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LETTERS

By D Magazine |

New Trust in Lakewood?

“Why Lakewood Doesn’t Trust Itself” in October did a fine job of reviewing the genesis of the “Lakewood Shopping Center Master Flan.” It would have been an excellent forum to dispel the rumors and false impressions that have been circulated in the neighborhood.

Questions raised about our client, Lakewood Bank and Trust, have long since been put to rest. Your publishing deadline apparently preceded the September 19 meeting at which answers were given to questions about private property in the shopping center.

Part of the problem was that a few residents apparently did not comprehend that the shopping center plan was conceptual – some ideas of what might happen. Words such as “redevelopment zone” have no reality unless there is sufficient capital and interest to adopt the plan’s ideas. It is unlikely, for the foreseeable future, that anything resembling the book’s “redevelopment” ideas will ever take place.

Then there is the question of numbers. You indicate that, judging from crowd response, there were more “pro’s” than “anti’s” at the Lakewood Library meeting. I agree with that assessment. However, you suggest that John Tilton found all the people in the community upset with the shopping center plan and/or Lakewood Bank. Actually, the best we have been able to tell, there are very few people involved.

Page 84: “The bank wanted to put a parking lot where a single-family house, which it owns, now stands.” The bank does not now own, and never has owned or leased that property. The bank had a lease-option, subject to zoning; no zoning, no lease, no further interest in the property.

The bank has owned the two apartment buildings across Oram street for about ten years. They were bought with the idea that the land might someday be needed for bank use. Tenants were well aware of this. All tenants have been relocated. They understood the situation and knew that the step was not undertaken lightly by the bank, which gave them every possible assistance in relocating.

It would certainly have helped if an official spokesman for the bank, DonWright or Bob Burns, had been interviewed. Marion Lindell/

Lindell-Keys Advertising/Dallas

Mr. Matthews replies: I thank Ms. Lindell for clarifying the issue of ownership of the house at Swiss and Oram. On the other counts, I’m afraid she underestimates the amount of confusion and discontent over the shopping center plan, and overestimates the degree to which this confusion and discontent was laid to rest by the September 19 meeting. In my story, I followed the bank’s “official” version of what it plans to do with Lake-wood Shopping Center property, an account supplied to me by the bank’s vice-president, Artie Barnett. Mr. Wright and Mr. Burns were unavailable for comment.



Brans a Winner

Jo Brans’s “Guilty as Charged” (October) moved me deeply. The losers she tells about will always have a chance to win as long as someone like Jo is around to make us aware – and D Magazine will remain a winner with a writer of her stature on its staff.

Charlotte T. Whaley/Dallas



In “Home Away from Home”(September) Jo Brans described the experience of “going home” very sensitively. As she described finding her grandmother’s house torn down, tears came tomy eyes. I am not sure that is proof ofgreat writing, but at least it is excellentwriting*. Rev. Bill Blackburn/Dallas



Central Expressed

Your article on Central Expressway (“The Route of the Problem,” September) was splendid! Well-researched, well-thought-out, well-written, vigorously expressed. Laurence Perrine/Dallas



Bright Memories

“Capital Scandinavia” (October) brought back memories for my wife and me of Tivoli Gardens on Midsummer Eve a few years ago. The lights were just as David Bauer described them, but I noticed one thing he didn’t mention. There were no burned-out bulbs. I started looking for one, but in all those millions of lights, found none. Try that on a single electric sign around here. Another memory is of driving 2,400 kilometers through the Scandinavian countrysidewithout seeing a single building unpaintedor falling down, or a single piece of rustymachinery lying in a Field.

Morris F. Baughman/Dallas



Too Much, Too Soon?

As I went through the September issue of your magazine, I thought that too much effort was being made to cover all points of human interest; then when I read Jim Atkinson’s article, “No News is Bad News,” with my friend Lord Thomson’s comment, I felt that his words applied almost exactly to D Magazine, The very size of your publication and the diversity of its articles makes it less appealing to me as a reader.

I hope you don’t mind this gratuitouscriticism. Stanley Marcus/Dallas



(The British newspaper publisher’s comment: “As for editorial content, that’s the stuff you separate the ads with. “)



More Values from Alsace

Your article on Alsatian wines (“Values from Alsace,” September) overlooked the fact that my establishment, as a retail store, also sells many of these wines. We carry the following Alsatian wines: Hugel Riesling 1975, $4.25; Dopff Riesling 1975, $4.69; Dopff & Irion Gewurtztraminer 1973, $3.79; Hugel Gewurtztraminer $4.25; Trimbach Gewurtztraminer $4.89; Hugel Gewurtztraminer Reserve Exceptionelle 1975, $5.59.

Francois L. Chandou/Manager,

La Cave/Dallas



The Baby Factory

It never ceases to amaze me that journalists and others who have never delivered a baby in their entire lives know all the answers about how it should be done (“The Baby Factory,” September). And yet the 5000 diplomates of the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology who spent at least the first 30 years of their lives training to be specialists at delivering babies only know how to totally clobber the situation. We are constantly bombarded with “reader interest” articles of the sort you wrote about the Harris Hospital in Fort Worth.

You stated, “A new policy, unique to Harris in this area, allows a’n obstetrician to instruct a nurse to administer Pitocin, the drug used to initiate or speed up labor, in the physician’s absence.” In January, I polled 100 hospitals throughout the U.S.A. and published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology the results: 55 percent of the hospitals in this country allow this procedure. Nurses are intelligent, experienced, and capable people and are quite capable of administering Pitocin.

Much of the lay literature on the horrible practices of obstetrics today is written by people of no experience who make sweeping claims and offer no proof. Every sentence in their books starts with the premise that hospital personnel are stupid, mean, and dedicated to making childbirth a horrendous experience. But, hospitals stay on – magazines fold – Life, Saturday Evening Post, etc.

G. C. Nabors, M.D./Dallas

(Dr. Nabors seems to ave missed these recent issues of Life and Saturday Evening Pos



Rating the Bureaus

I may or may not agree with all your conclusions about the local newspapers’ Washington bureaus (Up Front, July), since I worked with all the bureau people long enough to know that making a judgment on their performances is tricky business.

I agree that Bill Choyke is one fine reporter, although I most certainly would have had him sharing top honors with at least one and probably two other people. But what did bother me was the unfair treatment of a good reporter, Larry Neal of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Even including him in the analysis when he had been on the ground in D.C. for such a short time is questionable, and to be as critical as you were was just unfair.

During the short time I worked with Larry, I found him to be thorough, detail-oriented, very interested in “why” things happen, which is what a good bureau chief should be interested in, even if such scholarly undertaking does not always result in instant volumes of copy.

Robert Mann/Austin

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