Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 25, 1995 TAG: 9506260085
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Mary Bishop's 12-page report (Jan. 29 article, ``The loss still stings'') brought tears to my eyes. It fostered memories of the struggle my parents and grandfather had during construction of our home on Jefferson Street. Contractors and owners of building-supply houses were white, and refused their services and supplies. The Acme Hardware Co. was the only business in Roanoke that would sell to them. I don't know whether it was ethics or money.
My grandfather contracted to build, but supplies had to be purchased in East Tennessee and freighted to Roanoke, where they were then moved to the building site by my grandfather's horse and wagon. All laborers were black men, many who were from East Tennessee and who were taught their trades by my grandfather.
Moving day is a beautiful memory. I sat on the tailgate of the same wagon that had hauled supplies, which was now carting furniture and family to the completed house.
I received clippings recently from the Roanoke Times & World-News detailing the plague of fires and loss of the Claytor Memorial Clinic. I remembered the cross burned by the Ku Klux Klan before the homeplace was built, and how my parents and grandfather persevered against all odds to build our home.
Another not-so-happy memory is our fright, after moving in, when the Klan burned another cross while my physician father kept night office hours and my mother was alone with her first four children.
Thanks to urban renewal and fires, my nightmares are a reality.
BERNICE CLAYTOR BODDIE
LOS ANGELES, CALIF.
Averill will be good for government
WE HAVE a candidate for the House of Delegates who will help bring better government to the 14th House District, along with honesty and integrity to this office. The candidate, of course, is Trixie Averill.
I trust that every good citizen in the 14th District will get behind her campaign with support that will elect her in November.
HENRY M. FIELDS
ROANOKE
Protective services trap many innocent
I WANT to correct some false assumptions by William Bestpitch concerning Barbara Bryan, spokesperson for the National Child Abuse Defense Center, and others in his June 10 letter to the editor (``Another child-abuse study: Will the response be different?'').
The new study of Child Protective Services by the General Assembly does not result from one single ``disgruntled'' parent, but from the demands and pleas of hundreds of citizens statewide. These requests have come from falsely accused and falsely found guilty people, and from lawyers, doctors, mental-health professionals, ministers and concerned others who are sick and tired of seeing devastating effects imposed upon innocent people by out-of-control Draconian techniques used by many CPS investigators.
My husband and I were falsely charged more than 10 years ago. It would take pages to tell just a small portion of the living hell my entire family suffered as a result of the skewed process CPS used to ``prove'' their so-called case.
A false assumption is implied when Bestpitch states that Bryan and others want the CPS system to be completely dissolved. He seems to imply that Bryan and the center wish to abolish the system that's supposed to protect children. He omits the rest of her statement: that it is the present, out-of-control CPS system that should be dissolved in favor of returning social services to its historic role as a family-support agency, and one that uses courts and law-enforcement backup in cases where no family member can or should keep a child.
Bestpitch also wrote that Bryan accuses CPS investigators of disrupting a number of lives. This distorts her words and motives. No one objects to an open-minded, impartial, thorough investigation. The issue is sloppy, skewed investigations made by many CPS workers who ignore facts pointing to the innocence of the accused. Examples of these situations occur many times in child-custody cases, and also when angry young people choose this course to retaliate against parents who want them to mind.
Bestpitch's letter is biased because he refuses to acknowledge the extreme hardship and suffering that mishandled investigations have caused and continue to cause many families.
PATRICIA D. DEEL
National Child Abuse and Resource Center
CLOVERDALE
A potential hole in the safety net
VIRGINIA IS near the head of the class in use of federal tax dollars to fund services for the mentally disabled. Some who favor increased state funding for services note that Virginia ranks about No. 47 in state funding for these services. Advocates for increased use of state and local taxes become uncomfortable when it's pointed out that Virginia first began to maximize use of federal tax dollars for this purpose during Gov. Douglas Wilder's administration. What difference does it make whether our tax dollars come out of our front or back pocket?
Virginia is entering the era of privatized managed care for public mental-health services. Locally and across the state, this is about to happen with virtually no public dialogue. The inference is that the public hasn't been doing its job - rushing to the bureaucracy's aid, insisting that pumping more state and local tax dollars into this privatized method of operation will solve the problems. With the bureaucracy circling its wagons, concerned taxpayers are shut out of the process. Access to information is Draconian. What a difference could be made with modern computer access (i.e., Internet) to public records.
Citizen-representative Community Service Boards are poised to vote their approval on behalf of taxpayers. There are a number of basic questions each CS board member across the state should be comfortable with answering before casting a vote and setting this managed-care process in stone.
Privatizing usually means there are investors, but it's unclear who they are in this case. Would CS board members be voting casually if they were investing even a mere $10,000 of their own money? Will managed care keep some individuals from falling through the safety net, and help those in the greatest need receive appropriate services?
Let us hope so, remembering the words printed on our money: ``In God we trust.''
PHIL THEISEN
President, Lynchburg Depressive Disorders Association
LYNCHBURG
An obstruction, rather than incentive
THE SUPREME Court took a long, hard look at affirmative action recently, and knocked it down in a 5-4 decision. The decision was based on two factors: academics and minorities. Constitutionality should be a term most individuals deal with on a nonassumption level without fear of reprisals.
Affirmative action was institutionalized some 20 years ago, and it may well have reached limitless boundaries by its very existence. There are few if any persons who couldn't consider themselves as a minority. Business leaders have had to rationalize constructively to avoid undue lawsuits over dismissals of minorities. Quality or quantitative workmanship was never a relative factor to production. Long-standing construction firms failed in bidding for federally funded projects. Some of these projects are now being viewed as low- or below-standard projects, as witnessed in some of the severe earthquakes around the country. The public now must shoulder the responsibility of rebuilding when little concern was given to engineering of these projects.
Academically, we all gained and sustained a higher level of opportunity, which should have been affirmative action's main objective. Lower courts, which mandate state policy, will often run in favor of state-supported projects within their limit of operations.
Have we gone too far in mandates to justify affirmative action as a primary means for employment? Possibly, for when mandated policy becomes a deterrent to one's capacity to gain knowledge and an obstruction rather than an incentive, then affirmative action should end - and so stated the Supreme Court.
We can easily afford to rebuild bridges so badly constructed, but one cannot rebuild badly constructed academics.
JUNE A. THOMPSON
BUCHANAN
by CNB