Mayor of Eastland Although he was a soft-spoken individual, Don Pierson was also an untiring booster of his adopted hometown of Eastland. In 1957  he reopened the long-closed grass-strip Eastland airport which he renamed "Eastland International Airport." Later, in the 1970s, he became the first person to land a jet aircraft in Eastland. He attracted world headlines when, as mayor of Eastland in 1964, he convinced his fellow council members to pass a purported ordinance banning all smoking in Eastland  with a mandatory three-year jail penalty for violators. Although intended as a humorous response to the Surgeon General's Commission on Smoking, whose recently issued report on the dangers of smoking had been accompanied by an official photo of the Commission showing ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts , the Eastland anti-smoking ordinance proved prophetic-even though, at the time  it generated a deluge of hate mail from the outraged citizens of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Soon thereafter , Eastland again found itself in the headlines when, as president of the local Rotary Club,  Pierson managed to convince the Deputy Soviet Ambassador to the United States, Vladimir Alkimov, to appear as the featured speaker of the club's weekly meeting – at the height of the Cold War .
Mayor of Eastland Although he was a soft-spoken individual, Pierson was also an untiring booster of his adopted hometown of Eastland. In 1957 , he reopened the long-closed grass-strip Eastland airport which he renamed "Eastland International Airport." Later, in the 1970s, he became the first person to land a jet aircraft in Eastland. He attracted world headlines when, as mayor of Eastland in 1964, he convinced his fellow council members to pass a purported ordinance banning all smoking in Eastland , with a mandatory three-year jail penalty for violators. It was intended as a humorous response to the Surgeon General's Commission on Smoking, whose recently-issued report on the dangers of smoking had been accompanied by an official photo showing the commissioners' ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts . The Eastland anti-smoking ordinance proved prophetic, although, at the time , it generated a deluge of hate mail from the outraged citizens of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Soon after , Eastland again found itself in the headlines when, as president of the local Rotary Club, and at the height of the Cold War, Pierson managed to convince the Deputy Soviet Ambassador to the United States, Vladimir Alkimov, to appear as the featured speaker at the club's weekly meeting .
D
Don
A
,
A
,
R
Although
It was
R
recently issued
recently-issued
R
of the Commission showing
showing the commissioners'
R
, the
. The
R
prophetic-even though,
prophetic, although,
A
,
R
thereafter
after
A
and at the height of the Cold War,
R
of
at
D
– at the height of the Cold War