3 reasons for Franck

Chapel Hill Herald, Oct. 15, 1997

Here are three reasons why I am voting to keep Richard Franck on the Town Council.

As a user of town and Triangle Transit Authority buses, I believe that no one now on the Council has a greater and more effective commitment to public transit than Richard.

As a member of the Chapel Hill Greenways Commission, I know that Richard is a big supporter of greenways, parks and open space.

And as someone who has struggled with Chapel Hill's garbage, I believe that Richard is providing important leadership on solid-waste issues on the Council and on the Landfill Owners Group, which he chairs.

Please help keep Richard Franck on the Council for another term.

Joe Herzenberg
Chapel Hill

ACLU seeks nominations for Jones Award

Chapel Hill Herald, July 25, 1997

The Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union is seeking nominations for our 1997 Charles and Dorcas Jones Award.

The award, initiated in 1993, recognizes a person who has made outstanding contributions to the cause of civil liberty in Orange and Chatham counties, the area served by the local ACLU chapter.

Previous recipients of the Jones Award include Joe and Lucy Straley, 1993; Rebecca Clark, 1994; Robert Seymour, 1995; and Dan Pollitt, 1996.

The deadline for submitting nominations is Aug. 5. To make a nomination for this year's award, call 929-4053 or drop a note to ACLU, P.O. Box 1285, Chapel Hill, NC 27514.

Joe Herzenberg
Chapel Hill

History is not always rosy

Fine lines and firing lines

The News & Observer, April 8, 1997

By ANDREW GUY JR.

CHAPEL HILL -- He was summoned to town to help them create their first piece of public art. He told them to remember the violence. They told him to take his ideas and go home. Thomas Sayre of Raleigh, one of the state's most respected conceptual artists, didn't ask to help Chapel Hill create a public sculpture. But Sayre finds himself caught up in the struggle of a town coming to grips with the idea that bad things - violent things - can happen in their peaceful little village.

Two years ago, Sayre offered the idea of constructing five benches at the sites of the town's most shocking shootings. The benches would be constructed of dismantled firearms collected in a gun buyback program. "In order to deal with evil," he says, "you must own up to it."

...

When Sayre introduced his first vision for the Chapel Hill project, people were struggling with the reality that their town was no longer the tiny Village on the Hill. The town was still in shock over a tragedy that had rocked the state.

On Jan. 26, 1995, UNC law student Wendell Williamson, wearing military-style fatigues, went on a methodical - and still unexplained - shooting spree down Franklin Street, killing two people at random.

"After that happened, I felt that the town was in the exact state as I was in," says Ruby Sinreich, who from a window saw Williamson kill UNC undergraduate Kevin Reichardt. "We were all shocked." Ten months after the shootings, Williamson was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He is being treated at a
mental hospital.

Joe Herzenberg lives on Cobb Terrace, where Williamson began his deadly rampage. He thinks some kind of memorial is necessary to commemorate the tragedies that have occurred in this town.

"I thought it was important not only to have a memorial, but to have it downtown," says Herzenberg, whose 27-year residency in Chapel Hill included an eight-year stint on the town council. "I think it's really good to have a Holocaust museum or Vietnam wall and other things to remind people that history is not always rosy."

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