December 18, 2003

Essie Mae Washington-Williams, 78-year-old retired teacher from Los Angeles, says she is daughter of late Sen Strom Thurmond and his family's black maid; makes announcement in Columbia, SC, where Thurmond was legendary political figure and, for decades, adamant segregationist; says she never sought to harm Thurmonds, who acknowledge tie, but needed to tell her own four children and now feels 'completely free'; photos; Thurmond had what Williams calls 'affair' with her mother, Carrie Butler, when she was 16 and he was 22-year-old teacher; statement confirms longtime rumors about woman who visited Thurmond in his Washington office and was supported by him throughout the years (M)

New York inaugurates long-awaited AirTrain to Kennedy International Airport, exactly 100 years after Wright brothers' first flight and nearly 60 years after Robert Moses dismissed early version of idea; photo; Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov George Pataki step off AirTrain into gleaming new terminal in Jamaica; computer-operated train links airport terminals and connects to local trains and subways in Jamaica and Howard Beach; Manhattan passengers still have to transfer but train will spare them unpredictable, expensive taxi ride; advocates credit Pataki with finally pushing through scaled-back plan (M)

Nora Guthrie, daughter and arhivist of late singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie, discovers series of songs on Jewish themes written in 1940's and 1950's while her father, his second wife, Marjorie Mazia, and her Jewish family were living in Coney Island; 92nd Street Y will hold concert on December 20 of Guthrie's Jewish songs, with music by Klezmatics, Arlo Guthrie and Celtic folk singer Susan McKeown; photos (M)

Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp says departing salaried employees of Kaiser Aluminum pulled money out of their pension fund so quickly last year that they virtually wiped out assets; cancels pension plan, saying it has to protect what is left for past and future retirees; plan records show 231 salaried employees took $77 million out of plan in 2002 in one-time payments; plan had been paying retirees about $37 million a year until last year; employees apparently began to fear for future when Kaiser filed for Chapter 11 bankrupty protection in February 2002, and those who qualified for retirement pulled all their money out of pension fund while they still had chance (M)

New York Stock Exchange will appoint John A Thain, president of Goldman Sachs, as its chief executive; is splitting chairman and chief executive posts as part of reform, and John S Reed, interim chairman and chief executive, may continue as chairman for now; decision is announced by SEC chairman William Donaldson, who urged division to keep too much power from being concentrated in hands of one person; Thain is technocrat involved in Goldman Sach investments in electronic trading platforms, several of which compete with exchange; photo; he and Reed are both MIT graduates (M)