Man of the Year
Sir:
Should his fight be the beginning of the end of Communism, I would like to suggest the Hungarian Freedom Fighter as the Man of the Century.
J. M. RITERIS
Tarrytown, N.Y.
Sir:
Congratulations on your choice of the Hungarian Freedom Fighter as Man of the Year! I hope a sufficient number of copies of TIME were smuggled into Hungary.
BARBARA V. RYAN
Lakewood, Calif.
Sir:
In keeping with your recent choice, I now nominate America's Conscience as Thing of the Year, 1957.
FRANKLIN S. HARPER
Volders, Austria
Sir:
Your making a composite picture of a motley crew of trigger-happy poets, callow youths, delinquent teenagers, gun molls and other Hungarian riffraff and trying to foist them off on us Americans as the "Man of the Year" is a piece of journalism that is not only unique but should stand out as the acme of effrontery.
JOHN BUCKLEY
Rutherford, NJ.
Sir:
Your selection was expedient and political. You evaded the issue, avoided the always controversial selection of a living man, and put up a symbolic man that few would criticize in the present emotionally charged state of the public mind.
GENE CONNELLY
Philadelphia
Sir:
The Man-of-the-Year story was tragically beautiful--if a story or an act of men can be thus. It made me quiver. And it also evoked a feeling of utter humility to read such an intimate, personal account of the Hungarians' fight for freedom.
BILL FISHER
Lancaster, Pa.
Sir:
Your Man-of-the-Year editor better resign. Never again could he do so well.
K. B. BRAGG Baltimore
Race & Education
Sir:
I know I speak for my more experienced colleagues when I assure the congressional investigators [TIME, Jan. 7] that we who teach genuinely integrated classes simply see no sense in segregation. A Negro face does not tell us a thing about what sort of mind is behind it, any more than a white face does. I have Negro pupils who are problems; I have lily-white children who are problems. It just happens this semester that the only truly sensitive intellect studying under me belongs to a Negro.
Race and education are mutually irrelevant concepts, and nobody is going to get anywhere thinking about education in terms of race. I know this not because it was taught to me as an article of piety, which it was, but because unlike most of my early articles of piety, this one turns out to be true on testing.
Dubious congressmen are cordially invited to visit my classes for a demonstration of what I am talking about.
WINIFRED SCOTT
New York City
Sir:
The truth is that at this stage of their development Negroes get along faster and better in their own schools with their own teachers. When you get a sufficient number of them in a white school, both whites and colored suffer. It was all tried out in our Reconstruction days after the Civil War, and both sides reached the conclusion that it would not work.
R. B. HERBERT
Columbia, S.C.
Judge Judged
Sir:
If Judge William Hawley Atwell has, as you put it, "singlehanded staved off integration [ of public schools] in Dallas for at least another year" [TIME, Dec. 31], what of the nine peanut politicians serving also as pink stooges trying to ram integration down the throats of 50 million Southerners?
ARTHUR R. KING
Dallas
Sir:
It's too bad that people such as Judge Atwell have any authority. It seems that a man of his age (87) should be trying to get nearer to God and not trying to raise more hell here on earth.
(A/2C) J. C. FINLEY
Spokane, Wash.
Space Pace
Sir:
A million space enthusiasts shed silent tears as they laid down their Jan. 14 issue of TIME. For there they had read that "according to [Dr. Frankl Crawford, the man who has ventured deep into space can never return to earth before his life runs out. To keep the age advantage gained during the fast outward trip, he must make the home-bound trip at a comparative snail's pace." This touching picture of mass emotion compels me to remove TIME'S foot from my mouth. I said no such thing, and it isn't true. I did say that in order for retarded aging in space travelers to be observed, a high-speed round trip is not necessary. A fast one-way trip suffices. I then said that if the traveler returns home at a snail's pace he will maintain the age advantage gained during the fast outward trip. You said the rest. In fact, if he does return fast, he doesn't lose his age advantage; he doubles it.
FRANK S. CRAWFORD JR. University of California Berkeley," Calif.
P:Spacemen, dry those tears.--ED.
The Pupil
Sir:
The fantastically puerile view of the cause for Clinton Peurifoy's spasticity [TIME, Jan. 7] indicates how little we have advanced since the days when man blamed God for thunder and lightning. Do these poor, ignorant folk believe that God (with Jesus as his hatchet man) causes polio, sclerosis, cerebral palsy and the other ills that afflict our kind in general and children specifically? Perhaps they believe also that Salk's vaccine and the other aids we are developing are works of the devil designed to subvert the intention of God to bring suffering and pain to chosen ''pupils."
RICHARD G. GOULD
Los Angeles
Sir:
Why do we become mushy and impractical as well a's intolerant when we speak of religion? You practically left the impression that John Peurifoy was an atheist because he didn't have the same philosophy on handicaps as Queen Frederika did. God doesn't give handicaps. No child should be taught that. God has set up His universe so that handicaps can be obtained through accidents of nature, but He also has given us spirits to rise above them. Knowing the Peurifoys, I think they would be the first to agree. You see, I have cerebral palsy as does Clinton. My husband is a professional man, and I'm just an average housewife. We hope we have made the most of our lives despite the insistence of a few to make us content to be "hopeless cripples'" because God willed it so.
MRS. CLYDE BERGER
Wichita, Kans.
Sir:
That Jack Peurifoy was given the grace to believe that it was a just and good God who in His inscrutable wisdom had given his son this "hardest problem" is gratifying. Other countless parents, from the time of Adam and Eve to our present day, have been troubled about the same thing.
BERTON SEVENSMA
Grand Rapids, Mich.
Sir:
Clinton Peurifoy was blessed by God when given life on His earth; because of God's will, Clinton was made to suffer. After thinking about this, one begins to realize that God must love everyone. This love may not be outwardly shown, but we can be sure it is there, or at least was one time or another. JEAN HANCH.
Etna, N.Y.
Sir:
Give God the glory and thank Him for a world with Peurifoys, a Brown, and Queen Frederika.
JOHN B. WHITNEY
Brockton, Mass.
Sir:
The story told by Admiral Charles Brown was a stirring lesson for young and old. Clinton Peurifoy, the hero, will always be an inspiration to all that read it as well as the favorite pupil of Jesus.
CHARLOTTE H. LEHMAN
Pine Island, Minn.
Acheson's Way
Sir:
Had we followed the course advised by ex-Secretary of State Dean Acheson [TIME, Jan. 7], we would by now be involved in another Korea--our soldiers fighting Russian "volunteers" with the war confined to the soil of Egypt and Israel, of course.
We had too many years during the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations when our policies were based on "skillful and artful means," without too much regard for honor or integrity.
MRS. GILBERT H. KING
Orchard Park, N.Y.
TV Ratings
Sir:
We would like to set the record straight in connection with your article on national television rating services [TIME, Jan. 14]. Videodex, a diary system of reporting, has long been a comprehensive source of television-rating data and yet was overlooked in your article. Videodex is the pioneer diary service (a technique later adopted by other services), currently issues a monthly National TV Rating Report based on a larger sample than any other service, and has more local market ratings more frequently than any other service.
ALLAN V. JAY
Manager Videodex, Inc.
New York City
All in the Family
Sir:
It has taken us all these days to come down out of the clouds because we were so thrilled and proud to be the family of "Antarctic Explorer Siple," whose wonderful portrait was on the cover of TIME for December 31st, and who was so excellently portrayed in the feature article.
RUTH J. SIPLE (MRS. PAUL A.)
ANN SIPLE
JANE PAULETTE SIPLE
MARY CATHRIN SIPLE
Arlington, Va.
Enigmatic Right
Sir:
Regarding the stoning of the Mona Lisa [TIME, Jan. 7]: of course, there is the question of the artistic value of the painting. But how far can art go in the way of justifying everything? My point is, no woman, no matter how important or beautiful she might be, has the right to be smiling "enigmatically" for nearly five centuries. The action of the Bolivian crackpot symbolizes the repressed reactions of millions of healthy men when faced with feminine enigmas.
MONTI WALTERS Forest Hills, N.Y.
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