The Akron Beacon Journal from Akron, Ohio • Page 64

A 1 0 Akron BfMCon journal TupsiI.iv. M.iy 14. 1935 WORLD AND NATION Copley in New boys life inspires class Jersey to save eagles Qlfc3 ISFSDEF ft v' Plot to kill Gandhi on U.S. visit revealed A Vietnam War hero posing as an explosives and weapons expert infiltrated a Sikh terrorist plot to overthrow India's government and assassinate Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi during his U.S. visit June 12-15, federal officials say.

The plot included plans to murder another Indian official in New Orleans, to set up a guerrilla training base in New Jersey and to bomb facilities in India, including a nuclear reactor, U.S. Attorney Raymond J. Dearie said Monday. FBI Director William H. Webster said five conspirators had been arrested in New Orleans and that the FBI was seeking two others in the New York City area.

The undercover agent, identified only as penetrated the alleged plot to kill Gandhi, whose mother, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, was assassinated by Sikh members of her personal bodyguard last year, Dearie said. was a former SEAL, the Navy's equivalent of Special Forces, who was awarded the Medal of Honor in Vietnam, he said. New Orleans police arrested Virinder Singh, Gurpartap Singh Birk, Jasbir Sandhu and Sukhwinder Singh near Lai's hotel May 4. A fifth man indicted in New Orleans, Jatinder Singh Ahluwalia, was arrested by agents there Sunday, the FBI said. Singh is a name used by almost all Sikhs.

GE ENTERS GUILTY PLEA TO FRAUD: General Electric the nation's sixth-largest defense contractor, pleaded guilty Monday to defrauding the Air Force of $800,000 on a nuclear-warhead contract and was fined $1,040,000, the maximum penalty. The Air Force was evaluating the plea to determine what action, if any, would be taken against GE, which performed the work at two Philadelphia area plants, said Air Force spokesman Lt. Col. Larry Greer on Monday. GE pleaded guilty to 108 counts of making false statements and claims for payment to the Air Force to recover cost overruns on a $47 million contract to refurbish the Minuteman Mark-12A intercontinental ballistic missile.

The plea came on what was to be the opening day of jury selection for trial on the charges. DOTSON SEEKS NEW TRIAL: Gary Dotson, already free from prison after his sentence was commuted by Illinois Gov. James R. Thompson, will clear his name of a rape his accuser now says never happened if a judge grants his request for a new trial, Dotson's lawyer said. Attorney Warren Lupel goes before Chief Criminal Judge Richard Fitzgerald today in Chicago to request a new trial based on the recanted testimony of Cathleen Crowell Webb and what he contends was inaccurate testimony by a state expert at the original 1979 trial.

THAYER IN PRISON: Former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Thayer checked into a minimum-security federal prison Monday to serve a four-year sentence for obstruction of justice, a prison spokesman said in Big Spring, Texas. He admitted lying to authorities probing an insider stock trading scheme in which the ex-chairman of LTV Corp. participated. Beacon Journal photo by Ron Kuner and Marilyn (holding Eric's IN THE WORLD Continued from page Al did from her. "Eric Conner was the greatest teacher I ever had," she said.

"He was never afraid of dying. He always said there will be a better place for him after this life. I've dedicated this year to him. I want to make a better place for kids while they're here on earth." Ms. Holland told her pupils in Haddonfield all about Eric, she infected them with his kind of enthusiasm for life.

They wrote poems and short stories about Eric. Then they embarked on a program that has received national attention. They started out to raise enough money to adopt a baby bald eagle, Eric's favorite bird, through New Jersey's Endangered and Non-game Species Program. They collected $6,400, enough to allow them to adopt two Canadian eaglets, which will be tagged and raised in New Jersey. Their efforts were noted by President Ronald Reagan and New Jersey Gov.

Thomas Kean and chronicled on numerous TV stations and in more than 50 newspapers, including the New York Times. "Eric was our inspiration," Ms. Holland said. "He was never satisfied with just accepting the norm. He always strived for something higher." The New Jersey children are striving for more, too.

One of the Haddonfield pupils, Jon Read, designed an emblem to commemorate the Adopt-an-Eagle Program. Ms. Holland then began a campaign to have the emblem turned into a stamp dedicated to the preservation of endangered species and to Eric. She wrote the Postal Service. The pupils at the Haddonfield Middle School wrote, too.

So did the pupils at Copley-Fairlawn Middle School. In all, some 1,000 letters have to delivered to the Postal Service, including several from politicians such as Kean and from officials at Goodyear, where Eric's father, Gary Conner, works. The design went on display this past weekend in Washington, D.C., at the meeting of the Citizens Stamp Advistory Committee. Ralph Stewart, a spokesman for the Postal Service, said the design is one of about 1,500 that will be considered. He said 25 to 30 new stamps will be issued this year.

(If you want to write in your support for the stamp, address letters to Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee, U.S. Postal Service, Washington, D.C. 20260.) Whatever the committee's decision, the real story here is the indelible mark that such a young boy as Eric Conner left on so many people children and adults. His parents and his sister, 16-year-old Lorrie, visited Haddonfield last month. "The kids there made you feel as if they knew him all his life," said Marilyn Conner, his mother.

"We always thought he was a special boy, but he was our son. What they've done, what the kids here in Copley have done it makes you feel that other people thought he was special, too." Why was he so special? He was a good student, but not exceptional. He was a fine athlete, a fierce competitor, but he was limited by his slight build. "He loved life," Ms. Holland said.

"He loved people. He was always optimistic. He never said it couldn't be. He was an instigator. He was the kind of a kid who got things started," He was the kind of boy who started water fights at the Cleveland Clinic.

He was the kind of boy who delivered valentines to all the other children plus the doctors and nurses in the clinic's pediatric ward. He was the kind of boy who could present a science report on his own illness, explaining to his peers what was happening to him. He was the kind of boy who could make his parents laugh when their hearts were breaking. He was the kind of boy who, only a few hours before he would slip into the coma that preceded his death, called his father and asked him to bring some gifts to Associarea Press picture), and sister Lorrie, 16 their experiences. It will be titled There's a Better Place.

"If the book helps just one other family to cope with what we had to cope with, it will be worth the effort," Gary Conner said. The book will be full of anecdotes about Eric's final days. Perhaps two of those moments will give you an idea of the kind of kid Eric Conner was. On Sept. 7, a Friday night, Eric attended a Copley football game with his family.

He hardly watched the game. He spent most of the time shaking hands, chatting with teachers and other pupils. He looked like a little politician making his way through a crowd of constituents. "Everybody commented how healthy he looked, how happy he seemed," Mrs. Conner said.

The next morning, Eric told his parents to take him to the hospital. He would never return home. "It was as if he knew, as if he wanted to say goodbye to everybody," Mrs. Conner said. The next few days were filled with intense pain.

"The doctors there told me that he apologized to them for complaining," Krill said. On Friday, Sept. 14, just a few hours after he distributed the gifts his father brought for the other kids in the ward, Eric went into a coma. On Sept. 16, at 1:30 a.m., he died of a massive cerebral hemhorrage.

But don't remember Eric Conner in death. Remember him by this: When he was about 3 years old, his mother teasingly would call him Eric the Airsick Eagle, a takeoff on a character from Captain Kangaroo. "I would sing a song, Eric, the Airsick Eagle," Mrs. Conner said. "He didn't like me to ring it.

He would say, 'Mama, eagles don't get airsick. They're terrific birds. They're free. Nothing can harm She had forgotten about the song until one day a couple of weeks before Eric's death. By then, his body had been enlarged by massive doses of steroids the doctors used to treat his illness.

"He had the bulk of a man," Mrs. Conner said, "but he walked over to me, put his arms around my neck and sat in my lap." Then Eric said to his mother, "Mama, sing Eric, the Airsick Eagle to me." Somehow you have to think that Eric the Eagle has found his better place, a place where he can fly free and nothing can harm him. "I think without this formula change there's not much chance for UDAG," Regula said. Besides changing the formula, the bill would tighten controls on cities' use of the money after it is repaid by companies getting UDAG loans. The cities would have to use the money to grant similar low-interest loans to other businesses.

Eric Conner's parents, Gary o4doDtion 9an Endangered Species Stamp makes a plea cheer up the other kids in the ward. "I think it's things like that that made me most proud of him," Conner said. The Conners learned of Eric's illness in April 1983, when he was in the sixth grade. Aplastic anemia robs the bone marrow of its ability to produce red corpuscles, white corpuscles or platelets. Without platelets, the body is susceptible to bruises and bleeding.

A blow to the head could be fatal. Nevertheless, that summer Eric continued to play baseball. "He wasn't in the more serious stage of the disease at that point," said Dr. Carl J. Krill a pediatric hematologist who treated Eric in Akron.

Midway through the season, though, Krill ordered Eric to stop playing. "His team lost a couple of games in a row without him," Gary Conner said. "He really wanted to play." So one night Eric called Krill at home. He cut a deal with the doctor he would play only three innings a game and he wouldn't slide. Because there was almost no hope for Eric's recovery, his parents relented, although Mrs.

Conner couldn't bring herself to watch a game. "We decided that if he died playing baseball, he would die happy," Conner said. Eric was selected to his league's all-star team. He led the all-stars to a victory their first game, hitting two doubles and a triple and driving in three runs. On the triple, he slid into third base.

Actually, it wasn't much of a slide. "He bowled over the other team's third baseman," Conner recalled. "The only way he knew how to play was all-out." As Eric entered the seventh such projects as the Goodyear Technical Center in Akron and the Newmarket Project in downtown Canton. The House bill, co-sponsored by Pepper and Regula, is designed to broaden support for UDAG by changing the formula for awarding the grants. Currently all UDAG money about $440 million this year is targeted to projects in economi 1 Fi rv Rl El ft 1 II grade, his ability to compete in athletics diminished as the disease grew dominant.

"With aplastic anemia," Krill said, "if you're not going to do well rarely are there any periods of remission." Somehow, Eric found a way to stay involved in athletics. He re-fereed. He learned to excell at non-contact sports such as table tennis. He instructed other children. In June, the middle school will present the first Eric Conner Memorial Award.

It will be given to the boy and girl physical education pupils who best demonstrate "the spirit, enthusiasm and winning attitude that Eric exuded each and every day," physical education teacher Neil Dekker said. That winning attitude extended into the classroom. He attended his seventh-grade classes as often as he could during the 1983-84 school year. "When he would come into English, he would always say, 'Are we going to have fun today or are we going to have recalled Patty Picard, Eric's seventh-grade English teacher. Ms.

Picard, who now teaches in the Hudson system, often took pupils to visit Eric when he was at the clinic. Her class sent him a T-shirt that read "Mr. Fun" on the front and "Eric" on the back. Barb Middleton, a guidance counselor at Copley-Fairlawn Middle School, said Eric's attitude was so upbeat during his seventh-grade year it was difficult for the other pupils to comprehend the extent of his illness. "I think they knew he was sick, but it didn't really sink in," she said.

"Then when he died, and the reality set in, it really shocked them. Many of them came in here in tears. Some cried for days." If Eric Conner ever shed any tears, nobody saw them. Even at home, he maintained his cheerful countenance until the end. "He never gave up," Mrs.

Conner said. "He would keep us going. "You can't imagine what it's like to watch your child dying. And on top of that pain, you have bill collectors who want their money now. It was a very difficult time for all of us, but Eric always found a way to make us smile.

He never felt sorry for himself. He never asked, 'Why He just accepted it." The Conners are collaborating with Ms. Holland on a book about cally distressed urban areas. Legislators from the South, Southwest, West and Midwest have argued that the restriction shortchanges their areas. Under the Pepper-Regula plan, two-thirds of UDAG money would continue to go to distressed urban areas but one-third would be awarded on the project's merit, with no concern for an area's economic plight.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, in Paris for a one-day visit, shakes hands with supporters who oppose the U.S. trade embargo on Nicaragua. Ortega said on Monday that France was prepared to make new efforts economically and politically to help his nation in the face of U.S. eeonomic sanctions. BOMBINGS IN S.

AFRICA: Three bomb explosions early today damaged police buildings near Tsakane township in which thousands of blacks gathered for the funeral of union leader Andries Raditsela, 29, who died after being detained by police. A spokesman at police headquarters in the South African capital of Pretoria said the bombs exploded today in Brakpan, a white community east of Johannesburg. The bombs broke windows and doors at police living quarters, a court for blacks and an office of a court messenger. No one was injured, police said. Unions representing about 300,000 black workers called for a work stoppage to protest Raditsela's death.

CRAXI COALITION WINS BACKING: The pro Western coalition of Italy's Socialist Premier Bettino Craxi has turned back a Communist challenge in local elections, winning 58 percent of the vote. The Communists received 30 percent, according to official figures released today in Rome by the Interior Ministry. Craxi welcomed the vote of confidence in his five-party government, at 21 months already the third-oldest in postwar history, saying it brought a "factor of stability in Italian political life." The elections were Sunday and Monday. JAPAN TO CUT STEEL EXPORTS: The Japanese Cabinet today approved a five-year plan to cut steel shipments to the United States from 6.3 percent to 5.8 percent of the U.S. market.

Japan is one of nine steel exporters the White House has persuaded since last September to reduce steel shipments. POLICE SHOOT ILLEGAL ALIENS: Illegal aliens trying to leave Nigeria said police shot four aliens to death at the Seme border post after halting a 400-truck convoy carrying thousands trying to force their way across the border into Benin. There was no independent or official confirmation of the shootings Monday. ET CETERA: El Salvador's leftist rebels have proposed that a third round of peace talks with the government be held June 15 in a rebel stronghold, and that private preliminary meetings be held two weeks earlier in San Salvador Snipers battled across Beirut's Green Line today after overnight rocket-propelled grenade and machine-gun clashes in which police said four people were killed and 17 wounded. Regula pushes to save urban grants IN WASHINGTON By William Hershey Beacon Journal Washington Bureau WASHINGTON U.S.

Rep. Ralph Regula, R-Navarre, joined Rep. Claude Pepper, Monday in introducing legislation aimed at saving Urban Development Action Grants. The program was left out of the 1986 budget approved last week by the Senate. UDAp funds have assisted NAVY PORT CALL DELAYED: The United States and China have been unable to work out a Chinese demand that visiting U.S.

ships not carry nuclear weapons, resulting in postponement of the first U.S. Navy port call to Shanghai in 36 years. The U.S. 7th Fleet visit had been set for mid-May. Edited from wire reports by the Beacon Journal National Desk.