Yesterday's Year Il Undoubtably, the summer of 1981 will be remembered as the "Summer of the Strike." The baseball season was almost lost to the strike of the Players' Association in June, but the reo juvenated season, organized on a split·season concept, seemed to bring even the very disgrunt. led fans back to the ballparks in August In last Ocotber, the World Series ended the delayed season as the Los Angeles Dodgers won 4-2 over the New York Yankees. The other big strike was that of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), Over 12,000 of the controllers went on strike despite a clause in their contract pro· hibiting such a walkout. After a brief grace period, President Reagan fired the striking controllers and decertified the union. Many airlines cut back on the number of daily flights and despite PATCO's claims that air safety could suffer with the non-union controllers in the towers, as of January, air traffic safety was on its longest streak of time free from major accidents. Leading this year's "Don' t let this happen to you" column is the case of the Soviet subON rRlKE ,,- marine which grounded off the Swedish coast later to be found by a Swedish fishing boat The Soviet captain claimed to have had "difficulties with his sonar equipment." However, this dif· ficulty did not appear until after the sub had managed to navigate a very narrow inlet to come within a short distance of the high-security Karlskrona naval base . undetected by the Swedes. After several days of investigations and diplomatic protests, the Swedes "refloated" the sub, and it steamed 9ff. One of the saddest disasters of 1981 occured on July 17, when two walkways in the lobby of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, Mo. collapsed onto the floor below. The floor and walkways were filled with dancers and party·goers at the time. The death toll was 113_ The twenty-two month vigil of terror in Atlanta seemed to be over following the arrest of Wayne Williams, a black free lance photographer, for several of the murders of black male children. During the ordeal the city Mental Health Department established fear and anxiety centers to help children cope with the reality of the murders I / of 28 young black males, who were killed by passive strangulation. As Williams went to trial in January, no new murders had occured. The year was not without its special events and accomplishments. NASA lifted itself out of several years of obscurity in the nation's mind to send the space shuttle, Columbia, into orbitnot just once, but twice. On November 12, 1981, the Columbia began the first suc - cessful mission by a reusable space vehicle, a sign of things to come. November 14, saw the premature, but successful ending of the mission. Eventually, NASA foresees numerous missions of this sort, perhaps culminating in the establishment of a "space station" of some kind which could serve as a port for the shuttles and as a base for experimentation. Also flying, but not quite as high was the balloon Double Eagle V. The Balloon's four· man crew of Ben Abruzzo, Max· ie Anderson, Hiroaki Aoki, and Ron Clark, was rescued in the rugged terrain of northern California on November 12, after the balloon had crashlanded there. The rescue was = lUJ _ Wide World Pholos made even more monumental by the fact that the Double Eagle V had just completed the first successful trans· Pacific flight in a balloon_ The craft had taken off from Japan. Of course, the most enchant· ing event of 1981 was the July 29 wedding of Charles Philip Arthur George, otherwise known as the Prince of Wales. heir apparent to the throne of the United Kingdom, and Lady DiaJila Spencer. The pageantry and pomp captivated not just the British but virtually the whole world. The choirs were perhaps not always in tune, the pageantry was to the point of being contrived, and the Queen found it difficult to muster a smile, but the charming couple seemed to symbolize the hopes of an entire nation, looking for a way out of the economic depression that has gripped it for several years. The British had even more to cheer about when it was announced later in the year that the new Princess of Wales was expecting a child. One of the last great barriers to women in the political sphere was broken down dramatically as President Reagan 's first nominee to the Supreme Court was sworn in on September 26. Sandra Day O'Connor, a former Arizona appellate court judge became the first woman to sit on the nation's highest court. Although oppossed by some voices on the right wing, Mrs. O'Connor sailed through her Senate confirmation. ~ World News·43
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