Protest Fails, So They’ll Steel Themselves to Plastic

--Fifth-graders at Four Corners Elementary School in Greenfield, Mass., are upset by a switch from stainless steel utensils to plastic forks and spoons in the cafeteria. The stainless steel tableware was sent to the high school for use by what one youngster called “ugh, teen-agers.” Christopher Peters, 11, said eating with the new blue-gray hard plastic tableware “makes you feel weird all over.” So the children got permission from their principal to protest with posters and petitions “as long as they had everything spelled correctly.” But even though they collected signatures from more than half the school’s 316 pupils, food services director Sandra Herzig said she would keep the plastic utensils because they are cheaper. Winning isn’t the most important thing, said Principal Mary Ann Clarkson. “It’s much more important to have gone through the process.” The pupils can appeal to the Greenfield School Committee, she said.

--Entertainer Carol Burnett, presidential candidate Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), country music singer Waylon Jennings and Tom Johnson, publisher and chief executive of the Los Angeles Times, are among the 10 winners of the 1988 Horatio Alger Award for their “rags-to-riches” life stories. Love Smith, executive director of the Horatio Alger Assn. of Distinguished Americans, said award winners typify the characters in the books written by the 19th-Century writer of boys’ stories who overcame severe personal hardships while on the road to outstanding success. Other 1988 winners are: Trammell Crow of Dallas, the founder and chairman of Trammell Crow Co., the nation’s largest real estate development company; Dr. Willie Herenton, superintendent of the Memphis, Tenn., school system; Donald Keough of Atlanta, president, chief operating officer and director of Coca-Cola Co.; Frank Resnik of New York, president and chief executive of Philip Morris U.S.A.; Eddie Robinson of Grambling, La., athletic director and football coach of Grambling State University, and David Roderick of Pittsburgh, Pa., chairman and chief executive of USX Corp.