July 13, 1993

It used to be an article of faith among high-technology strategists that mergers between computer companies were virtually doomed to fail. The list of high hopes dashed, at least in the short term, was notable -- Burroughs and Sperry, I.B.M. and Rolm -- and the list of successes was nonexistent. But in the two years since the American Telephone and Telegraph Company's bruising hostile takeover of the NCR Corporation, the deal has begun looking a good deal more shrewd than it did at the time.

As another summer weekend approached, Amos Harari said he was already looking forward to Labor Day. The three planes that make up his Aero-Tag flying billboard company already have all the missions they can handle, but people keep calling with last-minute requests. "I have so many personal things this weekend," he said, looking over his schedule. "One happy birthday to a wife. One happy birthday to a 1-year-old kid."

An international industry group led by Novell Inc., the leader in network software for corporate computer systems, plans to announce on Wednesday a set of standards for protecting information stored in computers or transmitted over networks, industry executives say. Neither Novell nor most of the other companies or user groups involved would discuss the announcement, which is seen as an indirect challenge to the Clinton Administration's effort to impose a national encoding standard for computer and telephone communications.

As officials and community leaders worked to preserve a tenuous calm in Washington Heights yesterday, the two firefighters injured by a firebomb during a night of unrest last week described the horror of the attack. But one of the men emphasized that the community was not to blame. The two firefighters, speaking with reporters in the hospital where they are recovering from third-degree burns, described a terrifying scene that ended in a narrow escape.

Donald Young remembers the four telephone calls he made, and how in 20 minutes 20 people, and then 40, arrived to help. He remembers pulling the clothes out of the closets and packing away the crystal, the family photographs, his wife's 400 cookbooks. He remembers rounding up the 14 geese, emptying the grain bins, driving out the tractors, the plows and the combine. He remembers everything about the night the river forced him and his wife out of the house where they had lived for 27 years -- except for this: "I can't tell you what day it was," he said today. "All I can tell you is that the river stage was 26 when we left." Time Halted at 5:40 Donald and Geneal Young returned to their farm on Sunday to survey the damage, riding in a boat across the river that used to be their fields of corn and soybeans. The crops, all 1,200 acres -- about one-and-a-half Central Parks -- were gone. Stalks of corn that just six days ago had been ready to tassle had floated into the house and now drifted from room to room in murky, calf-deep water.