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Show Modw AJtoooDit lit? WnewpiDniHl; To many people, the Coalition Building was a symbol of Park City's mining days. What did it represent to you? Blanche Fletcher Almost my whole life. I'm just heartbroken. Years ago I used to sit and Watch the buckets go up and down the hill it was so PageA2 Thursday, July 23,1981 peaceful. JEdllTtairIsiIl A - , - An era has ended with burning of Coalition When the Silver King Coalition Building burned last Monday Mon-day morning, it lit up the old section of town like an orange sun. It looked like the end of the world or at least, the end of an era. For miles around, people woke up and looked out their windows at a glow that was so bright, they assumed the fire must be blazing in their back yards. One colleague here at The Newspaper told us about waking up at home on Rossi Hill and seeing the side of the mountain lit up like daylight. She remembered looking down the hill at the soaring flames and fireballs of sparks and wondering, "What is it? The Kimball Art Center? No. The Center wouldn't make that big a fire. Park Station?" It simply never occurred to her that the Coalition could be burning up. The idea was inconceivable, like someone shooting the Pope. The Coalition was venerable and inviolate. in-violate. The report that morning on KPCW said that "A fire has taken the life of the Coalition Building." And as strange as that sounded, you began to realize how accurate that statement was. Park City has lost a vital, almost living presence. The reactions to the fire were as varied as the city itself. The town's oldest citizens remembered when the clanking of the tram cars was a familiar sound and workers from the Silver King mine bustled through the innards of the building. The firemen who fought the gigantic blaze for over an hour marveled at the havoc it caused scorching the nearby train cars and melting the plexiglass windows like taffy, turning an imported car parked nearby into a Junkyard specimen literally in minutes, and threatening TOV,KxnVTl,T A struggle backstage at the White House Washington There is an ail-American ail-American quality about Ronald Reagan. It may be his easiness of manner, his engaging sincerity, the way his whole personality seems to smile. He has a gift, too, for expressing himself movingly and for reducing great issues to simple moral principles. prin-ciples. In the past, conservative advocates saw in this folksy, relaxed leader a father figure for the American people and a vehicle for their own policial agendas. But now that they have installed in-stalled him in the White House, they are losing their hold on him. The hard-line conservatives are dismayed over the number of moderates who have turned up in policymaking positions. The conservative conser-vative champion inside the White House is Lyn Nofziger. He is rumpled, scowling, lumbering fellow who has the temperament of the grizzly bear he resembles. He has raised a ruckus in the backrooms over the failure to give more power to arch-conservatives. With some justification, he calls them loyalists who backed Reagan from the beginning. Yet they are being pushed aside, Nofziger complains, by moderates who supported Vice President George Bush. The latest confrontation was over who will control White House communications com-munications and public affairs. Nofziger Nof-ziger wanted this authority, but staff chief James Baker won it. He is a moderate. More than once, Nofziger has stormed stor-med out of White House staff meetings in a terrible wrath. One witness described his outbursts as "temper tantrums." Nofziger is so frustrated that he has told associates he'll quit by the end of fmSnTI by the year. He said other conservatives, including one Cabinet officer, are also ready to resign. He has the backing of several arch-conservative arch-conservative power blocs and pressure groups. They draw their support from hard-core Republicans who might otherwise contribute their money to the party. This has upset the party chairman, Richard Richards, who would like the independent groups to stop siphoning off political contributions. Richards has conservative credentials that are dyed-in-the-wool. But some of the pressure groups have lowered the boom on him. The Reverend Jerry Falwell, leader of the Moral Majority, has complained to presidential adviser Ed Meese about Richards. Another White House aide, Morton Blackwell, has suggested in an internal memo that Richards should be shut up. Chairman Richards just wants to stop the fueding. He has nothing against the Moral Majority. What he wants is a Republican majority. Student investors Budget director David Stockman has just come up with a new argument for cutting back student loans. He got the idea from one of his deputies, Glenn Schleede. Schleede confided that his daughter had used a student loan to finance indirectly in-directly a money-making investment. Here's how it worked: She had enough money of her own to pay for her tuition, but she invested it in high-yield certificates of deposit. Then she borrowed money at lower interest rates from the student loan program to pay her college expenses. The point is that she wouldn't have had the money to spare for an investment invest-ment if the low-cost student loan hadn't been available. The law forbids the use of student homes a good block away with its heat. A local artist recalled the number of times she had painted it. Another woman shook her head and lamented, well, it was bound to happen with such an old building. The motorists who were accustomed to driving by its gaunt, silent presence on the way to work were shocked to learn about the fire for the first time when they saw the building's remains a square skeleton of bulky black bones . At this writing, we can only guess at the motivations and reactions of those who set the fire. Suffice to say that the destruction of the Coalition is a testimony to the awesome power of blind stupidity. The Coalition was a central part of the town's history and it was Park City's trademark. Now that it is gone, we are left at a great loss. What could possibly replace it? What else in town possesses the Coalition's solitude, distinction, weathered dignity? - '';! ... The Coalition appeared on T-shirts and coffee mugs and was used as a logo on brochures, maps and stationery. It also appears on the front of every copy of The Newspaper, and will remain there as a reminder of our links to the mining-town past of Park City. One small ray of hope emerges from the ashes and crumbled crum-bled timbers of the Silver King Coalition Building. The owners of the property, Jack Sweeney and sons, are talking of reconstructing the building. Perhaps at this stage one can't "restore" the Coalition. You can only duplicate with love and respect. But we applaud any effort to bring back a portion of Park City that has been cherished by residents and tourists alike. " ' i . RB Jack Anderson loans for any other purpose than education. But strictly speaking, the budget officer's daughter used her own money for the investment and the taxpayers' tax-payers' money to pay for her schooling. What she did, therefore, was not illegal. But the incident has aroused the interest in-terest of David Stockman. He has learned that other affluent students have turned a profit from the student loan program. They have put their own money into investments that draw high interest. Then they borrow money at low interest under the student loan program to pay their college bills. Stockman hopes to stop this by restricting the low-cost loans to students who really need help. Executive memo The Peace Corps is saving the taxpayers some money by tricking the phone company. Officials Of-ficials at the Texas regional office of the corps recently instructed applicants to call collect, person-to-person. Then the Peace Corps bureaucrats refuse to take the calls; instead they call the applicants back at the less expensive, ex-pensive, direct-dial rates. Dozens of workers at Hill Air Force Base in Utah have charged that they've contracted a variety of diseases ranging from sterility to cirrhosis of the liver. They claim the cause was exposure to toxic chemicals used to maintain the Air Force's fighter jets. There are 25 cities in the United States with populations of more than a million, but only two of them, according accor-ding to federal experts, have developed plans to deal with a gasoline crisis. Unless you live in Los Angeles or Washington, DC, you could be in trouble come another gas shortage. 1981, United Feature Syndicate, Inc. I feel bad. I was eight years old when the Coalition was built I'm 88 now. We used to stand and watch the men go up in the buckets to test the wires. We always called it the Silver King Terminal. 'Mm Childhood days. We used what's Since I've been here, the . by Stanley Karnow Himiteirpiretiive Mepqpptt Reagan puts in Washington, D.C Just as Ronald Reagan's popularity is slipping at home, so his ratings have dropped overseas. Thus he could face resistance at the allied summit meeting due to take place in Ottawa on July 20. On the personal side, Reagan scores high abroad. His wit and courage during the recent assassination attempt won him a good deal of sympathy. Displays of bravery, after all, hold universal appeal. The tinsel movie-actor image, which drew sneers from European sophisticates during the election campaign cam-paign last year, also has disappeared. Reagan no longer is seen by international inter-national television viewers as the reincarnation rein-carnation of John Wayne. But precisely because he now is taken seriously, his foreign policy performance per-formance has proved to be a disappointment disap-pointment to America's partners, who had hoped that he would fulfill his promise to restore the status of the United States as an incisive authority in global affairs. It may be that such a hope was illusory. Perhaps, given the complexity com-plexity of problems confronting the world, no power can exercise predominant influence. A complaint directed at Reagan, however, is that he has scarcely tried. For one thing, he has not set forth a coherent foreign policy beyond his repeated theme that the Soviet Union is at the root of all evil. That platitude, even if valid, hardly adds up to a strategy. It worries Europeans, who fear that U.S. energies may get diverted into marginal crusades designed to help Latin American dictators check real or imagined revolutionaries, rather than focusing on the social injustices that breed discontent. foreie policy Mewspaper: Subscription Rates, $6 a year in Summit County, $12 a year outside Summit County Published by Ink, Inc. USPS 378-730 "ubllsnCT Jan Wilking Editor Bettina Moench Advertising Sales jan Wilking, Bill Dickson Business Manager Rick Unman Graphic Consultant ferry Hogan GrcP1"" Becky Widenhouse, Liz Heimos Reporters , David Hampshire, Rick trough, Doug McCulloch Photo Editor Phyllis Rubenstein Typesetting Dixie Bishop, Paula Gibson Subscription & Classifieds Anne Bennett Distribution Bob Grieve 1 Entered as second-class matter May 25, 1977. at the post office in Park City, Utah 84060, under the Act of March 3, 1897. Published every Thursday at Park City, Utah. Second-class postage paid at Park City, Utah. Unsolicited manuscripts and photographs are welcome and will be considered for publication, however. The Newspaper will assume no responsibility for the return of such material. All news, advertising and photos must be received prior to the Tuesday noon deadline at our office, 419 Main Street in Park City, by mail P.O. Box 738, Park City, Ut. 84060, or by mlling our office (801) 649-9014. Publication material must be received by Tuesday noon for Thursday publication. Lillian Bircumshaw Bea Kummer An historical landmark and an old friend. My husband and I lived almost under the cables and the sound was reassuring that things were working. When they were silenced, they were really silent, and many thought that was the end of Park City. Marge Angeli to always watch the cars go up and down the hillside. Mel Armstrong It represented the whole town as it used to be. I think the Park Station should be the new logo it seems fairly representative of happening now. Garth building has always been representative ofParkCity. America first; Similarly, the Reagan administration's ad-ministration's decision to furnish arms to China caused considerable apprehension ap-prehension in Western Europe and Japan, since it contributed to heightening tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union for no apparent purpose. At the same time, Reagan baffled America's allies by lifting the U.S. embargo on grain sales to the Russians, mainly to keep an election pledge. His mistake, European analysts point out, was not to extract concessions con-cessions on Poland from Moscow in exchange. As perceived from many capitals, meanwhile, Reagan's approach to other areas also seems to lack vigor and consistancy. Indeed, as a British colleague of mine submits, he may even make Jimmy Carter look good by comparison which would be quite a feat. In the Middle East, for instance, Reagan deserves credit for Philip Habib's success in averting a clash between Israel and Syria in Lebanon. But that cannot be more than a temporary tem-porary achievement. More significantly, Reagan has failed to maintain the momentum of Camp David by pressing Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to refrain from building new Jewish settlements on the West Bank, an act that violates the spirit of the agreement. Reagan could have wielded that pressure at an opportune moment, when the Israelis raided Iraq's nuclear installation last month. Instead, he waffled and finally slapped Israel on the wrist by holding up delivery of four fighter aircraft. Europeans are troubled, too, by - Wilkinson Reagan's flirtation with South Africa, which they fear will drive Africa's black nations away from the West. According to a senior French official, Zimbabwe has warned privately that it will ask the Soviet Union for military aid should Reagan come to terms with South Africa. Exacerbating these concerns, America's allies are puzzled by the battles going on inside the Reagan administration's foreign-policy establishment. They simply cannot situate the locus of power. The West Europeans respect Secretary of State Alexander Haig, whom they know from his days as commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But they cannot figure out whether he manages international inter-national affairs. , It is no secret abroad that Haig has been squabbling with Reagan's inner circle of White House advisers and that he has lost several disputes. The logical question posed by America's allies, therefore, is whether his statements represent the U.S. position. In many ways, it appears overseas, Washington is as enigmatic as the Kremlin. The general impression beyond these shores, then, is that Reagan is putting America first by concentrating on domestic matters and relegating foreign policy to the back burner. ; His choice may be sound. But he cannot demand, as he has, that Western Europe and Japan share in their relationship with the United States as long as he offers them little mere than confusion and neglect in return. (Released by The Register and Tribune Syndicate, 1981) |