveys, federal
emergency officials said 940 houses were
either totally destroyed or suffered major
damage. About 700 structures, including
more than 50 businesses were destroyed or
damaged to the extent of being
uninhabitable.
The contingent of National Guard troops
helping guard the city was doubled to 150
Wednesday night and another 90 arrived
today.
“Nobody really knows how many deaths
there are,” said Gov. Charles Thone, who
inspected the devastation by helicopter.
Estimates of the death toll Wednesday
reached as high as 35, but Thone later said
the final tally would be lower than ex-
pected.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said
Danford Stout, who huddled with his
family in a cellar as the twisters reduced
his home to splinters. “You know, I ain’t
much of a church-goer, but I still believe in
the good Lord and I prayed when we were
down in that basement. ”
President Carter declared Hall County,
which includes Gpnd Island, a disaster
area, opening the way to low-interest loans
to citizens and businesses.
Much of the city remained without
power and water pressure today. City
Public Works Director Bob Olsen said it
would take “three or four days to restore
some of the power, but it will be weeks,
before it can be completely restored.”
JASPER, Ark. (AP) — A tour bus from
Texas with 34 persons aboard careened off
a "suicide curve” and plunged 50 feftt
down a rocky ravine in a mountainous
area of northern Arkansas early today,
killing at least 20 people. Police said the
brakes apparently failed.
“In 27 years with the state police, it’s the
worst I’ve ever seen,” said Capt. Billy Bob
Davis, commander of Troop' 1 of the
Arkansas State Police at Harrison. He
estimated the death toll at 21. One of the 21
was missing and presumed dead.
“It looked as though the .brakes ap-
parently had failed,” Davis said.
Frank Wise, administrator of the Boone
County Hospital at Harrison, said 13
persons were treated there for injuries.
One was listed in critical condition. The
condition of the others was not im-
mediately available.
State police said the passengers were all
from the Dallas area.
Some of the victims still were trapped
under the bus and surrounding timber four
hours after the accident occurred.
Davis said the bus was northbound down
a steep hill of the two-lane Arkansas
Highway 7, a scenic route. It traveled
along a ditch on the right side of the
highway for more than 200 feet, then hit a
culvert and veered off the road, landing
nose down in rugged terrain 50 feet below
the shoulder of the highway, he said.
Keith Hopper, a spokesman for Central
Texas trailways in Dallas, said the bus
was chartered by Mrs. R. W. Jacobs of
Irving, Tex. The tourists apparently “had
no affiliation with any organized group.”
Hopper declined to comment on state
police reports that the brakes had failed.
Davis said the driver and three or four
passengers were thrown out of the bus. At
least four were found on the highway.
Davis said the driver, who has not been
identified, was among the dead.
A nearby resident heard the crash and
News briefs
Dairy team
tops contest
Hopkins County’s 4-H Dairy
Judging team, coached by County
Agent Ron Woolley, has won first
place at the 4-H Roundup in College
Station. The contest was held Tuesday
and Wednesday.
The three-member team which
captured the state title in dairy
judging consists of Monty Teel, son of
Mr. and Mrs. Marion Teel of Sulphur
Springs; Richard Dannheim, son of
Mr. and Mrs. Bill Lyon of Sulphur
Springs; and Eric Mabe, son of Mr.
and Mrs. Larry Mabe of Miller Grove.
Teel ranked as the high point in-
dividual in the contest, while Dan-
nheim was fifth high.
Special awards in the dairy judging
contest were presented to the winners
by Associated Milk Producers, Inc.;
Texas Jersey Cattle Club; and Texas
Holstein Association.
Hopkins County is in District V.
Windthrost of Archer County and
District III won second place. Canyon
of Randall County in District I placed
third.
Money order
warning out
Sulphur Springs Police Chief
Delbert Harrell Thursday warned
local businesses that U.S. Postal
Money Orders have been stolen from
Leesburg and could possibly be
passed in Sulphur Springs.
Harrell said the money orders will
be numbered 2,615,332,067 through
2,615,332,299.
Also stolen with the money orders
w6re an imprinter (No. 26064) and a
validating plate (No. 42207).
“Anyone who runs into any of these
money, orders or equipment should
contact our office or the U;S. Postal
Service offices in Fort Worth at 817-
334-2905,” he said.
alerted authorities.
Elmer Dunn, <>61, of Grand Prairie,
Texas, was among those who received
minor injuries.
Dunn said the group left Dallas early
Wednesday for a trip to Branson, Mo., and
Eureka Springs, Ark.
He said he was riding on the left side of
the bus, toward the rear, and was almost
asleep when the bus ran off the road in a
curve.
The windows were knocked out from the
impact of the crash. Durr said he hit the
back of the seat, then slid to the floor and
crawled out a window.
He said one side of the bus was
demolished. There was no fire.
The accident occurred shortly before 1
a m. one mile south of Jasper.
Twenty of the bodies were taken to a
funeral home in Harrison.
Authorities said identification of the
female victims was difficult because
purses were scattered in the wreckage.
The bus was chartered by Central Texas
Trailways of Waco, Texas, and left Dallas
early Wednesday for a four-day holiday in
Missouri and Arkansas, officials said.
J, Ganner, assistant general manager of
the bus company, said in a telephone in-
terview this morning that he had not been
notified officially of the accident.
Raymond Johnson, 62, also of Grand
Prairie, was sitting near the back of the
bus with his wife and was dozing at the
time of the accident. “I heard the bus
hitting some rough places,” he said, and it
plunged down the embankment.
State police said the bus followed a
shallow ditch along the right side of the
highway until it hit a culvert, then veered
down the embankment, shearing off trees
36 inches around.
The bus landed in a rocky, tree-covered
ravine about three-fourths mile above the
Buffalo River.
The site, known locally as suicide
curve,’’, has. been the location of many
fatal traffic accidents. Nearby, the state
Highway and Transportation Department
is constructing an emergency ramp
consisting of deep gravel. The ramp is
intended to allow drivers traveling down
the extremely steep hill to slow their
vehicles when they go out of control.
Dunn said the tour was scheduled to
travel to Branson, Mo., Wednesday night
and remain there through Thursday night.
He said the bus was delayed in Queen
Wilhelmina State Park Lodge in nor-
thwestern Arkansas for about five hours
Wednesday afternoon because of a faulty
fuel pump.
Dunn said the tour was to go to Eureka
Springs, Ark., just across the Missouri
state line, on Friday to attend a passion
play. The schedule called for the tourists to
have a one-night stopover Friday in
Rogers, Ark., in the extreme northwestern
part of the state, before returning to Dallas
on Saturday.
Carter vows veto of
dime gas fee repeal
WASHINGTON (AP) - President
Carter is vowing to veto legislation to kill
his 10-cent-a-gallon gasoline fee, but
lopsided votes against him in both the
House and Senate suggest he faces a losing
battle.
The House voted 376-30 and the Senate .
73-16 Wednesday to repeal the fee. Both
votes were well over the two-thirds margin
that must be delivered in both chambers to
override a veto.
The bill to formally kill the levy could
reach Carter’s desk later today after the
House and Senate resolve minor dif-
ferences over what form it should take.
Wednesday’s votes dealt Carter one of
the severest congressional energy defeats
of his presidency and drew bitter criticism
from Charles Schultze, Carter’s chairman
of the Council of Economic Advisers.
“It was disturbing, it was serious, it was
inexcusable,” Schultze said on NBC’s
"Today” show. “Probably the biggest
economic problem of our generation ... is
energy. The president didn’t even ask
them to vote for the tax. All they had to do
was let him do it. He’d take the heat ...
We’re trying to pull them (world leaders)
together to do something about this very,
very serious problem, and here the
Congress takes the power away from the
president.”
If Carter follows through on his veto
threat, he could become the first
Democratic president to have a veto
overridden since Congress in 1952 forced
an immigration bill into law over Harry S.
Truman’s protest. ' ■
Carter has cast 21 vetoes, including two
this year, all of which have been sustained.
While the House passed a simple bill to
knock down the fee outright, the Senate
attached it to a 30-day extension of the
federal debt limit.
Thus the House was having to decide
today whether to go along with the Senate
version or to request a conference with tj$e
Senate to iron out the differences.
Regardless of its form, the measure to
kill the fee is expected to reach the
president before week’s end.
Carter told reporters Wednesday he
plans to veto the bill in whatever form it
reaches him and even if no more than one
member of Congress is willing, to support
him. Carter said imposition of the fee was
“not a popular decision...but in my
judgment it is right for our country.” -
Failure to impose it, the president said,
will “send a clear signal to oil-producing
nations and oil-consuming nations that we
do not mean business, that we will not take
a firm stand to conserve oil and we will
pay much higher prices for oil in the
future.”
At the same time, White House press
secretary Jody Powell acknowledged the
White House could not now muster enough
votes to sustain a veto of the repeal bill.
'New nostalgia'
warning sounded
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — Former
Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance, who
quit to protest the attempt to rescue the
hostages in Iran, today warned of “a
dangerous new nostalgia” for a time when
American military power could handle
any foreign threat.
Vance, in a speech prepared for Har-
vard’s 329th commencement, also
criticized “wild swings” in America’s
dealings with the Soviet Union. It wu his
first major address since his resignation
The nostalgia sweeping the United
States, he said, is “a longing for earlier
days when the world seemed, at least in
retrospect, to have been a more orderly
place in which American power could,
alone, preserve that order.”
Without referring specifically to Iran,
Vance said, “The new nostalgia leads us to
simplistic solutions and go-it-alone
illusions, diverting our energies from the
struggle to shape change in constructive
directions. ”
Terrell officer
shot to death
<4
TERRELL, Texas (AP) - A police
officer here was shot to death early
Thursday with his own service revolver,
officials said.
William Robert Stout, 29, apparently
was flagged down as he drove through an
apartment parking lot, hit in the head and
shot shortly after 1 a.m., police said.
Ronnie Eugene Davis, 22, of Terrell, was
arraigned on a murder charge before
Justice of the Peace LT. Smith. He waa
jailed on a $100,000 bond.
Stout had worked for the Terrell Police
Department since August He formerly
worked for police departments in the
Dallas suburbs of Fanners Branch and
University Park, and for the Dallas County
Sheriff’s Department.
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Keys, Clarke. Sulphur Springs News-Telegram (Sulphur Springs, Tex.), Vol. 102, No. 134, Ed. 1 Thursday, June 5, 1980, newspaper, June 5, 1980; Sulphur Springs, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth823855/m1/1/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Hopkins County Genealogical Society.