Word: towns
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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After 39 years as mayor of Smyrna, Tenn. (pop. 12,000), John Sam Ridley could hardly separate his personal business from the town's. He used his city credit card to visit a daughter in Texas, vacation in Florida and attend the Southern Baptist Convention, claiming that as mayor he was on duty 24 hours a day. He and his brother Knox, a former judge, owned Smyrna's Chevrolet dealership, which serviced cars for the city. A conflict-of-interest suit filed against Sam dragged on for seven years, through two of his re-elections. Then, facing an impending decree...
...Smyrna's dynasty survives. The five-member town commission took all of ten minutes to name Brother Knox to fill out the remaining 2 1/2 years of Sam's term. Said Knox: "Sam will be my right arm." Municipal policies will remain unchanged, and voters may not even notice that a new man is in charge: born 20 minutes apart 67 years ago, now with the same type eyeglasses and portly build, Sam and Knox are identical twins...
More than half of the 180 residents of Saragosa, a tiny farm town in West Texas, were in the community hall Friday night attending a graduation ceremony for preschool children enrolled in a Government Head Start program. About 8 p.m., some heard a whistling sound. "Someone yelled a tornado was coming, and parents started grabbing their kids from the stage," recalls Elodia Garcia, 26. A number shoved their children under tables and benches...
...more than 100 injured. In the predawn darkness Saturday, rescuers were still digging away at the wreckage of homes illuminated only by the lamps on the workers' mining helmets. Bodies were laid out in a school bus converted into a makeshift morgue. Said Reeves County Jailer Janie Rodriguez: "The town is completely gone...
...there was an inexplicable lapse, with key radars failing to detect the missile's launch and the Phalanx system remaining off. This was clearly a tragic failure for a vessel sailing in an area where more than 200 ships have been attacked during the past three years. "Everybody in town knew there was a war going on in the gulf except the Navy," says Jeffrey Record, a military analyst with the Hudson Institute. The Navy appointed a board of inquiry to examine possible lapses in judgment and equipment, but it cautioned against drawing too many conclusions about the vulnerability...