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June 19 / Sun. / Austin: American Friends Service Committee presents “Chile Lives,” a documentary film on the military overthrow of the Allende government. Discussion follows. Friends Meeting House, 3014 Washington Square. Information: June 22 / Wed. / Austin: Interested persons meet to form a local chapter of Amnesty International. An AI field organizer will be on hand. First task: a letterwriting campaign to free political prisoners. 7:30 p.m. at Parish Hall, All Saints Episcopal Church, 209 W. 27th St. InformaJune 23 / Thurs. / Houston: Atty. Gen. John Hill addresses the Press Club of Houston Forum. Open to the public; $10 admission. Noon, grand ballroom, Whitehall Hotel. Reservations: June 24-26 / Fri.-Sat. / Austin: Texas Committee on International Women’s Year meets to discuss, formulate resolutions on feminist-related issues. Public invited; registration is $5. Thompson Conference Center, University of Texas campus. Information: Barbara Langham self-help for minorities, the poor and uneducated. Open to the public. 7 p.m., AFL-CIO Building, 476-6731. July 4 / Mon. / Dallas: Democratic party “Funfest” has food, potables, raffles and fireworks. Democratic clubs and organizations provide booths for fundraising, information. Raffle ticket is included in the $1 admission; children under 12 free. Afternoon and evening at the Woman’s Pavilion, Texas state fairgrounds. July 4 / Mon. / Presidio: Members of the Texas Committee on Natural Resources and other concerned environmental groups embark on an inspection tour of the upstream Rio Grande and discuss ways to prevent its proposed clearing and channelization. InJuly 4 / Mon. / Houston: Party and elected officials are among celebrants at the Harris County Democratic party “Funfest.” ticket. No charge for children under 12. From 3 to 8 p.m. at the Bavarian Gardens, 3926 Feagan. July 12 / Tues. / Dallas: State board meeting of the Texas Coalition for Juvenile Justice. For TCJJ members. 10 a.m.-3:30 p.m. at the YMCA, 3012 Maple Ave. Membership information for individuals and organizations: Pat Cumberland, Rt. 1, Box 122-C, Atascosa, Texas 78002. Near Future By John Gjedde This calendar of political and related events is an information service for Observer readers. Please mail or phone in items to the Observer office at least three weeks before the scheduled event. June 27 / Mon. / Austin: A. Phillip Randolph Institute meets every fourth Monday of the month. Topics: voter education, national publications with stringer copy. Long, says Bode, was not satisfied with “sending just a single story” to all his papers, “but working just as though we were employed fulltime for each and every one of them. “We were batting out those specialized reports and oil-and-gas notes as though we created technical news and political gossip from somewhere in between our kidneys and our fingertips.” Through this daily chaos, Long moved lfice a serene ghost, routinely putting in ten or twelve hours a day and stretching it to sixteen during legislative sessions. Recycled paper clips Long’s hard work was matched only by his thrift. IBM once told him his battered typewriter was the oldest electric still in use, and the hired hands were assigned manuals even hoarier. If you moved Stuart’s desk away from the wall, you could see “Army Air Corps” stenciled on the back. He insisted that reporters use both sides of every sheet in a notepad, and it is said that Long recycled the same box of paper clips for thirty years. Long was born in Portales, on the High Plains of eastern New Mexico, the son of a school teacher and a druggist. J. Frank Dobie once insisted that Long, in spite of his origins, had “one of the world’s only true Texas accents,,” Complex, unlimited man After graduating from the University. of Texas, Long started his Capitol career in 1935 with an interview with Gov. Jimmy Allred. He worked for two Austin papers and the old International News Service before he and his new wife, the former Emma Jackson, headed for the West Texas oil boom, where they published weeklies in Kermit, Wink and Grandfalls. World War II took him into the Marines. After the war and a New York stint at the short-lived daily P.M., Rep. Lyndon Johnson, whom Long had met in the thirties when Johnson was Texas chief of the National Youth Administration, hired him at the family radio station in Austin. A year later, Long and partner John McCully started Long News Service. In 1975, Long’s hard work, long hours, and lousy habits caught up with him. The doctors diagnosed the clutching pain in his chest as lung cancer, and this February it finished him. The last time I saw Stuart he lay in a hospital bed; a nerve had just been severed to ease the pain. But he didn’t talk about thathe was elated that a Democratic president was returning to the White House, and the firehorse in him was chafing to cover the new legislative session. But he never returned to the Capitol. “We never presumed to know the limits of this complex man,” says Bode.. “He probably was limited. only by the time available to him.” Ben Sargent is the principal editorial cartoonist for The Austin AmericanStatesman and a former LNS staffer. June 17, 1977 39