4--THE PROGRESS
Friday, Nov. 6,
1964
Veteran's Day
1964
A day to honor all those who
have died in defense of our
country. Monument at right in
Arlington National Cemetery
honors Civil War dead, while
the tablet at far right in grave-
yard of the Old Presbyterian
Meeting House, Alexandria,
Va., honors the Unknown Sob
dier of the Revolutionary War.
Represents
Nation at
Veterans Rites
WASHINGTON (NC) -- John S.
Gleason, Jr., administrator of
the U.S. Veterans Bureau, has
been designated by President
Johnson as his personal repre-
sentative at Veterans Day No-
vember 11 ceremonies in nearby
Arlington National Cemetery,
burial ground of the nation's
heroes.
Gleason will make the prin-
cipal address at the ceremonies
and will lay a wreath off behalf
of the President on the Tomb
of the Unknowns.
A parishioner of Our Lady of
L o u r d e s parish in suburban
Bethesda, Mr., Gleason has been
VA adminstrator since 1961. He
was graduated from the Univer-
sity of Notre Dame in 1936 and
was named Notre Dame "man
of the year" in 1958.
J Reach Plan to-Buy
Medical School
TRENTON, ,N.J. ONC)-
Gov. Richard J. Hughes and
state legislative I e a d e r s
have tentatively arrived at
a compromise plan for the
purchase and administration by
the state of Seton Hall Univer-
sity's medical and dental school
in Jersey City.
The plan is scheduled to be
submitted to the Legislature when
it convenes Nov. 16. It provides
that the state pay Soton Hall, an
institution of the Newark arch-
diocese, $4 million for the medi-
cal and dental school. The school's
name will be changed to the New
Jersey Medical and Dental Col-
lege.
The Jersey City school is pres-
ently the state's only medical
school. Seton Hall, however, has
indicated that it can no longer
afford to operate the school,
which has been running a $1 mill-
ion annual deficit.
Rutgers University, the state
university, is scheduled to open
a two-year medical school of its
own in 1966. The exact nature of
the relationship between Rutgers
and the Jersey City school up to
now has been a snag to plans
for state purchase of the Jersey
City facility.
Rutgers has stated its will-
ingness to operate the institu-
tion. But a governor's eommlt-
tee which originally recom-
mended that the state buy the
school from Seton Hall opposed
this.
Under the compromise plan, a
separate state board will run the
Jersey City School for five years
while an approach to joint ad-
ministration of the Rutgers and
Jersey City institutions is worked
out. Acceptance of the plan, it is
believed, hinges on arriving at
language that will satisfy all fac-
tions of the question of the rela-
tionship between Rutgers and the
Jersey City school.
'History Will
Remember *
NEW YORK (NC)--An exiled
priest predicted here that those
who took part in the Hungarian
revolution of 1956 "will be re-
membered long after history has
swept Communism aside."
Msgr. Bela Varga, a former
president of the Hungarian parlia-
ment, made the prediction in a
sermon preached November 1 at
a Mass in St. Patrick's cathedral
marking the revolution's eighth
anniversary. He called the Hun-
garian uprising "a turning point
in the history of Communism,"
which has since seen the Commu-
nist empire broken into "frag-
ments."
He said Communism remains
hostile to the Church in Hungary
and the Communists "only mean
to leave so much of the Church
as their deceptive propaganda
need, p
Flying Doctors Help
Missioner's Cavemen
CHICAGO (NC) -- A mission-
ary's description of poverty
among his cave-dwelling Indians
prompted a doctor to organize
the flying doctors of osteopathy.
The American Osteopathic As-
sociation disclosed here that in
1961 Dr. Ernest E. Allaby of
Denver heard about the Tara-
humara Indians who live in
caves and mud huts in the 9,000-
foot Sierra Madre of Mexico, 300
miles southwest of El Paso, Tex.
Father Luis Verplancken, S.J.
who has been a missioner for
12 years among the Tarahum-
aras, told the doctor that four out
of five of the tribe's children die
before reaching their fifth birth-
day.
Now once a month, a Hght
plane touches down on a cow-
pasture landing strip in the de-
solate Sisoguichi region of
Mexico. The pilot is an osteo-
pathic physician, a member of
DOCARE (Doctors of Osteo-
pathic Care), founded by Dr.
Allaby.
The hospital and mission clinic
are housed in an old adobe build-
ing.. so cold and damp at times
that patients often leave their
beds to huddle around a small
pot-bellied stove. Surgery is per-
formed by kerosene lantornlight.
Doctors often share the same bar
of soap and towel, and sterlize
instruments in a pressure cooker.
The clinic's operating table, a
dilapidated relic some hospital
donated, serves more patients
now than when it was new.
Maluntrition borders on starva-
tion. S m a 11 p o x, dysentery,
typhoid fever and witchdoctor
medicine are the enemies of a
doctor's 12-hour day. IX)CARE
provides the sole medical aid to
the 56,000 Tarahumara Indians
whose ancestors were driven
from the lowlands by the Span-
ish Conquistadors.
Father Vcrplancken has
found an amazing vitality and
stamina in some of his people
who have managed to survive
ehildhoed. He said it's common
for tribesmen to stage non-stop
foot races ever a 70-mile
course.
Dr. Robert A. Klobnak of
Chicago accompanied a recent
D(ARE mission. As director of
public relations for the American
Osteopthic Association, he want-
ed to see the work beirig done
and report on this medical aid
organization that now numbers
some 50 doctors, who fly their
own planes on their own time
and expense in this volunteer
program.
Dr. Klobnak expressed con-
fidence DOCARE would f i n d
more volunteers and supporters
of the work of Father Ver-
plancken and the flying doctors
among the stone-age Indians of
Mexico. A 200-bed hospital is
planned in Sisaguichi, while the
immediate need is for food,
drugs a n d clothing, he said.
IX)CARE has its headquarters at
1040 East Colfax Ave. in Denver,
Colo.
Lives in Togo
CHARLES lives in Togos a small
new state in West Africa you will
probably never see. But Catholic Re-
lief Services-N.C.W.C. distributes
clothing, sheets and blankets there,
as it does in 70 countries around the
world. Won't you help children like
Charles by contributing unused, un-
needed but whole and useful clothing
this November? All Catholic parishes
are collection points in the annual
Catholic Thanksgiving Clothing Col-
lection.
Rune Sfones Fascinating Relics
By R. P. Thuriacjer
STOCKHOLM (NC)--
The ancient rune stones
which dot parts of the
Swedish countryside are
among the nation's most
fascinating relics, and no-
body is a better guide in find-
ing them than the German-bern
pastor of Stockholm's oldest
post-reformation parish.
Sweden abounds in these me-
dieval stones inscribed with
runes -- the mysterious letters
which are believed to be de-
rived from the alphabet of the
northern Etruscans.
The Rev. Richard Wehner,
S.J., pastor of the 127-year-old
St. Eugenia's parish, is an ex-
pert on the history of and
meaning of the rune stones.
While he is a native of Ger-
many, his intimate knowledge
of Swedish history and culture
give the lie to the frequent
charge that the Catholic Church
and its people are something
alien in this Lutheran country.
There are more than 2,000
rune stones in Sweden, most of
them in central provinces of
Soderrnanland and Uppland,
fairly near Stockholm. While
some Scandinavian monuments
with runes carved on them
date back as eady at 250 A.D.,
those extant today date mostly
from around the llth century.
This was Sweden's missionary
period, and erection of runic
monuments was having a great
revival.
According to Father Welm-
er, only five of the rune
stones on the Swedish main-
land are obviously pagan.
Most of the rest bear witness
to the Catholic Faith, t h e n
struggling against the rem-
nants of the old northern
heathenism.
The best way to get a good
picture of the rune stones was
a field trip with the Jesuit ex-
pert. We set out from Stock-
holm early in the morning after
Mass, our Volkswagen full of
gasoline and our lunches
packed.
D r i v i n g southwesterly,
through St. Ragnhild's Ilth-
century town of Sodertalje, we
were in the middle of one of
the country's richest rune stone
areas in an hour. This is the
little parish of Spelvik, north of
We tsopped at a beautifully
shaped rune stone. The runes
are hewed in an arc extend-
ing around the edge of the
front surface of the stone.
lated the inscription around
this stone:. It says simply:
"He was in Greece. Christ,
help his soul. Christ he
loved."
This rune stone was erect-
ed by a relative of one of the
many Northmen who went east-
ward. (Not all Vikings, or Var-
angians, went out ravaging.
Most of them who went east-
ward were occupied with com-
merce. Some of the Vikings
from eastern Uppland, called
Rus, now Roslagen. founded
the kingdom which came to be
called Russia.)
The stone bears witness of
the Christian faith of the de-
ceased and his family. Such
stones are usually decorated
with a beautifully shaped cross.
Sometimes, however, they have
another adornment. Not far
from this stone, also in-Spel-
vik, is another one. Here it
isn't the text, but the picture
that is interesting. The artist
has changed the cross for a
face -- the first picture of
Christ in the Scandinavian art.
Father Wehner recalled that
there were two different mis-
sions working in Sweden at
that time: German and Eng-
lish. He holds that the crosses
of the rune stones come from
Father Wehuer easily German tradition, while the
face of Christ is of Anglo-
Saxon inspiration.
After a visit to say a prayer
• in Spelvik's medieval church
we sat down on the grass out-
side and ate our picnic lunch.
Then we set out towards the
northwest, to Stenkvista par-
ish, near Eskilstuna. The stone
we were looking for stands neat'
a farmer's house. It is well
kept, with the letters filled with
red coloring as it was origin-
ally. Here the artist chose a
middle way -- even Father
Wehner can't explain why --
chiseling both a face of Christ
and a cross on the same stone.
Maybe he wanted to give
his inscription extra strength
by this. It might have been
needed, for less titan a mile
from this spot there is aw
other stone, provided w i t h
hammer of Thor, the fore-
most pagan god of the north
Germanic tribes. It is an en-
tirely pagan stone.
And it symbolized the hard
struggle between the believers
of Thor and Christ in Scandi-
navia.
With this, our runic expedi-
tion had to end. Father Wehner
had to return to his parish: the
struggle between Christ and
heathenism still goes on, ev.en
if Thor is no more.
