ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, September 7, 1996 TAG: 9609090023
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
*IT TAKES a city to kill a tree: Air pollution, poor soil, de-icing salt - the list is long of stresses that shorten the lives of trees that flourish in an urban setting.
Now, however, comes news of two soon-to-be-released varieties of the stately elm that not only are tolerant of city life but also are resistant to the Dutch elm disease that since 1931 has wiped out 90 percent of America's elm trees. The Valley Forge and the New Harmony varieties, reports The Futurist magazine in its September-October issue, should be for sale from wholesale nurseries in 1998 and from retail nurseries in 1999.
Roanoke, take note. Maybe there's an alternative to the Bradford pear.
*EXCUSE US, but as classes get under way at the newly rebuilt high school in Wedowee, Ala., why is Hulond Humphries the principal? Humphries was the educator who, in front of a school assembly, called a student of mixed racial parentage a "mistake." He also cancelled the senior prom rather than allow any racially mixed couples to attend.
His actions left Wedowee in an uproar in 1994. The man is not obliged, of course, to repudiate his prejudices, made more pernicious because of his position at the school. But neither is his school district obliged to employ him.
The superintendent of schools did request a hearing to see if Humphries should be fired, but the school board overruled him. Later, the high school was burned. Arson was blamed; no one was convicted of the crime. This week, the reconstructed school's opening was marred by the unreconstructed presence of Humphries, a racist role model and pillar of his community.
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