Field day for flea beetles; tree kills man getting wood; swingers club settles
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Odd and interesting news from the Midwest.
- By PAUL SWIECH The (Bloomington) Pantagraph
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BLOOMINGTON, Ill. (AP) — Jayvoni Jefferson, seated on his mother's lap and wearing flexible-frame prescription eyeglasses, reacted excitedly to a television program.
"It's BabyFirst TV," said his mother, Qyanna (Key-A-na) Jackson. "It's his favorite program because it's so colorful."
A few minutes later, Jayvoni, who turned 2 years old on June 4, was standing directly in front of the television and holding on to the table underneath.
"We don't know what he can see," Qyanna said. "He knows our faces."
"It's heartbreaking when a kid is sick," she said in their Bloomington apartment as Jayvoni watched television. Her mother, Annie Jackson, also of Bloomington, watched Jayvoni carefully.
"I just want Jayvoni to be healed," Qyanna said. "I want all children with cancer to be healed."
Jayvoni has bilateral retinoblastoma. Retinoblastoma is a cancer that starts in the retina, in the back of the eye. Bilateral means he has cancer in both eyes.
That's uncommon. His pediatrician, Dr. Kaye Harms Toohill of Bloomington Pediatrics & Allergy, said Jayvoni is her first patient with bilateral retinoblastoma.
There is a family history. Qyanna, 33, had it, as did her father, Willie Williams, 75, of Chicago.
Qyanna's right eye was removed shortly after birth and replaced with a prosthesis. Her father is blind.
Complicating matters is that Jayvoni also has sickle cell disease, an inherited blood cell disorder that requires close monitoring.
"Those are significant illnesses to have at once," Toohill said.
"That has complicated his treatments," said Dr. Janice Lasky Zeid, an ophthalmologist and medical director of ocular tumors at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago.
Jayvoni is undergoing treatments at Lurie to control the tumors in both eyes by making them inactive, to save his vision and save his eyes, Zeid said.
"It's a difficult treatment course. He has had some response to treatment. Some tumors have responded (mostly in the left eye) but there hasn't been a complete regression of the tumors," Zeid said. "We are hoping to improve that over time. We are closely following him."
"I'm hoping they can remove the tumors without removing his eyes," Qyanna said.
The dedication of Jayvoni's family, especially Qyanna, helps, the doctors said.
"She has done a remarkable job," Toohill said. "She's a single mother but she never misses doctors' appointments here or in Chicago."
"They are a wonderful family," Zeid said. "They have been through so much but have shown a lot of courage through the whole process. She (Qyanna) is devoted to Jayvoni and makes everything work for him."
Jayvoni and his mother live in the apartment with Jayvoni's sister, Janesha Hampton, 11.
"Janesha doesn't carry the gene," her mother said.
After Qyanna, who relocated to Bloomington in 2008, was diagnosed with bilateral retinoblastoma at birth, her right eye was removed. Her mother said cryotherapy, laser therapy and radiation followed to save her left eye.
Cryotherapy uses extreme cold to destroy abnormal issue. Laser therapy uses heat.
Treatments continued until age 11.
While the treatments saved the vision in her left eye, not having a right eye results in imbalance at times, Qyanna said.
"Everything is a double take because I can only see with my left eye," she said.
Because of her prosthetic right eye, "it makes me look like I'm cross-eyed sometimes," Qyanna said. During childhood, she was teased by other children.
Jayvoni was born on June 4, 2014. He was diagnosed immediately with sickle cell disease and, shortly thereafter, with bilateral retinoblastoma when tumors were found in both eyes.
"I was devastated," Qyanna said. "I knew there was a chance but I was hoping he wouldn't have it because Janesha doesn't."
Jayvoni was referred to Lurie, where he was seen by Zeid, first as an inpatient, then as an outpatient.
Treatments have included chemotherapy, cryotherapy and laser treatments.
Jayvoni's current routine is two appointments a month with Zeid in Chicago to treat the eye cancer and two appointments a month with a sickle cell specialist at the St. Jude clinic in Peoria.
Sometimes, after cryotherapy and laser treatments, Jayvoni is so sick that he needs to stay at Lurie overnight. Generally, he's sent home with Tylenol with codeine to help to treat the pain and facial swelling.
Anesthesia medicine that Jayvoni is given so he can undergo cryotherapy and laser treatments sometimes result in seizures and erratic breathing during the drives back from Chicago, Qyanna said. Some of those episodes result in quick diversions to the nearest emergency department.
After treatments, he can't rub his eyes or take his glasses off, so his arms are strapped down for a while.
"He hates it," his mother said.
He hasn't been able to get his childhood immunizations — except for hepatitis B — because they could interact with his cancer treatments, Qyanna said. That puts Jayvoni at risk of infection.
That's why he takes penicillin twice a day. Other daily treatments include a cream to treat rash resulting from his meds and an anti-nausea medicine, Qyanna said.
Because he's at high risk of infection, Jayvoni seldom leaves the house. Most of his outings are for doctors' appointments and church on Sunday.
"He has had no significant infections, despite both diagnoses," Toohill said.
Because Jayvoni's sight is impaired, he walks off balance, his mother said. He recently got his prescription eyeglasses to strengthen his right eye but he doesn't like them and frequently takes them off.
"He bumps into things," Qyanna said. "I carry him a lot so doesn't hurt himself."
Qyanna, who was an assistant teacher at a day care, quit her job to care for Jayvoni.
"It's rough on him and it's rough on my daughter and myself," Qyanna admitted. "My mom helps as much as she possibly can but there are a lot of things we can't do because of his medical condition."
His left eye is considered stable because there are no new tumors, Qyanna said. But there are several active tumors in his right eye.
A possible future treatment is intravitreal chemotherapy, which means injecting the drug directly into the eye, Zeid and Qyanna said.
More traditional chemotherapy and removal of the right eye are other possible future treatments that doctors are trying to avoid, Qyanna said.
"At times, I feel like I want it to be over with," Qyanna said. "I just want him to be healed, to be cancer free. I want him to have a normal life."
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Source: The (Bloomington) Pantagraph, http://bit.ly/1Y4I19S
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Information from: The Pantagraph, http://www.pantagraph.com
This is an AP-Illinois Exchange story offered by The (Bloomington) Pantagraph.
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BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Field days have been scheduled at four North Dakota sites next week for the collection and redistribution of flea beetles that eat leafy spurge.
Leafy spurge is one of North Dakota's most problematic weeds. Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring says people interested in getting flea beetles to release on their own property can collect them from established populations at the field day sites.
The field days are Tuesday in Billings County, Wednesday in Grant County, Thursday in Billings County and Friday in Stutsman County. They're sponsored by the state Agriculture Department and the county weed boards.
Details on the field days can be found at http://1.usa.gov/25ZS3PU
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VALLEY CITY, N.D. (AP) — Valley City Police Chief Fred Thompson is apparently among the identity theft victims in a case being investigated in his city.
Thompson tells KFGO radio (http://bit.ly/1sIbLOp) that somebody submitted his income tax return and received a refund from the Internal Revenue Service in his name.
The chief says he was surprised to be part of the forensic information from state investigators who are analyzing computer hard drives and discs. Thompson says it could take up to a year to complete the investigation.
The computers, along with hundreds of credit and gift cards, were seized from a man's apartment and office in March. Valley City State University professor Long Man Ram Lau is charged with possession of stolen property and unauthorized use of personal information.
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Information from: KFGO-AM, http://www.kfgo.com
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KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri's attorney general says a judge has ordered Walgreens to pay $309,000 for violating an agreement between the drugstore chain and the state over allegedly deceptive pricing.
Chris Koster says a Jackson County judge assessed a $1,000 penalty Friday for each of the 309 times it was found to have left sales tags on the shelves after the sales period ended. Koster says that violated a 2014 deal mean to halt suspected overcharging.
That agreement barred Walgreens from leaving expired sales tags on display more than 12 hours from the time the offer expired.
Deerfield, Illinois-based Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. says the judge's ruling was consistent with the company's decision last year to take part in an auditing program under which it would pay fines for violating the agreement's terms.
- By BRIAN SLODYSKO Associated Press
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INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A former Indiana Department of Education official took a job with a company involved in a $573,000 agreement he helped broker to develop a web app that tracks school data and distributes news releases for state schools Superintendent Glenda Ritz's office.
Documents obtained by The Associated Press show that David Galvin, Ritz's former communications director and IT manager, took a job with N2N Services in October 2015 — two months after a $435,000 payment was requested for AT&T and N2N Services, AT&T's software developer, in connection with the project. Galvin, who is now executive director of marketing and communications for Atlanta-based N2N Services, specifically requested the two companies be hired for the work.
Watchdogs say it's another example of Indiana's lacking ethics laws, which were exposed in recent years by high-profile cases involving former schools superintendent Tony Bennett, former Indiana Department of Transportation chief of staff Troy Woodruff who sold land to the agency, and state Rep. Eric Turner, who helped kill a nursing home construction ban that could have cost his family business millions.
By law, Indiana's state government workers must comply with a mandatory one-year waiting period before taking a job with companies with which they helped negotiate contracts and spending agreements. State employees can seek a formal advisory opinion from the state Inspector General, which clears them to take a job.
There is no record of Galvin seeking a formal advisory opinion. Instead, an email released by Ritz's office shows he sought informal guidance. An official in the inspector general's office advised Galvin that he could work for the company because N2N was a subcontractor for AT&T and did not directly contract with the state, but suggested he seek a formal opinion "because of his extensive interaction with N2N."
Galvin, who was paid $88,000 a year by the state, says he took the job to be closer to his significant other and claims he took a pay cut, though he declined to provide documentation.
"I don't understand the big deal," Galvin said of his new job. "I listened to the people who do know the law and followed their guidance."
In a statement, Ritz's office noted the informal advice Galvin received from the inspector general's office and emphasized that he "has no current relationship or interaction with the Department."
Galvin was a divisive figure during his tenure as Ritz's communications director and helped instigate an ethics investigation into Ritz's GOP predecessor Bennett after she defeated him in 2012. Ritz staffers reviewing computers used by Bennett's administration found that Bennett's staffers had performed political work while on the clock as state employees, which is prohibited. No criminal charges came of the investigation, though Bennett was fined $5,000.
When it came to the web app, Galvin requested the 2015 deal with AT&T and N2N because the companies offered marketing capabilities and a product that the state could not provide, documents obtained by AP show. Also, the documents show that education department officials signed off on the agreement, but Indiana's Department of Administration, which vets state contracts, says they did not approve the agreement.
The state Republican Party called for an ethics investigation of Ritz's office Friday as a result of the AP's findings.
"From day one her office has put politics and self-interest before the needs of children. We are calling for a full ethics investigation from the Inspector General on this matter," David Buskill, the executive director of the Indiana Republican party, said in a statement.
These types of arrangements are the "reason people are cynical about government," according to Paul Helmke, a public affairs professor at Indiana University.
"When you have someone — paid by taxpayers — who is pushing a contract to a private entity then they leave and take a job within a couple months, that's why we need strong ethics rules," said Helmke, who is also a former Republican mayor of Fort Wayne.
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COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — The University of Missouri System is set to cut several administrative positions and reduce some salaries in an effort to offset a $3.8 million reduction in state funding.
The Columbia Missourian (http://bit.ly/28L7zxQ ) reports that the Board of Curators voted unanimously Thursday to approve the system's budget for fiscal year 2017. The budget includes a recurring payroll cut of $2 million and a one-time payroll cut of $1 million.
The system plans to implement a hiring freeze for some vacant positions. Raises will not be given to employees based on past performances for fiscal year 2017.
The cuts to administrative positions will include jobs in Finance, Information Systems, Human Resources, University Relations, General Counsel and Academic Affairs.
Vice President for Finance Brian Burnett said the system will do its best to serve all four university campuses "with a smaller workforce."
Burnett said that revenue for the upcoming year is steady and totaled around $3.1 billion.
At the curators meeting, university Chancellor Hank Foley also addressed an expected decrease in enrollment. He estimated enrollment will drop by 2,630 in fall 2016. Of the expected drop, almost 500 are students who are not returning to MU.
The anticipated decrease in enrollment has led to a $31.4 million budget gap.
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Information from: Columbia Missourian, http://www.columbiamissourian.com
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MORGANTOWN, Ind. (AP) — Authorities in central Indiana say a man has died after a tree fell on him while he was gathering wood while riding an all-terrain vehicle.
The Indiana Department of Natural Resources say emergency responders were called about 7:30 p.m. Thursday to a residence in Morgantown about an ATV accident. When they arrived they found a large portion of a tree fell on 28-year-old Robert C. Blacker of Shelbyville.
Officials say emergency workers removed Blacker from under the tree and took him to a Martinsville hospital where he was pronounced dead. He suffered blunt force trauma to the head and chest.
Official say Blacker was helping gather wood and limbs when the tree broke and fell on him. Authorities say he wasn't wearing a helmet or other protective gear.
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SHELL KNOB, Mo. (AP) — Authorities say a woman has died after an unoccupied pickup truck rolled into her in southwest Missouri.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol identified the victim as 68-year-old Bobbie Harris, of Shell Knob. The patrol says the truck rolled backward down a driveway Thursday and struck a 77-year-old woman before traveling onto a street and hitting Harris.
The older woman sustained minor injuries.
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WEST CHESTER, Ohio (AP) — A suburban township has settled a lawsuit by Indiana-based adult club owners who had planned to open a swingers club in southwest Ohio.
The Hamilton-Middletown Journal-News reports (http://bit.ly/21oPC2w ) Melissa Warren and Eric Adams of Sanford Group LLC planned to open the sexually oriented business in West Chester but found their business license and zoning certificate had been revoked in November.
A judge ruled the town shouldn't have revoked the club's permit. The town and Sanford Group reached a settlement that calls for Warren and Adams not to open another such sexually oriented business or similar use in town.
The town has agreed to pay Sanford Group $61,000 and the site's landlord $29,000 toward unpaid rent.
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Information from: The JournalNews of Hamilton, http://www.journal-news.com/cgi-bin/liveique.acgi$sch=jnfront?jnfront
- By BLAIR EMERSON The Bismarck Tribune
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FORT YATES, N.D. (AP) — In an effort to boost low-performing schools across the country, four schools on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation were selected to join a national program that integrates arts and music into curriculum.
The schools — Solen Middle School, Cannonball Elementary, Standing Rock Middle School and Standing Rock Elementary School — have been selected to join the White House's Turnaround Arts program, which uses arts education to improve academic achievement.
The President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities started the Turnaround Arts initiative five years ago, and it now operates in 68 schools in 15 states and the District of Columbia.
Staff of the president's committee toured the schools within the Solen Public Schools and Standing Rock Community/Fort Yates Public School District in February.
At the White House last month, Michelle Obama announced the Standing Rock schools will join the Turnaround Arts 2016 program during the 2nd Annual Turnaround Arts Talent Show.
Representatives from all four Standing Rock schools were invited to the White House for the announcement, The Bismarck Tribune reported (http://bit.ly/1rs7SvI ).
The program helps poorly performing elementary and middle schools enhance arts and music instruction, and offers professional development for teachers to integrate arts across subject areas, such as science and cultural studies.
"It's a really great opportunity for not only teachers, but students too," said Solen High School Principal Jeff Brandt, who visited the White House.
The integration of arts, such as dance, theater and music, into curriculum has been shown to improve students' academic performance.
A 2015 evaluation of schools in the program found that from 2011 to 2014, schools saw an average improvement of 12.6 percent in reading proficiency and 22.5 percent in math proficiency. Attendance rates also increased, and in-school and out-of-school suspensions decreased.
"This program has come at the right time for us because we are definitely looking at changes that we feel need to be made," said Robyn Baker, Fort Yates superintendent.
Such changes include schools focusing more on a "well-rounded" education that includes arts and music, rather than just reading and math, Baker said.
"Like every other school in the nation, we have been really stressing about the math and the reading and then forgetting about the arts," she said.
Artist mentors will also "adopt" schools through the three-year program, hosting workshops and giving lessons.
Jane Fonda will visit Solen Middle School, R&B singer and jazz recording artist Ledisi will go to Cannonball Elementary School, DJ IZ, actor and hip-hop artist, will be at Standing Rock Middle School, and Dave Matthews was selected to join Standing Rock Elementary School.
The artists will visit the schools sometime in the fall, according to Barb Sandstrom, local program director of Turnaround Arts: North Dakota.
The North Dakota Council on the Arts and the North Dakota Humanities Council also have signed on to the program.
School principals and staff members will visit Washington, D.C., at the end of the month for a five-day conference to learn more about the program and how to incorporate it into classrooms and at the schools.
"(Teachers are) really positive about this, and if it's a way to get kids engaged in learning, they're on board with it," Brandt said.
"We're really excited about it because I just think good things are going to come from it," Baker said.
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Information from: Bismarck Tribune, http://www.bismarcktribune.com
- By PETER SALTER Lincoln Journal Star
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LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Of course, the most famous house in Havelock was perfect for Don Wesely.
He was from the neighborhood, a Northeast Rocket. He knew something about being a local celebrity.
And the former mayor needed a place. He'd been renting in the Country Club area and had looked at maybe 100 houses around town. But they sold too fast or didn't measure up or exceeded his budget.
Then he saw a story in the paper last summer. The house at 6825 Platte Ave. -- the house hundreds of contractors and volunteers built while the rest of the city, and much of the nation, watched on "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" -- was for sale. And at $249,000, it was just inside his price range.
Wesely toured it that morning, all six bedrooms, six bathrooms, indoor-outdoor waterfalls and granite-countered laundry room. More than 4,000 square feet of prime time home design.
"It was more than fine," he said. "It was amazing."
He immediately offered his limit, a quarter-million even.
Wesely heard later the sellers had fielded half a dozen offers that day. He learned they chose his, he said, because he was from Havelock; he'd represented northeast Lincoln in the Legislature for 20 years.
Plus, he'd know how to handle the parade of cars that still circle the block, or the strangers who'd stop him in the cereal aisle to ask about his dream home.
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For nearly a decade now, the dream home has cast a shadow on Helen Tipton's tidy, 988-square-foot house next door.
And it reminds her daily of that week in late 2006 when her street was overrun with tourists, TV talent, volunteers, contractors and cameras.
The crews worked around the clock, flooding the night with noise and bright light. So the show's producers put her up in a hotel because she had an important job -- monitoring heart patients at the hospital -- and it was critical she got her sleep.
They also gave her $500 for use of her yard, but left her with dead grass, dead flowers and a string of broken promises.
"They took out my tree, took out my fence, moved my shed. I'm still having problems because of that house."
That house. That house stands out, and it still means something to people. People still drive by, 10 years later, just for a look at that house.
"The house doesn't fit this neighborhood. It's extremely large and it has lots of bells and whistles that our little houses don't have," she said.
"But that house is everybody's dream, that house represents all the dreams people have that someday they might get something free like that."
It was built for a Lincoln couple whose blended family -- she had three teens, he had two -- threatened to overwhelm his two-bedroom home on Platte Avenue. Instead of renovating, the show started over, hauling away the old house and constructing this mansion. All in six days.
When the show aired in January 2007, millions of viewers watched Ty Pennington and his crew converge on 6825 Platte Ave., to surprise the couple. They watched the demolition and construction, and they watched the family vacation in Paris that week.
They watched Helen Tipton's working class neighborhood get attention it wasn't used to.
"You see it on TV, people get free cars and they get free houses," she said. "But those are places like Chicago and New York, not little Lincoln, Nebraska."
The family returned for the tear-filled reveal -- preceded by its trademark chant: "Move that bus!" -- and settled in their new home. They felt like they were living in a fishbowl, they said at the time, although the house on Platte Avenue began disappearing from the headlines.
Until last year, when Don Wesely opened his newspaper and learned Havelock's most famous house was for sale, the Lincoln Journal Star (http://bit.ly/1RAW28b ) reported.
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The first floor is cavernous, almost medieval -- with a castle-like staircase inside the front door, walls made of stone, walls made to look like stone, exposed brickwork, rough-hewn planks for the kitchen ceiling.
"When I first came over and I walked in," Wesely said, "it took my breath away."
Every door opened to a surprise.
The show's designers were known for tailoring their work, for creating theme rooms to match each family member, and for trying to outdo each other.
So on Platte Avenue, they built a room to resemble a tropical paradise, with bamboo wainscoting.
They built a hockey room, with an illuminated plexiglass floor to look like ice and pucks for the closet door pulls.
They built a racing room, with diamond plate shelving and a three-level slot car set that swung down from the wall to fill most of the floor.
They built a photography room, with picture frames that look like light boxes.
They built a backyard oasis, with a covered patio off the two-story garage, a babbling brook and marble benches.
They spared no expense in the bathrooms, and no two fixtures are alike -- except for the his-and-hers shallow sinks in the master bath. They put in a sink that looks like a mixing bowl, a sink that looks like a seashell, a sink made of stainless steel. Faucets that look like nozzles, a faucet that cascades like a waterfall and a wall-mounted waterfall in the room Wesely turned into an office.
"So if you ever get stressed out, you can come in here and watch the water, I suppose."
But the builders also gave the dream home the horsepower to support their design and the scale of their construction. A pair of everything, Wesely said: two water heaters, two water softeners, two furnaces, two air conditioners.
"One of the things about older homes is they have character," he said. "This house has got character, but it also has all the modern features."
This house was so big it took him a few visits to finally find the last basement bathroom. And although the home was built in under a week, it's solid, he said: He's discovered a few loose tiles and a couple of bricks that need to be reset, but that's it.
If this house had been selling in another neighborhood, far from the clang-clang-clanging of trains in the Havelock shops, he couldn't have afforded it.
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It's beginning to feel like home to him, but it took some time.
Lots of room -- and rooms -- to fill.
Such an eclectic house can accommodate almost any style of fixture, furniture or artwork. So a Persian-style rug with Wesely's face stitched into it -- a gift from the people of Khujand, Lincoln's sister city in Tajikistan -- fits right in on the wall above the staircase, not far from the suit of armor that greets visitors.
The former politician added a Kennedy Room, with portraits of the brothers and a JFK rocking chair. He turned the first-floor guest bath into the Lincoln Bathroom, with a fancy, framed photo of Abe above the toilet.
The photo-themed room's black-and-white wallpaper had a European flair, so it became his Paris Room, decorated with Eiffel Towers. He kept the tropical paradise room, adding bamboo folding chairs and a pair of stuffed pandas.
He brought in his own big pieces of furniture but bought even bigger -- including a massive table from Mrs. B's Clearance Outlet at Nebraska Furniture Mart that now seems small in his dining room.
"I bought a few things and I had a few things. It's been a hunt."
It's a big house for one person. But he has three adult children, and one grandchild so far, and they all have their own rooms now when they return to Lincoln to visit. He's been a lobbyist for a dozen years, and he now has a home, and yard, perfect for gatherings and fundraisers.
He doesn't plan to make any changes. He likes the paint and the fixtures. He still marvels at his house every morning, he said, even after nearly a year.
"There are nicer houses and more expensive houses, but none was built in six days, and none was given for free on national TV," he said. "There's no other house like this."
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Information from: Lincoln Journal Star, http://www.journalstar.com
- By CARSON GERBER Kokomo Tribune
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KOKOMO, Ind. (AP) — Call it meat with a mission. That's how Brian and Alan Mast see it.
Since 2008, the father-and-son team has raised cows that they eventually turn into hamburger.
That's the meat. And the mission?
All the beef is donated to Kokomo Urban Outreach to help provide meals to up to 1,000 local kids every Sunday evening.
Brian and Alan aren't cattle farmers, but that hasn't stopped them from spearheading the outreach, which has become known as the Cattle Project.
It was Alan who first came up with the idea of raising cattle and donating the meat. He was a 16-year-old sophomore at Northwestern High School at the time, and he had just spent a week volunteering in the food pantry at KUO.
It didn't take long for Alan to notice that the ministry included hardly any beef or pork with their meals, and he felt that was a problem, since eating meat provides essential nutrients like protein.
So Alan had an idea. Why not buy some cows, raise them, butcher them and then hand off the beef to the ministry?
"I didn't think it would be too challenging to raise some cattle for the outreach," he said.
After all, Alan already had a little experience dealing with cattle, since he had been working on a neighbor's dairy farm since he was 13. That experience had taught him, however, that it can be expensive to raise cows.
So Alan took the idea to the congregation at Howard-Miami Mennonite Church, where he attends, and asked for donations to get the project off the ground.
It was an idea the church took an instant liking to, and within a couple of months, members had donated enough money to allow Alan to buy two calves.
One of Alan's good friends from the church youth group had a barn a few miles from his home near Kokomo Municipal Airport, so the two cleaned it up and got it ready to house the two calves.
"It was crazy to see all the things come together," he said. "It was really a God thing. All the pieces just seemed to fit together."
For the next year, Alan visited his friend's barn every day to feed and water the cows. When they had grown large enough, the animals were butchered, and Alan was able to send around 1,000 pounds of meat to KUO.
That was in 2008. Since then, the Cattle Project has donated in total around 20 processed animals.
KUO Executive Director Jeff Newton said the outreach has come to depend on the annual donation, which has allowed the food ministry to grow by leaps and bounds.
He said before the Cattle Project, the ministry was providing just 100 meals at two different locations to families on Sunday evening.
But with more than 1,000 pounds of beef coming in every year, that number quickly mushroomed into 1,000 meals at 13 different locations around the city every Sunday.
Newton estimates each cow provides around 5,000 meals. Add up all the cows donated since the outreach started, and the Cattle Project has provided around 100,000 meals to kids and families in Kokomo.
"It's huge," Newton said. "That's what we count on to provide meals. It's a huge gift that affects tons of people. I'm not sure what we would do without it."
Now, the outreach has morphed into a kind of community-wide undertaking since Alan started it eight years ago.
His dad, Brian, took over the day-to-day chores when he left for college in 2010.
Brian, who owns Ace Automotive in Kokomo, is currently raising five calves, which are housed in a neighbor's barn during the winter, and put out to pasture in another neighbor's fields in the summer.
Not long ago, a local Rotary Club raised enough money to pay for the installation of new fencing around the barn.
When it comes to feeding the cows, Brian, Alan and other volunteers spend time every summer harvesting hay, which is grown on land owned by Alan's brother, as well property owned by the boss of Brian's wife.
And through it all, members at Howard-Miami Mennonite Church have consistently donated enough money to buy new calves every year and help pay for grain and other supplies.
Sarah Schlegel, a pastor at the church, said the congregation has embraced the outreach and made sure it succeeds. Every year, they hold a chili dinner, with all the proceeds going to the project
Last year, an issue with some of the cows prevented them from being butchered, so the church raised enough money to buy meat to donate to KUO.
"We really want to do what we can to help fight hunger in the community," she said.
Alan, who is now 23 and works for a poultry farm near Warsaw, said it's been neat to see so many people jump on board and do whatever they can to help with the project, such as donating trailers to transport the cows or filling in to do the chores when Brian is on vacation.
"We use so many different people who all donate different things," he said. "I knew the church would help, but the community support has been amazing. People help out wherever they can, and that's pretty cool."
Brian said it's that kind of support that keeps the outreach up and running, and without it, the Cattle Project would have stopped long ago.
"You realize you're doing good for somebody, and that's what motivates you," he said. "We don't realize the need in town. It's hard to imagine that so many kids in our backyards are needy, but they are. To know that we're making a difference . That's what it's all about."
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Source: Kokomo Tribune, http://bit.ly/1OqMJND
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Information from: Kokomo Tribune, http://www.ktonline.com
This is an AP-Indiana Exchange story offered by the Kokomo Tribune.
- By JARED COUNCIL Indianapolis Business Journal
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INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — In 1942, the U.S. Navy opened a secret manufacturing plant on the east side of Indianapolis to produce bombsights, devices that helped World War II pilots gauge when to release bombs.
By the early 1990s, the 1-million-square-foot facility at Arlington Avenue and East 21st Street was virtually unneeded, and the U.S. Department of Defense was slated to close the 2,300-worker plant_a fate averted by a 1996 privatization deal orchestrated by then-Mayor Stephen Goldsmith.
Following that brush with death, the plant now is run by the multibillion-dollar defense contractor Raytheon Co. It not only has survived, but has become the sole location for some key Raytheon programs, including one that's sort of a "Pimp My Ride" for old battle tanks.
The operation here_which primarily offers upkeep and modernization services_has become so important to Raytheon that the company has consolidated similar facilities into it, is investing$24 million into renovations, and plans to add a few hundred jobs in the coming years.
"I think this facility is uniquely positioned for what the military needs today," said Todd Probert, Raytheon's vice president of mission support and modernization.
"Raytheon is out there developing new missiles and new radars and that's important, too. But there's a deployed weapon-system base that the U.S. has to keep maintained so we can keep our competitive edge on the military scene. And facilities like Indy are more relevant now than they've ever been."
Raytheon has 61,000 employees worldwide and $23 billion in annual sales. It's one of the Big 5 defense contractors, along with Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co., Northrup Grumman Corp. and General Dynamics Corp.
The roughly 1,000-employee Indianapolis facility falls under Raytheon's Intelligence, Information and Services Division, one of four at the suburban-Boston-based company.
The division refurbishes electronic systems worn by the rigors of military use, as well as modernizes dated components of vehicles and aircraft. It also does cybersecurity work and builds custom military solutions upon request.
Indianapolis is home to much of that work, including Raytheon's tank modernization. That program takes Army-green 1970s tanks, soups them up with new firing and control systems, and sells them by the dozen to authorized countries like Jordan.
"So, basically you take an old tank, you give it new capabilities, and you keep it relevant," said Rimas Guzulaitis, a senior director with the Intelligence, Information and Services Division.
New tanks can cost several million dollars each; retrofitting these old ones costs about a third of that, he said.
Raytheon also modernizes the cockpits of F-18 fighter jets, replacing antiquated analog controls and gauges withdigital dashboards.
As military spending becomes more measured, customers are more attracted to the idea of enhancing vehicles already in use and lacing them with technology for an increasingly digital battlefield, Raytheon officials said.
A walk through the massive plant feels like a blast from the past. Michigan Maple wooden floors_designed to mitigate shock waves from bombsight manufacturing and testing_are still abundant, stretching several hundred feet down some corridors.
And archaic signs with messages such as "TEST IN PROGRESS DO NOT ENTER" aren't hard to come by.
The site known for upgrading and renovating military systems now is getting its own makeover.
"We've partnered with the state here recently and we're going through a major face-lift to make it relevant for the future," Probert said.
Probert was referring to the deal it hashed out with the Indiana Economic Development Corp. last year to add 349 jobs by 2020 in exchange for $4.4 million in tax credits. It employed about 900 people at the time.
Raytheon consolidated similar operations in California and Virginia into the Indianapolis location as part of the agreement and plans to pump $24.4 million into interior and exterior renovations.
While the plant's employment is far below its peak of 3,000-plus, without privatization it might be shuttered today. In the early 1990s, the federal government was closing dozens of military operations under its Base Realignment and Closure program_including Fort Benjamin Harrison in Lawrence in 1991.
Before privatization, the Raytheon plant was called the Naval Air Warfare Center. It performed so-called depot work, which entailed refurbishing used military equipment like missile holders.
Realizing NAWC was on track for closure, Goldsmith, who developed a national reputation for bidding out government work, raced to avert disaster.
Larry Gigerich, who was executive assistant for economic development under Goldsmith, said city officials learned from Fort Harrison's closing that pleading with the military wouldn't work. So Goldsmith struck pre-emptively with a plan for private firms to bid to take over NAWC.
The military's experience with privatizations mostly involved government-owned, contractor-operated arrangements, Gigerich said. There was no precedent for transferring real estate and physical assets off the military's books, as the NAWC deal called for. At the time, it was the largest deal of its kind.
"It was one of the most satisfying projects that I've ever worked on, I think partly because it was so difficult to get it done and it had never been done before," said Gigerich, who is now managing director at site-selection firm Ginovus LLC.
The federal government ultimately OK'd the plan, and Hughes Electronics Corp. took over operations on Jan. 1, 1997. Raytheon bought Hughes later that year.
"We walked out of the door on a Friday as a federal employee and walked in Monday as a Hughes Aircraft employee," said Tom Lansing, a director of business development at Raytheon, who's worked at the East 21st Street plant more than two decades.
Raytheon's Indianapolis operation has emerged as an indispensable part of the company for two reasons: reduced military spending and the growing digitization of war.
After the 2011 Budget Control Act, the Defense Department cut spending and slowed its growth timetable. As a result, operations that develop new military toys haven't fared as well as those charged with maintenance and modernization.
"So that's a major thrust: modernizing our weapons systems so that data is useful for that guy or gal who has to go use it in the fight," said Probert, the Raytheon vice president. "And that's something that's happening in, at least in my lifetime, probably the most austere budget climate that I've seen for defense spending."
But the plant's technological innovation goes beyond retrofitting planes and tanks.
For instance, the facility produces augmented-reality lenses, which overlay icons and data on a fighter's field of vision. The lenses allow pilots, for instance, to see an outline of terrain while landing a helicopter despite being engulfed in a cloud of dust.
And earlier this year, the company received an honorable mention at TechPoint's Mira Awards for its Mission Data Server, which integrates disparate communication and information channels onto one platform.
"Data is becoming more of the focus, or at least as much of the focus, as the bullets and the planes and the tanks and the trucks," Probert said.
The Indianapolis location has benefited from the institutional knowledge rooted in its history, he said, and from the central Indiana talent pool.
While there might be competition from other logistics, aerospace or technology companies after the same talent, Probert said he's "not struggling with getting talent at this facility."
Gigerich is gratified by the plant's survival_and the new investment.
"I think it's just great for Indianapolis and great for the east side. If the east side would have taken a hit like it did with Fort (Harrison) and had 160 acres and couple thousand jobs go away like a normal base closure, that area of the community would have been devastated."
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Source: Indiana Business Journal, http://bit.ly/1royj5t
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Information from: Indianapolis Business Journal, http://www.ibj.com
This is an AP-Indiana Exchange story offered by the Indianapolis Business Journal.
- By GARY DEMUTH Salina Journal
- Updated
SALINA, Kan. (AP) — Three years after building his own submarine from scratch, Scott Waters' undersea ambitions have deepened.
In September 2013, the 27-year-old Salina man completed a five-year project to build a "yellow" submarine — a 14-foot-long, 4,500-pound, steel-plated, two-man sub powered by eight Marine batteries placed inside sealed cylinders on the bottom half of each side of the sub.
Waters successfully launched his custom sub — christened "Trustworthy" — at Milford Lake. Although the sub was designed to dive as deep as 350 feet and support life for up to 72 hours, the Milford Lake dive was accomplished in just a few feet of water and for very short periods of time.
For Waters, a submarine addict since he first viewed the Walt Disney/Jules Verne movie classic "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" as a child, it was the culmination of a decades-long obsession.
"I got blueprints for a submarine back in first grade," said Waters, now 29 and chief executive officer of the Kansas-based family business Waters True Value Hardware.
After that successful launch, Waters was ready to take his obsession a step further and much, much deeper.
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Sea sub purchased
In December, he purchased a deep diving submarine called the Pisces VI, a spherically-shaped sub constructed of 1.1-inch thick specialty hardened steel and weighing 24,000 pounds. The sub is designed to dive a maximum of 8,300 feet and carry a pilot and three passengers for up to five days.
The Salina Journal (http://j.mp/1ZJ9Aoh ) reports that the Pisces VI was built in 1976 by HYCO, an international hydrodynamics company, for $2.5 million — about $10.5 million in 2016 dollars — and sold to a company called IUC (International Underwater Contractors) for undersea exploration and deep water drilling for the oil industry.
Waters said the Pisces VI also made important contributions to a better understanding of the deep ocean as part of National Geographic's William Beebe expedition, discovering never before seen deep sea creatures in their natural environment.
More than a decade ago, IUC switched its focus away from submarine exploration and decommissioned the Pisces VI. Waters said he ran across the sub while conducting a worldwide search for decommissioned deep sea subs and made a purchase offer.
The company wanted $500,000 for the Pisces VI, but Waters said he bought it for $30,000.
"We went back and forth for nine months, but I stuck to my guns and it paid off," he said.
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Upgrades planned
Waters' purchase makes the Pisces VI the deepest diving submersible owned by a private individual in the world. Only six other government-owned submarines in the world have the capability of diving to a similar depth, Waters said.
Waters picked up the Pisces VI from a Wisconsin storage facility and hauled it to a custom-built shop near the Saline/Ottawa county line. With the assistance of a team of experts, Waters said he plans to renovate and retrofit the sub during the next four years.
"For a 40-year-old sub, it's not in bad shape," he said. "We're going to tear it apart to its individual components and do a lot of upgrades, including putting in computerized systems and electronics."
Waters said in the end the refurbishing costs could exceed $100,000, with most of that coming from his own bank account.
"I won't make money until we get it in the water in about four years," he said. "And that timeline might change."
Waters is being assisted in the sub renovation by crew chief Vance Bradley, of Port St. Lucie, Fla., an adviser for a personal submersibles organization at psubs.org and veteran of hundreds of offshore and underwater explorations; Ben Fosse, a Kansas State University graduate who is a professional commercial pilot in Delaware; and Ryan Johnson, a Salina machinist and longtime friend of Waters.
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'A commercial venture'
Bradley said despite the years of wear, the hull of the Pisces VI was in nearly "perfect" shape.
"I've piloted two of her sisters and worked on this one for a time when it was a couple of years old, and it's in remarkably good condition for a sub that was used fairly regularly the first three decades of its life," he said.
Bradley said that when diving at dangerous depths, the thick, spherical shape of the sub helps distribute "equal pressure all around."
Even the viewport at the center of the sub is not made of glass or plastic but a special 14-inch-thick R-Cast acrylic made for deep diving submersibles.
"You can't buy this stuff at True Value stores," he said with a laugh.
Fosse said his job mainly is to go through a lot of "checks and balances" to make sure the sub is restored and operated as safely as possible.
"The safety procedures are a lot like we use in airlines," he said. "There's a lot of grunt work that needs to be done to restore this sub. It's a long-term project that you can't do overnight, but the end result is a sub that will be used to open up a chunk of the world nobody's seen before, and that's exciting."
Once the sub is restored, Waters said he plans to take it to a research and testing facility in San Antonio, Texas, to give him a better idea "of how deep it can go."
After the Pisces VI is deemed seaworthy, Waters said he plans to ship it to a location like the Canary Islands and recoup the costs of the expensive restoration by offering low-cost services in areas of science, film and tourism.
Since 2008, Waters said, government funding has been slashed for science and exploration programs, so his plan is to offer his sub as a less-expensive option for scientists and film crews to continue their exploration of the world's oceans.
"I'm hoping for big contracts in the future for science and film companies," he said. "Mankind has a need to explore and learn about the world we live on. I plan on pushing the envelope of exploration in the deep sea."
Tourism also is a major goal. Waters plans to offer rides in the sub to those willing to pay the price.
"The other sub was for fun," he said. "This sub is a major investment and goes way beyond being a hobby. It's a commercial venture."
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Information from: The Salina (Kan.) Journal, http://www.salina.com
- By SETH TUPPER Rapid City Journal
- Updated
COTTONWOOD, S.D. (AP) — There is no escaping the divisive tone of politics in this election year — not even in Cottonwood, S.D., population 12.
But it wasn't the presidential primaries that had townspeople divided as they went to their polling place Tuesday. It was a proposal to dissolve the town, which voters rejected, the Rapid City Journal (http://bit.ly/1tpLLHu ) reported.
The final tally: 7 to 4.
Dave Griffee is the acting president of the board of trustees of Cottonwood, located in ranching country on U.S. 14 about 70 miles due east of Rapid City. He said a few residents who oppose modest efforts to improve the town forced the election. They were disruptive at town board meetings, Griffee said, and insisted that the town and its government be disbanded.
"So just to shut them up once and for all," Griffee said Wednesday, "we said, 'Well, we'll give them a chance to vote it.'"
The election brought the town to the brink of dissolution after more than a century of existence on the plains between Wall and Philip.
According to local history books, the town's origins date to the late 1800s. Oxen-drawn wagons hauling freight between the Missouri River and Deadwood crossed a creek lined with Cottonwood trees and dubbed the place "Cottonwood Crossing." The town was officially organized there in either 1906 or 1907, as railroads and homesteaders pushed west onto former Native American lands that were opened for settlement.
Cottonwood's zenith came around 1930, when the census counted 191 residents. Through the years, there was a post office, a newspaper, a bank, a school, a hotel, a rodeo arena and even a municipal electric power plant.
"At one time," wrote local historian Leona Cook in 1966, "Cottonwood was probably the largest and most thriving town between Fort Pierre and Rapid City."
The Depression and Dust Bowl hit western South Dakota hard in the 1930s and drove many families off the land. Cottonwood's school closed during the 1950s because of declining enrollment and insufficient funding, and the town's population dropped below 100, never to recover.
Today, no businesses remain, and much of the town has melted into the surrounding environment. Cottonwood's few streets are unpaved, and much of the grass in town is knee-high or up to the thigh, and intermixed with yellow sweet clover. Perhaps two dozen structures still stand, although some are leaning. They range from ramshackle, faded-wood outbuildings to well-kept homes.
The skyline, so to speak, remains surprisingly distinct thanks to the aluminum-covered skeleton of an old grain elevator, the steeple of an abandoned clapboard church, and a dilapidated, two-story brick structure, the only one of its kind in town. Those photogenic emblems of rural decay lure as many as a dozen curious motorists off the highway during the busiest days of the summer road-trip season. On Wednesday morning, a shiny SUV drove slowly through town and stopped occasionally as its occupants hopped out with cameras.
It takes a certain kind of person to reside in Cottonwood, where days unfold slowly under the harsh sun of the western South Dakota sky, and the sound of summer birdsong is interrupted only by the wind, the trains and the vehicles that zoom past on the highway.
The 66-year-old Griffee, who sports a bushy horseshoe mustache, is one of those certain people. He retired several years ago from a job in Rapid City and bought six lots in Cottonwood for about $500 apiece. While keeping a home base there in one of his three campers, he uses the other campers to poke around the Black Hills as he prospects and pans for gold.
Griffee said he is among a group of townspeople who wrested control of the town board away from the family of J.C. Heath, the former board president. Heath was not home Wednesday when the Journal visited Cottonwood, and nobody returned several phone messages left by the Journal at a number listed for the Heaths in a 2015 South Dakota Municipal League directory.
According to Griffee, the Heaths oppose minor clean-up efforts and ideas to attract people and businesses to Cottonwood, like setting up a picnic area for motorists or recruiting someone to build a gas station and convenience store.
"They said they want the town to stay as it has been, even if it ends up dying someday," Griffee said.
The divergent visions caused town board meetings to grow confrontational, until Griffee said he and others decided to appease the Heaths by granting them an election on their demand to dissolve the town. Griffee figures the Heaths accounted for three of the four "yes" votes on the ballot measure, but he isn't sure who cast the other one.
A Cottonwood resident who requested anonymity voted "no" on the ballot measure for several reasons, including the town's funding of street lights, road maintenance and garbage service. The garbage service consists of a central dumpster that everyone uses and the town pays to have emptied.
Cottonwood does not levy any taxes of its own but receives a small share of various state and county taxes and fees, including vehicle-licensing revenue. Unaudited annual financial reports submitted to the state Department of Legislative Audit show that Cottonwood received between $7,000 and $9,000 in annual revenue in recent years and has spent between $4,000 and $8,000 annually.
Besides Griffee's seat on the town board, there is a vacant seat and another seat filled by 72-year-old Phil Stark, a retired Navy submariner who grew up in nearby Philip and lives in a trailer house in Cottonwood with his wife, Jo-Ann.
Stark was sitting next to a mini-fridge stocked with beer and fish bait on his deck Wednesday morning, while smoking a cigarette and staying cool under the dense shade of an awning and the trees around it.
Stark seemed like a man unburdened by worry, and he sounded faintly amused by the town's recent troubles. But he also hopes the town survives and counts himself and his wife among the seven votes cast against dissolution.
He hopes the election returns will put an end to the strife, because in a town of 12, it's tough to avoid anyone.
"It's kind of like Rodney King said," Stark opined, recalling the victim of an infamous 1991 police beating in Los Angeles. "Can't we all just get along?"
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Information from: Rapid City Journal, http://www.rapidcityjournal.com
- By JOE HOLLEMAN St. Louis Post-Dispatch
- Updated
ST. LOUIS (AP) — If you play it, they will come. Eventually.
The purple martin, North America's largest swallow, has a cozy relationship with humans.
But they were generally missing from the St. Louis Zoo until May, when three mating pairs made their home in a tall house on a tiny island in a small cove at the park.
And "the song" may have done the trick.
Officially titled "The Dawn Song," it was recorded in 1989 in Oregon by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The tune basically is a looped recording of a male purple martin singing a song that gets quicker as dawn approaches.
"We played it every morning, from 3:30 to 6:30," said bird keeper Matt Schamberger, a Belleville native who now lives in St. Louis and has been with the zoo for four years.
"Actually, we got the A.V. guy to set it on a timer to go off automatically," he said. "We like purple martins, sure, but not enough to be here at 3:30 every morning."
The "we" includes Jim Deters, a Warrenton resident and a 27-year veteran of bird-keeping at the zoo, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (http://bit.ly/28xJUAQ ) reports.
"Last year was our first, and we didn't get (the house) up until May," Deters said. "We did get what they call 'scouts,' which are older adult birds who come by and look for good nesting locations. But that was it.
"But this year, we moved the house to a better spot and played the song and so far we've been able to identify three mating pairs," Deters said with quiet pride.
One of the species' most endearing habits is that they come back to the same nest for years, and often make that return on the same date. (The swallows of Capistrano, right?)
But both keepers wonder about next year's return, given that the pairs here now did not show up until early May.
"Migratory patterns (the birds start in South America) say they're supposed to get here in late April, so we played the song for a solid month, mid-March to mid-April," Schamberger said.
"But ours didn't. We kind of thought we weren't going to get any, and then they show up in May," Schamberger said.
The pair of keepers said they would love to get up to 12 pairs in the 24-condo birdhouse.
Schamberger said the pairs now seem to be occupying two condos each. "It's like they have a home and a vacation home in the same birdhouse."
Michael Macek, the zoo's curator of birds, said he wanted to create an environment for a species that is easily one of the most popular with bird lovers.
"Purple martins have this unique connection to humans. People just seem to like them and value them," Macek said, noting that Native Americans began building homes for the birds several hundred years ago.
The tribes created houses from hollowed-out gourds, painted them white and hung them on tall poles. Research indicates that the tribes may have appreciated, among other traits, their voracious appetite for flying insects.
Macek said the conspicuous nature of a purple martin house has helped popularize the species: They are built on tall poles, between 12 and 20 feet off the ground. They have multiple compartments, called "condos" or "apartments."
Deters said the height stems from the species' healthy fear of predators.
"They like it to stand alone, away from buildings and trees that could hide predators," Deters said. "And they even like the ground around the pole to be clear of any foliage, in case they're hiding in there."
Schamberger said the species is rare in its communal living.
"Most birds, including other swallows, build one small nest in a secluded place and don't want company. But martins seemed to like living in a crowd," he said.
Finally, people love the species' acrobatic flights and seemingly endless amount of energy.
"They're busy birds," Schamberger said. "They're always doing something."
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Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, http://www.stltoday.com
- By PAUL SWIECH The (Bloomington) Pantagraph
BLOOMINGTON, Ill. (AP) — Jayvoni Jefferson, seated on his mother's lap and wearing flexible-frame prescription eyeglasses, reacted excitedly to a television program.
"It's BabyFirst TV," said his mother, Qyanna (Key-A-na) Jackson. "It's his favorite program because it's so colorful."
A few minutes later, Jayvoni, who turned 2 years old on June 4, was standing directly in front of the television and holding on to the table underneath.
"We don't know what he can see," Qyanna said. "He knows our faces."
"It's heartbreaking when a kid is sick," she said in their Bloomington apartment as Jayvoni watched television. Her mother, Annie Jackson, also of Bloomington, watched Jayvoni carefully.
"I just want Jayvoni to be healed," Qyanna said. "I want all children with cancer to be healed."
Jayvoni has bilateral retinoblastoma. Retinoblastoma is a cancer that starts in the retina, in the back of the eye. Bilateral means he has cancer in both eyes.
That's uncommon. His pediatrician, Dr. Kaye Harms Toohill of Bloomington Pediatrics & Allergy, said Jayvoni is her first patient with bilateral retinoblastoma.
There is a family history. Qyanna, 33, had it, as did her father, Willie Williams, 75, of Chicago.
Qyanna's right eye was removed shortly after birth and replaced with a prosthesis. Her father is blind.
Complicating matters is that Jayvoni also has sickle cell disease, an inherited blood cell disorder that requires close monitoring.
"Those are significant illnesses to have at once," Toohill said.
"That has complicated his treatments," said Dr. Janice Lasky Zeid, an ophthalmologist and medical director of ocular tumors at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago.
Jayvoni is undergoing treatments at Lurie to control the tumors in both eyes by making them inactive, to save his vision and save his eyes, Zeid said.
"It's a difficult treatment course. He has had some response to treatment. Some tumors have responded (mostly in the left eye) but there hasn't been a complete regression of the tumors," Zeid said. "We are hoping to improve that over time. We are closely following him."
"I'm hoping they can remove the tumors without removing his eyes," Qyanna said.
The dedication of Jayvoni's family, especially Qyanna, helps, the doctors said.
"She has done a remarkable job," Toohill said. "She's a single mother but she never misses doctors' appointments here or in Chicago."
"They are a wonderful family," Zeid said. "They have been through so much but have shown a lot of courage through the whole process. She (Qyanna) is devoted to Jayvoni and makes everything work for him."
Jayvoni and his mother live in the apartment with Jayvoni's sister, Janesha Hampton, 11.
"Janesha doesn't carry the gene," her mother said.
After Qyanna, who relocated to Bloomington in 2008, was diagnosed with bilateral retinoblastoma at birth, her right eye was removed. Her mother said cryotherapy, laser therapy and radiation followed to save her left eye.
Cryotherapy uses extreme cold to destroy abnormal issue. Laser therapy uses heat.
Treatments continued until age 11.
While the treatments saved the vision in her left eye, not having a right eye results in imbalance at times, Qyanna said.
"Everything is a double take because I can only see with my left eye," she said.
Because of her prosthetic right eye, "it makes me look like I'm cross-eyed sometimes," Qyanna said. During childhood, she was teased by other children.
Jayvoni was born on June 4, 2014. He was diagnosed immediately with sickle cell disease and, shortly thereafter, with bilateral retinoblastoma when tumors were found in both eyes.
"I was devastated," Qyanna said. "I knew there was a chance but I was hoping he wouldn't have it because Janesha doesn't."
Jayvoni was referred to Lurie, where he was seen by Zeid, first as an inpatient, then as an outpatient.
Treatments have included chemotherapy, cryotherapy and laser treatments.
Jayvoni's current routine is two appointments a month with Zeid in Chicago to treat the eye cancer and two appointments a month with a sickle cell specialist at the St. Jude clinic in Peoria.
Sometimes, after cryotherapy and laser treatments, Jayvoni is so sick that he needs to stay at Lurie overnight. Generally, he's sent home with Tylenol with codeine to help to treat the pain and facial swelling.
Anesthesia medicine that Jayvoni is given so he can undergo cryotherapy and laser treatments sometimes result in seizures and erratic breathing during the drives back from Chicago, Qyanna said. Some of those episodes result in quick diversions to the nearest emergency department.
After treatments, he can't rub his eyes or take his glasses off, so his arms are strapped down for a while.
"He hates it," his mother said.
He hasn't been able to get his childhood immunizations — except for hepatitis B — because they could interact with his cancer treatments, Qyanna said. That puts Jayvoni at risk of infection.
That's why he takes penicillin twice a day. Other daily treatments include a cream to treat rash resulting from his meds and an anti-nausea medicine, Qyanna said.
Because he's at high risk of infection, Jayvoni seldom leaves the house. Most of his outings are for doctors' appointments and church on Sunday.
"He has had no significant infections, despite both diagnoses," Toohill said.
Because Jayvoni's sight is impaired, he walks off balance, his mother said. He recently got his prescription eyeglasses to strengthen his right eye but he doesn't like them and frequently takes them off.
"He bumps into things," Qyanna said. "I carry him a lot so doesn't hurt himself."
Qyanna, who was an assistant teacher at a day care, quit her job to care for Jayvoni.
"It's rough on him and it's rough on my daughter and myself," Qyanna admitted. "My mom helps as much as she possibly can but there are a lot of things we can't do because of his medical condition."
His left eye is considered stable because there are no new tumors, Qyanna said. But there are several active tumors in his right eye.
A possible future treatment is intravitreal chemotherapy, which means injecting the drug directly into the eye, Zeid and Qyanna said.
More traditional chemotherapy and removal of the right eye are other possible future treatments that doctors are trying to avoid, Qyanna said.
"At times, I feel like I want it to be over with," Qyanna said. "I just want him to be healed, to be cancer free. I want him to have a normal life."
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Source: The (Bloomington) Pantagraph, http://bit.ly/1Y4I19S
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Information from: The Pantagraph, http://www.pantagraph.com
This is an AP-Illinois Exchange story offered by The (Bloomington) Pantagraph.
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Field days have been scheduled at four North Dakota sites next week for the collection and redistribution of flea beetles that eat leafy spurge.
Leafy spurge is one of North Dakota's most problematic weeds. Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring says people interested in getting flea beetles to release on their own property can collect them from established populations at the field day sites.
The field days are Tuesday in Billings County, Wednesday in Grant County, Thursday in Billings County and Friday in Stutsman County. They're sponsored by the state Agriculture Department and the county weed boards.
Details on the field days can be found at http://1.usa.gov/25ZS3PU
VALLEY CITY, N.D. (AP) — Valley City Police Chief Fred Thompson is apparently among the identity theft victims in a case being investigated in his city.
Thompson tells KFGO radio (http://bit.ly/1sIbLOp) that somebody submitted his income tax return and received a refund from the Internal Revenue Service in his name.
The chief says he was surprised to be part of the forensic information from state investigators who are analyzing computer hard drives and discs. Thompson says it could take up to a year to complete the investigation.
The computers, along with hundreds of credit and gift cards, were seized from a man's apartment and office in March. Valley City State University professor Long Man Ram Lau is charged with possession of stolen property and unauthorized use of personal information.
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Information from: KFGO-AM, http://www.kfgo.com
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri's attorney general says a judge has ordered Walgreens to pay $309,000 for violating an agreement between the drugstore chain and the state over allegedly deceptive pricing.
Chris Koster says a Jackson County judge assessed a $1,000 penalty Friday for each of the 309 times it was found to have left sales tags on the shelves after the sales period ended. Koster says that violated a 2014 deal mean to halt suspected overcharging.
That agreement barred Walgreens from leaving expired sales tags on display more than 12 hours from the time the offer expired.
Deerfield, Illinois-based Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. says the judge's ruling was consistent with the company's decision last year to take part in an auditing program under which it would pay fines for violating the agreement's terms.
- By BRIAN SLODYSKO Associated Press
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A former Indiana Department of Education official took a job with a company involved in a $573,000 agreement he helped broker to develop a web app that tracks school data and distributes news releases for state schools Superintendent Glenda Ritz's office.
Documents obtained by The Associated Press show that David Galvin, Ritz's former communications director and IT manager, took a job with N2N Services in October 2015 — two months after a $435,000 payment was requested for AT&T and N2N Services, AT&T's software developer, in connection with the project. Galvin, who is now executive director of marketing and communications for Atlanta-based N2N Services, specifically requested the two companies be hired for the work.
Watchdogs say it's another example of Indiana's lacking ethics laws, which were exposed in recent years by high-profile cases involving former schools superintendent Tony Bennett, former Indiana Department of Transportation chief of staff Troy Woodruff who sold land to the agency, and state Rep. Eric Turner, who helped kill a nursing home construction ban that could have cost his family business millions.
By law, Indiana's state government workers must comply with a mandatory one-year waiting period before taking a job with companies with which they helped negotiate contracts and spending agreements. State employees can seek a formal advisory opinion from the state Inspector General, which clears them to take a job.
There is no record of Galvin seeking a formal advisory opinion. Instead, an email released by Ritz's office shows he sought informal guidance. An official in the inspector general's office advised Galvin that he could work for the company because N2N was a subcontractor for AT&T and did not directly contract with the state, but suggested he seek a formal opinion "because of his extensive interaction with N2N."
Galvin, who was paid $88,000 a year by the state, says he took the job to be closer to his significant other and claims he took a pay cut, though he declined to provide documentation.
"I don't understand the big deal," Galvin said of his new job. "I listened to the people who do know the law and followed their guidance."
In a statement, Ritz's office noted the informal advice Galvin received from the inspector general's office and emphasized that he "has no current relationship or interaction with the Department."
Galvin was a divisive figure during his tenure as Ritz's communications director and helped instigate an ethics investigation into Ritz's GOP predecessor Bennett after she defeated him in 2012. Ritz staffers reviewing computers used by Bennett's administration found that Bennett's staffers had performed political work while on the clock as state employees, which is prohibited. No criminal charges came of the investigation, though Bennett was fined $5,000.
When it came to the web app, Galvin requested the 2015 deal with AT&T and N2N because the companies offered marketing capabilities and a product that the state could not provide, documents obtained by AP show. Also, the documents show that education department officials signed off on the agreement, but Indiana's Department of Administration, which vets state contracts, says they did not approve the agreement.
The state Republican Party called for an ethics investigation of Ritz's office Friday as a result of the AP's findings.
"From day one her office has put politics and self-interest before the needs of children. We are calling for a full ethics investigation from the Inspector General on this matter," David Buskill, the executive director of the Indiana Republican party, said in a statement.
These types of arrangements are the "reason people are cynical about government," according to Paul Helmke, a public affairs professor at Indiana University.
"When you have someone — paid by taxpayers — who is pushing a contract to a private entity then they leave and take a job within a couple months, that's why we need strong ethics rules," said Helmke, who is also a former Republican mayor of Fort Wayne.
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — The University of Missouri System is set to cut several administrative positions and reduce some salaries in an effort to offset a $3.8 million reduction in state funding.
The Columbia Missourian (http://bit.ly/28L7zxQ ) reports that the Board of Curators voted unanimously Thursday to approve the system's budget for fiscal year 2017. The budget includes a recurring payroll cut of $2 million and a one-time payroll cut of $1 million.
The system plans to implement a hiring freeze for some vacant positions. Raises will not be given to employees based on past performances for fiscal year 2017.
The cuts to administrative positions will include jobs in Finance, Information Systems, Human Resources, University Relations, General Counsel and Academic Affairs.
Vice President for Finance Brian Burnett said the system will do its best to serve all four university campuses "with a smaller workforce."
Burnett said that revenue for the upcoming year is steady and totaled around $3.1 billion.
At the curators meeting, university Chancellor Hank Foley also addressed an expected decrease in enrollment. He estimated enrollment will drop by 2,630 in fall 2016. Of the expected drop, almost 500 are students who are not returning to MU.
The anticipated decrease in enrollment has led to a $31.4 million budget gap.
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Information from: Columbia Missourian, http://www.columbiamissourian.com
MORGANTOWN, Ind. (AP) — Authorities in central Indiana say a man has died after a tree fell on him while he was gathering wood while riding an all-terrain vehicle.
The Indiana Department of Natural Resources say emergency responders were called about 7:30 p.m. Thursday to a residence in Morgantown about an ATV accident. When they arrived they found a large portion of a tree fell on 28-year-old Robert C. Blacker of Shelbyville.
Officials say emergency workers removed Blacker from under the tree and took him to a Martinsville hospital where he was pronounced dead. He suffered blunt force trauma to the head and chest.
Official say Blacker was helping gather wood and limbs when the tree broke and fell on him. Authorities say he wasn't wearing a helmet or other protective gear.
SHELL KNOB, Mo. (AP) — Authorities say a woman has died after an unoccupied pickup truck rolled into her in southwest Missouri.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol identified the victim as 68-year-old Bobbie Harris, of Shell Knob. The patrol says the truck rolled backward down a driveway Thursday and struck a 77-year-old woman before traveling onto a street and hitting Harris.
The older woman sustained minor injuries.
WEST CHESTER, Ohio (AP) — A suburban township has settled a lawsuit by Indiana-based adult club owners who had planned to open a swingers club in southwest Ohio.
The Hamilton-Middletown Journal-News reports (http://bit.ly/21oPC2w ) Melissa Warren and Eric Adams of Sanford Group LLC planned to open the sexually oriented business in West Chester but found their business license and zoning certificate had been revoked in November.
A judge ruled the town shouldn't have revoked the club's permit. The town and Sanford Group reached a settlement that calls for Warren and Adams not to open another such sexually oriented business or similar use in town.
The town has agreed to pay Sanford Group $61,000 and the site's landlord $29,000 toward unpaid rent.
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Information from: The JournalNews of Hamilton, http://www.journal-news.com/cgi-bin/liveique.acgi$sch=jnfront?jnfront
- By BLAIR EMERSON The Bismarck Tribune
FORT YATES, N.D. (AP) — In an effort to boost low-performing schools across the country, four schools on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation were selected to join a national program that integrates arts and music into curriculum.
The schools — Solen Middle School, Cannonball Elementary, Standing Rock Middle School and Standing Rock Elementary School — have been selected to join the White House's Turnaround Arts program, which uses arts education to improve academic achievement.
The President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities started the Turnaround Arts initiative five years ago, and it now operates in 68 schools in 15 states and the District of Columbia.
Staff of the president's committee toured the schools within the Solen Public Schools and Standing Rock Community/Fort Yates Public School District in February.
At the White House last month, Michelle Obama announced the Standing Rock schools will join the Turnaround Arts 2016 program during the 2nd Annual Turnaround Arts Talent Show.
Representatives from all four Standing Rock schools were invited to the White House for the announcement, The Bismarck Tribune reported (http://bit.ly/1rs7SvI ).
The program helps poorly performing elementary and middle schools enhance arts and music instruction, and offers professional development for teachers to integrate arts across subject areas, such as science and cultural studies.
"It's a really great opportunity for not only teachers, but students too," said Solen High School Principal Jeff Brandt, who visited the White House.
The integration of arts, such as dance, theater and music, into curriculum has been shown to improve students' academic performance.
A 2015 evaluation of schools in the program found that from 2011 to 2014, schools saw an average improvement of 12.6 percent in reading proficiency and 22.5 percent in math proficiency. Attendance rates also increased, and in-school and out-of-school suspensions decreased.
"This program has come at the right time for us because we are definitely looking at changes that we feel need to be made," said Robyn Baker, Fort Yates superintendent.
Such changes include schools focusing more on a "well-rounded" education that includes arts and music, rather than just reading and math, Baker said.
"Like every other school in the nation, we have been really stressing about the math and the reading and then forgetting about the arts," she said.
Artist mentors will also "adopt" schools through the three-year program, hosting workshops and giving lessons.
Jane Fonda will visit Solen Middle School, R&B singer and jazz recording artist Ledisi will go to Cannonball Elementary School, DJ IZ, actor and hip-hop artist, will be at Standing Rock Middle School, and Dave Matthews was selected to join Standing Rock Elementary School.
The artists will visit the schools sometime in the fall, according to Barb Sandstrom, local program director of Turnaround Arts: North Dakota.
The North Dakota Council on the Arts and the North Dakota Humanities Council also have signed on to the program.
School principals and staff members will visit Washington, D.C., at the end of the month for a five-day conference to learn more about the program and how to incorporate it into classrooms and at the schools.
"(Teachers are) really positive about this, and if it's a way to get kids engaged in learning, they're on board with it," Brandt said.
"We're really excited about it because I just think good things are going to come from it," Baker said.
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Information from: Bismarck Tribune, http://www.bismarcktribune.com
- By PETER SALTER Lincoln Journal Star
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Of course, the most famous house in Havelock was perfect for Don Wesely.
He was from the neighborhood, a Northeast Rocket. He knew something about being a local celebrity.
And the former mayor needed a place. He'd been renting in the Country Club area and had looked at maybe 100 houses around town. But they sold too fast or didn't measure up or exceeded his budget.
Then he saw a story in the paper last summer. The house at 6825 Platte Ave. -- the house hundreds of contractors and volunteers built while the rest of the city, and much of the nation, watched on "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" -- was for sale. And at $249,000, it was just inside his price range.
Wesely toured it that morning, all six bedrooms, six bathrooms, indoor-outdoor waterfalls and granite-countered laundry room. More than 4,000 square feet of prime time home design.
"It was more than fine," he said. "It was amazing."
He immediately offered his limit, a quarter-million even.
Wesely heard later the sellers had fielded half a dozen offers that day. He learned they chose his, he said, because he was from Havelock; he'd represented northeast Lincoln in the Legislature for 20 years.
Plus, he'd know how to handle the parade of cars that still circle the block, or the strangers who'd stop him in the cereal aisle to ask about his dream home.
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For nearly a decade now, the dream home has cast a shadow on Helen Tipton's tidy, 988-square-foot house next door.
And it reminds her daily of that week in late 2006 when her street was overrun with tourists, TV talent, volunteers, contractors and cameras.
The crews worked around the clock, flooding the night with noise and bright light. So the show's producers put her up in a hotel because she had an important job -- monitoring heart patients at the hospital -- and it was critical she got her sleep.
They also gave her $500 for use of her yard, but left her with dead grass, dead flowers and a string of broken promises.
"They took out my tree, took out my fence, moved my shed. I'm still having problems because of that house."
That house. That house stands out, and it still means something to people. People still drive by, 10 years later, just for a look at that house.
"The house doesn't fit this neighborhood. It's extremely large and it has lots of bells and whistles that our little houses don't have," she said.
"But that house is everybody's dream, that house represents all the dreams people have that someday they might get something free like that."
It was built for a Lincoln couple whose blended family -- she had three teens, he had two -- threatened to overwhelm his two-bedroom home on Platte Avenue. Instead of renovating, the show started over, hauling away the old house and constructing this mansion. All in six days.
When the show aired in January 2007, millions of viewers watched Ty Pennington and his crew converge on 6825 Platte Ave., to surprise the couple. They watched the demolition and construction, and they watched the family vacation in Paris that week.
They watched Helen Tipton's working class neighborhood get attention it wasn't used to.
"You see it on TV, people get free cars and they get free houses," she said. "But those are places like Chicago and New York, not little Lincoln, Nebraska."
The family returned for the tear-filled reveal -- preceded by its trademark chant: "Move that bus!" -- and settled in their new home. They felt like they were living in a fishbowl, they said at the time, although the house on Platte Avenue began disappearing from the headlines.
Until last year, when Don Wesely opened his newspaper and learned Havelock's most famous house was for sale, the Lincoln Journal Star (http://bit.ly/1RAW28b ) reported.
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The first floor is cavernous, almost medieval -- with a castle-like staircase inside the front door, walls made of stone, walls made to look like stone, exposed brickwork, rough-hewn planks for the kitchen ceiling.
"When I first came over and I walked in," Wesely said, "it took my breath away."
Every door opened to a surprise.
The show's designers were known for tailoring their work, for creating theme rooms to match each family member, and for trying to outdo each other.
So on Platte Avenue, they built a room to resemble a tropical paradise, with bamboo wainscoting.
They built a hockey room, with an illuminated plexiglass floor to look like ice and pucks for the closet door pulls.
They built a racing room, with diamond plate shelving and a three-level slot car set that swung down from the wall to fill most of the floor.
They built a photography room, with picture frames that look like light boxes.
They built a backyard oasis, with a covered patio off the two-story garage, a babbling brook and marble benches.
They spared no expense in the bathrooms, and no two fixtures are alike -- except for the his-and-hers shallow sinks in the master bath. They put in a sink that looks like a mixing bowl, a sink that looks like a seashell, a sink made of stainless steel. Faucets that look like nozzles, a faucet that cascades like a waterfall and a wall-mounted waterfall in the room Wesely turned into an office.
"So if you ever get stressed out, you can come in here and watch the water, I suppose."
But the builders also gave the dream home the horsepower to support their design and the scale of their construction. A pair of everything, Wesely said: two water heaters, two water softeners, two furnaces, two air conditioners.
"One of the things about older homes is they have character," he said. "This house has got character, but it also has all the modern features."
This house was so big it took him a few visits to finally find the last basement bathroom. And although the home was built in under a week, it's solid, he said: He's discovered a few loose tiles and a couple of bricks that need to be reset, but that's it.
If this house had been selling in another neighborhood, far from the clang-clang-clanging of trains in the Havelock shops, he couldn't have afforded it.
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It's beginning to feel like home to him, but it took some time.
Lots of room -- and rooms -- to fill.
Such an eclectic house can accommodate almost any style of fixture, furniture or artwork. So a Persian-style rug with Wesely's face stitched into it -- a gift from the people of Khujand, Lincoln's sister city in Tajikistan -- fits right in on the wall above the staircase, not far from the suit of armor that greets visitors.
The former politician added a Kennedy Room, with portraits of the brothers and a JFK rocking chair. He turned the first-floor guest bath into the Lincoln Bathroom, with a fancy, framed photo of Abe above the toilet.
The photo-themed room's black-and-white wallpaper had a European flair, so it became his Paris Room, decorated with Eiffel Towers. He kept the tropical paradise room, adding bamboo folding chairs and a pair of stuffed pandas.
He brought in his own big pieces of furniture but bought even bigger -- including a massive table from Mrs. B's Clearance Outlet at Nebraska Furniture Mart that now seems small in his dining room.
"I bought a few things and I had a few things. It's been a hunt."
It's a big house for one person. But he has three adult children, and one grandchild so far, and they all have their own rooms now when they return to Lincoln to visit. He's been a lobbyist for a dozen years, and he now has a home, and yard, perfect for gatherings and fundraisers.
He doesn't plan to make any changes. He likes the paint and the fixtures. He still marvels at his house every morning, he said, even after nearly a year.
"There are nicer houses and more expensive houses, but none was built in six days, and none was given for free on national TV," he said. "There's no other house like this."
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Information from: Lincoln Journal Star, http://www.journalstar.com
- By CARSON GERBER Kokomo Tribune
KOKOMO, Ind. (AP) — Call it meat with a mission. That's how Brian and Alan Mast see it.
Since 2008, the father-and-son team has raised cows that they eventually turn into hamburger.
That's the meat. And the mission?
All the beef is donated to Kokomo Urban Outreach to help provide meals to up to 1,000 local kids every Sunday evening.
Brian and Alan aren't cattle farmers, but that hasn't stopped them from spearheading the outreach, which has become known as the Cattle Project.
It was Alan who first came up with the idea of raising cattle and donating the meat. He was a 16-year-old sophomore at Northwestern High School at the time, and he had just spent a week volunteering in the food pantry at KUO.
It didn't take long for Alan to notice that the ministry included hardly any beef or pork with their meals, and he felt that was a problem, since eating meat provides essential nutrients like protein.
So Alan had an idea. Why not buy some cows, raise them, butcher them and then hand off the beef to the ministry?
"I didn't think it would be too challenging to raise some cattle for the outreach," he said.
After all, Alan already had a little experience dealing with cattle, since he had been working on a neighbor's dairy farm since he was 13. That experience had taught him, however, that it can be expensive to raise cows.
So Alan took the idea to the congregation at Howard-Miami Mennonite Church, where he attends, and asked for donations to get the project off the ground.
It was an idea the church took an instant liking to, and within a couple of months, members had donated enough money to allow Alan to buy two calves.
One of Alan's good friends from the church youth group had a barn a few miles from his home near Kokomo Municipal Airport, so the two cleaned it up and got it ready to house the two calves.
"It was crazy to see all the things come together," he said. "It was really a God thing. All the pieces just seemed to fit together."
For the next year, Alan visited his friend's barn every day to feed and water the cows. When they had grown large enough, the animals were butchered, and Alan was able to send around 1,000 pounds of meat to KUO.
That was in 2008. Since then, the Cattle Project has donated in total around 20 processed animals.
KUO Executive Director Jeff Newton said the outreach has come to depend on the annual donation, which has allowed the food ministry to grow by leaps and bounds.
He said before the Cattle Project, the ministry was providing just 100 meals at two different locations to families on Sunday evening.
But with more than 1,000 pounds of beef coming in every year, that number quickly mushroomed into 1,000 meals at 13 different locations around the city every Sunday.
Newton estimates each cow provides around 5,000 meals. Add up all the cows donated since the outreach started, and the Cattle Project has provided around 100,000 meals to kids and families in Kokomo.
"It's huge," Newton said. "That's what we count on to provide meals. It's a huge gift that affects tons of people. I'm not sure what we would do without it."
Now, the outreach has morphed into a kind of community-wide undertaking since Alan started it eight years ago.
His dad, Brian, took over the day-to-day chores when he left for college in 2010.
Brian, who owns Ace Automotive in Kokomo, is currently raising five calves, which are housed in a neighbor's barn during the winter, and put out to pasture in another neighbor's fields in the summer.
Not long ago, a local Rotary Club raised enough money to pay for the installation of new fencing around the barn.
When it comes to feeding the cows, Brian, Alan and other volunteers spend time every summer harvesting hay, which is grown on land owned by Alan's brother, as well property owned by the boss of Brian's wife.
And through it all, members at Howard-Miami Mennonite Church have consistently donated enough money to buy new calves every year and help pay for grain and other supplies.
Sarah Schlegel, a pastor at the church, said the congregation has embraced the outreach and made sure it succeeds. Every year, they hold a chili dinner, with all the proceeds going to the project
Last year, an issue with some of the cows prevented them from being butchered, so the church raised enough money to buy meat to donate to KUO.
"We really want to do what we can to help fight hunger in the community," she said.
Alan, who is now 23 and works for a poultry farm near Warsaw, said it's been neat to see so many people jump on board and do whatever they can to help with the project, such as donating trailers to transport the cows or filling in to do the chores when Brian is on vacation.
"We use so many different people who all donate different things," he said. "I knew the church would help, but the community support has been amazing. People help out wherever they can, and that's pretty cool."
Brian said it's that kind of support that keeps the outreach up and running, and without it, the Cattle Project would have stopped long ago.
"You realize you're doing good for somebody, and that's what motivates you," he said. "We don't realize the need in town. It's hard to imagine that so many kids in our backyards are needy, but they are. To know that we're making a difference . That's what it's all about."
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Source: Kokomo Tribune, http://bit.ly/1OqMJND
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Information from: Kokomo Tribune, http://www.ktonline.com
This is an AP-Indiana Exchange story offered by the Kokomo Tribune.
- By JARED COUNCIL Indianapolis Business Journal
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — In 1942, the U.S. Navy opened a secret manufacturing plant on the east side of Indianapolis to produce bombsights, devices that helped World War II pilots gauge when to release bombs.
By the early 1990s, the 1-million-square-foot facility at Arlington Avenue and East 21st Street was virtually unneeded, and the U.S. Department of Defense was slated to close the 2,300-worker plant_a fate averted by a 1996 privatization deal orchestrated by then-Mayor Stephen Goldsmith.
Following that brush with death, the plant now is run by the multibillion-dollar defense contractor Raytheon Co. It not only has survived, but has become the sole location for some key Raytheon programs, including one that's sort of a "Pimp My Ride" for old battle tanks.
The operation here_which primarily offers upkeep and modernization services_has become so important to Raytheon that the company has consolidated similar facilities into it, is investing$24 million into renovations, and plans to add a few hundred jobs in the coming years.
"I think this facility is uniquely positioned for what the military needs today," said Todd Probert, Raytheon's vice president of mission support and modernization.
"Raytheon is out there developing new missiles and new radars and that's important, too. But there's a deployed weapon-system base that the U.S. has to keep maintained so we can keep our competitive edge on the military scene. And facilities like Indy are more relevant now than they've ever been."
Raytheon has 61,000 employees worldwide and $23 billion in annual sales. It's one of the Big 5 defense contractors, along with Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co., Northrup Grumman Corp. and General Dynamics Corp.
The roughly 1,000-employee Indianapolis facility falls under Raytheon's Intelligence, Information and Services Division, one of four at the suburban-Boston-based company.
The division refurbishes electronic systems worn by the rigors of military use, as well as modernizes dated components of vehicles and aircraft. It also does cybersecurity work and builds custom military solutions upon request.
Indianapolis is home to much of that work, including Raytheon's tank modernization. That program takes Army-green 1970s tanks, soups them up with new firing and control systems, and sells them by the dozen to authorized countries like Jordan.
"So, basically you take an old tank, you give it new capabilities, and you keep it relevant," said Rimas Guzulaitis, a senior director with the Intelligence, Information and Services Division.
New tanks can cost several million dollars each; retrofitting these old ones costs about a third of that, he said.
Raytheon also modernizes the cockpits of F-18 fighter jets, replacing antiquated analog controls and gauges withdigital dashboards.
As military spending becomes more measured, customers are more attracted to the idea of enhancing vehicles already in use and lacing them with technology for an increasingly digital battlefield, Raytheon officials said.
A walk through the massive plant feels like a blast from the past. Michigan Maple wooden floors_designed to mitigate shock waves from bombsight manufacturing and testing_are still abundant, stretching several hundred feet down some corridors.
And archaic signs with messages such as "TEST IN PROGRESS DO NOT ENTER" aren't hard to come by.
The site known for upgrading and renovating military systems now is getting its own makeover.
"We've partnered with the state here recently and we're going through a major face-lift to make it relevant for the future," Probert said.
Probert was referring to the deal it hashed out with the Indiana Economic Development Corp. last year to add 349 jobs by 2020 in exchange for $4.4 million in tax credits. It employed about 900 people at the time.
Raytheon consolidated similar operations in California and Virginia into the Indianapolis location as part of the agreement and plans to pump $24.4 million into interior and exterior renovations.
While the plant's employment is far below its peak of 3,000-plus, without privatization it might be shuttered today. In the early 1990s, the federal government was closing dozens of military operations under its Base Realignment and Closure program_including Fort Benjamin Harrison in Lawrence in 1991.
Before privatization, the Raytheon plant was called the Naval Air Warfare Center. It performed so-called depot work, which entailed refurbishing used military equipment like missile holders.
Realizing NAWC was on track for closure, Goldsmith, who developed a national reputation for bidding out government work, raced to avert disaster.
Larry Gigerich, who was executive assistant for economic development under Goldsmith, said city officials learned from Fort Harrison's closing that pleading with the military wouldn't work. So Goldsmith struck pre-emptively with a plan for private firms to bid to take over NAWC.
The military's experience with privatizations mostly involved government-owned, contractor-operated arrangements, Gigerich said. There was no precedent for transferring real estate and physical assets off the military's books, as the NAWC deal called for. At the time, it was the largest deal of its kind.
"It was one of the most satisfying projects that I've ever worked on, I think partly because it was so difficult to get it done and it had never been done before," said Gigerich, who is now managing director at site-selection firm Ginovus LLC.
The federal government ultimately OK'd the plan, and Hughes Electronics Corp. took over operations on Jan. 1, 1997. Raytheon bought Hughes later that year.
"We walked out of the door on a Friday as a federal employee and walked in Monday as a Hughes Aircraft employee," said Tom Lansing, a director of business development at Raytheon, who's worked at the East 21st Street plant more than two decades.
Raytheon's Indianapolis operation has emerged as an indispensable part of the company for two reasons: reduced military spending and the growing digitization of war.
After the 2011 Budget Control Act, the Defense Department cut spending and slowed its growth timetable. As a result, operations that develop new military toys haven't fared as well as those charged with maintenance and modernization.
"So that's a major thrust: modernizing our weapons systems so that data is useful for that guy or gal who has to go use it in the fight," said Probert, the Raytheon vice president. "And that's something that's happening in, at least in my lifetime, probably the most austere budget climate that I've seen for defense spending."
But the plant's technological innovation goes beyond retrofitting planes and tanks.
For instance, the facility produces augmented-reality lenses, which overlay icons and data on a fighter's field of vision. The lenses allow pilots, for instance, to see an outline of terrain while landing a helicopter despite being engulfed in a cloud of dust.
And earlier this year, the company received an honorable mention at TechPoint's Mira Awards for its Mission Data Server, which integrates disparate communication and information channels onto one platform.
"Data is becoming more of the focus, or at least as much of the focus, as the bullets and the planes and the tanks and the trucks," Probert said.
The Indianapolis location has benefited from the institutional knowledge rooted in its history, he said, and from the central Indiana talent pool.
While there might be competition from other logistics, aerospace or technology companies after the same talent, Probert said he's "not struggling with getting talent at this facility."
Gigerich is gratified by the plant's survival_and the new investment.
"I think it's just great for Indianapolis and great for the east side. If the east side would have taken a hit like it did with Fort (Harrison) and had 160 acres and couple thousand jobs go away like a normal base closure, that area of the community would have been devastated."
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Source: Indiana Business Journal, http://bit.ly/1royj5t
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Information from: Indianapolis Business Journal, http://www.ibj.com
This is an AP-Indiana Exchange story offered by the Indianapolis Business Journal.
- By GARY DEMUTH Salina Journal
SALINA, Kan. (AP) — Three years after building his own submarine from scratch, Scott Waters' undersea ambitions have deepened.
In September 2013, the 27-year-old Salina man completed a five-year project to build a "yellow" submarine — a 14-foot-long, 4,500-pound, steel-plated, two-man sub powered by eight Marine batteries placed inside sealed cylinders on the bottom half of each side of the sub.
Waters successfully launched his custom sub — christened "Trustworthy" — at Milford Lake. Although the sub was designed to dive as deep as 350 feet and support life for up to 72 hours, the Milford Lake dive was accomplished in just a few feet of water and for very short periods of time.
For Waters, a submarine addict since he first viewed the Walt Disney/Jules Verne movie classic "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" as a child, it was the culmination of a decades-long obsession.
"I got blueprints for a submarine back in first grade," said Waters, now 29 and chief executive officer of the Kansas-based family business Waters True Value Hardware.
After that successful launch, Waters was ready to take his obsession a step further and much, much deeper.
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Sea sub purchased
In December, he purchased a deep diving submarine called the Pisces VI, a spherically-shaped sub constructed of 1.1-inch thick specialty hardened steel and weighing 24,000 pounds. The sub is designed to dive a maximum of 8,300 feet and carry a pilot and three passengers for up to five days.
The Salina Journal (http://j.mp/1ZJ9Aoh ) reports that the Pisces VI was built in 1976 by HYCO, an international hydrodynamics company, for $2.5 million — about $10.5 million in 2016 dollars — and sold to a company called IUC (International Underwater Contractors) for undersea exploration and deep water drilling for the oil industry.
Waters said the Pisces VI also made important contributions to a better understanding of the deep ocean as part of National Geographic's William Beebe expedition, discovering never before seen deep sea creatures in their natural environment.
More than a decade ago, IUC switched its focus away from submarine exploration and decommissioned the Pisces VI. Waters said he ran across the sub while conducting a worldwide search for decommissioned deep sea subs and made a purchase offer.
The company wanted $500,000 for the Pisces VI, but Waters said he bought it for $30,000.
"We went back and forth for nine months, but I stuck to my guns and it paid off," he said.
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Upgrades planned
Waters' purchase makes the Pisces VI the deepest diving submersible owned by a private individual in the world. Only six other government-owned submarines in the world have the capability of diving to a similar depth, Waters said.
Waters picked up the Pisces VI from a Wisconsin storage facility and hauled it to a custom-built shop near the Saline/Ottawa county line. With the assistance of a team of experts, Waters said he plans to renovate and retrofit the sub during the next four years.
"For a 40-year-old sub, it's not in bad shape," he said. "We're going to tear it apart to its individual components and do a lot of upgrades, including putting in computerized systems and electronics."
Waters said in the end the refurbishing costs could exceed $100,000, with most of that coming from his own bank account.
"I won't make money until we get it in the water in about four years," he said. "And that timeline might change."
Waters is being assisted in the sub renovation by crew chief Vance Bradley, of Port St. Lucie, Fla., an adviser for a personal submersibles organization at psubs.org and veteran of hundreds of offshore and underwater explorations; Ben Fosse, a Kansas State University graduate who is a professional commercial pilot in Delaware; and Ryan Johnson, a Salina machinist and longtime friend of Waters.
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'A commercial venture'
Bradley said despite the years of wear, the hull of the Pisces VI was in nearly "perfect" shape.
"I've piloted two of her sisters and worked on this one for a time when it was a couple of years old, and it's in remarkably good condition for a sub that was used fairly regularly the first three decades of its life," he said.
Bradley said that when diving at dangerous depths, the thick, spherical shape of the sub helps distribute "equal pressure all around."
Even the viewport at the center of the sub is not made of glass or plastic but a special 14-inch-thick R-Cast acrylic made for deep diving submersibles.
"You can't buy this stuff at True Value stores," he said with a laugh.
Fosse said his job mainly is to go through a lot of "checks and balances" to make sure the sub is restored and operated as safely as possible.
"The safety procedures are a lot like we use in airlines," he said. "There's a lot of grunt work that needs to be done to restore this sub. It's a long-term project that you can't do overnight, but the end result is a sub that will be used to open up a chunk of the world nobody's seen before, and that's exciting."
Once the sub is restored, Waters said he plans to take it to a research and testing facility in San Antonio, Texas, to give him a better idea "of how deep it can go."
After the Pisces VI is deemed seaworthy, Waters said he plans to ship it to a location like the Canary Islands and recoup the costs of the expensive restoration by offering low-cost services in areas of science, film and tourism.
Since 2008, Waters said, government funding has been slashed for science and exploration programs, so his plan is to offer his sub as a less-expensive option for scientists and film crews to continue their exploration of the world's oceans.
"I'm hoping for big contracts in the future for science and film companies," he said. "Mankind has a need to explore and learn about the world we live on. I plan on pushing the envelope of exploration in the deep sea."
Tourism also is a major goal. Waters plans to offer rides in the sub to those willing to pay the price.
"The other sub was for fun," he said. "This sub is a major investment and goes way beyond being a hobby. It's a commercial venture."
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Information from: The Salina (Kan.) Journal, http://www.salina.com
- By SETH TUPPER Rapid City Journal
COTTONWOOD, S.D. (AP) — There is no escaping the divisive tone of politics in this election year — not even in Cottonwood, S.D., population 12.
But it wasn't the presidential primaries that had townspeople divided as they went to their polling place Tuesday. It was a proposal to dissolve the town, which voters rejected, the Rapid City Journal (http://bit.ly/1tpLLHu ) reported.
The final tally: 7 to 4.
Dave Griffee is the acting president of the board of trustees of Cottonwood, located in ranching country on U.S. 14 about 70 miles due east of Rapid City. He said a few residents who oppose modest efforts to improve the town forced the election. They were disruptive at town board meetings, Griffee said, and insisted that the town and its government be disbanded.
"So just to shut them up once and for all," Griffee said Wednesday, "we said, 'Well, we'll give them a chance to vote it.'"
The election brought the town to the brink of dissolution after more than a century of existence on the plains between Wall and Philip.
According to local history books, the town's origins date to the late 1800s. Oxen-drawn wagons hauling freight between the Missouri River and Deadwood crossed a creek lined with Cottonwood trees and dubbed the place "Cottonwood Crossing." The town was officially organized there in either 1906 or 1907, as railroads and homesteaders pushed west onto former Native American lands that were opened for settlement.
Cottonwood's zenith came around 1930, when the census counted 191 residents. Through the years, there was a post office, a newspaper, a bank, a school, a hotel, a rodeo arena and even a municipal electric power plant.
"At one time," wrote local historian Leona Cook in 1966, "Cottonwood was probably the largest and most thriving town between Fort Pierre and Rapid City."
The Depression and Dust Bowl hit western South Dakota hard in the 1930s and drove many families off the land. Cottonwood's school closed during the 1950s because of declining enrollment and insufficient funding, and the town's population dropped below 100, never to recover.
Today, no businesses remain, and much of the town has melted into the surrounding environment. Cottonwood's few streets are unpaved, and much of the grass in town is knee-high or up to the thigh, and intermixed with yellow sweet clover. Perhaps two dozen structures still stand, although some are leaning. They range from ramshackle, faded-wood outbuildings to well-kept homes.
The skyline, so to speak, remains surprisingly distinct thanks to the aluminum-covered skeleton of an old grain elevator, the steeple of an abandoned clapboard church, and a dilapidated, two-story brick structure, the only one of its kind in town. Those photogenic emblems of rural decay lure as many as a dozen curious motorists off the highway during the busiest days of the summer road-trip season. On Wednesday morning, a shiny SUV drove slowly through town and stopped occasionally as its occupants hopped out with cameras.
It takes a certain kind of person to reside in Cottonwood, where days unfold slowly under the harsh sun of the western South Dakota sky, and the sound of summer birdsong is interrupted only by the wind, the trains and the vehicles that zoom past on the highway.
The 66-year-old Griffee, who sports a bushy horseshoe mustache, is one of those certain people. He retired several years ago from a job in Rapid City and bought six lots in Cottonwood for about $500 apiece. While keeping a home base there in one of his three campers, he uses the other campers to poke around the Black Hills as he prospects and pans for gold.
Griffee said he is among a group of townspeople who wrested control of the town board away from the family of J.C. Heath, the former board president. Heath was not home Wednesday when the Journal visited Cottonwood, and nobody returned several phone messages left by the Journal at a number listed for the Heaths in a 2015 South Dakota Municipal League directory.
According to Griffee, the Heaths oppose minor clean-up efforts and ideas to attract people and businesses to Cottonwood, like setting up a picnic area for motorists or recruiting someone to build a gas station and convenience store.
"They said they want the town to stay as it has been, even if it ends up dying someday," Griffee said.
The divergent visions caused town board meetings to grow confrontational, until Griffee said he and others decided to appease the Heaths by granting them an election on their demand to dissolve the town. Griffee figures the Heaths accounted for three of the four "yes" votes on the ballot measure, but he isn't sure who cast the other one.
A Cottonwood resident who requested anonymity voted "no" on the ballot measure for several reasons, including the town's funding of street lights, road maintenance and garbage service. The garbage service consists of a central dumpster that everyone uses and the town pays to have emptied.
Cottonwood does not levy any taxes of its own but receives a small share of various state and county taxes and fees, including vehicle-licensing revenue. Unaudited annual financial reports submitted to the state Department of Legislative Audit show that Cottonwood received between $7,000 and $9,000 in annual revenue in recent years and has spent between $4,000 and $8,000 annually.
Besides Griffee's seat on the town board, there is a vacant seat and another seat filled by 72-year-old Phil Stark, a retired Navy submariner who grew up in nearby Philip and lives in a trailer house in Cottonwood with his wife, Jo-Ann.
Stark was sitting next to a mini-fridge stocked with beer and fish bait on his deck Wednesday morning, while smoking a cigarette and staying cool under the dense shade of an awning and the trees around it.
Stark seemed like a man unburdened by worry, and he sounded faintly amused by the town's recent troubles. But he also hopes the town survives and counts himself and his wife among the seven votes cast against dissolution.
He hopes the election returns will put an end to the strife, because in a town of 12, it's tough to avoid anyone.
"It's kind of like Rodney King said," Stark opined, recalling the victim of an infamous 1991 police beating in Los Angeles. "Can't we all just get along?"
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Information from: Rapid City Journal, http://www.rapidcityjournal.com
- By JOE HOLLEMAN St. Louis Post-Dispatch
ST. LOUIS (AP) — If you play it, they will come. Eventually.
The purple martin, North America's largest swallow, has a cozy relationship with humans.
But they were generally missing from the St. Louis Zoo until May, when three mating pairs made their home in a tall house on a tiny island in a small cove at the park.
And "the song" may have done the trick.
Officially titled "The Dawn Song," it was recorded in 1989 in Oregon by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The tune basically is a looped recording of a male purple martin singing a song that gets quicker as dawn approaches.
"We played it every morning, from 3:30 to 6:30," said bird keeper Matt Schamberger, a Belleville native who now lives in St. Louis and has been with the zoo for four years.
"Actually, we got the A.V. guy to set it on a timer to go off automatically," he said. "We like purple martins, sure, but not enough to be here at 3:30 every morning."
The "we" includes Jim Deters, a Warrenton resident and a 27-year veteran of bird-keeping at the zoo, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (http://bit.ly/28xJUAQ ) reports.
"Last year was our first, and we didn't get (the house) up until May," Deters said. "We did get what they call 'scouts,' which are older adult birds who come by and look for good nesting locations. But that was it.
"But this year, we moved the house to a better spot and played the song and so far we've been able to identify three mating pairs," Deters said with quiet pride.
One of the species' most endearing habits is that they come back to the same nest for years, and often make that return on the same date. (The swallows of Capistrano, right?)
But both keepers wonder about next year's return, given that the pairs here now did not show up until early May.
"Migratory patterns (the birds start in South America) say they're supposed to get here in late April, so we played the song for a solid month, mid-March to mid-April," Schamberger said.
"But ours didn't. We kind of thought we weren't going to get any, and then they show up in May," Schamberger said.
The pair of keepers said they would love to get up to 12 pairs in the 24-condo birdhouse.
Schamberger said the pairs now seem to be occupying two condos each. "It's like they have a home and a vacation home in the same birdhouse."
Michael Macek, the zoo's curator of birds, said he wanted to create an environment for a species that is easily one of the most popular with bird lovers.
"Purple martins have this unique connection to humans. People just seem to like them and value them," Macek said, noting that Native Americans began building homes for the birds several hundred years ago.
The tribes created houses from hollowed-out gourds, painted them white and hung them on tall poles. Research indicates that the tribes may have appreciated, among other traits, their voracious appetite for flying insects.
Macek said the conspicuous nature of a purple martin house has helped popularize the species: They are built on tall poles, between 12 and 20 feet off the ground. They have multiple compartments, called "condos" or "apartments."
Deters said the height stems from the species' healthy fear of predators.
"They like it to stand alone, away from buildings and trees that could hide predators," Deters said. "And they even like the ground around the pole to be clear of any foliage, in case they're hiding in there."
Schamberger said the species is rare in its communal living.
"Most birds, including other swallows, build one small nest in a secluded place and don't want company. But martins seemed to like living in a crowd," he said.
Finally, people love the species' acrobatic flights and seemingly endless amount of energy.
"They're busy birds," Schamberger said. "They're always doing something."
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Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, http://www.stltoday.com
3 Shake Shack locations coming to Tucson area
