[Even I know his name, see the middle of the article, another Angel gone home]
Gun victim the nicest man you and I never met
(http://www.post-trib.com/news/73488,victim.article)
September 27, 2006
By JERRY DAVICH Post-Tribune metro columnist
The camera crews have fled. The reporters have left for the day. The parking lot is empty again, like usual.
It's Tuesday afternoon at East Point Grocery on Gary's east side and I'm probably the very last person who's with the media or police to visit the store since Sunday morning.
That's when Harold L. Jones was shot to death behind his store counter by two assailants.
That's when he tried shooting back with his own gun, but missed, according to family.
That's when returning gunfire before a church service would be the last thing on anyone else's mind.
Probably yours, too. But not in Gary, right? Not in the murder capital of our minds, right?
Let's face it, when those of us living outside of Gary first heard about Jones' death, our initial reaction was "Another Gary homicide." Be honest now. At least to yourself.
OK, I admit I did, too.
This is why I drove to East Point Grocery on Tuesday. I could have driven to a dozen other places in Northwest Indiana for today's column. In fact, I had other plans lined up.
But something kept tapping me on the shoulder -- who is Harold L. Jones? -- so I drove to his store to find out.
Here's what I discovered.
On the store's front counter display case, taped amid several old photos and some dusty memorabilia, is one telling newspaper clipping. Its headline warns store customers, "House bill OKs right to shoot."
"Mr. Harold," as he was called, and "Miss Jessie" Cain, his sister, taped it up to warn potential criminals that the law now allows them to defend themselves if needed.
And darn it if Mr. Harold, a 79-year-old Army veteran, didn't try on Sunday morning.
Behind the store counter, on the front door of an old refrigerator, is a fresh bullet hole.
"That came from his gun, not the boys who killed him," Miss Jessie told me, shaking her head.
"They got the jump on him," she sighed.
That morning, Mr. Harold stopped in before church, dressed to the nines. A customer called to ask if she could send her grandson to pick up a pair of pantyhose.
Of course, Mr. Harold said yes.
"He'd give you a thousand dollars if he had it," Miss Jessie said.
"Mmm-hmmmm," piped in her son, Mr. Harold's nephew.
It was the lady's grandson who found Mr. Harold's body, shot in the neck.
The killers got all of $50, the regular kitty for each new day of business.
"Those boys should get lethal injection," Miss Jessie said, rubbing her hand over the bullet hole in the fridge.
Police said two suspects have been held on unrelated charges, but not officially fingered as Mr. Harold's killers.
That's how Mr. Harold died. Here's how he lived.
Store customers called him "Wild Bill" and "Fuzzy," nicknames that stuck long ago. Kids called him "Mr. Harold," from his decades as a bus driver before he called it quits.
Still, even after retirement, Mr. Harold woke up early every weekday to be a school crossing guard before running the store. He didn't have to be. He wanted to be.
"Good morning, Mr. Harold," the familiar-faced kids would say.
"Good morning yourself," he'd reply.
Despite handwritten signs in the store warning "NO CREDIT" and "NO PASS OUTS!," Mr. Harold often issued credit to regular customers until the first of the month, and wink-and-nod pass outs to needy neighbors.
The lifetime Gary man worked seven days a week and didn't like calling off. The store was his life, not his livelihood.
In his youth, he was the Jessie Owens of Indiana, setting track and field records all the way to North Carolina State University, where he majored in physical education.
He was eventually inducted in the Indiana Association of Track & Field Hall of Fame in 1994. A weathered Post-Tribune clipping of this feat is still taped to a store wall.
As an adult, the father of eight ran for 5th District committeeman as a Democrat under the platform of "Your friendly bus driver."
"You would have loved him. Everyone did," said longtime customer Gwendolyn Blackmon, whose grandkids visited Mr. Harold for free snacks and pop. "He'd play with them and laugh and laugh."
On Tuesday afternoon, Miss Jessie looked weary, as much from the flash flood of media attention as her brother's death.
So she propped herself up alongside the fridge -- the one with the bullet hole -- and pondered her sibling's life and death.
"You couldn't find a better person than Harold," she said. "Go ahead, ask around. They'll tell you the same."
It seems that Mr. Harold was the nicest man you and I never met.
He was, quite frankly, someone I should have known while he was alive, not dead. But here I am showing up too late, writing a eulogy instead of a column.
Miss Jessie said funeral arrangements for her brother are pending.
Sadly, so too were our sympathies when we first heard about his death.
Contact Jerry Davich at 648-3107 or jdavich@post-trib.com
© Copyright 2006 Sun-Times News Group |
ranny remember back when we were trying to figure all this out??????
Thermonuclear fusion reactor test succeeds
HEFEI, Sept. 28 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists on Thursday successfully conducted their first test of an experimental thermonuclear fusion reactor, which replicates the energy generating process of the sun.
The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) fusion reactor, nicknamed "artificial sun", was tested at the Institute of Plasma Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Hefei, capital city of east China's Anhui Province.
During the experiment, deuterium and tritium atoms were forced together at a temperature of 100 million Celsius.
"At that temperature, the super heated plasma, which is neither a gas, a liquid nor a solid, should begin to give off its own energy," scientists explained.
The first tests lasted nearly three seconds, and generated an electrical current of 200 kiloamperes, Wan Yuanxi, general manager of EAST, told Xinhua.
The experiments were continuing, he said.
The device is planned to eventually create a plasma lasting 1,000 consecutive seconds, the longest a fusion reactor has ever run.
Wan said the deuterium extracted from one liter of seawater could produce energy equivalent to that generated by burning 300 liters of gasoline thanks to the fusion technology.
If the thermonuclear fusion technology is commercialized, it may provide energy to mankind for more than 100 million years, Wan said.
Li Jiangang, director of the Institute of Plasma Physics, said the results of the test met the expectations of scientists and signified a great breakthrough in the research of thermonuclear fusion.
"That means we lead all our competitors by at least a decade," said Li. "The breakthrough will make it possible for mankind to harness a safe, clean and endless source of energy."
The EAST is an upgrade of China's first-generation Tokamak device and the first of its kind in operation in the world, said Chinese scientists.
The Institute of Plasma Physics spent eight years and 200 million yuan (25 million U.S. dollars) on building the experimental reactor.
The columniform device, made with special stainless steel, is about 12 meters high and weighs 400 tons.
Compared with similar devices in other countries, EAST cost the least money and time to be built and is the first in operation, said Li.
The EAST would be the most advanced thermonuclear fusion reactor in the world for the next ten years, said Dr. Gary Jackson from General Atomics of the United States, who participated in the research.
Unlike traditional nuclear fission reactors, which split atoms to create energy and produce dangerous radioactive waste, the EAST uses nuclear fusion to compress atoms at extremely high temperatures to generate energy that would produce very little pollution.
Scientists theorize that a fully functional fusion reactor would provide cheaper, safer, cleaner and endless energy and reduce the world's dependence on fossil fuels.
The EAST is part of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), which is the largest international program dedicated to experiments in thermonuclear fusion.
In 2003, China joined the 4.6-billion-euro ITER which was originally initiated by the United States and Russia. The first operation of ITER might be in 2016.
Among the six partners involved in this ambitious plan, the European Union will cover 50 percent of the total budget. The remaining five, the United States, Japan, Russia, the Republic of Korea and China, will pay 10 percent each.
"The EAST is the only prototype nearest to the ITER and, thus, it can serve ITER advanced research in terms of engineering technology and physics," said Wan.
But the most optimistic estimation on first commercialization of the ITER said it needs at least half a century.
Chinese Minister of Science and Technology Xu Guanhua said earlier that as China is short of energy, global research endeavors for energy supply solutions meet the strategic interest of the country. Enditem
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http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-09/28/content_5151013.htm