Fifty-five Years Ago this week in The Colorado Statesman … Top officials with the Post Office Department – including Acting Assistant Postmaster General Sidney W. Bishop, a Denver native – unveiled major new Postal Service programs before an audience of 2,700 delegates to the 57th annual National Association of Postmasters Convention in Denver. The department would be emphasizing construction of new post offices where the mail volume was highest, Bishop said, instead of building new post offices in as many towns as possible. Known as the nation’s largest landlord, with jurisdiction over 35,000 post offices and thousands of stations and branches, Bishop called the mismatch between facilities and mail “more than serious; it is desperate.” Assistant Postmaster General Richard J. Murphy, head of personnel for the Postal Service’s 580,000 employees, announced a response to the “tragic” losses by injury and accident. A study showed 84,000 postal employees were injured annually, and 21,000 of those were disabling, he said. In addition, the department reported 20,000 motor vehicle accidents a year and 560 fires. “We resolved to do something immediately about this tragic waste, and we have developed a program to attack it,” Murphy said. That included establishing safety programs, asking employees to help reduce accidents and giving more authority to safety technicians. Former Postmaster General James A. Farley also attended and predicted President John F. Kennedy would run again and be reelected, adding that the “Catholic issue” wouldn’t be important in the next campaign. “That was the greatest thing that happened in the last election,” he said. “Kennedy had to be elected by Protestants. There aren’t enough Catholics and Jews to elect anyone.”…

… Denver was one of 12 cities nationwide selected for a White House Regional Conference in November, Gov. Steve McNichols announced. “The purpose of the conference is to tell the public what their government is doing that is of direct interest to Westerners, to hear suggestions and to answer questions,” said McNichols, who had been designated the official host of the conference by President John F. Kennedy. “The details of the program are now being mapped out,” the governor added. “I am certain that water resources and the major problems facing our cities will take up most of the day’s panels and discussions.” At least 10 top-level federal officials, including Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, were set to attend the non-partisan conference, scheduled at the Hilton Hotel. McNichols hailed the conference as a “unique demonstration of the Kennedy administration’s desire to give the American people a more direct voice in their government,” with panel discussions and the chance to mingle with important decision-makers. There would also be questions from the general public as time permitted. McNichols released the contents of a telegram direct from the White House that outlined the plan, which included informing “citizens about administrative and congressional action in the fields of urban affairs, full employment and economic growth, and relating to problems and opportunities for youth and the elderly.” McNichols declared: “Colorado is the crossroads of the West – in terms of geography, transportation, communication and its basic economic and cultural interests. There is no better location for a discussion of what our federal government is doing – particularly in the resources field – than our capital city of Denver.” …

… Colorado Democratic Party Vice Chairman Evelyn Davidson had forwarded to the Civil Rights Committee of the Western States a comprehensive report on “extremist right-wing groups in Colorado,” covering 22 organizations that “have carried on active hate-and-smear campaigns in the state.” Describing her work as ongoing, Davidson asked that alert Coloradans forward her any information they came across – “particularly clippings and pamphlets” – about the extremist groups’ activities. “It is shocking and sickening to read some of the material published by the extremists of the right,” she said. “These people pretend to work for some high national purpose, to combat communism, to support religious principles. Yet what they really do is peddle race prejudice, religious bigotry, distrust of the democratic form of government, and economic and social backwardness. They promote a ‘know-nothing’ attitude and thereby a distrust of all intellectual and progressive ideas.” It wasn’t a witch-hunt or an attempt to infringe on the expressive rights of extremists, she emphasized, but “an attempt to expose the extremists for what they are so that people will be alerted to them and be prepared to make sensible evaluations of their propaganda.” …

… No one joins the Peace Corps to avoid the draft, said Dr. Wm. Boast, director of communications at Otero Junior College, at a meeting of the Jane Jefferson Club in La Junta. “With the training course they take, all but the bravest persons are better off drafted,” he said. The main concern of the Corps was research on “waging peace,” Boast said. “The Pentagon is working harder for peace than any other place on earth right now,” he added, “through the Peace Research Institute.” Boast had represented the college at a Peace Research Conference at Colorado University and had enjoyed the opportunity to attend a dinner at the home of Maurice L. Albertson, founder and director of the Peace Corps. …

… Grand Junction’s Citizens’ Committee for Downtown Development had put forward an “unusual plan” to revitalize the city’s downtown. Known as “Operation Foresight,” the plan would break up the monotonous blocks of the business district by curving Main Street from one side of the existing roadway to the other from block to block, reducing the street to just a single lane each direction. “[T]he remainder becomes parking space and maneuvering lanes, with the wedge-shaped pieces left over being devoted to landscaping and to street furniture, such as lights, benches and planting boxes,” promoters said. Downtown merchants planned to create a special improvement district to pay for the overhaul. …

… A Colorado State University scientist was launching a project to discover what makes people turn up their noses at lamb. Dr. D.A. Cramer, assistant animal husbandman at the CSU Agricultural Experimentation Station, planned to study the gases that emerged when cooking lamb in hopes of developing a method to eliminate the undesirable odor. He would be using a recently developed piece of equipment, a gas chromatograph, which separates gases into components. Cramer said he expected to find some 30 molecules and compounds and would then set out to identify which ones cause the “sheep-ish” odor.