St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 27

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH I I NEWS ANALYSIS: Saddam Hussein of Iraq EDITORIAL: A court ruling in favor of Blue Cross COMMENTARY: Saddam Hussein's ruthless weather" 'isc llwllfc might welcome a major U.S. military action 15C leaves questions unanswered 16C tactics have led to the latest confrontation 17C LOUISREGION SECTION FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1996 BILL McCLELLAN ON MY OWN iller Pleads Guilty, Gets Life Sentence Shot Man Sitting In Car With Family In '95 "If the victim had been one of those young boys or an elderly black man, Wade might have been able to get out in 20 years," Clay said. Krewson was white. He was an architect who helped put together the master plan for Forest Park.

He and his wife, Lyda Krewson, and their two young children lived near the park, on Lake Avenue. Police have said that Wade and an accom-See MURDER, Page 2 By Tim Bryant Of the Post-Dispatch Staff James I. Wade bargained for his life Thursday in pleading guilty of murdering architect Jeff Krewson as the victim and his family sat in their car outside their Central West End home. Wade was charged with first-degree murder and other crimes in the killing. He had been scheduled to go on trial next month, and the state had planned to seek the death penalty.

Mac Strike Settled At Kitchen Table IN THE STARE-OFF with McDonnell Douglas, the Machinists blinked, and it's to their credit that they did. Because the contract they just ratified is not a whole lot better than the one they rejected three months ago, it would have been easy in fact, it would have felt good! to spurn the company's latest offer. Thank goodness most of the fellows are counts of armed criminal action, and a 15-year term for attempted robbery. The terms will run consecutively. Wade, dressed in slacks, shirt and tie, said little in court.

Afterward, his mother, Allean Clay, said she grieves for her son and Krew-son's family. She said that Riley's sentence was just but indicated that it might have been lighter had the victim been black. That changed Thursday. Wade, 22, of the 4600 block of Lindell Boulevard, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in exchange for the state's agreement to drop its request for death. St.

Louis Circuit Judge John Riley then sentenced Wade to life in prison without parole. In addition, Riley handed down two life terms with the chance of parole on separate married. You see, this strike wasn't settled at the negotiating table. It was settled at the kitchen table. A Gentleman Of Leisure At least, that's the 0T-.

feeling I got after talking to a bunch of the guys. I talked to some after they left the Convention Center on Wednesday, and then I spent Thursday morning talking to others who had called and left their numbers during the 99-day T-N i 1 1 -i A si i Ski 4 i 4 if i -it i -4 i Wayne CrosslmPost-Dispatch The pleasant weather is expected to continue through Saturday. Charles Cobb takes a quiet lunch break in Tower Grove Park earlier this week, Forecasters predict highs of 74 today and 77 Saturday. i Judge Orders State To Pay Special Prosecutor By William C. Lhotka Of the Post-Dispatch Staff Ronald E.

Jenkins did a great job as a special prosecutor two years ago in the case of former St. Louis Comptroller Virvus Jones, says the chairman of the Missouri Ethics Commission. Dennis Quillin found against attorneys of Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon and on behalf of Jenkins. Quillin ordered Jenkins b4 paid the principal of $9,353, plus interest, for, the $10,342 total. 4 When Jenkins got no satisfaction, he tried, to garnishee the state treasury.

Holden' office then cited sovereign immunity the doctrine that the state cannot be sued. See PAYMENT, Pagi wein of Clayton. For every day after Sept. 20 that the check is late, Missouri will owe Jenkins an additional $1,000, the judge added to his order. For his part, Jenkins said he would never have gotten involved in the Virvus Jones matter if he had suspected the state would stiff him on his legal fees.

The order by Campbell on Wednesday was the second legal victory for Jenkins. After a trial in January, Associate Circuit Judge because Missouri legislators never provided any funds to the commission to pay special prosecutors. The state's refusal to pay Jenkins may end abruptly after an order Wednesday by St. Louis County Presiding Judge Robert L. Campbell.

Calling the state's failure to pay Jenkins outrageous, Campbell ordered state Treasurer Robert Holden to cut a check for $10,342 to the law firm of Jenkins, Kling and Sauer- In an interview Thursday, John Maupin, the commission's chairman, said the state was unable to pay Jenkins for his legal work "and he deserves every penny of it" strike. None of the fellows was enthusiastic about the new contract. Most of the yes-voters said they had been reluctant yes-voters. They had wanted to vote no, many said. Certainly they did.

They had hit the streets in June with a sense of determination. They were, and are, highly skilled workers, and they had watched with dismay as their very profitable employer shipped their jobs elsewhere. They were determined to stop the bleeding, and, as regular readers might recall, I supported them wholeheartedly. Their determination turned to righteous anger as Herb Lanese, the company's designated heavy, hurled insults at the strikers. "This might sound inflammatory, but the last job I would guarantee is Machinists," he said.

"I replaced the IAM people with folks from the 7-Eleven who got two months' training." That's playground stuff. The typical male response to that kind of taunting is to fight back. Ask any grade-school teacher. You don't resolve conflicts on the playground while one of the antagonists is taunting the other. But as the resolve of the Machinists stiffened under the barrage of insults, there were signs that they were marching toward a cliff.

During the Democratic Convention in Chicago, I asked one of the Missouri labor guys what he thought would happen after Congressman Dick Gephardt announced that the two sides would be meeting in Washington. "I think it will be settled soon," the labor guy said, and then he shrugged. "If it's not settled within two weeks, then it's going to be a very long haul." In this day and age, the long haul doesn't bode well for strikers. Most people, after all, live paycheck to paycheck. Belts can be tightened only so far.

It's one thing to give up baseball games. It's another thing to give up health insurance or to miss mortgage or car payments. There was a story floating around the union hall. Tow trucks were coming on to the parking lot to repossess cars. Fifteen were snatched before the union barred the trucks from the lot.

Union officials denied that story. "Maybe one car," an official told me. "I know that our security people asked about tow trucks, and we said nobody without union business was allowed on the lot." Apocryphal or not, a lot of the guys thought the story could be true. That's because they knew firsthand that people were hurting. Stories of hardship abounded.

Then came the offer from the company, the result of the negotiations that Gephardt had initiated. There were, of course, two ways to view the offer. One was to dismiss it. If the company had one offer, it would soon have another. After 99 days on the picket line, we deserve more than a contract that is only marginally better than the one we rejected.

After all, it's in the company's interest, as well as the union's, to end the strike. The other was to grab it. Because what if the company held tough? After 99 days, only a few union members had crossed the line. But if the new offer was rejected especially in a narrow vote what would happen then? If workers started crossing the line as fall turned into winter, the union would be dead by spring. As far as I'm concerned, the only sane choice was to accept the offer.

The potential gain in hanging tough wasn't worth the potential loss. Better something than nothing. But that's easy for me to say. Lanese wasn't spouting off on the playground about me. And so the Machinists mulled the offer.

I listened to KMOX on Monday and Machinist after Machinist called to denounce the offer. Men don't blink. That seemed to be the message. In the meantime, though, the real discussions were going on over the kitchen table. And while Gephardt deserves a lot of credit for initiating the final negotiations, it's the wives of the Machinists who deserve most of the credit.

Their message was simple: Better to blink than to get poked in the eye. Up To The Minute South Koreans Visit City For Tips On St. Louis' Parking Meter System 4 4 ing $48 million a year in its public parking system. He and Kim Suk-bae, an executive at Seoul National University, hope St. Louis will lend some guidance.

The key element is microchip technology. In 1990, St. Louis installed computerized parking meters that are supposed to account for every nickle, dime and quarter that's put into' the meters downtown. The system here was the first of its kind in the world, said Clark Selby, president of World Wide Parking, a parking meter distribution company in Rockville, that supplied St. Louis' new meters.

At least 4,000 of the city's 10,000 meters are See METERS, Page 5 By Carolyn Tuft Of the Post-Dispatch Staff About six or seven years ago, the St. Louis treasurer's office was criticized because the cost of operating the city's parking meters outstripped the revenue. People wondered: How can a parking meter operation lose money? How things have changed. This week, two representatives from Seoul, South Korea, arrived on the steps of City Hall to inspect what some call the world's most efficient, accountable parking meter system. Park Do-hyun, chairman of a company in Seoul that is trying to install a metered system in that city, estimates that the Korean capital is los South County Mall Seeks Tax Break For Expansion Sam LeonePost-Dispatch Naomi Hoffman, 13, takes a break from her studies of Jewish history and Scripture at Hebrew school at Shaare Zedak in University City.

She attends Wydown Middle School in Clayton. Girl, 13, Ponders Jewish New Year As Rosh Hashanah Brings In 5757 stores, raising the total number of specialty stores to 150 from 90. Possible construction of a Me-troLink station or mass transit center. Road and other infrastructure work to improve access to the center and support a larger facility. The size of the shopping center would increase to 1.3 million square feet from its present 750,000 square feet, Costello said.

Construction would be done in phases starting in 1998 and enoing two years later, he said. Westfield Holdings is seeking up to $40 million in special tax financing from St. Louis County. On Thursday, the County Council passed a bill establishing a tax-increment financing See MALL, Page 4 By Phil Sutin and Mark Schlinkmann Of the Post-Dispatch Staff The owner of the South County Shopping Center plans to spend $200 million to rebuild and greatly expand the 33-year-old retail mall at Lindbergh Boulevard and Lemay Ferry Road. Larry Costello, local development director for the owner, Westfield Holdings, an Australian company, said the project would include: The addition of a Sears store as the center's fourth anchor store.

Construction of new buildings for the current anchors, Dillard's, Fa-mous-Barr and J.C. Penney. They will be in new locations in the shopping center. The addition of space for 60 we did wrong last year, tell people we hurt that we are sorry and plan for the year ahead." This evening opens the days of awe or High Holy Days. They continue until the evening of Sept.

23, Yom Kippur. These are defining High Holy Days for Naomi her first as a confirmed adult Jew. The last day of August she was welcomed as a full member in a bat mitzvah ceremony. In Hebrew, bat mitzvah (pronounced baht-MEETS-vah) means "one who is commanded." She says she is lucky to be living See HOLIDAY, Page 5 By Patricia Rice Post-Dispatch Religion Writer Naomi Hoffman will be exclaiming "Happy New Year" today. Tonight at sundown most of the area's 60,000 Jews will observe Rosh Hashanah, the first day of the Jewish New Year.

It's the year 5757 in the Jewish calendar. "It's not at all like the January New Year's with parties," said Naomi, 13, at her home in Clayton after school this week. "We pray and listen to the Torah at services. It's a time to think about what Bill McClellan column appears Sunday, Monday. Wednesday and Friday.

You can reach him at 340-8143 or by fax at 340-3050 or write him at the Post-Dispatch. 900 North Tucker St. Louis, Mo. 63101. You can find online discussion of his column at www ir.