The Tennessean from Nashville, Tennessee • Page 1

TENMSSBW' steps Army bucks fund parties Thousands in tax dollars diverted to entertain U.S. generals with exclusive fetes at bases in Europe, military audit agency finds. I See Page 6A I VU-women Lady Commodores lose in the semifinals of the Southeastern Conference and now hope for an at-largc bid to the NCAA tourney. tSee Page 1C i Carolina engaged See Page 4D "Copyright 184 A GANNETT NEWSPAPER 5 Sections Volume 80, No. 394 Nashville Tennessee Second ciaMt pmtjgc paid al High: float esander halts Pupils launch balloons Si Not owning underground rights sticky Long-abandoned claims impossible to trace ANNE PAINE Staff Writer You might own a home, but if you don't own what's under it too, you could be set up for trouble, according to a spokesman for Save Our Cumberland Mountains.

There are hundreds of thousands of acres of land in Tennessee where mineral rights are owned separately from surface rights, said SOCM lob- byist Bill Nolaa "Some were separated as long as 100 years ago," Nolan said. "The titles to the mineral rights are difficult and sometimes impossible to trace, especially since taxes are not being paid on a number of them" Many mineral tracts remaining unidentified and untaxed means a loss of revenue for counties, Nolan added. But homeowners and farmers have the worst problems because of unclear titles. Joe and Rena Burke offered their home on Daisy Mountain near Chattanooga for sale in 1979 for $59,000. A family who liked the Burke home was approved for a loan and sold their own home, but two days before the closing, it was discovered that the Burkes did not own the mineral rights.

The loan company said the deal was off until the Burkes acquired mineral rights, said Joe Burke in a letter about the costly and time-consuming exercise in futility that followed the attempted sale. "The courthouse had no record of anyone owning the mineral rights on our place, but said we didn't" Burke wrote. Neither a lawyer nor a title search company could come up with the owner of the mineral rights. "We spent days camped out at the courthouse to see about mineral rights on Daisy Mountain," Burke continued. "No one pays taxes, no tax bills are ever sent to anyone and yet we can't sell our property to anyone without financing the loan ourselves." The first buyers were long gone by the time the Burkes realized they would have to carry the loan themselves at a reduced selling price.

Aside from difficulties in selling property, some landowners have trouble getting loans for improvements on their land if the question of who owns the mineral rights Is unclear, said Nolaa The fear is that the mineral rights owner will appear and start mining, thereby reducing the value of the property, Nolan said. Turn to PAGE 6A, Column 4 road expansion plan near farm LARRY DAUC1ITREY and JAMES PRATT Staff Writers Gov. Lamar Alexander canceled a seven-mile stretch of his $1.2 billion road program yesterday to quash any impression he will benefit from the road's proximity to land he controls. The governor's announcement followed a news story in Sunday editions of The Tennessean detailing ownership of 991 acres of land in Blount County by Alexander and five partners. The canceled section of road is a planned stretch of the Pellissippi Parkway, also called Interstate 140, from the Knoxville airport to a point near Walland.

The Pellissippi would join another four-lane road there leading within 2.7 miles of Alexander's property. "The story cooks up an inference about my integrity which must have left hundreds of thousands of readers wondering what their governor is up to," Alexander said in a prepared statement "They can stop wondering. If there was a question yesterday about that part of the Pellissippi Parkway, there cannot be one today because there is now no proposal from me to build it The next gover- See editorial, 'Taxpayers need all the facts on roads they finance," 8A. nor will decide the question, and I am confident that he or she will decide that all Tennesseans will be best served if the Parkway is completed on schedule. The statement follows in full: "Sunday's Tennessean said, 'Planned Road 7 Miles from Alexander "A good writer arranges facts so that readers can imagine the point the writer really wants to make.

"I will not permit for one day the suspicion to remain that the planned road is not for the public's benefit "So I have stopped the road dead in the water. The state will not spend a penny even studying it while I am governor. The next governor will decide it and I am confident he or she will find it is urgently "Putting off the decision for a year will not delay completing the road since construction was not scheduled to begin until 1991. "If there was a question yesterday about the proposal to build this road, there cannot be one today because there is now no proposal. "I have something to say about the Sunday story.

"The Tennessean's point is this: when the Pellissippi Parkway is completed in 1993, it will connect Oak Ridge with the Smoky Mountain Highway (Route 321), which if traveled for four miles will take you to a two-lane county road, which if traveled for three more miles will take you to a dead end and a farm on the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains Park. I own half of the farm. Our family has had a cabin In that part of the Smokies since 1973. "In arranging its facts, somehow The Tennessean forgot "That the entire Pellissippi Parkway from Oak Ridge to the Smoky Mountain Highway has been part of the State Department of Transportation published highway plan since 1975, more than three years before I became governor; "That construction of the part of the Parkway from the Alcoa Highway to the Smoky Mountain Highway is not scheduled to begin until 1991, four years after I leave office; "That the Parkway is the most urgently needed new road in East Tennessee It will be to the Knoxville area what the Research Triangle is to North Carolina; it is as important to East Tennesseans as the Middle Tennessee Parkway is to those worrying about Nashville's congestion; "That it would be hard for me to have a home in Blount County where my family has lived for six generations and not be within 7 miles of the Pellissippi Parkway; "That this project is only one of 230 badly needed improvements to our state's primary road system; "That these 230 projects are on major highways that come within 7 miles of at least two-thirds of all the people in Tennessee, not just the governor. That is why we need the road program: these main highways go to places where most Tennesseans live; "That to end the Parkway at the Alcoa Highway would dump thousands of cars a day upon the most heavily traveled four-lane open-access highway in the state and would ignore the 25-year effort of the Department to build an Alcoa or Maryville bypass.

Turn to PAGE 10A, Column 1 1 onuses termed sign 00 that led to slaying of father -5 US Welch Staff STUDENTS in Wilson County schools make hot air balloons from art tissue paper and launch them at Mount Juliet Junior High School. The fourth- through eighth-grade students are part of SEEK Students Exploring and Expanding Knowledge which is a locally funded program for gifted students. Michael Sloan, above in orange shut, and Jason Sharpe, in black and gray. Inspect a balloon after an inflation test In the middle picture above, a balloon is filled with hot air. At left, students chase their airborne handiwork.

said she now realizes there were alternatives, and regrets her father's death: "She loves her father." At the arraignment Gianelli wiped tears from Cheryl's face as she sat with her hands shackled behind her. He vowed to prove the killing resulted from five years of "terrible, terrible abuses" that culminated a year ago, after her mother's death, when she became her father's "surrogate wife." Police say the destruction of Cheryl's home life Intensified when her mother got sick several years ago with kidney disease. Gianelli said Cheryl considered leaving home, but remained for the sake of her 8-year-old sister. Then one day she saw her father "roughhousing" with her sister and I Tarn to PACE 7A, Colum 1 to teach sex put in their own messages." Many parents may have found the traditional "birds and bees' discussion with adolescents Afriat said. "In today's world, there is absolutely no need for those classic onetime, parent-child conversations, and that's good," she said.

"The subject of sex comes up four or five times every day at home. In the supermarket everywhere. Parents can take advantage of that" Discussions of sexuality should begin early, since human beings are "sexual creatures" from birth, she of abuse J. ml banged up, I would think it would come to somebody's attention," said John G. Ehrlich, chief of the family crime bureau of the Suffolk County district attorney's office.

But Cheryl had never been men-' tioned in any complaint to his office. Ehrlich's staff has increased from two to six in the past four years, -while the number of child abuse complaints increased tenfold. Work In recent years to uncover cases of child abuse "makes this all the more troubling. There is an avenue. They don't have to kill their father," said Arthur Dermer, principal at the school Cheryl attended.

New-field High School in Coram, "There were a lot of ways she could have avoided the problems with her father," agreed Assistant District Attorney Edward JablonskL Cheryl's lawyer, Paul Glanelll, for parents own messages about sexuality," Afriat told participants at the Children's Defense Fund conference here on teen-age pregnancy. "Parents can use television as an opening for the discussion of childbirth, sex and other topics." Afriat said she believes It Is Important for parents not to be afraid to tell their children how they feel about sexual issues. "If parents want to make sure their kids learn what they want them to team about sex, they have to teach them," Afriat said. "Parents High 55 vTva tow 35 fJSee2B LAWRENCE NEUMEISTER The Associated Press SELDEN, N.Y. Classmates sometimes saw black-and-blue marks on Cheryl Pierson's body, but she told them they were nothing to worry about Now authorities say those bruises were the only indication that the 16-year-old cheerleader had suffered five years of incestuous abuse at the hands of her father.

The situation didn't come out Into the open until her father, James Pi-erson, 42, was shot dead in the family's driveway. Cheryl and her boyfriend were arrested and accused of paying a 17- year-old schoolmate $400 to kin him. Cheryl and the schoolmate were charged with the death; the boyfriend with conspiracy. "If a kid comes into school and is TV called aid Moving Philippines bases estimated to cost $8 billion Starts discussions with children, educator says DEB frill I i i i 1 1 1 ii i i i Editorial, THIS SECTION Editorials 8A tetters 8A Nashville Eye 9A National News 3,6,7 A Newsmakers. 3A World News 2A Metro SUte, SECTION Amusements 68 Deaths 33 Thompson's Station 1B Sports, SECTION Auto Racing 5C Baseball 16C Classified 7C College Basketball 1C Prep Basketball 3C Scoreboard 2C Larry Woody 1C Arts Leisure, SECTION Comics TO Crossword 40 Horoscope 40 Television 30 Both islands are under the control of the United States and are already home to US.

military installations. "There are other places you could move the VS. bases to, like Japan or Australia, but you have the same potential problem there as in the Philippines you don't know If well be welcome down the road," explained one source. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, while declining to discuss contents of the report told reporters yesterday after a television taping that the United States is optimistic about the future of its bases after 1991. "It's very important to the Philippines, It's very Important for us.

so we want to keep them there just as long as we can, and things look very favorable," he said. Weinberger also said the United States helped the military rebels WASHINGTON (AP) The Pentagon estimates relocation of two huge VS bases in the Philippines cost upwards of $8 billion and put American forces long distances from potential hot spots, sources say. A classified report containing the estimate is to be sent to Congress today, less than a week after the fall of Ferdinand Marcos and the installation of Corazon Aquino as president of the longtime VS. ally. The Philippines is home to Subic Bay Naval Station and Clark Air Base, the largest American bases outside the United States.

The leases on those bases run out In 1991, and Aquino has refused to say whether she will let them stay. The Pentagon report says that if those two bases are lost, the most stable potential spots to relocate would be Guam and Tinian islands, according to the sources, who spoke only on the condition they not be identified. RENTE VAUGHN Staff H'nter WASHINGTON The sexual messages conveyed by television and other media actually can help parents teach moral values to their children, said a national expert on parent-child relationships. Susan Afriat a parent educator for Training 3 Center in Philadelphia, said parents should take advantage of sexual references on television to initiate discussions about sex with their children. "Parents can use the media's qthcr messages to ge artpeir.