Escapes from Honor Rancho

You would think that the authorities would have learned after Kevin Cooper, a dangerous man, escaped from a minimum security lockup. Obviously they haven’t, since we see a man who has committed multiple murders put in the Wayside Honor Rancho.

The excuse is “the downtown jail is crowded,” but surely they could send a person less prone to violence! While it may be true that you can never really tell what a person may do, you can tell that an inmate with no history of violence is a better bet than one with a long history of violence.

Could it be that it was less paper work to send the violent one out to Wayside than the one less violent? I fail to see any reason for the authorities to continue to send murderers, rapists etc. to places that do not have the proper facilities to house these people.

I also think that, if this continues, maybe some responsible persons should take over the housing policies of the police agencies.

We don’t need another Chino Hills out here in the Santa Clarita Valley and then have the officials say it was a computer error or some feeble excuse.

WILLIAM F. LANGLEY

Canyon Country

Economic Impact of Burbank Airport

The people behind the recent petition drive to “do something about the noise and air pollution” at the Burbank Airport conveniently managed to either overlook or misstate things that might weaken their case. For one thing, far more people than the 10,000 that signed the petition use the airport each year. There were 2.7 million passengers in 1984. Even allowing for those who use the airport more than once, we’re obviously talking about several hundred thousand individuals who cared enough about the airport to pay hard cash to make it a part of their lives. Presumably many of these people would also sign a petition saying Burbank Airport is doing just fine, thank you.

Secondly, the petition foisted that old, inaccurate slogan, “They get all the money; we get all the noise” onto the public. It is well known that the airport neither takes nor directly contributes tax revenues to Burbank, Glendale or Pasadena--the law precludes this. It operates itself on the fees it charges airlines, concessionaires and people who use the parking lots. The real economic significance of the airport is the 22,000 jobs and $550 million-plus that it generates around the entire region, including ALL of the San Fernando Valley.

Finally, the airport’s critics do themselves little credit when they fail to toss any bouquets to the airport for the progress that is being made on noise. The airlines are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to bring the quietest airplanes in the world to Burbank, and this airport has more of these desirable planes than almost anywhere else. Yet, to hear the critics talk, the times when there were nothing but noisy Boeing 727s and DC-9s in the sky were somehow the good old days! I wonder.

I realize there are people who are still disturbed about noise. But the more they go for theatrics and make distorted claims--all the while discounting the positive side of the airport we all know exists--the more difficult it is to take their complaints seriously.

CHARLES B. BRILEY

Glendale

John Wayne and Violence

Iread with some horror Al Martinez’s column of March 4, in which he stated that the tragic assault on Cathy Ewing by David Webster was somehow related to the films of John Wayne. I share Mr. Martinez’s concern that we are becoming an increasingly violent society, but I feel his analogy is way off base. As a matter of fact, in his films Mr. Wayne defended the rights of the innocent and traded blows only when all else failed. If this unfortunate incident were in a Wayne film, I’m sure “Old Quick-Draw” would have punched Mr. Webster in the face.

John Wayne was admired and respected in this country and all over the world, not only because of his film career, but, more importantly, because the traditional American values of courage, justice, responsibility and integrity were an integral part of his personal life. People recognized and identified with these qualities in him, and for that reason there is an airport in Orange County named after him, a bronze statue in Beverly Hills depicting him as a cowboy--the hero of American folklore--and Congress awarded him a special Congressional gold medal inscribed, simply, “American.” As President Carter said, “John Wayne personifies the true American character. He serves as a symbol of courage and self-reliance in the finest of our nation’s traditions.”

If Mr. Martinez is looking for villains to blame for the violence in our lives, he can surely do better than choose a true American hero like John Wayne.

ANDY M. CAMACHO

Pasadena

Rotation of Soldiers in 2 Wars

In your article on the Valley Vet Center in Northridge (March 10), you say that counselors there maintain that one of the reasons Vietnam vets have a more difficult time in returning to civilian life is that, unlike World War II, men were replaced with men instead of units’ being replaced by units; that men were returned home as individuals, “a departure from the practice in previous wars of sending soldiers over and back as a unit.”

Where in the name of all that’s good and holy did they get that idea from? If counselors are telling Vietnam veterans that that is one of the reasons for their apparent difficulties, then they are either deliberately lying or they are speaking out of ignorance.

In Europe during World War II men replaced men. At the end of World War II men came home, as I did, without one single member of their units accompanying them. I was sergeant in an infantry reconnaissance unit. We had been together, those few still left, for nearly four years, yet because I was a “high point” man I came back when my time was ready, not when the unit returned.

My uncle was with the 5th Marine Division at Iwo Jima. He came back without his unit. No two men in my platoon returned home at the same time. By the time my division returned to the United States it was made up in a major part of men who had had little or no combat.

As to firing on civilians and them firing back, just what do those counselors think happened in eastern France and Germany?

To put men into battle and then not permit them to win, as this country did in Vietnam, is criminal, and those who laid down such an edict should be tried and convicted of failing to keep faith with the men and women who were dying for their country; but let’s keep the record straight so that the Vietnam veteran doesn’t think he or she was the only soldier in this nation’s history who killed children, or fought civilians or was sent home alone and without his comrades.

MAC ST. JOHNS

Thousand Oaks