President Reagan said in an interview yesterday his shooting still seems
unreal, although he wonders why it did not happen “27 times before.” He said
that although he still is in pain from the lung injury he suffered in the
assassination attempt last month, his recovery is “astonishing.”
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daily
Consumer Party gaining ground
By JOHN SCHLANDER
Daily Collegian Staff Writer
f The National Citizens Party and the
Consumer Party, its Pennsylvania affil
iate, are gaining support on the grass
roots level, Barry Commoner, Citizens
Party co-chairman and 1980 presidential
candidate, said yesterday.
At a news conference, Commoner, a
prominent environmentalist, said many
people are becoming disenchanted with
President Reagan’s policies.
This is leading to growing support for
the Citizens Party, he said, which Com
moner co-founded two years ago.
Although he and his running mate in
the 1980 election, LaDonna Harris, re
ceived only 0.27 percent of the vote,
many local candidates fared well, he
said.
“Wherever we ran local candidates in
November, we got, on the average, close
to 10 percent of the vote.”
Many people who supported Common
er voted for Carter because they did not
want Reagan elected, Commoner said.
When people had a chance to show
support through financial contribution or
support of local candidates, they often
did so, he said.
Consumer Party success in Burlington,
Vt., where the the party had its first
winning candidate in the city council
race, is a starting point, he said.
“This (support) is a message of nation
al significance,” Commoner said. “This
November, the local elections are going
Identity known
Donald Meyer crash victim
By REBECCA CLARK
Daily Collegian Staff Writer
The body of the man who died Tuesday night when a Cessna 401 twin
engine plane crashed at University Park Airport was identified yesterday as
Donald Meyer, owner of the Meyer Dairy Store, 2390 S. Atherton St., a University
spokeswoman said yesterday.
Meyer, Box 388, Boalsburg, was pronounced dead Tuesday night at the
scene of the accident by Centre County Coroner Robert Neff.
After an autopsy yesterday, Neff said the 64-year-old Meyer died of
injuries he received when his plane hit the ground.
Meyer’s body was badly burned in the crash. However, Neff said the
autopsy did not determine the degree of the burns that Meyer’s body received
because he was dead before the plane caught fire.
“We feel that he died instantly upon impact,” Neff said.
Meyer was practicing take-offs and landings when his six-passenger plane
crashed and burst into flames at about 8:05 p.m.
A part-time employee of the airport, who was working about 500 yards
from the runway, who witnessed the crash said the right wing of the plane dipped
before the crash occurred.
The witness said, however, that he did not know if the wing hit the ground
before it crashed.
The witness, whom University officials refused to identify, said it looked
as if Meyer tried to take the plane up before it crashed.
Meyer’s plane was moving westbound about 200 yards from the runway
when the crashed occurred.
Mary Dunkle, assistant manager of the University news bureau, said
officials from the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Safety Board
have arrived to investigate the crash and try to determine the cause of the crash.
“They will be here investigating the crash for at least a week,” Dunkle
said.
The FAA and National Safety Board officials would not give any indication
of why the plane crashed, Dunkle said; The officials could not be reached for
comment.
Dunkle said Meyer’s body was released to Koch Funeral Home, 201 S,
Atherton St., after the autopsy was performed.
Richard Crowley, assistant vice president for business at the airport, said
the crash was the airport’s first fatal accident since it opened in 1962.
BINDERY
W 202 PATTEE
4 ? co?c.:‘
to take on a new look.”
Commoner said he strongly supports
Centre County Consumer Party co-chair
man Tom Ortenberg in his bid to become
State College’s mayor, as well as Ray
Bbyle and Chris Hall tot municipal coun
cil seats.
Ortenberg’s campaign for mayor “rep
resents a very important step locally,”
Commoner said.
“Clearly, this is a community that
ought to reflect the interest of the stu
dents. This isn’t to say there ought to be a
conflict between the local residents and
the students.
Nationally, support for the Citizens
Party is growing because Reagan’s pro
grams are losing support, he said.
“Reagan has chosen a technique which
is politically subversive,” Commoner
said.
Commoner said Reagan was elected on
the assumption that federal programs
would be cut back.
“Federal programs aren’t being cut.
They’re being shifted from social pro
grams to the military.
“It’s underhanded,” he said.
The Democratic Party cannot be relied
on to represent liberal views, he said.
“They are just rolling over and playing
dead.”
Commoner also commented on a possi
ble setback to the Centre County Con
sumer Party the Centre County
commissioners are denying the party
ballot status.
Reagan reviews March shooting
By JAMES GERSTENZANG
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) President Reagan says he is
still suffering pain from his gunshot wound March 30,
and while the episode seems unreal to this day, he
wonders, too, “why this didn’t happen 27 times before.”
In an interview yesterday, his first with reporters
since the assassination attempt outside a Washington
hotel, Reagan disclosed that his first thought when he
heard the gunfire was “to take a look . . . but the Secret
Service man behind me had a different idea.”
Agent Jerry Parr had propelled the president into
his limousine. But as to exactly what happened in those
early moments, said Reagan. “Actually, I can’t recall
too clearly. I knew I’d been hurt,” but he didn’t think he
had been hit by gunfire. “It was the most paralyzing
pain ... as if someone hit you with a hammer.
“When I sat up on the seat the pain wouldn’t go away
and suddenly I found I was coughing up blood,” the
president said. Parr has said the blood was oxygenated
evidence of ,an internal injury and that prompted
him to order the driver of the armored car to head
straight for the hospital.
Brady undergoes additional
By DAVID ESPO
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - White House
press secretary James S. Brady,
wounded in last month’s assassination
attempt on President Reagan, under
went surgery last night to close a pas
sage allowing air to seep into his
damaged brain.
“Everything is going OK,” Dr. Dennis
O’Leary, a spokesman at George Wash
ington University Hospital, said. “I don’t
lie
The victim of the first fatal plane crash at the University Park Airport since it Dairy Store. A witness said Meyer had been practicing take-offs and landings
opened in 1962 was identified yesterday as Donald Meyer, 64, owner of Meyer when the crash occurred at about 8 p.m Tuesday.
ian
University Park, Pa. 16802
Published by Students of The Pennsylvania State University
Tom Ortenberg and Barry Commoner
Reagan said he then believed that Parr’s shove had
broken a rib, which in turn had punctured his lung.
“The next thing I knew I was on a cart” at George
Washington University hospital, and “it was then that
they found the wound and (realized) that I’d actually
been shot,” he said.
The president described his near-panic while gasp
ing for air. “The more I tried to breathe” he said, the
less oxygen he seemed to get. “I almost had the feeling
it would diminish to the place where I wasn’t getting
any” he said. “Then they shut me up” by placing a
breathing tube in his throat.
The entire affair, he said, “still seems kind of
unreal.”
The president said that “you wonder in your mind
when and how it’s going to happen or what it would be
like” to be the target of someone bent upon assassina
tion. But he recalled that in 1976, someone pointed a toy
gun at him and “Well, I never saw that. I was busy
saying hello to someone and I didn’t see this.”
Reagan said he continued to suffer from what
doctors told him was “one of the longest-enduring
discomforts” because of his type of injury.
think he’s in any danger.”
O’Leary said the air was increasing
pressure inside Brady’s skull.
The surgery began at 7 p.m. EST.
There was no indication how long the
operation would last.
Rich Ellis, another hospital spokes
man, described the operation as “non
urgent surgery.”
The surgery came a few hours after
doctors inserted two needles into Brady’s
head to release air trapped inside his
Thursday April 23,1981
Vol. 81, No. 157 20 pages
brain, O’Leary said.
The air passage, from Brady’s sinuses
into his brain, probably was the result of
the bullet which pierced his skull when a
gunman opened fired on Reagan and the
presidential party outside a Washington
hotel March 30.
Reagan, a Secret Service agent and a
policeman also were wounded but have
been released from the hospital.
Deputy White House press secretary
Official, biologist
differ on TMI affects
By JILL LAWRENCE
Associated Press Writer
HARRISBURG (AP) - A Philadel
phia biologist and a Health Department
official were in conflict yesterday over
whether the Three Mile Island nuclear
power plant accident affected infant
deaths arid birth defects.
But the two, in testimony on the pro
posed restart of the undamaged TMI-1
reactor, disagreed on which way the
wind was blowing after the March 28,
1979, mishap, and based their findings on
analyses of almost entirely different
geographical areas.
In testimony submitted to the Atomic
Safety and Licensing Board, Dr. Bruce
Moholt said there is “some evidence”
that enough jodine-131 leaked from the
crippled Uriit 2 r&actor 'diirihg the acci
dent to increase the hypothyroidism rate
among newborns.
Moholt, science director of the Envi
ronmental Cancer Prevention Center in
Philadelphia, said the predominant wind
direction after the accident was north
east.
The incidence of the thyroid disorder
increased for six counties lying in that
direction from two cases in the nine
months before the accident, to eight in
the nine months following it, he said.
There was also a statistically signifi
cant increase in infant deaths within a
10-mile radius of the plant following the
accident, said Moholt.
The biologist’s statements were con
tradicted in testimony prepared by Dr.
George K. Tokuhata, director of epide
miological research for the state Health
Department, scheduled to appear this
week.
Tokuhata said wind direction within 48
hours of the accident was north and
northwest, and not a single case of
hypothyroidism was reported in eight
counties in that direction for all of 1979.
With the exception of Dauphin, the
counties he analyzed were different
from those involved in Moholt’s calcula
tions.
“It doesn’t go away,” he said. “There is that pain.”
Wearing a blue-gray suit, Reagan walked with a
steady though slightly stiff gait as he entered the Map
Room in the White House for the 19-minute interview.
His cheeks were ruddy and his voice showed no effect of
the lung injury he received.
In response to a quick question about how he was
doing, he declared: “I’m feeling fine.” But later he
spoke of the continuing pain and said he was not ready
“to hurdle any tables for awhile.” Nonetheless, he said
his recovery “is astonishing to me.”
He said his'soreness was diminishing and He has
resumed “at a little slower pace” his daily exercise
regimen.
The chief executive said that in watching televised
reviews of his first 100 days in office the 100th day will
not occur until next week he saw pictures of himself
milling in crowds and wondered why the shooting had
not happened “27 times before.”
When he once again leaves the White House for
public events, “I have a hunch I’ll be more alert,” he
said.
brain surgery
Larry Speakes said he was not certain
whether Reagan was informed of the new
developments before last night’s sur
gery.
Sarah Brady, the press secretary’s,
wife, was reported to be with her hus
band at the hospital.
O’Leary said inserting the needles was
minor procedure that was not emergency
action. He said Brady was “stable
through the whole procedure.”
Tokuhata said hypothroidism re
mained “within a normal range” in the
state for both 1979 and 1980. An “appar
ent concentration” of seven cases in
Lancaster County in 1979 was investi
gated and the department concluded the
TMI accident was not a factor, he said.
Tokuhata said one of the cases was
reported before the accident and two
were from the Amish community, which
has a higher than normal incidence of
certain genetic conditions and diseases.
• Jewish University students
celebrated Passover this year with
help and friendship from Hillel
Page 7
• Boston drubbed the Sixers,
118-99, to even their NBA series at
1-1 Page 17
• A special screening clinic to
test for carriers of Tay-Sachs dis
ease will be May 7. Preregistration
for the clinic is from noon to 7 p.m.
today Page 13
weather
Mostly cloudy and cool today
with occasional rain and possibly a
thundershower late in the day. Tem
peratures today will hold nearly
stationary in the middle 50s.
Cloudy and cool tonight with a
couple of showers and a low of 45.
Considerable cloudiness, quite
breezy and cool on Friday with a
few sprinkles likely and an af
ternoon high of 55. Saturday should
be partly cloudy and cool with a
high temperature of 56.