Woman Quits as Portland Chief

--Police Chief Penny Harrington, under fire for her friendship with a suspect in a drug case, said in Portland, Ore., that she had resigned as the first woman to head a big-city Police Department in the United States. Harrington, 44, said she submitted her written resignation to Mayor Bud Clark on Sunday. She called the resignation a victory for the Portland Police Assn. and the union agreed. It had opposed her during her 16 months in office and union President Stan Peters said he was relieved by her departure. Harrington, on the force for 22 years, said she resigned because the Clark-appointed commission that investigated her department reorganization called for her replacement. There was also criticism over the relationship she and her husband, Police Officer Gary Harrington, had with a suspect in a drug-trafficking case. She called the commission’s report extremely critical of her. Chief Harrington maintains that they have done nothing wrong. She told television station KGW that she was “disappointed in the whole mess from beginning to end. I always realized I’d have to pay the consequences for doing what’s right.” Harrington filed more than 40 complaints of sex discrimination on the job. Plans called for a movie of her life and she was named one of Ms magazine’s women of the year.

--Less than two weeks before Flag Day (June 14), a Jan. 23, 1776, document bearing the only known signature in the name of Elizabeth (Betsy) Ross officially became the property of the Philadelphia house where legend claims the Revolutionary War seamstress sewed the nation’s first flag. All other signatures attributed to Ross were in the name of Elizabeth Claypoole, her name when she remarried after the death of John Ross.

--The latest status symbol among people whose speech twangs, slurs or otherwise localizes them is the “general American accent,” speech therapists say. For $40 to $50 an hour, a speech therapist can help young urban professionals shed the regional accents they fear might stigmatize them socially and professionally. “There’s a stigma that if you have a New York or New Jersey accent you’re pushy. If you’ve got a Southern accent . . . you’re dumb and slow,” said Paul Smeyak, telecommunications department chairman at the University of Florida in Gainesville. “Voice quality is important too,” speech therapist Michelle Jensen said. “You want a smooth, full-bodied relaxed voice. That voice reassures people.” But if you drop your accent, won’t you be made fun of when you return home? “We train them to turn it on and turn it off,” Smeyak said.