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Number 19

February 29, 1976

FEATU R

ES

New

in the
By DAN BIDDLE
and ELAINE FLETCHER
MANCHESTER, N. H.
IT WAS A CIRCUS with two audi-
ences - a real one, and, you
might say, a surreal one. Certainly
nothing was more important in the
presidential primary than the vot-
ers. In fact, New Hampshire's "ver-
dict" has probably become a little
too important. This quadrennial
inflating of the first contest has
been the business of the surreal
audience: a vast rabble of glazed
public relations men, credential-
bedecked reporters, multi-lensed
photographers, unbarbered volun-
teers, bullet - brained Secret Serv-
ice agents, and the occasional tra-
veling would-be assassin.
When Mo Udall and his cast of
dozens - soon to be hundreds -
first pitched camp in the "Granite
State" eighteen months ago, no
one gave a hoot. The U.S.A. was
still wallowing in Watergate, and
it is well known that New Eng-
landers rarely hoot about. much
anyway. But by last week there
were 16 candidates, big and small
and perhaps a thousand reporters,
photographers, and network peo-
ple.
For the dry-voiced New Hamp-
shirians, it was sometimes a little
too much.
When, we arrived at 4 a.m. last
Saturday, v o t e r disaffection
This story was written from files sub-
mitted by Daily staffers Dan Biddle, Ken
Fink, E l a i n e Fletcher, Paul Haskins
Steve Kagan, and Jim Tobin.

Hampshire:
nationa ltr
was quickly affirmed by a well- won, but the1
placed and usually reliable source. tempts remind
"Too much of this campaigning," the next eage
grunted the manager of the Cadil- might contain
lac Motor Motel. "Five or six of us, Ronald Reagan
we're going to write - in Hum- strongest.
phrey," he said. "That's what the
people I know are saying. Five or WHEREVER t
six of us, at least." He speech pat- and his wi
tern, like the name of his estab- the luminescen
lishment, was quaintly redundant. a modern Adora
1 As it pushed t
THE HOOPLA drew few towns- across an airp
1 people all in all. There was an plane, the grot
L- occasional campaign manager well and contradicto
known in the area, placed on the center were the
candidates' staffs, who could be wife, always w
counted on to draw a few votes stretched from
from the locals. and painted, li
For the most part, however, the een masks,
campaigners, like the press corps, Always they
were imported talent. "I feel like a hands, sought o
reserve carpetbagger," said one crowd. It was
staffer for former Georgia gover- much they wer
noi Jimmy Carter. always had th
Many campaign workers worked who has been s
from logic and could argue effect- bulb popping in
ively for their candidate; others A LSO THEY w
had the aura of true believers Once, one o
about them. "You see someone with candidate with
a Carter button on and you know held high and
, you have something in common a coat pocket.'
with them; you want everyone to pockets!" an ag(
be a part of it, said one devoted on! Come on!
young Carter volunteer. "You be- kets!"
come obsessed with it, you want ev- As Nancy Rea
erybody to know him. And it's so hand-shaking 1
frustrating, because everybody nights "victory"
can't know him.' asked, "Aren't y
But it sometimes seemed like ter all this?" Sh
everybody tried, and this placed ' away but blinke
the candidates in an understand- The question u
able love-hate relationship with reached out to s
the crowds. The votes had to be C e n

First

act

agicomedy

Ford shooting at-
ed everyone that
rly extended hand
a pistol. Around
n, this feeling was
hey went, Reagan
fe Nancy were like
t central figures in
tion of the Magi.
through a crowd or
port runway to a
up was a strange
ry sight. At the
candidate and his
earing smiles that
ear to ear, spongy
ke rubber hallow-
reached for the
)ut the eyes of the
hard to tell how
e afraid; the two
e look of someone
tartled by a flash-
ches away.
watched the hands.
f us stood near the
a tape recorder
the other hand in
"Hand out of your
ent shouted. "Come
Out of your poc-
agan passed us in a
ine after Tuesday
speech, one of us
you pretty tired af-
e was only two feet
d and kept smiling.
was repeated. She
shake hands.
yofat 1. r dnh nin

democrat."
This made it sound pretty clear,
but everyone campaigning in New
Hampshire - from Harris to Car-
ter to Ford to Reagan - sounded
the same after awhile. Polls
showed that distrust and disgust
with big government were the key
issues, so every campaign picked
up this cry.
In the midst of all this, the vot-
ers played a strange role. In
many people's minds, issues and
candidates seemed to run together
and undercut the conclusions
drawn from Tuesday's vote. One
landscaper said he wanted WPA-
type job programs and a national
health insurance program, but he
was voting for Wallace because
"he's the only one who doesn't
spout the same rhetoric as all the
rest."
WHEN THE SHOW was over, the
voters seemed to prove them-
selves smarter than this imported
crowd. Although they left the state
littered with buttons and papered
wih unexciting leaflets, the presi-
dential hopefuls and their road
crews convinced the voters of very
little. The GOP vote split almost
evenly, and the Democrats went
five different ways: virtually ev-
ryone we talked to agreed on one
thing: it didn't matter much.
A policeman told us at one of
Reagan's rallies that he would pro-
bably vote for the former Califor-
nia governor. But he squinted and
said, 'The thing that gets me is,
no matter which one wins in the
end, it won't make much differ-
ence for us, will it?"

Daily Photo by KEN FINK
Carter supporter in a bicentennial outfit

varuer coauctU u is campaign
in a similar state of suspended an-
imation. Another Daily reporter
who followed right behind him on
his walking tours, found herself
shaking hands with the presiden-
tial hopeful an inordinate number
of times. At long last she refused
to pump his paw even once more.
With glazed eyes Carter paused
and stared at her. "Hello dear, nice
to see you again," he stuttered
finally and patted her face with-
out emotion.
Even at close range, it was al-
most impossible to gauge what lay
behind any candidate's carefully
veneered image. Reporters had an
axiom that anyone who was run-
ning for president would of course
have to be a bit of a maniac. But
which one was the sanest "nut"?
WE FOUND ourselves attracted
to the two more liberal demo-
crats, Udall and former Oklahoma
senator Fred Harris. But how to
tell them apart? Udall's answer to
this was simply, "Well, Fred Har-
ris is a populist and I'm a liberal

Cry:Chllng search

Daily Photo by STEVE KAGAN
Secret service agent at Reagan rally

fora w
By JEFF SORENSEN
IF ROBERT ETTINGER had his
way, the vast expanses of the
world's cemeteries, morgues, and
funeral parlors would vanish over-
night. Instead he would freeze the
dead, supposedly giving those peo-
ple -- the "cryonauts" - a chance
of achieving eternal life on earth.
Ettinger and his disciples, mem-
bers of various cryonics societies,
have already begun work on this
seemingly outrageous task. Twen-
ty-four people have been frozen
(at considerable expenses) in the
past decade, mostly in California
and New York.
In his book Prospect of Immor-
tality, published in 1964, Ettinger
delivers the cryonic call to arms.
"Most of us now living," he said,
"have a chance for personal, phys-
ical immortality." Since then, sev-
eral thousand followers have join-
ed over a dozen cryonics societies
in North America and Eurone, and,
at present, an estimated 100 people
have committed themselves finan-
cially, most with life insurance
policies, to be "cryogenically sus-
pended"' in liquid nitrogen after
death, at a temperature of -1960C.
Cryogenics is the study of low tem-
peratures.
For about $15,000, the Cryonics
Society of Michigan, located in Et-
tinger's home in Oak Park, will
help provide the necessary assist-
ance for the deep freeze. No long-
term storage facilities exist in
Michigan (although one site may
be ready within a year). But the
society does offer a mobile cryo-

or another permanent freezing fa-
cility.
THE MEMBERS of Ettinger's
brainchild organization as-
sume that one day it will be possi-
ble to repair nearly all damage to
the human body - including that
resulting from freezing and thaw-
ing, senility, and other causes of
death. In fact, Ettinger claims that
death is an imposition on the hu-
man race, and no longer accept-
able.
So we are advised to have our
bodies frozen at death to await
further scientific progress even
though no human being has ever
been successfully unfrozen. The
key to Ettinger's argument is time.
"A body cooled by liquid nitrogen

will keep, for all practical pur-
poses, for millenia" without sig-
nificant .damage, according to the
society.
However, critics contend that
the chances of revival for the peo-
ple who are "on ice" today is neg-
ligible. "The current banking of
frozen corpses is premature, fruit-
less, and unscientific - with ques-
tional value to the community in
general and cryobiology in partic-
ular," says Jerome Sherman, a cry-
obiologist (scientist concerned
with life at low temperatures) at
the University of Arkansas Medi-
cal Center. "The retort from the
well-meaning and sincere people
in the cryonics societies that those
See CRYONICS, Page 5

ay to beat death

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