Plane hijacking a Youth Forum issue 31 years ago

Sunday, Nov. 20, 2005 | 7:32 a.m.

Dr. Patrick O'Carroll

School: Bishop Gorman High

Sun Youth Forum year: 1974

Graduation: 1975

College: University of Notre Dame, Claremont Men's College (1979) and Johns Hopkins University (medical degree, 1983)

Occupation: Pacific Northwest regional health administrator for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Seattle

Accomplishments: Oversaw development on communications systems for public health for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, where he played a role in the establishment of critical components to the nation's defense against bioterrorism (1985-2002); won the U.S. Health and Human Services Departmental Honor Award for helping to develop and implement a sustainable science-based diabetes screening program (2005)

Editor's note: This is the seventh in a series about local students who participated in past Las Vegas Sun Youth Forums. The 50th anniversary of the forum will be Tuesday at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

"Suggestions (regarding anti-hijacking laws) were made ranging from locking the passengers in small compartments during the flight to undressing all passengers before the flight, to arming the pilots to slitting the throats of all hijackers. Eventually, the group agreed that flying should remain a not-too-unpleasant experience and therefore abandoned most of the extraordinary suggestions." -- Patrick O'Carroll, Dec. 15, 1974.

Dr. Patrick O'Carroll said that when his mother found among old papers the Sun Youth Forum column he wrote 31 years ago in the Las Vegas Sun, they read it and remarked how some topics are as fresh now as they were then.

"It is striking how some of the things our group discussed could come out of today's headlines," O'Carroll said, noting that some students' suggestions about how to deal with jet hijackings were considered three decades later in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"I have always been liberal, so I was not among those who had the more extreme ideas about what to do with hijackers. But one lesson we can learn is that long-term problems cannot be resolved with haste."

Another topic the future scientist wrote about involved concerns that Arab nations would nationalize American oil fields in the Middle East. O'Carroll noted that several group members felt the United States "could no longer allow these pompous, overbearing countries to continue to kick us in the teeth."

"It is not surprising that issues that affected energy were being debated in 1974 and remain problematic today, particularly since we are now in a war that some claim is primarily about protecting oil interests," O'Carroll said.

"I suspect that people will debate oil issues 30 years, maybe 100 years from now."

O'Carroll said his lasting memory of participating in the Sun Youth Forum was how so many bright people addressed issues from many different directions.

"I was struck with the tremendous diversity of opinion and how thoughtful and intelligent the kids were," he said.

Asked for his reaction to the Sun Youth Forum celebrating its 50th anniversary, O'Carroll said: "What a remarkable visionary (late Sun Publisher) Hank Greenspun was."

Ed Koch can be reached at (702) 259-4090 or at koch@lasvegassun.com.