PROFESSIONAL PROFILE by MATT PENIX PRODUCTIONS

Boxer proves he is a contender

By MATTHEW PENIX

The Times-Picayune

 

The boxing gloves worn by Tory William Jr. appear to be lined with lightning.

 

Williams, 24, of Mandeville, unleashed a flurry of fists with electric fury as he inflicted thunderous blows (apologies if this sounds like Howard Cosell) against a series of local, regional and national fighters this year to emerge a Golden Glove winner with a ranking as the second-best amateur in the nation.

 

Now, after only two years in the ring, the light heavyweight division fighter is poised to take on the world.

 

In his rise to the top, Williams will enter the 2014 Ringside World Championships beginning July 28 at St. Lenexa, Kansas, which is the largest amateur boxing contest in the world. The tournament — a grueling, five-day event that tests the physical and mental stamina of even the most conditioned fighters — will host 1,000 bouts. Approximately 1,500 world athletes separated by age, weight division and sex will square off during seven sessions in six rings.

 

The competition will be rough, but Williams is not fazed. For the past three months, he’s traveled outside of Louisiana for the first time to face strangers who want nothing more than to knock him unconscious. In one tournament, an opponent saw how bad Williams “beat down” another fighter and withdrew from the tourney.

 

During his travels, he has visited gyms where prizefighter Manny Pacquiao’s trains in Hollywood and iconic champion Floyd Mayweather keeps in shape in Las Vegas. While on the road, he realized that nothing is that different from his home gym — sweaty guys are seeking big dreams everywhere. Williams was shy at first in the company of champions but is no longer intimidated.  Williams plans to be crowned world champ in his weight class this month before focusing on the 2016 Olympics next year.

 

Williams says boxing continuously on the road is “tough, man. You’re bruised. Your lips busted. You’re muscles are sore.  Your mind is beat,” he said. “It gets tiring for sure, but you have to stay focused.

 

Williams is determined to train as hard as anyone  “You’re not going to outwork me. I’ll die before I get off this treadmill before you.”

 

Williams’ girlfriend, Melanie Clark, agrees. A personal trainer herself, she’s never seen somebody so totally focused. “He’s always training, even if there is no fight. His day-to-day lifestyle is always on. I’ll be cooking and hear noises upstairs and he’ll be shadow boxing. Nobody’s watching him, so nobody knows if he trains or not, but he knows, and he is always preparing.”

 

This is the dedication champs are made of, and Williams is no stranger to stone-cold obstacles.

 

While playing as a cornerback at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Williams worked out and practiced in full pads three times a day in Louisiana’s searing heat with hopes of one day going pro like his cousin, New York Giant’s standout wide receiver Ruben Randle. But when he told his coach that he’d just become a father with the birth of his baby girl, Aubriana.

 

 Williams was cut from the team. “Go take care of your family,” the coach said.

 

Confused and a bit shocked, Williams said, “But that is exactly what I am doing here.”

 

Just a few semesters shy of graduating with a business management degree, Williams had lost his scholarship and a chance at the big time. With a baby to care for, Williams took a job at Lowe’s, hauling lumber and concrete ala “Rocky.” While working at Lowe’s, his coworker, an MMA fighter, introduced him to Charles Baldwin. Baldwin, a reformed ex-convict who during a 28-year stint in Angola, turned to sanctioned prison boxing as an outlet, and agreed to help train Williams daily.

 

 It was dream come true. Growing up in Bastrop, Louisiana, a small country town “where everybody knows everybody and if you’re not from there people know it,” Williams was always intrigued by boxing but rarely exposed to the sport. In a town that graduated 100 or so kids a year, there were simply no places to box.

 

Under Baldwin’s tutelage, Williams soon found himself punching a bag in an abandoned church, conditioning under a shade tree, running in a parking lot and questioning his sanity.

 

“I knew it would be hard, but not that hard. I didn’t realize how out of shape I was,” Williams said. “I quit everyday. I hated it, but I loved it. He pushed me beyond my limits. He worked me to death before we even started to train. He always said training starts when you’re tired.”

 

The work paid off. Armed with a stinging jab, a smash mouth hook and thunderous uppercut, Williams, is perhaps the best amateur boxer to emerge from St. Tammany. Slidell Mayor Freddy Drennan honored Williams at a city council meeting recently for his boxing achievements.

 

Williams said he is “unstoppable or why else would I do this.” But you won’t hear him boast. He offers no trash talk. His record talks smack.

 

Impressed with his quiet strength, competitors offered a fitting nickname: “The Humble Beast.”

 

“I’m a quiet dude. I don’t talk a lot of noise. I’m all about action,” Williams said. “When I get into the ring, that’s when the beast comes out. That’s when I come out of hibernation. This is what I do. This is everyday life. This is my life.”

 

With Baldwin in his corner, Williams managed to secure nearly 20 fights without a gym sponsor before gaining the attention of Dupre Strickland, a former amateur boxer with a 150-5 record who briefly turned pro and now runs Anointed Hands Boxing in Slidell.

 

Strickland was intrigued with Williams but skeptical at first. Williams had only been training since 2011, but took a year off to heal after suffering a “boxer’s fracture” in his hand during his third bout. Other boxers have fought in twice as many fights and trained for twice as long. But something about Williams reminded Strickland of himself.

 

Williams, Strickland said, is like watching a younger version of himself, one that’s more driven, physically superior, and armed with more God-given ability than he ever had.  “It’s like me in him all over again. I’m like ‘wow’ if I had this I would be unstoppable. This kid’s going places.”

 

Strickland agreed to take on the young fighter but laid down the law: “If you want to do this we have to go all the way,” he said. “No half-stepping here. We have to train like you’re the best, like you’re hungry. If not, it’s not even worth my time.”

 

Along the way, Dupre had to stretch his comfort level too. He hates flying, yet has flown to a myriad of tournaments this year as Williams has fought in Knoxville, St. Louis, Kansas, and California to achieve his Golden Glove status and earn the nation’s second place amateur status.

 

Now, the two will board a plane later this month and head to the world championship. Although traveling costs are expensive and money is tight, Dupre is confident.

 

“We’re going to take it all. We will win. That’s our mindset and it’s always the same,” he said.

 

Earlier, Williams lifted up his shirt and turned sideways. Tattoos are inked on both sides of his torso. On one side the words “Country boy: 318” stick out proudly, an ode to his humble beginnings signaled by his hometown’s area code. On the other side, in cursive letters, is his daughter’s name, Aubriana, a permanent reminder of why he trains all day, every day.

 

Like his tattoo, she’ll always be a part of him. It’s all for her, he said.

 

Matthew Penix is the Tammany Sportsman. Submit news and photos about recreational sporting events, athletic accomplishments and active lifestyles on the north shore to penixmatt@hotmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewPenix1.

 

 

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Covington rider made good on vow to win Tour de Louisiane

By MATTHEW PENIX

The Times-Picayune

 

Seven years ago, a flurry of cyclists darting 30 mph leaned into an old Covington street curve and zipped past Stephen Mire’s wide-open eyes. Their bicycle wheels were a blur, muscular legs pumping up and down like hydraulic pistons; their sweaty torsos hunched forward, heads protected with aerodynamically-shaped pointed helmets.

 

As a former triathlete, the Covington High School graduate understood the pain sizzling in their calves, teetering on exhaustion. The scene “blew my mind,” he said. He immediately made a vow.

 

Someday, somehow, “I’ll be in this,” Mire said while watching a heat during the long-standing Covington race. “And I’ll win.”

 

On June 7, the now 25-year-old mechanical engineer stood on a podium, popped a cork of champagne and sprayed it over onlookers snapping pictures before taking a big swig himself. Mire had finally made good on his oath. Racing in the top class of the day, he came in first place overall when the Tour de Louisiane returned to the Franklinton and Covington for its two-day, three-heat event originating 43 years ago.

 

It’s the oldest, and one of the toughest, most heralded amateur stage race cycling contests in North America.

 

“It feels good man, no doubt,” Mire said of the win, a goal he trained for daily, riding 40-50 miles a day, inspired by a tattoo inked in Chinese on his back that reads: “Pain derives true strength.”

 

Mire finds pleasure in the pain, however. “There’s something special about being on a bike. When I’m upset, my fiancé tells me to go ride. It’s part of me … and it always will be. I’m hooked. This is my sport.”

 

For the 2014 Tour de Louisiane, dozens of riders ages 13 to 60 came from Georgia, Kansas, New York, Texas, Florida, Tennessee, Louisiana and elsewhere to compete in three separate events: a time trial, criterium (short-distance race) and road race (long-distance race), the latter pitting top amateur riders on an 80-mile trek through Stoney Point, La., near Franklinton.

 

The two other heats finished on the streets of old Covington, cordoned off by flashing police cruisers. The rider who earned the most points overall was crowned the winner in each category, or "cat" for short.

 

Cat one consists of top-dog amateurs. Cat five racers are newbies pedaling out the gate for their first few races. To get from cat five to cat four, a rider must compete in 10 sanctioned races such as this one, sponsored by the New Orleans Bicycle Club and race organizer Bob Monahan. To move to cat three, two and one, you have to start winning these races.

 

The Tour de Louisiane is the place to do this. It’s a top-shelf competition, an exhausting endurance race. This is, as one Olympic-caliber racer and participant said, “the biggest fist fight on bikes in the Gulf south.”

 

“Locally, I bet (Louisiana cyclists) can compete with anybody in the country,” said Kenny Bellau, a race participant from New Orleans who, at 46, jokes he’s an “elder statesman” for the sport.

 

Bellau is a local icon of sorts. He placed 10th in the 1996 Olympic time trials and has raced against the likes of Lance Armstrong and other household racing names. He recalls the sport’s black years of doping, yet remains optimistic for the future.

 

In the days of performance-enhancing drugs, or PEDS, “it was depressing. You knew the deck was stacked against you. You knew it from the moment you walked in the door,” Bellau said. “The whole (scene) was corrupt.”

 

But not here. Not in Louisiana. Not these days. After seven-time (1999-2005) Tour de France winner Armstrong admitted taking "PEDs" in an interview with Oprah, the cycling world was turned upside down, Bellau said.

 

Today, race organizers, cyclists and sponsors are vigilant about eradicating the sport of PEDs, Bellau said.

 

“It’s a good time to be a cyclist. It’s much better these days. There was never a problem locally, but now the whole sport is cleaner, more competitive,” he said.

 

Micheal Boedigheimer, 32, of the Bywater in New Orleans, agrees. “It changes your whole outlook on things,” he said. “When you wake up in the morning and its 8 a.m. and you’ve already done 40, 50 miles it’s like you can accomplish anything.”

 

Last year Boedigheimer raced as a cat five. This year he jumped up to a cat four, and was feeling good until his tire went flat.

 

“I was really bummed. I was riding well and then I felt the back wheel bubble,” he said. “It’s a little anticlimactic.”

 

Boedigheimer is not giving up. To stay competitive, he’s helping organize the Harbor Master Criterium June 22 at the South Shore Harbor and Marina on the New Orleans Lakefront — complete with bands, food, a bike expo and a prize giveaway.

 

Mire might be there, but only if he can go with his LaSport Elite Racing teammates Michael McBrian and Johnny Brizzard, close friends Mire has known since preschool. The team is sponsored by Matt Davis of Frog Island LLC., a local oil and gas company.

 

“This is an extremely different sport, an extremely difficult sport, a super self-sacrificing sport,” Mire said. “It’s all about teammates, and I wouldn’t be here without my teammates.”

 

In the world of competitive cycling, good teammates are critical. They will push themselves to the limits, forcing competitors to keep pace and ideally tire out, allowing one chosen teammate to rest and draft in their wake, a strategy similar to NASCAR racing teams. When the time is right, when other competitors are gassed, the team’s chosen rider will muster a last bit of saved stamina, sling forward and peddle like a charging locomotive to the finish line.

 

“They knew I’ve wanted to win this for seven years,” Mire said. “And they made it happen today. That’s what I love. You have to be willing at any time to sacrifice yourself for the betterment of the team.”

 

During the next race, he said, it will be his time to push the pack so a teammate will have a chance to win. It’s camaraderie to the highest degree, he said. It is what cyclists do.

 

Matthew Penix is the Tammany Sportsman. Submit news and photos about recreational sporting events, athletic accomplishments and active lifestyles on the north shore to penixmatt@hotmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewPenix1.

 

 

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Two medals. One woman.

How a Mandeville teen went for a state athletic record and walked away with her high school diploma.

By MATTHEW PENIX

The Times-Picayune

 

For four years, Madison Rae Heath slept little and studied harder. Gobbling books in the classroom as fast as Gatorade on the court, Heath became fluent in Spanish, excelled in math, and earned a 4.0 GPA, success that catapulted her into the school’s coveted Optimus Optimorum fraternity, an honor bestowed to only six of roughly 400 other students and comes complete with its very own medal.

 

For four years this two-sport athlete pounded her muscles, tested her mental tenacity and thrust her body to the verge of collapse near daily. Then she got up and did it again, a searing work ethic — one coach called it “near stubborn” — that led to a 2011 state volleyball championship ring, national pole vaulting recognition, and mounds of recruitment letters from Harvard, Stanford, LSU, Brown, Tulane, Virginia Tech, Wake Forrest, Cincinnati, UC Berkley, MIT and others.

 

For four years, the now 18-year-old Duke-bound all star mentored her mentally challenged classmates, devised and ran public service projects, and as a member of SAAD, rallied against the “destructive decisions” naive teenagers often make.

 

For four years, Heath loved Fontainebleau High School and it loved her right back.

 

This is why Heath’s empty metal folding chair — a few rows back in the middle of a sea of red caps and gowns during the 2014 high school graduation ceremony last weekend at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond — was all the more visible.

 

***

 

Heath never intended to miss her graduation ceremonies, which were scheduled the same day as the Louisiana 5A track and field pole vault championship state meet.  

 

Getting her name in the record books, however, was making it nearly impossible to get to graduation ceremonies in time.

 

As a nine-year former gymnast, Heath never expected to spend her graduation day clutching an unusually heavy, 15-foot carbon-fiber pole at the state championship meet at the sprawling expanse of LSU’s Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge.

 

Others, however, had seen her rise to the top coming for years.

 

FHS coach Terence “Terry” Theil, a 28-year track and field coach veteran, recalls when Heath first marched onto the FHS campus as a freshman transfer student and made the varsity volleyball team.  She possessed an air “so enthusiastic she was chomping at the bit for everything.”

 

She was tall, extremely athletic, incredibly driven and fast. Man, was she fast.

 

The same agility, balance and strength gymnasts posses is perfect, Theil said, for the complex yet graceful sport of pole vault, a process of sprinting, planting the pole into a hole and using kinetic energy (and a seriously bendable pole) to catapult oneself up and upside down, then over a high beam, before falling into an inflated mat on the other side. It’s a modern day take on an ancient Greek sport. (The Cretans used poles to leap over provoked, angry bulls, while the Celts used poles to leap horizontally over narrow waterways, giving birth to the long jump.)

 

Heath took to pole vaulting and “really loved it. It reminded me a lot about gymnastics, kind of that stupid feeling of doing something new, like people shouldn’t be doing this with their bodies … It was exhilarating and weird and a lot of fun,” Heath said. “It was for me.”

 

In her first competition, Heath vaulted 11 feet and placed fifth in a state competition — a stunning feat for a freshman that had just learned how to hold the pole five months earlier. The next year she hit 12 feet. Soon afterward, she was cruising the country — California, Nevada, Alabama, New York, North Carolina — doing street vaults, competitions set up on city streets rather than AstroTurf arenas. She met Olympic gold medalists, NCAA champs, and other living legends who liked her pizzazz and athletic chops. “I was taken aback,” she said. “I knew I was good, but not that good.”

 

Heath soon paired up with 2008 Beijing Olympian Erica Bartolina, a Hammond-based coach the area’s best actively seek out. In a weird twist, Bartolina’s gym happened to be minutes away from the college gymnasium Heath was supposed to be graduating from high school.

 

But instead here she was, a pretty face in front of a pretty large crowd, clinching various poles to feel for “the feel” as she geared up for her final  — and soon to be discovered — most memorable meet of her high school career.

 

With what seems to be an anti climatic accomplishment, Heath breezily clinched the state championship, clearing a 12-foot vault with ease, something she’d been doing all across the country for the past two years.

 

Now, with the championship clinched, she considered taking advantage of a little known provision that allows only those who win a state-sanctioned championship track meet to go for a personal record, which in some cases can also turn out to be a state record. (Track and field rules also dictate that state records can only be recorded at a state meet.)

 

She was torn. Part of her was consumed by an animalistic-like competitiveness to set up and go for the state record, a vault higher than what won her the meet. The other part couldn’t help but shake what was going on roughly 50 miles east in the packed auditorium near her old training grounds.

 

Go for the record?  Miss graduation? Semi-cognizant of the time, Heath checked her phone. The text banner across the screen set off an internal timer.

 

“They’re calling out the ‘G’ names,” it said.

 

“I kind of wanted to (leave the meet), but I so didn’t want it to end here. I knew I could do it,” she said. “I was feeling good, loose, confident. When that happens you have to take advantage of it.”

 

She cleared the text message and checked the time. It was a hair after 6:30 p.m.

 

Let’s do it, she said.

 

She told the official to set the bar: 12 feet, 7 inches, a record setting 5A height. She’d previously cleared 13 feet unofficially. She knew she could do this.

 

This was it.

 

She steeled her nerves and took a deep breath. She planted her legs into place and crouched low. She waited for the all clear.  She had reserved most of her energy for this moment.

 

“You don’t vault when you’re tired,” Heath recently told me. “Everything in pole vault is very specific. Consistency and having the right mark is very important. If they are off, it can affect the way you take off and run dramatically. So yea. Don’t vault tired.”

 

With the official signal given, Heath took off, her feet digging into the runway with a fury of power, her strides a blur. She planted the pole, lunged up in the air, and hoisted herself upside down and over the bar, clearing it easily.

 

As she floated back to earth, hitting a soft landing mat, she remembered thinking — I did it. Less than a few seconds had passed, but it felt like a lifetime in slow motion.

 

The state 5A pole vault record was set. She owned it. Her name would go down in history books.

 

Normally, meet winners are awarded medals on a podium to great fanfare and applause.

 

But Heath had another podium to stand on, other fanfare to witness. It was with her friends, donned in red caps and gowns nearly 50 miles away.

 

She took off running, snagged the medal from an outstretched hand of an official, and headed toward the waiting, running car.

 

***

Back in Hammond, schools officials earlier in the evening had rattled off a list of exceptional students and their accomplishments. Heath was one of those students.

 

“She’s not here though. She’s at a state track meet,” one speaker told the audience, adding they had her Optimus Optimorum medal waiting.

 

The crowd was impressed by her dedication. She missed graduation to compete? A few people sitting by my seat in the crowd turned to look at each other. One mouthed the word “wow.”

 

By now Principal Vitrano was calling out “M” names.

 

Heath’s friend, who earlier sent her the text, suddenly felt their pocket vibrate.

 

“I’m on my way,” a text read. It was Heath!

 

Wiping sweat off her face with a towel her mom brought, Heath fixed her hair in the car, affixed her red cap, pulled her gown over her sweaty track uniform and tossed on heels.

 

School officials knew what to do. They had planned for this moment a few months in advance, allowing her to sneak in without disturbing the ceremony if she ever made it all.

 

After a few minutes standing in the wings, she was ushered to her seat in the back row.

 

Out of the corner of his eye Superintendent Trey Folse saw Heath slip in with a “big smile on her face.”

 

“Then when Madison sat down in a chair on the back row waiting to receive her diploma, I saw her make eye contact with a fellow student, nod her head yes and then signal No. 1,” he said. “It was a proud, memorable moment in a memorable graduation.”

 

It was now time for Heath to step up to her second podium of the day, the one she preferred. As the last graduating senior’s name was called the principal circled back and called Heath’s name. The crowd erupted into cheers.

 

She walked onstage, grabbed her diploma and collected her second medal for the day.

 

She’d made it.

 

Reliving the experience two days later, Heath smiled.

 

“It was dizzying, a bit of a whirlwind,” she said. “But it was fun. It was worth it.”

 

“Now I’ve got new goals, a new world to explore,” in Duke, she added. “We’ll see where it goes from here.”

 

Matthew Penix is the Tammany Sportsman. Submit news and photos about recreational sporting events on the north shore to penixmatt@hotmail.com. Follow on Twitter @MatthewPenix1.

 

 

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The shot caller of bird callers

11-year-old 'Duck Whisperer' hopes to quack his way to the duck call world championship

By MATTHEW PENIX

The Times-Picayune

 

With 4,000 eyes starring directly at him, Miles Pond's nerves sizzled to life.

 

After months of practice and mentorship by the best of the best, this Folsom phenom knew he had the chops. But now, standing on stage at the Louisiana Duck Calling Championship competition at the 37th annual Gueydan Duck Festival in Gueydan, La., last August, a sliver of doubt flooded his psyche.

 

At just 10 years of age, the magnitude of the event had now crept in.

 

He stared back at a sea of people that seemingly stretched forever. TV crews and cameras lit up the stage. Miles faced competitors more seasoned and with big buck sponsors, some with $500 duck calls hanging from their neck, others with corporate sponsors emblazoned across their fancy uniforms. Miles, meanwhile, donned an everyday T-shirt, shorts and duck boots, and clutched a cheap, $25 run-of-the-mill duck call in his hand.

 

"Don't push it in there, let if flow, let the duck inside you talk," he recalls hearing his mentor say. Legendary duck call tutor Harry "Butch" Richenback, trainer of 47 world champion duck callers, had shown young Miles the ropes.

 

When called to perform at the competition, Pond seemingly sprouted feathers as he ripped into a 90-second routine, lighting up a rapid fire staccato of short quacks and longer drawn-out squeals.

 

"Oh my God," said his mother, Jana Pond, 37, of Folsom. "That was Miles on stage. That was my boy."

 

Miles' routine also was music to the judges' ears, and sounded good enough to earn third place in the 2013 Louisiana State Duck Calling Contest's junior duck division, Louisiana's premier state competition. With the win, Pond also qualified to compete in the World Championship in Stuttgart, Ark., where he later placed ninth in the nation.

It was Miles' first ever competition, but it surely wouldn't be his last.

 

"It felt pretty good," Pond said, his parents looking on with a smile. "It was nice."

 

Ask Miles Pond and he'll be the first to admit it: His first duck calls were pitiful.

 

His father, Kevin Pond, 37, by happenstance had taken Miles along for an annual Thanksgiving hunting trip in Stuttgart, Ark., the self-proclaimed rice and duck capital of the world. While there, some 60,000 duck callers and duck enthusiasts settled in, unbeknownst to the Pond family, for the World Championship Duck Calling Competition at the Wings over the Prairie Festival. The Ponds, on their way to pick up some more hunting supplies, had stopped at a sporting good store nearby where thousands of the festival goers shop while in town.

 

Then he heard it — duck calls emanating from throughout the warehouse. Miles Pond located the source, a kid about his same age. He was mesmerized. He looked up at his dad.

 

"If he can do it, I can do it," Miles said.

 

Back at the camp, Miles immediately rifled through his dad's hunting bag, pulled out a few duck calls and nestled into a picnic table while his dad and friends were "doing what Cajuns do, cooking a hog." He blew into a call.

 

"You sound like a poor dog stuck on a barbed wire fence," Kevin Pond said with a laugh before ushering Miles off the nearby pond to listen to ducks and practice by himself.

 

Although the sounds Miles Pond squeaked out were goose-bump bad, he was hooked. Duck calling was loud, rowdy and part of his hunting heritage. He spent the next six hours during the ride home thinking about the sport. The moment he walked in the door, he pulled out his iPad and Goggled duck calling.

 

"I sucked, but was thinking, 'I can do this,' " he said.

 

Ever since that day the Pond's family home, which is tucked behind a red barn with horses and a pond on dozens of acres in Folsom, has sounded like a duck farm. When not playing baseball, basketball and football, Miles Pond constantly blew into duck calls, perfecting his art, watching YouTube videos and Goggling technique. If the family had neighbors, they'd likely call to complain.

 

"We would be doing homework (with his siblings), trying to cook and relax," Kevin Pond said, a sly smile creeping across his face. "And Miles would blow on that thing for hours. He drove us nuts. It was all worth it."

 

Once after school at Folsom Elementary where his mother works, Miles ducked into her classroom and punched in a search for duck calls. Then he turned up the volume. Duck calls "flanked out" through the hallways, drawing several people to rush over, thinking a duck had got stuck inside.

 

Nope. Just Miles.

 

"He's like his dad," his mother, Jana Pond said. "When he does something, he has to do it good, go all the way."

In just a few short months, Miles Pond's calls went from ear splitting to a hunter's soundtrack for the soul. "I really just wanted to get better than him," Miles Pond said gesturing toward his father.

 

"Well, you did that," Kevin Pond said, smiling once again. Over the course of a few months, Miles' skills increased so much, his father posted a video on YouTube, garnering a few hundred hits in a day or so.

 

A few months later and another video was posted, this time attracting representatives from callingducks.com, a website dedicated to all things ducks and geese.

 

Miles has potential, the man on the other end of the line said. "You should consider competitions."

 

It was up to his son, Kevin Pond told the man.

 

"I didn't know if that was a big deal or not, Miles Pond said. "But I figured I'd try. I'm in."

 

Competition calling, as Miles Pond soon learned, was a different beast altogether. Most seasoned duck hunters will tell you that real time duck calling is vastly different than competitive calling. Contest routines consist of 20- or 25-note calls that in the real world are impossible, or at least extremely rare, for a live duck to produce. Essentially, competition calls are exaggerations of a duck's real world vocalizations, a rapid-fire routine of calls that no experienced hunter would use in a duck blind.

 

After performing at several local shows and open competitions, word got around and Richenback took note. Richenback, founder of Arkansas-based Rich-N-Tone duck calls , arranged to meet Miles Pond. Now every Wednesday they chat via phone.

 

Miles quacks. Richenback critiques.

 

"You've got to start them young," said Richenback, a 70-something with a thick country accent and pension for no-holds barred, straight shooting advice. "And Miles has a ways to go, but he'll get there. He's getting better each day."

Richenback should know. He's coached 47 people to win 106 world duck calling titles since 1969.

 

"It's intense," Jana Pond says of Richenback. "He will not sugarcoat it. He's honest and just as tough on a 55-year-old man as he is a kid. He's like the (legendary Alabama coach) Paul "Bear" Bryant of duck calls."

Miles Pond encourages the punishment.

 

It's the only way, he says, he'll get any better.

 

And after placing in his first two competitions, third in state and ninth in the world, Miles Pond, now 11, is setting sights on a higher goal: To be the best in the world, to win a World Championship.

 

At this championship, however, he'll be the one with a sponsor, Rich-N-Tone, emblazoned across his custom uniform, a $500 duck call hanging from his neck.

 

The title is too early to "call," but the veterans had better watch out for this young duck crooner from Folsom. He's no quack.

 

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Great Louisiana BirdFest of 2014 attracts hundreds

By MATTHEW PENIX

The Times-Picayune

 

Claire Thomas’ senses fired on all cylinders. As her ears zeroed in on the sound of distant "thwacking", her eyes scanned the canopy of longleaf pines. It was out there, somewhere, hiding in the dense Lacombe marsh. And she was close. She felt it. Blinking was not an option. It meant potentially missing her one shot.

 

Then, like a lioness stalking its prey, she raised the scope to her eye and honed in. This was her moment, years in the making.

 

Just 30 or so yards away, tucked in the marshy foliage of the Big Branch Marsh National Wildlife Refuge, a land so beautiful lawmakers have made it illegal to disturb its natural topography, fluttered the majestic creature of near mythical proportions. Often spoken about, but rarely, if ever, seen in person, the Red Cockaded woodpecker was every bit as beautiful as Thomas had imagined. She savored the moment, let it sink in, lowered the binoculars, took a deep breath, and smiled.

 

“It’s awesome. Freaking ridiculous. Amazing,” the 56-year-old graphic designer from Mandeville said in a rapid fire staccato.

 

Welcome to the Great Louisiana BirdFest of 2014. Sponsored by a Mandeville-area nonprofit, the Northlake Nature Center, the Bird Fest, in its 18th year, draws up to 300 people annually from across the country who descend on St. Tammany Parish to take advantage of eight different trips April 11-13 that showcase one of the best bird watching areas, arguably, in the country, the Mississippi River Flyway.

 

The event, held every April, coincides with a migratory phenomenon known as a “fallout” which occurs when birds, battle-tested from wind, rain and fatigue, are so tired after flying across the Gulf of Mexico they “drop” (metaphorically speaking, of course) out of the sky and rest for a few days, or weeks, before continuing on to their destination.

 

In other words, if you’re a birder, you want to be in St. Tammany Parish during April.

 

I’d be darned if I wasn’t going to take advantage.

 

With this rare woodpecker swirling overheard, Thomas offered up her binoculars. I obliged, grabbed them and pulled them close. Oops. Her neck was still attached. “No. It’s ok,” she said, her head nearly touching mine. “These straps stretch. Lean in. Fast. Don’t miss it.”

 

A flurry of bark, limbs and leaves whizzed by the eye slits. Then I settled in on it, and the elusive species came into focus. Unlike other woodpeckers, the Red Cockaded woodpecker lives only in live trees, but only rare longleaf pines 80 years or older that have developed heart disease which causes its bark to become malleable enough for the woodpecker to peck a nest inside, a process that can take up to two years. With white circular spots adorning its blackish feathers, and males sporting a red circle on their head, its beauty is debatable, but that’s beside the point.

 

It’s a dying breed.

 

With an estimated 6,000 family units, or 15,000 total left in the country — less than one percent of the woodpecker’s 1.5 million population at the time of European Settlement — federal protections were put in place in October 1970 to make anyone who kills or harms the woodpecker, or its habitat, subject to jail time and stiff fines. In other words, it’s listed as an endangered species by the National Wildlife Federation because it faces extinction following a depletion of longleaf pines harvested for new home construction. Conservation efforts and awareness, however, have increased its numbers, albeit slowly.

 

“We just got to see something that maybe only a third of the population ever sees,” said Thomas, a 20-year birder who moonlights as a BirdFest guide. “This is the Holy Grail of birding for this area.”

 

“You’re lucky,” she told me.

 

Yes, I am lucky.

 

But so was everyone who attended the three-day event that included a social, photo workshop, a boat trip to Manchac, and stops at Honey Island Swamp, the Bogue Chitto River and Boy Scout Boardwalk, a wooden trail snaking through the Big Branch Marsh National Wildlife Refuge in Lacombe.

 

Strangers in a strange land, these men and woman rolled into town in pickup trucks, sedans and sports cars, each donning a license plate from unheard of counties in far away places like Minnesota, Iowa, Arkansas and Colorado, to name a few. They carried binoculars around their necks and some sported Indiana Jones hats. Maps jutted out of their pockets, and calloused hands clinched green checklists of more than 120 birds likely to been seen.

It was time to start checking them off.

 

A rare Bald Eagle? Check. Carolina Chickadee? Check. A Blue-winged Teal? Check. Pine Warbler? Check. Then, as guide Marty Guidry, of Baton Rouge, cued up a birdcall on his iPod encased in a waterproof speaker case, it was time to check off the Marsh Wren that responded to the recorded mating call. Later, when it was dark, Guidry played an owl hoot, drawing an Eastern Screech Owl close, only visible at night via flashlight. Check again. And add an exclamation point for kicks.

 

For Pat Pagel, the 1,100-mile, 20-hour drive was well worth it. As a birder for 30 years, the retired nurse from Wabasha, Minn., was impressed with the first day of BirdFest, a high recommendation from someone who’s logged 1,800 sightings during birding travels to Africa, Ecuador, Trinidad and Tobago, Iceland and Mexico.

 

“When you realize a bird is not just a bird, it’s so much more, it opens up a new world you didn’t know existed,” she said. After spending a few hours with this crew, I was starting to realize this myself. Birding is serious business.

 

Rebecca Wheeler, for instance, from Little Rock, Ark., has traveled to Peru, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Columbia, Chile and now Lacombe to bird watch. “It’s like an Easter egg hunt for adults” that she just can’t get enough of, she said.  Meanwhile, Jan Robert, 60, of Covington, a “novice, but learning,” has found a new passion in life to keep her busy as she enters retirement.

 

And Joan Glabach, 70, of Windsor, Colo., who sported an outdoor vest with 20 or so patches from bird watching travels to Alaska, Iceland, and Yellowstone National Park, among other places, has used the hobby to bond with her travel companion, her husband Jay, 72. Each logged about 500 bird sightings.

 

“It’s just about being outside,” Robert said. “The beauty, the serenity of it all just makes you stop and enjoy the moment, to take it all in.”

 

Joan Glabach nodded. “It’s like a game to see how many birds you can get. It’s very relaxing. But for me, it’s not so much about seeing the special birds, but to see a lot of birds. I came here to see a lot of birds, and this area has delivered,” she said.

 

For the serious birders though, seeing as many birds as possible, including the rarest of them all, is the name of the game.

 

While many greenhorns log a bird if they only hear it chirping, following an honor system that’s hard to refute, the competitive abide by tournament and American Birding Association rules which, in some cases, require a picture for the bird to be counted. And despite what many say, including the 2011 movie “The Big Year” staring Jack Black, Owen Wilson and Steve Martin which portrayed warring birders in deviously funny competition, the hobby is not fierce. Rather, birders encourage each other.

 

The 20-year-old Northshore Louisiana Bird Club, for instance, which holds open meetings at 7 pm. every third Wednesday of the month at Grace Disciples of Christ church in Mandeville, sends out mass emails on a list serve when rare birds are spotted nearby. From there, birders scramble in all directions — if they think the citing is credible — to find the bird.

 

Thomas once drove to Vicksburg, Miss., a three- to four-hour drive, when a Snowy Owl, predominately found in the north, lost its way and wound up in the south.

 

Meanwhile, the world’s most serious birders travel much further, dropping everything on a dime to fly across the country, even the world, to log a bird. Sandy Komito, Owen Wilson’s character in the “Big Year” holds the world record with 721 bird sightings in one year, a “Big Year” for sure.

 

And to think, I only had to travel 15 minutes to Lacombe to see one of the rarest birds of them all, that little Red Cockaded woodpecker.

 

Don’t hate me, mom, but I may be saving for myself the bird feeder I just bought and stained for your birthday.

 

Matthew Penix is the Tammany Sportsman. Submit news and photos about recreational sporting events on the north shore to penixmatt@hotmail.com.

 

 

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A little magic bobbling in the water

By Matthew Penix

The Times-Picayune

 

Cal Kingsmill has just slipped his way into a blissful oblivion.

 

With his long brown hair peppered with a few silver streaks pulled back into a ponytail, the 65-year-old New Orleanian sits on a brown metal folding chair in his 6,000-square-foot barn, a handheld axe in one hand and a dried block of Tupelo Gum wood in other, hacking away in rapid fire motion.

 

His hands are a blur. Wood chips fly off the block. Others peel away like curled potato chips. Tune everything out and you can almost feel it; Kingsmill is in love. He falls deeper into the moment with each consecutive cut. He’s channeling his ancient ancestors of yesteryears. He’s entered “the zone. “

 

Kingsmill is a throwback to hunters of New Orleans’ past, carrying on the primal folk art of duck decoy carving, a dying art form that’s he’s spent half his life trying to perfect.

 

“It’s hard to explain,” he said, snapping back to reality, looking up and brushing off the wood dust from his faded jeans. “Time just disappears when you carve these things. You get lost in the art. Nothing else matters. All your worries slip out the door.”

 

For the past 37 years, Kingsmill has spent most of his free time carving, assembling, and painting duck decoys eerily similar to the real thing, making perhaps thousands over the years. Taking anywhere from a few weeks or months to a few years to complete, these replicas of Blue Winged Teals, Black Mallards, Canvas Backs and other species aren’t for decoration like many other decoys these days. They’re workable decoys that when strategically placed in waterways during duck hunting season attract other ducks looking for companionship. Some are made to dance in the tide. Others are made to stand still. Some, anchored with a weight, will self right themselves if tipped over. With hand-carved wings and meticulously painted bodies, they’re like a little magic bobbling in the water.

 

And to think state wildlife agents say duck hunting season is limited to a few times a year.

 

Not in Kingsmill’s world. This is offseason participation without the ringing shotgun blasts.

 

After spending a few hours in Kingsmill’s studio, a corner set aside in a sprawling industrial barn tucked away on a nearly hidden, nondescript pothole-riddled gravel road underneath a 7th Ward overpass, it’s compelling to watch this grown man act like a kid in a candy store, the last unicorn of sorts for an art as old as man has hunted game to survive.

 

The barn, enclosed with a high, barbed wire fence, houses a cornucopia of big rig tow trucks, old car parts, dirty tools, junked and beat up dusty old cars, some with shattered windshields and more, all remnants of his family business, Kingsmill’s Towing. It would be a dream-stop setting for “American Picker.”  

 

Bouncing from place to place, moving boxes, crawling under tables, and rifling through “stuff,” Kingsmill pulls out a lifetime worth of sentimental keepsakes relating to duck decoy carving, an art that originated with Native Americans using sticks and dried skins, but evolved in the early 1800s when improved firearms meant more dinner if, of course, you could get close enough.

 

In one plastic crate he blows the dust off of his framed sketches of ducks, drawings he did years ago inspired by duck hunting with this father. Around the corner, we squeeze through tables and into an upstairs office. Mounds of weathered, incomplete duck decoys are strewn across a hanging shelf. Old specialty whiskey bottles, with sprawling duck pictures on the label — and a few old sips to spare —are tucked away on a bookcase.

 

And underneath it all is the recognition he deserves, but doesn’t covet, a gold-plated plaque awarded for raising $65,000 for the Slidell branch of Ducks Unlimited, a wetland and waterfowl conservation group.

 

It’s the perfect den for a master folk artist.

 

“Cal’s workmanship with hand carved decoys is the top of the league,” said Barry Hanks, chairman for the Louisiana Greenwing group, an offshoot of Ducks Unlimited dedicated to teaching kids to respect and conserve nature. “Few have such a quality product. The working decoy is an item of the past and to keep the rich tradition alive it is vital to the heritage of duck hunting.”

 

Those words are like a duck call to Kingsmill’s ears.

 

Throughout St. Tammany Parish and New Orleans, Kingsmill extols the virtue of the art whenever he can. He routinely performs decoy-carving demonstrations at Fontainebleau State Park near Mandeville and at Audubon’s varying New Orleans attractions. He’s a committee member of the New Orleans-based Louisiana Wildfowl Carvers and Collectors Guild that hosts annual festivals at the Castine Center near Mandeville. And he donates time with Slidell-area nonprofits to teach carving classes, just to name a few extra curriculars.

 

“They aren’t many things modern man can do just like they did hundreds of years ago,” he said. “But this is one. And people should take note.”

 

Decades ago, duck decoy carvers weren’t such an endangered species. Throughout the state, such hunters and artists offered distinct pieces, unique styles and signature looks, often based on the species of ducks in the local area.

 

But now, the “microwave generation,” as Kingsmill calls them, want everything yesterday. Waiting a few weeks or months for a solid hunting decoy hunters is not an option. Coupled with the fact that Cyprus wood, the preferred wood of carvers because of its buoyancy, is fast becoming harder and more expensive to acquire, big box retail stores started flooding the market with plastic decoys, which don’t last as long and won’t carry the same vibrant yet weathered look when used over time.  Nontheless, today assembly line plastic decoys rule the day, and hand-carved originals are growing scarce.

 

“It’s a lot of work. It takes a lot of dedication,” said, Eric Hutchison, 56, of New Orleans, an award-winning duck decoy carver. Kingsmill and his friend occasionally carve together and compare notes. “You don’t do this just to do it. You do it for the love.”

 

“Nobody does it like this anymore,” Kingsmill said.” You could probably count the number of people making decoys for hunting on one hand.”

 

Here’s your chance. Call out a duck call to Cal. He’ll hear you loud and clear, unless of course, he’s in the zone.

 

Matthew Penix is the Tammany Sportsman. Submit news and photos about recreational sporting events on the north shore to penixmatt@hotmail.com. Follow on Twitter @MatthewPenix1.

 

 

________________________________________

Despite heroic efforts,

first responders unable to save teen

By MATTHEW PENIX

St. Tammany News

 

A day after a 15-year-old Fontainebleau High School student drowned in the river at Bogue Falaya Wayside Park in Covington Tuesday, firefighter Joe Ard recalled stripping down to his underwear and wading into the rushing river to rescue the teenager.

 

He shucked his firefighting gear, tossed it onto the sandy bank and ran into the icy cold water while Jordan Russell’s friends stood near their bikes, pointing to the area where their friend went under.

 

“I was shocked how cold the water was,” Ard said. “But your mind just clicks on training and chain of command. You almost go into an automatic mode. You can’t stop. You don’t have time to think.”

 

Ard, a two-year veteran from the Covington Fire Department, joined Covington Police officer Eric Driscoll in trying to rescue the teenager. The two were the first on the scene, clinching onto each other as they waded into the rushing river, flooded by recent rains.

 

It was too late.

 

Russell was reported missing about 3 p.m. Tuesday. His body was found 45 minutes later near the south side of the city park submerged in 12 to 15 feet of water, pinned against a felled tree underwater.

 

“If you think you’re going to overcome the current when it pushes you against a tree it’s not going to happen,” Covington Police Department spokesman Lt. Jack West said, referring to rushing water that produces 8 pounds of pressure per gallon, meaning thousands of gallons of water pressure trapped Russell. “It’s stronger beyond your wildest dreams.”

 

That news didn’t hit Ard until hours after Russell’s death.

 

“It may be two to three hours after the fact that the emotion hits you,” Ard said, back to safety in the garage of Covington Fire Department headquarters, about seven blocks from the accident. “Damn, he was only 15 years old.”

 

The accident unfolded when Russell and two friends, an unidentified 16- year-old and Nicholas Baham, 18, rode their bikes from the Abita Nursery Subdivision along Louisiana Highway 36 through the piney terrain of the park looking for a place to fish. They soon found a spot just out of the park ranger’s vision near signs nailed to a tree warning, “No swimming in this

area.” A nearby sign also warned, “Playground temporarily closed due to flooding.”

 

Recent rains had flooded the typically shallow and calm river to 6 feet higher than normal, West said. The park was also flooded with several feet of water that washed up several 2 to 3 feet long logs onto the park’s banks, West said.

 

Despite the warnings and high water, Russell told his friends, “Let me show you how to catch a fish with my bare hands,” West said.

 

It was the last time Russell was seen alive, West said.

 

When Russell didn’t surface, the two friends hopped on their bikes and darted through the park’s hilly terrain toward Covington Police Department headquarters, six blocks away.

 

West had just parked his police cruiser and was getting out when the teenagers rolled up.

 

“They were terrified. They were hysterical,” West said. “The kept screaming, ‘My friend is in the river. My friend is in the river.’”

 

When Ard and Driscoll arrived and waded into the water, Covington Fire Department firemen Gary Blocker, a 15-year-veteran, pulled his truck behind them, offering a rescue line and lifejackets. He tossed the vests to the pair. With the life vests, we could only go about 8 feet deep,” Ard said.

 

Earlier the friends tossed a stick into the river where Russell was last seen. Their estimation turned out to be right, West said. Rescue personnel were floating above him.

 

“Of course, that is always hard,” Blocker said. “It’s always tough when he’s 15.”

 

About 30 emergency personnel, including members of the Sheriff’s Office Special Operations Division, had flooded the scene. The Sheriff’s Office drove two boats to the sight, tying a rope to rescue workers to prevent the violent current from sweeping them away.

 

Blocker praised the boys for their quick thinking.

 

“They were extremely shook up, which was expected,” he said. “But through that type of tragedy they still maintained enough composure to get us a location.”

 

The Bogue Falaya drowning is the first in about a decade when a then 8- year-old boy jumped off the Boston Street bridge, West said.

 

At the time those rescue efforts were also compounded by rains that flooded the river and stirred up debris such as refrigerators, car parts and other industrial type machines dumped into the waterway over the years.

 

 

________________________________________

"Man’s Best Friend"

By MATTHEW PENIX

For VIP SEEN

 

Chris Guffey had to swallow his pride.

 

As a gruff, hard-nosed Marine, Guffey wasn’t used to asking for help. He was the strong man, show-no-emotion type of guy, capable of handling things himself. The masochistic mindset of being considered among the toughest soldiers in the world only reinforced this behavior.

 

But after two tours in Iraq from July 2010 to June 2012, Guffey returned home a changed man. He had seen things. Horrible things. Things to this day he won’t, rather can’t, talk about. To those who knew him before the war, he was completely different.

 

Guffey knew it too. PTSD had slowly, but surely wrapped its chilly fingers around his mental health like a vise. He started to wonder if there was a way out. Outwardly, though, he thought he feigned it well. He thought he had everyone fooled.

 

Then his girlfriend at the time dropped a bomb of realization. She knew Guffey from high school. She was there when he graduated and she was there when he returned home from the front lines of war. You’re not the same person, she said. You need help. You need the VA.

 

“I took that gut check and went,” Guffey said. “It was hard. That culture of the broad chested, bad ass Marine was still engrained.”

 

And on that day, his life changed. Again. And forever.

 

After meeting with someone who suggested he get a service dog, Guffey mulled it over. They were expensive, sometimes costing as much as $40,000, money he simply did not have. Plus, there’s typically a waiting list for months, sometimes years.

 

Enter Puppies Behind Bars, a NY-based nonprofit that uses inmate labor to train service dogs, typically Labradors because of their ability to learn dozens of commands. The nonprofit, operating on the backs of generous donors and ingenious grant writing, fast tracks the waiting list for younger veterans, typically those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The application process is robust. Trained professionals gauge the mind state of veterans, both to determine if a service dog will help, but also to ensure the safety of the dog itself. It’s a long process, one that Guffey kind of brushed aside, not expecting to be gifted such a dog.

 

Then, one random day after a long Memorial Day weekend where he attended Arlington National Cemetery with friends and paid respects to fallen comrades, Guffey’s phone buzzed to life.

 

George, a yellow Lab, would soon be Guffey’s new best friend, if of course Guffey still wanted the dog. The answer was simple. They’ve been inseparable ever since.

 

SIT BOY SIT!

 

After spending about six weeks with George, the typical incubation period for a veteran to get used to their service dog and vice versa, George came home to Johnson City. At first it was the little things that mattered. George just being around on a lonely night. Then George became a reason for Guffey to get out of bed. There were also responsibilities to fulfill. He had to be walk, fed, taken the veterinarian. George became more than a service dog. He gave Guffey a reason to live.

 

“It’s hard to wake up depressed when you sit up and have a dog smiling in your face, giving you a kiss,” Guffey said. “It’s amazing what they’ve done to train him too. I can’t imagine how they do it. He’s highly motivated. Very driven. He thoroughly enjoys it.”

 

George knows more than 100 commands. Combine them and the things George can accomplish are nothing short of amazing. George, for instance, can fetch a bottle of water out of the refrigerator. With a rope tied to the door, Guffey can say pull, grab, bring. Before long, George was bringing Guffey water without even a hint of coaxing.

 

But service dogs do more than fetch quests. Ever since his deployments ended, Guffey has struggled to sleep. Night has always been the hardest. Nightmares pierce his conscious night after night. But George is trained to recognize such spells.

 

“He will turn on the lights, pull the covers off me and wake me up,” Guffey said. “He’s always there for me.”

 

Always is not meant metaphorically either. George never leaves Guffey’s side. Ever. If he travels, George has the neighboring seat in the plane. A quick workout before class? George is coming to the gym also. A night on the town? Yup, George hangs with the crew. In fact, George travels with Guffey so much during trips to college at ETSU, the yellow lab has become a quasi-famous figurehead on campus. Recently, George celebrated a birthday and he received more attention than Guffey. Every body knows the veteran and the dog. Passerby’s don’t even inquire why George is always around anymore.

 

“Yes, he even comes on dates,” Guffey said laughing. Whether or not a woman accepts the fact, can tell Guffey a lot about whom he’s meeting. It’s become the “new benchmark.”

 

“George has been with me for five years, but I’ve just met you,” he said laughing at the scene as he says it out loud.

 

PROVEN BENEFITS

 

Mankind has relished in the bond between man and its dog for centuries. Movies are made about the bond. Best sellers feature dogs as the main character. The bond is mentioned in folklore. From the everyman to the king of the castle, dogs have always man’s best friend.

 

But in February this year, a preliminary study led by researchers at Purdue University College of Veteran Medicine not just recognizes the calming influence service dogs have on PTSD symptoms, but it showcases they actually decrease the symptoms, a new finding that solidifies the importance of this bond.

 

Guffey doesn’t need a study though to tell you this. He admits his life was spiraling out of control. After witnessing things no man should see, Guffey realizes his life was lived in a black cloud. But George, he said, George turned all this around.

 

“I credit everything to having George. I’m open to people now. I’m not as closed up. I’m about ready to graduate and start a brand new career. He’s the one that I owe thanks to,” Guffey said. “He saved my life.”

 

 

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Beauty queen with heart becomes cardiac activist

By MATTHEW PENIX

For VIP SEEN

 

The explosion in her chest came out of nowhere.

 

A beauty queen and social justice advocate, Jeri Ward and her soccer coach husband, Dean, lounged on the couch of their Dayton, Ohio home, working on their laptops, snuggling and generally avoiding the pop, flash and sizzle of cameras and microphones that dominate their daily lives. Suddenly it happened: The white hot flash of pain pierced the comfortable silence like a gunshot.

 

Jeri seized up. The air zipped out of her lungs. Her body froze. Somewhere, deep within her, a “pop” erupted. Then another, as if a stick of dynamite had exploded in her chest and head. Tremors of electric white heat scurried through her veins down her arms.

 

“It was like fireworks blasting off,” she said. “Then it all fizzled out just as fast as it came.”

 

Jeri, trying to make sense of what just happened, rationalized it all to herself in the moment. She felt fine now, at least relative to the electric darts scorching through her body seconds earlier. Ever an optimist, the beauty queen downplayed the spell, calmly considering it was either the start of a migraine or some odd result of pent up stress.

 

But then she tried to speak.

 

She tried to tell Dean how fireworks had just ripped through her body and tremors rumbled through her brain. She wanted to tell Dean how weird she felt but that she’s likely fine now. She wanted to reach out and hold his hand.

 

Instead, she uttered half words, all jumbled and slurred, mostly incoherent. They were more guttural grunts than recognizable English. She knew what she wanted to say, but she forgot how to say it. And her hand failed to reach out to Dean as she commanded. As if in an out of body experience, she saw herself floundering. Her mind was working; her body was not.

 

A grim reality thumped her like a sledgehammer to the chest. This wasn’t a migraine. This wasn’t stress. This was much worse.

 

“That’s when I knew something was wrong,” Ward said. “Very wrong … I immediately broke down into tears.”

 

Her mind shifted from calm to near panic. She tried to force the words out this time, but still nothing. Finally, after starts and stops, stutters and gasps, she managed to choke out the one word that mattered: "Hospital."

 

In the heat of the moment, Dean failed to recognize her typical southern-soaked songbird of a voice had slithered away. In its place: a voice lathered with a French-dipped European tinge, one he later realized he’d never heard before.

 

Dean, who had put down the game film footage he was studying as he frantically tried to decipher his wife’s words, heard her words this time loud and clear.

 

Within 20 minutes they were at the first of many ICU waiting rooms they’d grow to detest.

 

“In that moment, our lives changed forever,” Dean said.

 

TRAPPED INSIDE

 

In what seemed like a split second, Ward, a reigning beauty queen of national recognition and go-hung advocate to right all things unjust, had lost most of her speech, as if her cute southern accent was snatched from her throat without permission. Meanwhile, her motor functions failed as if they were too rusty to crank.

 

She was frozen in time and space, caught in her own body, with a mind that worked like normal, but a body she couldn’t control. She could hear people talk about her, in front of her, as if she wasn’t there. She watched in horror as her doctors and family attempted to understand her basic requests, sickened with anger that she couldn’t simply say she wanted ice. Her body had failed. It quit. It hijacked her soul, keeping it silent, unable to fly free, to communicate, to do what she wanted, to help others. She was a prisoner, held captive by her own body. Even worse, she knew it and there was nothing she could do.

 

Now, months later, after five brain procedures, and a few months of rehab, Ward has regained much these lost abilities. But as of press time Ward’s doctor’s still don't know how or why her stroke or strokes hit in such a sudden, visceral way. And now when she tells anyone about the ordeal, its punctuated with a new European accent that’s at odds with the fact that she’s never been to Europe. It’s so foreign that sometimes when she hears herself speak, she doesn’t even recognize who’s talking.

 

The world of the reigning Mrs. Ohio might not ever be the same.

 

THE BOMBSHELL ACTIVIST

 

Born in Emery, Virginia, Jeri, now 30, is no stranger to beauty pageants. At four years old she won her first crown, going on to win virtually every contest she entered since. At one point the Emery-Henry graduate was even Miss Washington County. After following her husband north to Ohio so he could pursue his coaching career with the University of Dayton’s woman’s soccer team, the pageants followed too. In 2018, Ward was crowned Mrs. Ohio, a win that guaranteed her a slot in the Mrs. America Pageant, where each state’s winners compete for the national crown.

 

For Ward though, the glitz and glamour of these whirlwind contests were only a fraction of the appeal. More importantly, she said, they opened doors, giving her a platform to address her real passion: social justice reforms.

 

Virtually her entire adult life Ward has been either an avid volunteer or state employee working with abusive homes and foster families, the homeless, disabled adults and children, both mentally and physically, and as an advocate for legislative reform, including court justice and prison improvements, among other issues. In 2016, she created an autism program to assist child behavior and improve school readiness skills. When crowned Mrs. Ohio in April 2018 she used her platform to battle the country’s crippling opioid addiction. Although she has no children of her own, Ward, as of last year, was also the legal guardian of 42 children.

 

“My work is my life,” she said via phone from her home in Ohio, in between a whirlwind weak of doctor’s appointments, typically five per weak. “When you can make a difference, even with just one person, everything is so worth it. I seem to get back so much more than what I give out. It’s been blessing ... And now, after being in this (predicament,) it gives me a better understanding of those I serve, the hardships some of these people have faced.”

 

Not shy of controversy, last year Ward became one of four Mrs. America contestants – alongside Mrs. Delaware Kimberly Phillips, Mrs. New Jersey Chrissy Timpson and Mrs. Missouri Brandy Palacious – who in October rallied against alleged racist comments made by pageant President and CEO David Marmel. In the wake of professional athletes kneeling for the nation anthem, Marmel was accused of accused of making racially infused remarks denouncing the practice. In another incident, he allegedly said “Ebony magazine owners were racist because they all used derogatory terms” with each other. Another time, he held his arm next to Palacious “in order to compare skin color,” according to Jeri’s press conference and national TV news coverage that followed.

 

For his take, Marmel defended himself, calling the allegation “false” and “ugly,” while noting his creation of the Black Achievement Awards, and highlighting an invite by the NCAAP and family of Martin Luther King Jr. t0 a thank-you dinner for his work on behalf of the African-American community. Marmel, who is Jewish, said he’s been sensitive to racism and bigotry from a young age, after while in California he was prohibited from playing baseball because of his religion.

 

Regardless of the outcome, one thing was clear: During an early October 2018 press conference in New York, on live TV, before a national stage, while standing next to famed woman’s right’s attorney Gloria Alfred, who gained overnight fame as lawyer for Bill Cosby’s accusers, Ward spoke out against Marmel’s alleged remarks and showed the nation she was more than a captivating smile framed in flowing dark hair; She was also a bombshell activist.

 

“If you look at the tape of that conference, she spoke so eloquently. She spoke with such passion. I was so proud of her,” husband Dean said. “Its like whatever she does, she just gets after it. Whether it’s working with foster families … or holding a national press conference. She had no other reason to do that (press conference) than its what was right. That's who she is. She’s got a purpose in mind. Its an amazing thing to witness.”

 

Fresh off a successful live nationally televised press conference, Jeri was reeling with pride and future possibility.

 

Two weeks later, she couldn’t speak.

 

12-TO-14 YEARS

 

The lightening bolt of a stroke struck about 10:30 pm, Oct. 25, 2018. There were no indications. No droopy face. No slurred speech. It was as if Dr. Death silently crept into the room and sat on Jeri’s chest.

 

“Looking back I wish there was something we could have prepared for,” Dean said. “But there were no signs.”

 

That’s the thing with heart issues, according to the American Heart Association. They can strike even the healthiest of people, sometimes without warning.

 

Jeri hopes to change this.

 

In her exclusive interviews with VIPSEEN, Jeri spoke candidly on several occasions last month about her current and ongoing struggles with her yet-to-be determined heart condition that’s crippled her breakneck pace of work. Yet somehow through the harrowing ordeal of have to reteach herself how to speak and walk, and after going through brain surgeries still awake, she seems to have bequeathed a new found sense of self and appreciation for others that suffer from debilitating medical issues.

 

While she admits that in her story there’s not much she nor anyone could have done to prepare, especially considering the cause of the sudden stroke is only speculative at this point, (one culprit is moya moya that she might unknowingly suffered since birth) she realizes now how important awareness is for what’s silently become the most ruthless and successful killer of both men and women on the planet.

 

Heart disease, for instance, kills about 610,000 people annually, responsible for one in every 4 American deaths, according to the CDC. For another perspective imagine the entire city of Nashville dying this year. Then repopulating to the same size only to die next year and the next year and so on, forever.

 

And by the time you read to this point – depending how fast you read – its likely about at least 15-20 people has suffered a heart attack, with one occurring every 40 seconds, according to the CDC. Even more compelling is the fact that every minute, more than one American dies from a heart disease related event, where whites, Hispanics and African-Americans are the most susceptible. For Asian Americans, or Pacific Islanders and American Indians or Alaskan Natives, heart disease deaths trail only those of cancer, notes the CDC.

 

By chronicling with us her very private, very intimate journey from the hospital floor to the top floor of the Bristol Hotel for this month’s cover photo, Ward seems to glow even over the phone, her beauty obviously more than skin deep. With a vocabulary of about only 10-15 words for the first few weeks to a month after her stroke, and months of rehab where her first word was mom, not to mention the strangers prodding her brain with strange medical contraptions, Jeri has had a tough ride for sure. Yet in some way, she’s managed to find the silver lining, despite more surgeries upcoming and no definite medical reason for the stroke in sight. Most would complain. Jeri, however, sees an opportunity.

 

“My clients always said you can’t possibly relate,” she said in her new thick and unexplained accent, which she jokes, makes her and her English husband sound like a posh European elite couple. “But now I can relate. I have a certified disability. It’s given me a new awareness that I never had before. When people struggle in the world because of some learning disability, I get it now more than I ever did.”

 

And if there is one thing she wants readers to get, its this: There are things most can do to prevent being victims of such heart diseases. Ward, among others like the CDC, suggest these tips:

 

* ENGAGE IN moderate-intensity physical activity at least 150 minutes per week or 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity, ideally spreading the activity throughout the week. Engage in activities you like such as walking, tennis, bicycling, swimming or even dancing to achieve this goal.

* APPROPRIATE your body weight, watching caloric intake and cutting down on fatty foods. Most people gain a pound or two a year as they age, adding 30-40 pounds of unhealthy weight as they age. Maintain a body mass index of 18.5 to 24.9.

* EAT HEALTHY: Consume fruits, vegetables, low fat diary, whole greens, nuts, fish, and skinless poultry working them in with every meal. Limit sodium, red meat, saturated fats, sugars and sugary beverages.

* DON'T SMOKE. Enough said?

* DRINK ALCOHOL in moderation, i.e. one to two drinks per day for men and one drink per day for women.

 

While these basic tenets are the usual affair often touted in hospital pamphlets and the daytime talk show health segments, a new study gives more weight to their importance: Follow these five steps and you’ll likely to live 12-to-14 years longer, according to a study published last year in the medical journal “Circulation.” Men, at age 50, who adopt these measures, lived 12.2 years longer than men who didn't, the study indicates. As for women, they lived 14 years longer, data suggested.

 

“What encouraged me the most about this data is it does not take perfection to be healthy,” said Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones, a cardiologist at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, who reviewed the study but did no participate. “These were not people who were running marathons or adopting vegan diets. You just need to adopt small goals – like eating more fruits and vegetables – achieve them, and move on to another step. Even modest changes can have a big impact in the long-term.”

 

For Jeri – and her husband Dean – everything is about change now.

 

HOSPITAL ROOM NO. 1

 

Dean Ward was devastated.

 

As his University of Dayton’ woman’s soccer team fought and tore through opponents last season, they had their ups and downs. Injuries, personal sagas, and all the deep stories of near pro-like athletes you can imagine when the layers are peeled back. The season was long. It was a grind, but here they were, a game away from advancing in their division. This was it. This was the reason the Wards left Virginia for Ohio. Dean’s career culminated with this game.

 

Then, in a dramatic turn of events, his girl’s team lost. They were sent packing and Dean, instead of flying out with his team to the next game, was sent home. He felt horrible for those girls. They played an incredible season. He even questioned it all, wondered why it couldn't have been them who advanced.

 

He soon got his answer.

 

“If we would have advanced, I never would have been on that couch with Jeri,” Dean said recalling the night of her stroke. “She might not be here today if we I traveled away.”

After he rushed Jeri to the hospital that fateful night, the doctors did a brain scan. They showed blood building, putting pressure on the prefrontal cortex. In other words, they showed possible death pulsating on the screen.

 

“Be blunt,” Dean told the doctors. “Be real. What’s the deal here? What do I need to prepare myself for?

 

The doctors spewed off a lot of technical prognosis, all bad. But the words kind of became mixed together. He was drifting, thinking about the love of his life. Then he heard the one word he never wanted to hear: ‘Death’ is possible.

 

“That’s something I should have never asked,” he said.

 

Dean held it together just long enough to get in the car and follow Jeri to the nearest hospital five minutes away for her emergency operation. It was now near 4 am, and Dean, alone for the first time that evening, broke down.

 

“I burst into tears,” he said. “I couldn’t lose her.”

 

Jeri, however, with her desire to make an impact on the world, wasn’t going anywhere.

 

MORE TO COME

 

From that first surgery to now, Jeri has undergone at least five brain surgeries. In some, they inject a die to see where where the brain activity fires off. During each time, she’s awake.

 

“Yes, that stings,” she said laughing.

 

But Jeri wasn’t laughing during the first surgery. In fact, she couldn’t talk. She was crying, but she couldn’t tell anyone how uncomfortable or hurt she was. It was perhaps the most frustrating thread through the whole ordeal.

 

Thankfully, Dean never left her side. He knew his wife. He loved his wife. And with this connection alone, he was more often than not able to understand the thoughts she so desperately tried to convey. Dean never left her side, crashing at her bedside in the reclining chair just so he could be there at the drop of hat.

 

“I’ve realized that you don't really need to sleep,” he says laughing now, months after those rocky first few weeks. “You’ll get by. You’ll survive.”

 

“It’s the new normal,” he said. “But yea, telling her story now, it just seems like I’m in a movie. It’s surreal. It’s not you. It’s like its someone else.”

 

Although not out of the words yet, Jeri’s progress is encouraging. When she speaks, it’s fluently, a gigantic leap forward and one made with warmth and compassion that’s palpable. It’s as if despite all the heartache, Jeri is not nearly as mad at life as she could be. And this just makes this beauty queen all the more beautiful. It’s more than physical. It's something deeper.

 

When mentioned this to her husband, Dean just laughs. He gets it. He knows. And then after hanging up with a reporter, he makes it a point to call back and explain exactly why this woman radiates. He tells a story of how Jeri, still in the ICU, recovering from yet another surgery while going through rehab, learning how to talk and walk and function again, sees an older lady come into the room next to her, alone. No family. No friends. Alone. The old lady seemed to have nobody.

 

And there was Jeri, in her most troubling times, thinking about that woman, Dean said recalling how Jeri forced herself up straight as if to make a point he couldn’t refuse. If nobody comes and visits her by the morning, Jeri told Dean, we’re going over there to spend time with her.

 

“Are you serious,” he said. “You just had a stroke and here you are thinking about someone else.”

 

“That really sums up who this woman is.”

 

Sure, the beauty pageants are nice, Dean said. But that’s only surface deep. This reigning queen’s true beauty lies beneath the surface.

 

 

 

________________________________________

How “The Great Disconnect” connects the region

Is the educational pipeline-to-business working?

By MATTHEW PENIX

For VIP SEEN

 

Chris Bogart is frightened.

 

As principal of Unicoi County High School, he yearns for his roughly 700 plus students in this rural area to succeed. He’s devoted his entire adult life to preparing this area’s youth for the future. He wants to see them grow, earn a higher education degree or technical training certificate and land a well paying job. He wants them to flourish. To prosper. To, in his own words, live the American dream.

 

But in such a rural community, opportunities can be scarce. In fact, a recent report by education advocacy group Complete Tennessee characterized such opportunities as a little more dire. There’s a “startling gap”, according to the report, in college attainment rates between students in more populated areas versus rural areas. And while the average college going rate in East Tennessee is 59 percent, that number dips dramatically in outlying and rural areas.

 

“It scares me,” Bogart said during a recent summit examining northeast Tennessee’s educational pipeline to the region’s ever expanding job market. As students who live near educational hubs like Johnson City and Kingsport “move forward, our (rural) kids stay behind. There is a gap, a tremendous gap.”

 

Still, despite this post secondary educational gap in more rural areas, unemployment rates throughout Northeast Tennessee remain low -- about 4.1 percent through July, according to the most recent figures from the United States Department of Labor. Yet, despite a rosy picture on paper, those numbers aren’t exactly what they appear, says Northeast State’s Vice President of Economic and Workforce Development Jeff McCord.

 

Today, hundreds, perhaps thousands of highly skilled jobs in medical, construction, advance manufacturing and technical sectors throughout northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia remain vacant, said McCord. Not because there isn’t a workforce, but because the workforce that’s available is not adequately trained or educated for such highly skilled jobs. Plus, considering roughly 40,000 people in the area don’t even have high school diplomas, there’s often a struggle to meet the high-level skills local industry requires.

 

And in areas such as northeast Tennessee and neighboring Virginia, a solid economy rests with the success of existing companies maintaining a competitive edge, as well as expanding current efforts. It’s easy to see how this boosts local employment numbers and offers competitive wages that increase tax bases and improve quality of life standards. Yet, while maintaining and improving the abilities of existing industry is no doubt a financial building block, to truly boost the area’s economic footprint, one must rely on the entire region’s collaborate ability to attract new businesses, specifically those traditionally robust industries such as medical, construction, computer and technical sectors, McCord said.

 

And fail not, every new business prospect that tours the area asks the same questions, said Matt Garland, CEO of the Greene County Partnership. How skilled is your workforce and when are they available to start?

 

“Companies are coming in and ready to go, so our workforce has to be ready to go. They want us to ramp as soon as they can,” Garland said. “Everybody can offer 30 acres and some buildings. But it does nothing if you don’t have the (skilled) labor force. You have to have the labor. If you don’t have the talent, you don’t land the prospect. It’s that simple.”

 

Further compounding the issue, not just in this region but also nationwide, is a mass exodus of a highly skilled, seasoned, and experienced workforce better known from 60s counterculture as baby boomers. Born after World War II, this generation spurred America’s rapid economic growth for more than five decades. As the largest pool of Americans to ever enter the workforce, they’ve experienced more technological advances than any other generation in history. It’s estimated that during the next 15-25 years, 76 million baby boomers will retire, up to 15,000 a day, said Kingsport manager Jeff Fleming in a video outlining the issue.

 

After retirement parties are celebrated and workers walk out their company’s doors clutching a box full of office belongings, they aren’t just leaving a vacant office chair spinning in their wake. They’re also taking with them a voraciously vast and varied knowledge base that’s ignited the economy for decades. Its as if this generation are the pistons pumping the nation’s economic engine. Of these 76 million estimated baby boomers existing the workforce, its believed there are about 46 million Gen Xrs ready to take their place in the economy.

 

But just because Gen X is next in the workforce line, doesn’t mean these 35-39 yr olds have the skills and knowledge base to step in for a smooth transition. This fact has many economic developers scrambling to prepare, at least for the last decade in this region alone. To make matters worse, 30 million college bound 18 to twenty-somethings are not even pursuing advance manufacturing careers, a crucial cog in the nation’s economy, and perhaps even more vital in this region. In essence, by the end of the next decade or so, the United States will need no less than 10 million highly skilled, highly experienced, and highly trained employees to step into the empty office chair left by the baby boomers. It’s a workforce shortage unlike anything the nation – or this region -- has experienced before.

 

In other words, America is facing a workforce crisis.

 

And as America goes, so does Northeast Tennessee. In fact, regional industries have already witnessed such impacts, and have for years. The pipeline linking education and certified training to those highly skilled jobs currently available is not just leaking, it’s often gushing, some local business leaders and economic experts admit. Eastman, for instance, is expecting to lose 300-400 employees due to retirement during the next several years due to retirement. And many companies are having difficulty in filling specialized positions that are much easier to fill in larger metropolitan areas, like Indianapolis, Louisville, even Nashville.

 

Roger Calloway, plant manager for Piney Flatts-based Microporous, a world leader in battery seperators for heavy machinery such as forklifts and industrial power cleaners, said he’s stressed out about finding qualified candidates. For the past 14 months he’s advertised for an engineering position. And everyday it's the same results: no worthy candidates. For a job title that in general offers fresh-out-of-college graduates a salary up to $65,000, Calloway is a little perplexed. Back in the Indianapolis/Louisville region where Calloway previously worked, a job posting such as his would have had applicants “lined up for days”, he said. And after plans to pump $20 million into current and future plant renovations and high tech machinery upgrades, he’s only been able to hire 5 of 12 other positions he recently created to help transition his company into the world leader for car battery separators, a segment of his business that currently only ranks 3rd in the world for output. Only third, he says modestly. In the world.

 

“It’s a credibility challenge,” he said, referring to inability to hire some specialized employees. “When you have all this going on and you can’t fill an important position, people wonder why.”

 

Cue the region’s odd contradiction here. The interesting dichotomy taking place today is that there are a number of jobs available, just not enough skilled workforce to fill them.

 

Welcome, folks, to the one of the largest issues facing the economic vitality of the region.

 

Welcome to the “Great Disconnect.”

 

THE BUZZ AND BUZZ WORDS OF REGIONALISM

 

For roughly a decade or so, local politicians, business leaders, career civil service, educators and a myriad of other stakeholders have recognized this impending lurch in the workforce. The missing link between the education and skills our current workforce can offer and what employers need is such a hot topic that last month about 200 local leaders, mayors, and even congressional staff gathered for a summit in Jonesborough. Dubbed Education 2 Employment, the forum focused on the ways and means to seal this leaky education-to-business pipeline. The issue is so prevalent, it’s even got a name: “The Great Disconnect”, a buzzword that area business trailblazers and visionaries seem to banter around as if it's the number one priority for the region. After hearing from panelist, it’s hard to argue any other way.

 

With such a crucial issue facing the region, VIP SEEN has gathered the area’s leading college and university presidents for the September cover issue, no small feat in itself, (and one that’s very appreciated). It almost comes off as an act of solidarity that showcases not only how strongly area educators feel about bridging this skills gap with, uh, education of course, but this landmark cover, a first in VIP SEEN’s history, represent a meeting of the minds, an idea that the region is stronger if it works together rather than competing for resources, clients and business. The idea is dubbed, simply enough, as “regionalism” and it's a concept that’s been brewing like a good Yee Haw beer for years. Logistically though it’s anything but simple. It is another buzzword loaded with unknowns, yet represents a camaraderie of commons, a unifying goal that industry, government, non profit, education, and other sectors work as one to benefit the whole. It seems to flow off the lips of economic developers, mayors, and educators alike with a sense of pride.

 

Garland, from the Greene County Partnership, is no different. Garland said he works closer with the 3 other major economic developers in the area almost on a daily basis. He put the concept another way: “Why is regionalism important? Because we can’t do this alone. We’re better together than as one. And if you live in one county and work in another, we’re all getting a piece of that dollar. We all benefit. It’s always been ‘Northeast Tennessee’ to me.”

 

Now, after more than a dozen interviews with mayors and other elected officials, local and state economic development leaders, private consultants, educators, students and more, a picture emerges that not only explains this educational disconnect, but also showcases avenues and means to “reconnect the disconnect.”

 

A PROMISE TO TENNESSEE

 

The notion of a “great disconnect” between the region’s education levels and employer needs is an idea that’s resonated up from local municipalities and wafted all the way to Nashville. In 2014 Gov. Bill Haslam challenged Tennessee with a “critical new mission”: The Drive to 55, an effort to equip 55 percent of Tennesseans with a college degree or educational certificate by 2025. In seven years, it’s estimated that half the jobs in Tennessee will require some sort of post-secondary education. It’s not just a revolutionary idea, but its also pioneering. No other state in the nation has implemented such a program, which includes its underlying programs, Tennessee Reconnect and Tennessee Promise.

 

While Tennessee Promise is aimed at high school seniors, Tennessee Reconnect is geared to adults, helping both age groups attend a community or technical college and complete a postsecondary degree or credential for free starting this fall.

 

Yes, you read right. Free.

 

While much talk is placed on younger students learning skills to fill highly technical skills, adult education is just as important. “While our state is making great strides in increasing the number of high school students who enroll in college, we cannot meet the full job market demands without engaging and supporting more adult learners,” according to the Website driveto55.org. “It’s not just a mission for higher education, but a mission for Tennessee’s future workforce and economic development.”

 

In this region alone, roughly 57 percent of quality jobs require industry or two-year certifications, and nearly 98 percent or more require a high school education.

 

This news is old hat to Northeast State Community College President James King. As an educator for more than 30 years, King sees any sort of education as a boon to the region. “This is what education is all about,” King said, referring to many of the industry certifications and highly specialized training his college offers. “For years, it was thought if you didn’t have a four-year degree you wouldn’t be a success. Not anymore. The value of the technical degree has exploded over the last 10 years. Don’t look down your nose at any certification or associate’s degree. That graduate may be walking away making two times as much money (as someone with a bachelors degree) and have 3 more job offers on the table than the next guy. You want to graduate with as many tools in the toolbox as you can, and this area industry is proving that.”

 

Although it’s hard to tell how many adults will overtime take advantage of the free tuition program, by August more than 30,459 students have applied, according to Tennessee Board of Regents.

 

Outside of the traditional college-type setting, education is morphing in other ways, too.

 

Besides statewide financial windfalls, a myriad of local programs are cropping up throughout districts statewide. In the Chattanooga area, for example, highly skilled technical companies are offering credits for students to actually come into plants and work, exposing them to possibilities they never even knew existed. In Greene County, career expos aren’t just held after school or manned by a recruiting booth in the cafeteria. Teachers often carve out specific class time to bring in panelists and expose students to job possibilities.

 

“We need to start having this talk now, starting even as young as kindergarten,” said Dr. Lyle Ailshie, former Greenville City Schools Director and Kingsport City Schools superintendent turned deputy commissioner overseeing the College, Career and Technical Education division at the Tennessee Department of Education. “The gaps in earnings, if we don’t do something, are going to continue to slide.”

 

In years past educators and businesses didn’t speak. High school teachers have traditionally been more concerned with state standardized test scores, while post secondary educators have developed educational tracks based on expertise they can offer. Again the “Great Disconnect” had reared it head. But now, after years of open dialogue between educators and business leaders, the education community can – and has - started catering programs towards local industry needs.

 

“If we’re not aligned together, we’re going to be preparing students for opportunities that don’t exist,” Ailshire said. “And that’s not going to work.”

 

This is where places like the Kingsport-based Regional Center for Advanced Manufacturing step in. RCAM specializes in apprentice-based programs, K-12 partnerships, Web-based technical training and college credit initiatives specifically geared toward the needs of individual employers. In other words, employers tell RCAM their needs and they set up training.

 

PEACHES AND CREAM (And everything in between)

 

After a decade of examining the “great disconnect”, local business and educational leaders are finally speaking out. In fact, they seem to be shouting it out to anyone that will listen. The mantra is always the same: Act, and act now. It seems only recently local, regional and state initiatives are taking root. Summits like the E2E conference is proof there’s “buy-in” from the local powers that be. And that makes people like Sullivan County Mayor Richard Venable smile. With more than 200 people attending the conference, Venable was shocked.

 

“When I walked in and saw this crowd, it kind of blew me away,” Venable said after delivering closing remarks. “I think we’ve finally admitted to each other that we need to come together. We’ve got to prosper together. No jealously. No competition. We’ve got to be hitting on all cylinders. I hate to use the cliché, if you build it they will come, but if we don’t build and educate our workforce, business won’t come.”

 

“I don’t think we’ve ever had such a concerted effort to reach the same goals,” he continued. “We’ve got to have a good outcome. There’s no other way.”

 

From an outside perspective, however, Northeast Tennessee and Virginia are eons ahead of the rest of the state and country in bridging the “great disconnect”, said Deane Foote, president and CEO of Phoenix-based Foot consulting Group LLC which specializes in workforce and economic development. As someone who’s traveled the country, consulting local leaders, he’s never quite seen an area that’s embraced “regionalism” and efforts to close the education gap as robust as here.

 

“Across the nation, these issues are all the same,” Foote said during a private interview. “But here, you’ve really got an advantage. You’ve got people already sitting around the table. It’s highly attractive.”

 

McCord, the vice president of at Northeast Community College, put it another way. “A lot of communities are just starting the conversation, but we’ve been plowing the field so to speak for over a decade. We’re just not starting to plant the seeds, but already we’re starting to bear fruit.”

 

“It’s not all peaches and cream,” he added, “but we’re making progress.”

 

AWAKENING AWARENESS

 

Despite these gains, many in the workforce aren’t simply aware such programs and financial aids are even available. And if workers aren’t aware they have a winning lottery ticket, they’ll never cash in. It starts with nonprofits, churches, even parents to hone in on the opportunities available, experts said. “There’s just simply not enough done communicating these career paths,” McCord said.

 

Abigail Eldridge, 23, agrees. The Johnson City native had a plan. She knew she wanted an accounting degree and she wanted to make a big splash. Work for the top firms. Make a name for herself. But as a high school student, she was never exposed to programs like ones today that help students learn how to interview, build a resume and network, what it takes to make it in a big way. There was no emphasis on soft skills, such as being courteous, professional, even skills such as promptness, showing up on time, or courtesy calls if going to be late, the kind of skills that many area experts say is sorely lacking, and ongoing theme and struggle for employers.

 

Despite the silent groans of her father, former Washington County Mayor Dan Eldridge, Abigail left Johnson City to chase the big dreams in a big city just hours away in Nashville. She’s the type of highly skilled up and coming workforce the region wants to attract, but a part of the ongoing crop of employees leaving the area after graduation. For her, she wanted a more progressive employer, ones that like in Nashville offer massage chairs and Ping-Pong tables in the office.

 

“This was my chance to spread my wings and fly,” she said of her decision to leave Johnson City, despite loving the area. “We’re starry-eyed dreamers, we want the biggest and the best. But we also want a progressive employer, one who understands us.”

And although she had job offers in Johnson City, in Nashville Abigail Aldridge could make $10,000 more a year for the same job. And it’s these esoterically Gen-X and Millennial needs that perhaps local industry needs to adhere to when attracting a better workforce. True, northeast Tennessee has the rolling hills, and enjoyments of an outdoor wonderland, but if employers want to attract highly skilled workers from beyond their backyard, they might want to start thinking like the millennial generation thinks now, she said.

 

Her former Johnson City employer was routinely “expressing a lot of frustrations that the new graduates being hired now didn’t have the skills they needed,” she said. “But maybe they need to start catering to targeted workforce.”

 

A BRIGHT LIGHT FUTURE

 

For now though, many economic developers, elected officials, and others see the potential in targeting students in K-12, exposing them to local job avenues they might not otherwise have known existed.

 

“We’re never going to be able to break the cycle of poverty. We’re never going to be able to ensure the future economic vitality of the community if we don't’ start (targeting and training) our future workforce when their young,” said Kingsport Mayor John Clark. “This is a major, multi-faceted issue that we’re trying to address from the top down. This is crisis management for me.”

 

Bob Feathers, foundation board chairman for Kingsport Chamber of Commerce, and board member for Johnson City Chamber of Commerce, put it more bluntly. Kids “being able to spell their name in kindergarten seems like a big win these days. We have to do more, anything to inspire children to open their eyes and see they can do these jobs so that we literally plant hope, can change their trajectory (and fill the region’s future workforce needs) so that we’re not sitting here in another 10-15 years talking about the same thing.”

 

Bogart, the Unicoi County Schools principal, agrees. He hopes the fear he harbors for the future of his students is misplaced. He urges state education leaders to lesson emphasis on state standardized test scores and places a larger emphasis on gearing curriculum in high school to the workforce demands of the region.

 

“Make us accountable for all these issues,” he said. “Help us learn to grade students on the needs of our local industry. Help us create opportunities outside the traditional school building infrastructure. I applaud this regionalism idea and the efforts to train students, but keep in mind, these outlying communities can’t do it on our own. Our kids have to compete in the region, too.”

 

 

________________________________________

How Tennessee bootleggers created Long Island iced tea

By MATTHEW PENIX

The Business Courier

 

BRISTOL, Tenn. — It started as folklore. Then it morphed into legend. Yet, the truth of the story was always a bit hazy.

 

But now, roughly a century later, a verbal jousting match this past year between Yankees and Southerners has brought the obscure origin story of one of America’s most beloved cocktails into focus, and for many it’s clear; Fuhgeddaboudit, New York; The Long Island Iced Tea was born right here in Kingsport, Tennessee.

 

Yes, you heard right.

 

Although Kingsport — dubbed the Model City — is known for many things, its cocktail making prowess has typically not topped the list of many simple syrup-sipping minds.

 

Until now, that is.

 

Reigniting long held lore, Kingsport officials doubled down this past year on its cocktail making claim, staking out its own territory once and for all just like their Tennessee frontiersman did with their land a millennium ago.

 

While the famed Long Island Iced Tea cocktail has long been associated with its more famous namesake location in New York State, local legend indicates a lesser known — yet equally vital location in a river snaking straight through this east Tennessee city — spawned the little kick of a cocktail a century ago.

 

But to tell this tale properly we must go back even further in time.

 

Kingsport was first settled in 1787 after the Revolutionary War, a little river settlement that set up shop at the confluence of the North and South Forks of the Holston River. The community at first was known only by the name Salt Lick, dubbed after a locally famous mineral lick.

 

Nonetheless, it was near this location, where the two forks in the river collided like a steamboat, that Mother Nature spared a sliver of land downstream across from the main channel of the South Branch of the Holston River. It was a slender island, a long island. It was the Long Island, a half-mile wide, four-mile long slice of earth once serving as a sacred council and treaty site for the Cherokee Indians, and where, in 1775, Daniel Boone began to clear the fabled Wilderness Road. Although now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark District where thousands of people visit yearly for its walking paths and undisturbed nature, back in the day the island was sought more for its geography. Close enough to get to by canoe or skiff, but hidden enough to parlay hard work into a good and stiff illegal pour, it was here that our forefathers’ folklore say bootleggers first mixed the drink into a palatable party favor.

 

ROARING '20s AND THE RISE OF ROARING DRINKS

 

It was the 1920s, a roaring time when the jazz was swinging that prohibition sprang up and Tennesseans mourned the loss of legal moonshine. It was also a time when a guy named Charlie “Old Man” Bishop decided to do something about it. Legend has it that Old Man Bishop scouted this naturally forming Long Island, the once-sacred Cherokee Indian site, as a place to brew his wares. Not only was water plentiful, but the island also provided cover for his shadowy production.

 

It was a boon for the boozy bootlegger; a perfect confluence of Mother Nature and time, a perfect place in a perfect storm.

 

And during an era when hooch was scarce and drinks were needed to pack a punch, Old Man Bishop’s booze delivered. To get the most bang for his buck, Bishop pumped everything into the mix: rum, vodka, whiskey, gin, tequila and — to make the insanity of it all sane and the hodgepodge a little more palpable — Old Man Bishop added a tinge of maple syrup to ease the bite, to smooth the taste.

 

The booze brew recipe was a hit. Old Man Bishop’s son, Ransom Bishop, recalled his father often made “special batches” throughout the Roaring '20s to keep up with roaring demand. You can learn more from an actor who dons a pencil bar mustache and old timey vest and portrays the younger Bishop, in a video produced to set the record straight. You can watch the video by visitkingsport.com, the marketing and tourism arm of the Kingsport Chamber of Commerce.

 

“Now we know there are some folks up in New York trying to take claim,” says the actor in a thick southern accent before he pauses, lets out a sly smile and turns to his side and looks into the camera, as if he’s turning to whispering a secret to an old friend. “But bless their heart. My daddy was making his special recipe 50 years before they even thought about it. Right here, in Kingsport, Tennessee.”

 

Twenty years later, the younger Bishop was said to still be running a still on the island. It was then, in the 1940s, when he decided to spruce up the already compelling cocktail by adding his own unique twist to pappy’s concoction — a dash of lemon and lime juice, then a splash or two of cola or soda water. Mix to taste. Serve with a smile. (And maybe a warning.) Boom. Bishop’s booze was reborn. The Long Island Iced Tea as its known today had arrived.

 

CUE THE DISSENT

 

“They must be dreaming,” said Butch Yamila, owner of . This past year he challenged the origins of the beloved drink in a letter to the city of Kingsport, then mayor John Clark and the Kingsport Tourism Bureau. To settle the claim once and for all, he also threw down a taste test challenge.

 

“Not since the ‘Battle of Long Island’ in the Revolutionary War has Long Island’s honor been so challenged,” Yamilla wrote. “We on Long Island celebrate our beaches, our accents, and most of all, our booze. An insult against one is an insult against all!”

 

“In New York,” he said,” we only drink tea when it’s from Long Island.”

 

And that tea, he said, was born from the mind of Robert “Rosebud” Butt who’s laid claim to the invention ever since the early 1970s when he allegedly whipped it up for a cocktail creation contest.

 

“Triple Sec had to be included, and the bottles started flying,” Butt has been quoted as saying. “My concoction was an immediate hit and quickly became the house drink at the Oak Beach Inn. By the mid-1970s, every bar on Long Island was serving up this innocent-looking cocktail, and by the 1980s it was known the world over."

 

A plausible story, if only the timeline was correct.

 

But even Betty Crocker isn’t buying it. As far as most anyone can tell, the first time the Long Island Iced Tea is ever mentioned in literature is in “Better Crocker’s New Picture Cook Book,” which was published in 1961, trumping Rosebud’s timeline by a decade or so.

 

The truth, as they say, was bound to surface. And in Kingsport, the gauntlet had been thrown. Jud Teague, executive director of Visit Kingsport fired back.

 

“Now, we know ya’ll have taken exception to our claim and we’re sorry if we’ve russled any feathers,” Teague wrote. “But in Tennessee, where the mountains are Smokey, our traditions are strong and the world moves a little slower, there’s never been any questions about heritage when it comes to alcoholic beverages.”

 

Teague didn’t stop there.

 

“Moonshine, home brew and Tennessee whiskey were born in these parts and we’re darn proud of that,” Teague wrote. “We’ve always been trailblazers here in Kingsport. Heck, Daniel Boone himself started clearing the Wilderness Trail (Road) here, no doubt enjoying a few of our local potions along the way.”

 

BOOZE BATTLE BEGINS; SOCIAL MEDIA FRENZIES

 

As soon as Teague’s words trickled off the page, a long dormant interstate booze battle had broken out of its shackles. The North-South taste test challenge was on.

 

“In your letter you mentioned the South trying to take over your territory … goodness, we’d never try to do anything like that. Why, we’re known for our hospitality and weather, which is why so many folks from your neck of the woods end up moving here. But we’re happy to have y’all, even though your laying claim to what’s ours – and them’s fighting words.”

 

And everyone, it seems, loves to gossip about fighting words.

 

With the challenge accepted, the brouhaha over the original “brewhaha” took the country by storm. Media from across the country picked up the story, debating the lore of each claim in news stories and social media everywhere. Fox ran a story in which Yamilla said Tennesseans were “dreaming.” ABC News followed suit. CNN also jumped in the fray. Of course the New York Post, the Long Island Press and other New York-based media outlets took to the airwaves and printing presses, too. Tennessee newspapers followed it as well, with one claiming it’s possible that two versions of the drink were developed at two different times.

 

Possible, but unlikely.

 

While similar, the two mixes do vary slightly. The local prohibition-era version includes whiskey, pure maple syrup and lime, while the disco-era New York staple excludes dark liquor, instead using Triple Sec and sour mix garnished with a lemon.

 

Regardless which mix tickles your gullet, one thing is clear: When the dust settled the world had heard of the Model City. Kingsport was on the map. Again.

 

On Facebook alone the debate garnered 4.8 million impressions. Twitter saw a dip but still managed an impressive 2.3 impressions. Instagram, meanwhile, went wild. More than 11 million impressions were noted on the photo-sharing social media platform. Add up active web links, clips on YouTube, and mentions from all corners of the internet, the origin debate garnered (as of this writing) more than 27 million impressions throughout the world. That doesn’t even account for printed hard copy materials such as newspapers and magazines, which are much harder to track.

 

What the whole debate boils down to though is much more than national, or even international recognition: It’s about pride. Pride in this thriving, tight knit community. Pride in our ancestors . And pride in the ingenious local leaders now who tapped a reservoir of inventive marketing that put the name “Kingsport” on the minds of people everywhere. And that’s right where the Model City deserves to be. Front and center. In the end, the entire effort was estimated to be worth at least $200,000 in free advertising with that figure climbing daily. But for the Chamber, city officials and the local hospitality industry, the coverage was priceless.

 

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so thanks a bunch,” Teague wrote in a final response to the taste challenge. “You may claim you’re the best but we’ll always be the original, and there’s no getting around that.”

 

 

________________________________________

Katrina survivor describes ordeal

Special for The Cincinnati Post

By MATTHEW PENIX

 

EDITOR'S NOTE: This was Matthew's first nationally syndicated story, and it was written when he was 21 years of age.

ST. TAMMANY PARISH, La. — After graduating from the University of Cincinnati and moving to Slidell, La., three years ago to start a career in journalism, I quickly became acquainted with the tragic and horrific.

 

I wrote stories about murders, rapes, carjackings, SWAT team standoffs, and other events filled with human suffering.

 

As I celebrated my 25th birthday a week before Katrina struck, I thought I had seen it all.

 

But I was wrong.

 

As I write this, it's hard to see the computer screen through the tears.

 

Friends and colleagues are lost, my office at the Slidell-Sentry News, submerged under several feet of water, is uninhabitable.

 

I still don't know where my editor is. A police captain, a valuable news source and friend, committed suicide. A colleague, in her mad rush to escape the devastation, accidentally drove over the body of a dead man in the road. Another colleague believes her parents are dead, but doesn't know for sure.

 

For days after the killer storm struck, no one knew where anyone was. Phones didn't work, and television stations were off the air. Everyone listened at night by candlelight to the only radio station still transmitting.

 

I stayed for five days to try and help other survivors and to document what I've seen. But with no gas within a 300-mile radius, no food, no electricity, and with the thick, blistering Louisiana heat searing my body every day, I joined the thousands of others who clogged the highways looking for an escape. As I left, I prayed I had enough gas to get out of there.

 

DAY ONE: WAITING FOR KATRINA

 

The plan was for my two roommates and me to stay at our house and wait out a "big one," just for the sheer excitement of it. We were all fraternity brothers at the University of Cincinnati, and no one wanted to be the first to tell the others this might not be such a great idea. But as the Weather Channel and cable news networks predicted Katrina would be a storm of biblical proportions, reason

eventually prevailed, and we decided to seek shelter only hours before the storm struck.

 

We drove a distance that ordinarily takes only 20 minutes - this time it took two hours - to an industrial complex building owned by the family of the girlfriend of one of my roommates, West Chester native Jay Gostisha. Sheltered by thick, steel-reinforced concrete walls, we barely felt anything from the storm.

 

The wind and rain were moderate for a hurricane, and for a day and a half we slept on concrete floors, eating chips and Pop Tarts. Jay and his girlfriend danced in the rain and wind before the brunt of the storm hit. We thought the hurricane was a non-event and that Katrina probably veered at the last minute, sparing the street corner jazz players, Creole food restaurants, and 250-year-old buildings that attract thousands to the city yearly. We thought we had escaped the Hurricane's hammer.

 

We were wrong.

 

DAY TWO: THE DISCOVERY

 

As the winds subsided, we repacked our three cars and headed home.

 

What I saw as I neared the place I shared with my former UC fraternity brothers in Mandeville, near Slidell, sent a chill down my spine. I had driven into a jungle. Fallen trees had sliced open homes. Gigantic metallic transformers lay strewn across parking lots and roads. I saw two policemen patrolling, and they looked as frightened as I was.

 

By now our three-car caravan had become separated, and I found myself driving alone through Mandeville. It's usually a place filled with families mowing their yards, slurping up snow cones, and shopping at upscale boutiques. Today, however, it was a wasteland.

 

The fronts of brick buildings had been blown away, exposing the desks, chairs, and fax machines inside offices. I blurted out a prayer that the power line I was seconds away from driving over was not live. Thump, thump. It wasn't.

 

By chance, the first other car I happened upon in miles belonged to my roommate, Adam Leimer, also a West Chester native, who had stopped and reversed his direction on the interstate, littered with limbs and tree trunks.

 

We sat there speechless. Both of us had tried to drive to our house, but it was impossible. The only way to get there was to park miles away, leap over and crawl under trees, stepping over power lines.

 

DAY THREE: MAKING SENSE OF IT ALL

 

We spent most of the third day longing for running water for showers, cooking, and drinking. The hot, sticky Louisiana heat never falters. The pool in the backyard was tempting, but we weren't sure it wasn't tainted by toxic rainwater, as rumors suggested. With no communication with the outside world, except the battery powered radio broadcast by the city's only public generator from New Orleans, rumors were all we had.

 

At this point, we thought the worst was over. Then the levee broke.

Early on the morning of Aug. 30, water pressure burst breaches in three places of the levee system on the Lake Pontchartrain side of New Orleans, one at least 250 feet wide. Heavy flooding covered almost the entire city over a sustained period, forcing the total evacuation of more than a million people. Because 80 percent of the city is below sea level, all water that goes into the city must be directly pumped out - even water from an average rainstorm. Consequently, the city is now uninhabitable until the water can be removed. The water presented other dangers - I've heard from friends in New Orleans that a police officer received chemical burns from it.

 

As millions of gallons of water rushed into the city, the water rose about a half inch to an inch an hour. The flooding continued until the water level in the city reached that of Lake Pontchartrain. By daybreak, the water would be kissing the second floor of homes. People who'd climbed into second-floor attics now faced a watery death if the levee wasn't fixed soon. It was only a matter of time, the radio announcer said.

 

It's been said a collective gasp engulfed the city.

 

Although the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had started improving the levee in 1999, it would take at least 15 to 20 years to complete, a spokesman for the agency said on the radio. This disaster could not have been prevented, he said.

 

That didn't mean too much to our small band of brothers, sitting back in Mandeville, huddled together around the boom box in the candlelight. Because we lived north of Lake Pontchartrain, we had avoided most of the flooding. The radio reports of massive flooding in the city seemed as though Orson Wells was playing another "War of the Worlds" prank.

 

New Orleans, although only 40 miles distant, seemed half way around the world. We talked to a woman who had chopped her way out of an attic in downtown New Orleans, pulling her children and elderly parents up onto the roof.

 

"I know now what hell feels like," she told me.

 

While waiting for days perched on the roof of the house, losing count of time, and passed over by numerous helicopters, she said she began to wonder if she would survive.

 

When she was finally rescued, the U.S. Coast Guard told her what she had feared about her neighbors - they had drowned.

 

"I knew what happened," she said practically in tears. "I could smell the death."

 

She was among the lucky ones. The death toll included babies, murder victims, and countless elderly residents who drowned or died because of lack of medication.

 

Tales of horror were everywhere. A "Current Affair" on FOX News reported a man was beaten to death by 10 men in the Superdome after he raped and stabbed to death a 7-year-old. A New Orleans police spokesman, whom I once interviewed for a story, committed suicide with his police-issued pistol.

 

That was the first 48 hours. Recent estimates by Mayor Ray Nagin put the death toll near 10,000 in New Orleans alone.

 

Back in the candlelight, I suffered a gut punch back to reality when St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Jack Strain's voice crackled through the battery powered radio on 870 WLW to give a Northshore update. At least three people had died around the corner from my office four days earlier.

 

Strain said he tried to contact the radio station numerous times, but communication along the entire Gulf Coast was out. He started to drive to the radio station across the Causeway, a modern marvel of a bridge that spanned 25 miles of the lake and connected the Big Easy to the Northshore. His deputies advised not to attempt it - the bridge no longer existed.

 

DAY FOUR: THE DECISION

 

After Katrina slapped St. Tammany, I checked my fuel gauge and decided to check on what I call "my people," the Slidell community I serve as a journalist. My press pass got me past Slidell police officers and about two miles down the exit. The rest was a sea of waist-high water.

 

I drove into the shallow end of the water, constantly opening my door to see how high it was. People walking behind me and beside me with bags of who knows what, kept telling me it was OK. I wasn't too reassured.

 

I rolled down my window as I drove up to a Hispanic man sloshing through the water. I asked him if he was OK.

 

He smiled, held up his bag and said, "I'll live."

 

I drove on. To this day, back in the comforts of my hometown of Batavia, I wonder where that man is today. The supplies he carried couldn't have lasted more than a few days.

 

As much as I wanted to get the story, my gut told me it wasn't worth flooding my car and jeopardizing my only way out. I turned around. It turned out to be a good decision - my office, as I would soon come to find out, had been destroyed, so there was no way to print a story if I had written one.

 

As I drove through town, a colleague who works in ad sales for the Slidell Sentry News called out to me. She was standing on the corner with friends and family. I stopped on a dry patch of asphalt and got out, wishing I had been able to take a shower, but trying my best to look dignified while giving new meaning to the term "starving journalist."

 

I asked her how she was; the pain in her eyes answered for me. She still hadn't seen her home; it was likely destroyed, but the roads were impassable, and she didn't know for certain. I asked her about the Sentry. She said her brother "swam" there earlier, and the entire first floor was under water. My heart sank.

 

She said our publisher, Terry Maddox, was giving out food somewhere. He was "supposed to give out 200 meals, but only gave out 60," she said.

 

She turned and pointed to a white SUV parked at the nonfunctioning stoplight. Inside was Slidell Police Capt. Rob Callahan. He was talking to people outside his car window. A CNN news crew was riding in his back seat. He told me to meet him at the emergency operations center on a narrow road around the bayou.

 

I tried to drive there myself, but my Jetta sunk into a black, smelly sludge. It took some time to get free. That was the last I saw of Rob Callahan. I hope our paths cross again.

 

After I freed my car, I toured the city. Katrina had toppled everything in sight throughout St. Tammany Parish, and every road I tried to drive down was blocked by debris.

 

Trees, boats, fences, and upturned cars were scattered throughout the city. I had no choice but to drive back to Mandeville, hoping my roommates had saved me a cold beer from the cooler.

 

It's an eerie feeling when you're sitting in a room by yourself lit only by candle light, huddled around a radio that's pumping the airwaves with the only media

lifeline remaining for Greater New Orleans. Cell phones, regular phones, and television remained out. Nobody really knew what was going on, and the reports were choppy and based on rumor at best. I figured the rest of the world knew more about what was going on than the people smack dab in the middle of it all.

 

With no food left, no electricity and a near empty gas tank, I decided to go home to Ohio. A rush of shame came over; I felt like I was abandoning my brothers in need.

 

DAY FIVE: GOING HOME

 

At least an hour and half into the 12-hour drive home, evidence of the storm was inescapable - trees thick as redwoods were split in two, homes had no roofs and signs littered the roads. The devastation seemed unending.

 

I mashed down on the gas pedal harder. Four fill-ups later and moments away from my mother's home in Eastgate, I pulled into White Castle to eat the only meal I had all day. It was horrible. But at least I was home.

 

I sank onto the couch and fell asleep. My brain, mind, body were exhausted, and I hadn't experienced anything compared to the destruction in New Orleans, Biloxi, and the rest of the Gulf Coast.

 

I slept for 13 hours and still woke up in pain.

 

 

________________________________________

A Suicidal Storm

By MATTHEW PENIX

St. Tammany News

 

Phyllis Chandler's weekends are not typical.

 

The mother of two spends much of her free time at the scenes of grisly suicides, comforting shocked family members who found a loved one shot or hanged by their own hands.

 

On a recent weekend, volunteers from her organization St. Tammany Outreach for the Prevention of Suicide, or STOPS, huddled around a family member whose brother had waited for his family to fall asleep, turned off his television, and pulled the trigger of a shotgun in his living room.

 

It was the team's fourth such visit in as many days.

 

"The realization of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is setting in. People are just now starting to look back," said Chandler, president of STOPS. "The mental health problem in St. Tammany is just now really starting to show."

 

While the 50 suicides in St. Tammany since Hurricane Katrina remains on par with rates dating back to 2000, the number of St. Tammany suicide attempts are on pace to surge 139 percent this year from 68 to 163, the largest attempted suicide rate in St.

Tammany's recorded history. Experts are alarmed and blame a near epidemic of depression and post-traumatic hurricane stress disorder of intensity rarely seen in this country.

 

Compounding the challenge, the local mental health care system is overworked, overbooked and understaffed, and after Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans mental health system suffered a near collapse with the number of adult psychiatric beds nosediving 93 percent to 17 from a pre-storm high of 234. The crippled system sent droves of new patients to the Northshore's struggling facilities where close to 400 beds are available but less than half are staffed.

 

"It's unbelievable," said Sheriff Jack Strain, whose office responds to suicide attempts. For some reason, nobody is paying attention to the problem in St. Tammany.Something must be done. I'm tired of seeing these young people do this."

 

He rattled off a list last week to prove his point. On the weekend of June 3, a 36-year- old white male pulled the trigger of shotgun, ending his own life. Later that same day, another 36-year-old tried to hang himself. A day later on Louisiana Highway 36 yet another 36-year-old was found dead with a gunshot wound. Hours later, a 33-year-old was found slumped over in his home on Laura Oak Drive. Strain has no solution, but fingers the lack of federal funding for mental health care as the culprit.

 

BEDS GO UNFILLED

 

In places like Southeast Louisiana Hospital, the region's largest adult mental health facility operating on U.S. Highway 190 near Mandeville, employee shortages have left 186 beds of the 374 available unstaffed. The parish's second- largest mental health facility, Northshore Psychiatric Hospital, was closed several years ago due to lack of adequate funding. State and federal governments did nothing to help.

 

And at St. Tammany Parish Hospital in Mandeville, ER workers are more accustomed to treating cuts and chest pains than dealing with the 40-percent spike in severely disturbed mental health patients and hard-core substance abusers, the most likely to attempt suicide. Equally disturbing is the fact that financial resources are scarce to entice new employees equipped to handle the uptick in mental health patients.

 

"We are working 72 hours at a time seeing these patients, a lot of times for free," STPH Emergency Room Manager Mark Stephens said referring to uninsured mentally ill patients. "It's not working too well. We're not psychiatrists. But there is nowhere for them to go, and we're working double and triple shifts for nothing. If someone says they are going to kill himself or someone else, nobody wants to let him go. We can’t let them walk out of here so we keep them and they clog up the beds, leaving our hands tied.”

 

TRAINING ISSUES PERSIST

 

Meanwhile, police and ambulance drivers untrained to deal with mental health patients are being tied up by long waits at emergency units, up to four hours at times, which deprives the area of essential crime fighters. At STPH, emergency personnel must wait for hours because typically five of the 12 ER beds there are housing the mentally ill, and other patient can’t be seen, Stephens said.

 

"The poor patient is caught in the middle," Stephens said. "He's left to anguish." Sometimes, Stephens said, his staff will remove a mental patient from his or her room,

strip their scrubs away and force them to sit in the waiting room watched by a law enforcement office while doctors use the room to treat other patients.

 

"When you have a 20-year-old who is suicidal and overdoses on Xanax and takes priority over an 80-year-old short of breath, it is frustrating," he said. "We're obligated to keep him there, but we're not offering any psychiatric care. It's really come to a head.

It's a crisis."

 

St. Tammany Parish Coroner Dr. Peter Galvan is offering a solution. Using money from a 4-mill tax passed by local voters in 2004 that generates about $3.5 million annually, Galvan is set to unveil in July a crisis emergency hotline, one that's tapped into an existing hotline similar to 911, but is dialed 211.

 

The network is already set up nationwide and is typically manned by volunteer staff, some of which are not trained to handle suicidal callers, he said.

 

Galvan's hotline, however, will be slightly different. He will personally hire and recruit licensed psychiatrists, he said. And with a media blitz of radio and television ads and thousands of pamphlets circulated parish wide he hopes to attract callers to the directory.

 

"Obviously we want to be efficient and not have redundant services," he said of tapping into the existing hotline that's largely unknown. "It's essentially a collaboration. I will actively recruit psychiatrists. It's the only way."

 

But therein lies the challenge, he said. The number of local psychiatric doctors licensed to do business in the area plummeted 90 percent from 400 to 40 after Hurricane Katrina, largely because they fled either due to their own hurricane related problems or to other areas where a client base was capable of paying. Most clients now are uninsured. Those clients used to take advantage of the Charity Hospital system, a 24- hour crisis intervention unit in downtown New Orleans that shuttered its doors after the storm. A Google search, however, reveals a broader gap: only 14 licensed psychiatric doctors were found in St. Tammany.

 

"There's just nobody here on the Northshore," he said. "They don't want to work here."

 

Nobody knows that better than Brenda, a STOPS volunteer who requested her last name be withheld to protect her grandson's privacy.

 

SEARCH FOR HELP

 

Earlier this year, her grandson, a 14-year-old once jovial teenager with a love for hunting, spiraled into depression. Katrina, as well as a horrific accident in which his uncle and cousin crashed and died in a privately-owned Cessna just several hundred yards away from a family gathering, trigged the depression.

The family searched desperately for a psychiatrist after the boy fought with his sister, grabbed a rifle, handed it to her and said, "Shoot me."

 

The quickest appointment was four months away.

 

"That's just too long. Nobody should wait that long," she said.

 

There are however, other avenues for help. More than 80 percent of people with clinical depression can be successfully treated, according to the National Alliance for Mental Health.

 

Dave Mancina, a board member of the organization's Covington chapter, is offering eight-week courses starting at 7 p.m. the second Tuesday of every month at Lakeview Regional Medical Center near Covington on U.S. Highway 190.

 

Dubbed Journey of Hope, the classes teach friends, families and patients of mental illness, depression and suicidal thoughts how to cope.

 

"There is hope out there, but these people don't know it," he said. "And sometimes it can get too late. People aren't trained to recognize the signs."

 

Mancina said in recent months the amount of calls he received from suicidal or depressed people has tripled. But he downplays the surge in suicide attempts as a call for help, not an act to kill oneself.

 

"The amount of suicides is not a real barometer of mental health," he said. "Suicide is the final word, most of these people try four times before they actually kill themselves."

 

Chandler, the STOPS director, knows this first hand. Seventeen years ago, she was blind to the signs.

 

She watched her husband meticulously tidy up his bills and life insurance policy. He repeatedly said he loved his family.

 

Then, one day while she was at work and kids off to school, he killed himself.

 

"At first it was the guilt, the wondering, the questioning, why did I do this? Why didn't I do that?" she said. "That's just part of the grief process."

 

Now, she's dedicated her life to others who suffered the same fate.

 

"They say there are six survivors for every one suicide," she said. "Those tentacles run far and deep. Hindsight is always 20-20. Nobody can prepare for that.”

 

"But this made us stronger. It brought me closer to my kids," she said before pausing, almost reliving the moment she found her husband's body. "I do this work so his death

won't be in vain."

 

 

________________________________________

Electric Power Lines Sizzle Controversy

By MATTHEW PENIX

St. Tammany News

 

Cassandra Myers has lost her best friend.

 

Her husband, Carlos Canter, a 37-year-old, 225-pound weightlifter, is a shell of his former self. He stumbles on easy words. Sometimes staring out into space, he forgets what he's talking about mid-sentence. His headaches are so bad he feels as if he can vomit "on command." And when drinking a cup of coffee, he occasionally drops it, shattering the mug on the floor.

 

"He's just not himself anymore," Myers said. "We can't talk like we used to. He looks so sad, like his dog was his best friend and you just ran over it. It's not normal."

 

It's been three months since Canter, an Illinois resident vacationing in Covington, was struck by a falling power line on Boston Street. And his condition is worsening.

 

Coursing with electricity, the wire singed his face and chest and knocked him unconscious. It was a freak accident, and for a moment, when emerging from a haze to police and ambulance flashlights shining in his face, he thought he was dead.

 

At the very least he thought his face was on fire.

 

Rushed to St. Tammany Parish Hospital, where he was hooked up to IV's for two days, Canter learned a third-degree burn mark from his ear to his neck would likely be permanent. It was tough, he said, but at least he was alive. Besides, his wife was expecting a baby boy the next week. He looked forward to it. It wasn't so bad, he thought.

 

He was wrong.

 

The electrical impulses that fire off his brain processes were shocked by the power surge, causing damage to his memory and motor skills, likely contributing to long-term disabilities. Now his head constantly throbs in pain and he can't sleep more than three to four hours a day. He's on antidepressants, and just recently his taste buds returned to normal, ending the weeks-long taste of copper and blood in his mouth. He   couldn't eat during that time, losing 7 pounds in the process.

 

And after visiting several doctors who passed on treating his uncommon ailments, he finally was referred to Dr. Muhiyuddin Khalid, who had to call in favors to learn how to treat Canter.

 

"I never had a family physician because I never got sick," said Canter. "And so, when I went to find one, nobody would take me. I had the hardest time finding a doctor."

 

It seems Canter's plight has just begun. With diminished motor skills, Canter, ironically an electrical worker in his hometown of Fairview Heights, Ill., who spent 17 years avoiding shocks from live power lines, can't get work.

 

Some power companies first offered a job if he signed a waiver, but later recanted.

 

"I know how to climb poles. I know how to climb trees. But nobody will let me come back to work," he said.

 

So, he's now left jobless, counting on his wife's part time paycheck, a $7.50 an hour job at Burger King, to feed his family of five. Canter was used to making $23 per hour.

 

"My mom and dad help us out, but we can't always turn to them," Myers said. "It's just so stressful."

 

Although a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, injury compensation doesn't apply for Canter. The accident happened during vacation, not during work, said Jim Berger, business manager for Local 309 in Illinois.

 

"We're going to do what we can for him, but it's touchy," Berger said. "He wasn't working at the time."

 

Berger is calling on fellow electricians to donate to a tapped distressed members fund to ease the financial pitfalls Canter faces.

 

And now, to eat and save the bank from repossessing his cars, Canter is seeking legal compensation that seems to be stalled.

 

In what amounts to a jurisdictional nightmare, Covington has no record of ownership of any electrical lines by the city and claims Cleco Power LLC is the owner, Covington Attorney Deborah Foshee told Canter via e-mail correspondence. And Covington claims the line that fell was not even "energized," likely falling into another live line that snapped and hit Canter, he said.

 

But Cleco Power LLC said the "line in question was owned by the City of Covington," Canter said, referring to the e-mails.

 

"This is the source of the disagreement between the city and Cleco - who is the owner of abandoned and no longer energized lines," Foshee wrote via e-mail to Canter who then released the communications to The News Banner. "Were this line to have been energized there would be no argument to keep Covington involved in this matter."

 

It's become a punting game with each entity "pointing fingers at the other one," Canter said.

 

Foshee has not returned repeated phone calls seeking direct comment.

Meanwhile, Cleco spokesman Robbyn Cooper said its power lines are up to standard per the National Electric Safety Code but refused further comment, saying only the company expects a legal battle when a civil suit is filed.

 

Meanwhile, Canter just wants a resolution. "I don't want to sue anybody. I don't want to go to war. But I have to keep pushing. I still have another 60 years to live."

 

NEW INSPIRATION

 

Always a jovial man, Canter's patience is wearing thin. He's lost, not sure where to turn, meanwhile doing mind puzzles and playing chess to keep his mind sharp per doctor's orders.

 

Although he doesn’t mind doing the assigned crossword puzzles, Canter doesn't mind the exercises. Each day he grabs a pen and sits down to work the problems. He exercises his memory to remember who he is. His second child, a boy named Aden Daschun born Oct. 4, can't know a father whose memory is fading, he said.

 

"I got new hope," he said. "He's 2 months old and he sits up and he smiles at me every day."

 

Then there are the nightmares when he wakes up in a cold sweat, sometimes just staring at the ceiling, wondering what his future holds. Will Aden grow up knowing the same father that his other children Cheyeann, 7, and Emalie, 4, have grown to know?

 

He's unsure. And the uncertainty fuels his depression. But true to form, Canter looks at the bright side. "My wife likes it because I'm always up with" my son, Canter said, chuckling. Then once more Canter stumbles again, pauses and asks what he was talking about before adding his final words.

 

"I'm dying back here. I'm behind on everything. They're about to take my cars," he said. "They say it's always the darkest before the dawn. Right now, it's pretty dark."

 

 

__________________________________________

Back in the Saddle

By MATTHEW PENIX

The New Orleans Times-Picayune

 

Attention all sports fans, outdoor enthusiasts, thrill seekers, master anglers, pirogue racers, UFC fighters, skydivers, bird watchers, Frisbee golf gods and any and all weekend warriors who simply love the outdoors when a crisp Louisiana breeze blows in off the sun-kissed waters of Lake Pontchartrain: This column’s for you.

 

After a brief seventh-inning stretch, The Tammany Sportsman is back, and nothing is off limits. If it occurs in St. Tammany, it’s within bounds. And if it’s in bounds, it’s game time, so put on a catcher’s mitt. This pitch is coming in hot.

 

Some days, for instance, this column will hurl a lightening- strike of a fastball like that of the ultimate thrill seeker, Slidell's Skydive Nawlins instructor Tom “Hippie Tom” Tharp. Tharp, who moonlights as a special education teacher, voluntarily (yes, voluntarily) hurls himself out of planes 10,000 feet in the air only to plummet to earth faster than the stock market — at speeds of 120 mph or so for nearly an entire minute of free fall. Nothing stands in the way between life and death other than a neatly packed thin nylon-like bag strapped to his back. He calls it a parachute. His students call it "life support". You might just call it crazy.

 

Other days, we’ll lob over a slow pitch for an easy home run everyone can appreciate. How about a sneak peak of a soon- to-be famous baseball slugger quietly honing his skills while smacking the stitches off balls seven days a week? If Slidell’s Salmen High School alumnus and current MLB’s Washington Nationals’ second baseman Mike Fontenot can rocket to fan favorite status after leading all hitting statistics when LSU clinched its 2000 national champion title, why can’t some other young buck do the same? Or better? When the new, eagerly-anticipated 15-pitch-for-$1 batting cages open to the public in early March at Mandeville’s Pelican Park, there’s no doubt some young Fontenot will be there, strapped in the required helmet, his heart pumping and eyes narrowed, as he zeroes in on the sweet spot of his Louisville slugger swinging for his own 2030 spot in Cooperstown’s Hall of Fame. If this kid exists, you’ll read it here first.

 

 

_______________________________

Elder abuse a growing crime

 in St. Tammany, nationwide

By MATTHEW PENIX

St.Tammany News

 

When an elderly Slidell couple opened their front door to Annette Torregano in 2004 they thought an angel had arrived.

 

She was a charming, wide-eyed, smiling woman and proved to be a stellar home health caregiver as she catered to somewhat demanding commands from Louis Polizzi, a retired Slidell doctor whose health was declining. Louis’ wife Jane, who had recently suffered a stroke that left her debilitated and on oxygen and feeding tubes, also posed challenges.

 

But Torregano fetched food, ran errands, bowed to sometimes barking orders and changed Jane’s breathing tubes for $15 an hour, family members said. She quickly became part of the family, knowing intimate details of their lives. She built a trusting bond. She was a friend, they thought.

 

Then, when Louis was 82, just three months shy of his death, she swindled at least

$46,000 from his frail grasp. He never saw it coming.

“She was on a path,” Louis’ daughter, Antonia “Toni” Polizzi, said. “At that point, she had my dad’s trust completely.”

 

GROWING PHENOMENON

 

The Polizzi case is one of dozens of elder abuse cases reported in St. Tammany each year and one of millions reported nationwide involving the felony crime punishable by 10 years in jail under Louisiana law. Tomorrow marks World Elder Abuse Awareness Day, an awareness campaign aimed to educate the public on such crimes.

 

“We’re supposed to be living in the most affluent community in the state, and the bad guys go where the money is,” said Ralph Oneal, president of Seniors and Law Enforcement Together, a St. Tammany advocacy group for elder rights. “We are just primed for it.”

 

And with seniors among the wealthiest age group in America, more and more are moving to St. Tammany, where home caregivers rank among the top five fastest-growing jobs locally, according to the parish’s District Attorney’s office.

 

Coupled with the fact most caregivers don’t submit to rigorous background checks and only 7 percent of cases are ever reported, it’s become a seemingly free ride for all for criminals, Oneal said.

 

“It’s probably one of the most unreported felonies in the country,” he said.

 

But it’s growing in scope. Elder abuse cases increased almost 20 percent between 2000 and 2004, according to the Delaware-based National Center of Elder Abuse, an advocacy group for elder rights.

 

The same organization estimates that anywhere between 1 million and 2 million Americans older than 65 “have been injured, exploited or otherwise mistreated by someone on whom they depended for care.”

 

ELDERLY FEAR REPORTING

 

For many, the Polizzi case was elder abuse pure and simple. For prosecutors, however, the case wasn’t as cut and dry.

 

While Louisiana has a law to battle elder abuse -- exploitation of the infirmed, punishable by up to 10 years in prison -- the law is rarely used. Only one such case has been successfully prosecuted in Covington’s 22nd Judicial District Court.

 

“If you asked district attorneys around the country if they use (the law) they will say no,” said Harold Bartholomew Jr., a prosecutor with the 22nd Judicial District Attorney’s Office in Covington.

 

The reason is, he said, many elderly victims are reluctant to prosecute loved ones, 50 percent of which are the perpetrators. This dispels a misconception that the majority of violations are in nursing homes.

 

Many times, the elderly who are abused also have dementia, routinely forgetting they were beaten or that they loaned hundreds to thousands of dollars and were never repaid, leaving prosecutors without a witness. Others are afraid of retaliation or worried that, since they’ve been swindled, it signals a loss of independence, Bartholomew said.

 

“It’s much more complex than somebody stuck a gun in somebody’s face and stole money,” he said.

 

That, coupled with the fact that many law enforcement officers aren’t adequately trained to recognize elder abuse, leaves the exploitation charge rarely used. Instead, theft and battery charges are often levied.

 

DA’s ROLE

 

That’s when Bartholomew steps in.

 

In 2005, before hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Bartholomew was tapped by District

Attorney Walter Reed to head a new elder abuse division. At that time Reed’s was only the second such office in the state to offer such specific services. Now there are 41 elderly abuse programs housed in state prosecutors’ offices statewide, largely piggybacking Bartholomew’s tiring crusade to spread the message.

 

“[Bartholmew and the 22nd Judicial Court] really spearheaded the campaign to get elderly abuse prosecution on the map,’ said Trent Garrett, a staff attorney at the Louisiana District Attorneys Association.

 

Through that association Bartholomew has given numerous seminars with 400 district attorneys in the audience. He’s also spent countless hours consoling victims, not necessarily to get convictions, but to solve the problems. In the meantime, he’s become one of the nation’s foremost experts in the field, Oneal said.

 

“He’s really breaking some new ground,” Oneal said. “There is fertile ground here, and many now realize this is an area that needs to be filled. You can take a lot of that back to Harold’s doorstep.”

 

For Bartholomew, the drive is much simpler. He wants results.

 

His own grandmother had Alzheimer’s disease, and he wonders how he would feel if a family member stole her life savings, or worse, pummeled her to death.

 

“We all get old if we are lucky,” he said. “What if this was you?”

 

So, Bartholomew spends his hours consoling victims who are scared of retribution or of sending a family member to jail. Instead, he looks for the easiest solution. He tells the victim to blame the criminal prosecution on him.

 

“So now grandmothers are off the hook,” he said. “And now I’m the bad guy…. They come in afraid but leave with hope.”

 

He admits it’s not always easy to tell a grandparent he’s going to prosecute their grandchild. But it’s part of sending a message to would-be criminals: This crime won’t be tolerated, he said.

 

“Part of me feels like an ogre, but at what point do you draw the line?” he asked. So instead “we’ve moved the line.”

 

GIVING THANKS

 

Polizzi give thanks to that notion.

 

Although court records reveal Torregano stole $46,000, Polizzi believes it was more likely between $75,000 and $100,000, including a new 2005 Honda Accord Louis bought her with promises she would one day repay him.

 

That day never came, Polizzi said.

 

Polizzi’ suspicions soon ran high. She continued to fly back to Slidell from her New York home once a month to check on her parents, and more importantly, the caregivers.

 

It’s then she started noticing small things missing – guns, narcotic prescription painkillers and more that she can’t pinpoint on anyone. Then on Father’s Day 2007, while rifling through her father’s checkbook, she noticed the check numbers skipped in sequence. Someone, she realized, was stealing money.

 

“That was the beginning of knowing something was wrong,” she said.

 

She called the bank and noticed six checks totaling an undisclosed amount had been debited from her father’s account, three of which were written and forged by Torregano.

 

She presented her father with the evidence, and a criminal case snowballed. Police were called. Interviews were conducted. And a search of Torregano’s home produced Louis’ missing painkillers, resulting in a drug possession charge that Polizzi said was later dropped.

 

Three months ago, under Bartholomew’s prosecution, Torregano pleaded guilty to theft and was given a seven-year suspended sentence. She only spent one night in jail.

 

But the message was sent, Polizzi said.

 

Meanwhile, on Jan. 25, Louis passed away, some of his last memories likely of a caregiver’s betrayal.

 

Now Jane is left a widow and in a nursing home. Polizzi has now moved home to help out and is renovating her parents’ home, the home she grew up in, wondering how the fiasco ever happened in the first place.

 

“You have to trust somebody, but who?” she asked. “I just hope this story brings some light to others.”

 

 

________________________________

Family fights for mother's right to life

BY MATTHEW PENIX

Slidell Sentry-News

 

SLIDELL  — After Oris Pettis' mother suffered a stroke in March, Pettis sat in the hospital room for nine weeks, passing the time by playing Christian albums and reading books to her mom.

 

But Doris L. Hightower Smith, Pettis' 89-­year-­old mother, barely talked or moved. Every once in a while, she would grin or her eyes would follow people as they moved about in the room. A month later, as a feeding tube was worked down her throat, she gurgled.

 

Overall, the responses were few and far between, but at least they were responses, said Pettis.

 

That was enough to keep hope alive for Pettis, her sister, Dianne Smith Braddock, and her brother, Steve Smith. They celebrated the small victories  — a finger move, a low, inaudible mumble  — and offered thanks to God.

 

Today, the elder woman's responses, or lack thereof, threaten to separate the family for good.

 

In a recent court appeal, Pettis is challenging her sister and brother, who decided to remove Doris Smith's feeding tube, and honor a living well that her mother not be kept alive by life-­‐support.

 

On Aug. 2, a Monroe, La., judge also sided with Steve and Braddock and ruled it is legal for the siblings to execute their mother's living will, which Pettis says would ultimately starve their mother to death.

 

Mike Hart, attorney for Steve and Braddock, did not return repeated phone calls. Braddock was contacted by telephone and declined to comment.

 

Fourth Judicial District Court Judge Alvin Sharp noted in a 16-­‐page ruling that Doris was a competent woman and capable of understanding the living well she had signed years earlier, despite her eighth-grade education.

 

"All persons have the fundamental right to control the decisions relating to their own medical care — including the decision to have life — sustaining procedures withheld or withdrawn in instances where such persons are diagnosed as having terminal and irreversible conditions," Sharp wrote.

 

But Pettis doesn't believe her mother understood the implications of life support, she said, and has filed an appeal.

 

"I don't believe that the people in Louisiana are aware that a feeding tube is considered life support," said Pettis. "And I don't believe my mother realized that either. I can't just sit back and let her die. That's euthanasia."

 

According to Jack Wright Jr., Pettis' lawyer, it was never clearly described to Doris that food was considered life support and if it had, she might have not signed the will.

 

"Our position is that it is not informed consent because Doris was not told that life support meant nutrition or dehydration," said Wright. "She was not informed about what may happen. And if the appeals court agrees with that, it could potentially invalidate a lot of living

wells."

 

This week, Wright won a stay order, which allowed doctors to replace the feeding tube. The Second Court of Appeals, based in Shreveport, La., will review the case Thursday.

 

The court can elect to hear the case, or agree with Sharp's previous ruling. Either way, the decision could take several days, Wright said.

 

If the court sides with Sharp, Pettis fears her mother's fate.

 

Doctors and nurses have explained the dying process, Pettis said, which could take up to six weeks.

 

However, if the appeals court favors Wright it could be a landmark decision in Louisiana, one that would forever change the way living wills are written and signed, said Wright.

 

"I think it's a significant lawsuit," said Wright. "I would like to see living wills spell out the ways you can die. Right now, they don't. This could be the start to that."

 

Fighting back tears Tuesday, Pettis pulled out a picture of her mother, Doris. Her daughter, Debbie Ritchie, sat close and tried to comfort her mom.

 

"This is a situation you never thought you would get into. Never," Ritchie said. "We could have not envisioned this."

 

Pettis turned to look at her daughter. Her eyes seemed to pour out "thank yous" for the support.

 

"It's an ugly situation," said Pettis. "I don't feel like I want to do all this, but to stand in front of God with clean hands this is what I have to do. This is what the Bible says. I challenged my siblings to prove from scriptures that they are right, but they can't. I can."

 

For now, Pettis said she is caught up in a bad dream.

 

"I feel like I am in a nightmare recently and I don't know what to do," she said. "I'm a private person, but if this is what it takes to let people know that wills aren't always specific enough and they need to be changed, then it helps me through it. May God help us."

 

 

_____________________________

Life continues in FEMA land

By MATTHEW PENIX

St. Tammany News

 

Jeanette Battle's 15-foot long trailer was supposed to give her a new life after Hurricane Katrina.

 

Now it's her prison.

 

After having neck surgery to repair two infected discs in her neck, the mother of three can't return to work as a Taco Bell manager.

Instead she spends her days watching "Judge Judy," cramped in a 6- by 6-foot bedroom, barely big enough to stand up. The federal government calls it her home. She calls it her insane asylum.

 

After Hurricane Katrina dumped 10 feet of water into her Lacombe home, with only an inch to spare before it reached the ceiling, Battle was issued a temporary trailer in north Slidell by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. High post-Katrina rent costs have forced her to stay put, caring for her infant grandson, while her three boys, 14, 15, 18, live in a trailer behind her. She's been socking away money in hopes of moving out this November.

 

"I'm just real stressed right now," said Battle, her eyes worn and body language slouched. "I can never get used to this. I always had my family in the house with me, a family environment. Now I can't even move."

 

Battle glances down the hall. She could spit to the other side of the trailer, she said,

 

Battle is just one of more than 4,000 residents living in St. Tammany FEMA trailers, down from 10,000 local trailers after the storm and a far cry from the 92,000 still dotting the Gulf Coast, 41,837 of which are in Louisiana, according to federal, state and local government calculations. Of those residents statewide, 17,000 rented apartments before Katrina and Rita.

 

There could be a solution, albeit a small one. The federal government compiled a parish-by-parish Web site list of 6,300 apartments statewide and 3,885 in the seven-parish New Orleans area eligible for rent vouchers from the Department of Housing and

Urban Development. It's meant to be a guide for people like Battle to find permanent housing with a portion of the rent paid until March 2009. Of those available apartments, New Orleans has 1,705, Jefferson 1,613, St. Bernard 262 and St. Tammany has 158.

 

That's news to Luis Sikaffy's ears. An American man of Columbian descent, Skiffay has lived in the greater New Orleans area for 40 years. He easily fell in love with the area's spicy Cajun seafood and booming brass bands. He paid his taxes, minded his own business and he and his wife focused on raising their daughter. Then just as his life was sailing smoothly, Katrina pounded his Mid-City home.

Now he lives in a FEMA trailer park near Pearl River, his home for the past two years.

 

It's a simple place: one beige chair, one beige couch, courtesy of FEMA. The walls are bare, sans two crosses hanging in the window. He's afraid to decorate it with his own flair, fearing he'll have to move soon, unsure of what he can afford with high post-Katrina rents. The only luxury he’s bought is a 20-inch TV so he can keep up with local news. He feels trapped, suffocated.

 

"I don't want to live in this trailer. I've always worked, always bought my own things. I don't like the way I live. I have nothing against FEMA, but I don't want to live in the government's park," he said.

 

Its restrictions have gotten to him. Because of the close proximity of the trailers, he is banned from performing his favorite task: grilling out. He also has no yard to tend to. At times, depression sets in and he turns to the cross hanging over his window for guidance.

 

His story is not unusual.

 

A study released in March by the Santa Monica, Calif.-based International Medical Corps, a psycho-social scientific outfit aimed at emergency operations, found Louisiana hurricane survivors living in FEMA trailers are 15 times more like to commit suicide than the national suicide rate. Depression is also seven times the national average, and domestic violence is nearly triple the baseline before displacement.

 

Elvis G. Sellers knows the latter first hand.

 

He's tried to commit suicide twice since Katrina, when his girlfriend and son moved to Houston. He's now on antidepressants.

 

"The doctors say it has a lot to do with my living conditions," the 20-something man said, sitting next to Battle, a neighbor he visits often after losing his own home in Slidell. "It's like prison, and the crime here is no joke. If it stays like this for two more years, it's going to become the new New Orleans. It's for real."

 

International Medical Corps agrees. After surveying 400 men and women living in FEMA trailer parks, 49 percent said they did not feel safe at night and 45 percent said they would not let their children play in the parks during the day.

 

Crime statistics from local law enforcement agencies were not available as of press time.

 

"Those planning and leading recovery efforts should not think of these displaced persons as merely evacuees, but in a global construct as internally displaced persons," said Dr. Lynn Lawry, a specialist in psychosocial emergency recovery. "Programs should be tailored to well-developed and well-studied international models of rights-based care as a means of improving the health and well- being of this (trailer) population."

 

Until then, people like Battle, Skiffay and Sellers sit and wait. They wait for the day they can afford an apartment or buy a plot of land to place another trailer on or build a home. It's a struggle, they said, but their faith keeps them alive.

 

"I guess it's not so bad. I just live day by day," Skiffay said. "I can't complain. I just have to thank the government for one thing - a roof. I'm a Christian man. I just leave it to God."

 

 

_______________________________________

Slidell Junior High principal giving up school

to compete on the NASCAR circuit

BY MATTHEW PENIX

Slidell Sentry-News

 

SLIDELL — Years ago, Kim Crosby stood near the race track and felt the ground rumble as a 3,400-pound NASCAR turned the far corner and roared by her on the circle track.

 

The thunderous ring reverberated in her ear. Her body was covered in goose bumps. Tears swelled in her eyes. Without hesitation, she turned to her husband and said, "I can do that."

 

"Yeah, right," her husband Chris Crosby said. Kim recently proved him wrong. The Slidell Junior High School principal and 12-year education veteran, announced her retirement this December to join the ranks of NASCAR fury. Sponsored by Louisiana's own Boudreaux's Butt Paste, Kim is only the third female in history to be sponsored in the NASCAR Busch and Nextel series, a multi- million dollar, 35-race series between the two broadcasts nationwide.

 

She can't wait.

 

The diesel gas fumes, hot sticky sun and breakneck speeds have left a jones in Kim's heart and body ever since she can remember. As a child her and her friend would race dirt bikes, blaze trails with tractors and juice up transmissions, gears and "whatever it takes to go faster."

 

On the hot Florida asphalt Feb. 19, Kim will be blazing another trail.

"It's big shoes to fill," said Kim of cementing her place in NASCAR history as the only woman racer revving her car at the series first race this season in Taledego, Fla. "Women in the past 50 years haven't grown up on the tracks. It hasn't been until the last 20 years women have gotten serious. I guess it's the whole mind set thing. That's OK. We just kind of look at them and smile and keep going."

 

In fact, Kim has never stopped. Her motto is to "keep going." She knows what she wants and goes after it, she said.

 

She's been preparing for this moment all her life.

 

The daughter of a St. Tammany Parish school teacher, Kim was bred for an education career early on. The field was stable and teachers can make a living making a difference, she said. It sounded good. She could tinker with her cars after school and race on the weekends.

 

Then she met her husband.

 

At a drag race in 1982, she saw Chris from afar. Kim was a senior in high school with her eyes set on education. Chris was a dragster, a bad boy covered in grease. It was a perfect match. The two started to chat and mutual interest in dangerous speeds kicked the relationship moving. Like the races, their love affair hasn't slowed down. "That was it. I knew he was the man of my dreams."

Since then the two have driven in countless races across the United States, traveling to The Florida Truck Series at Desota Super Speedway near the birthplace of racing, Daytona, Florida, and drag racing for 15 years with the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) and International Hot Rod Association (IHRA).

 

Since 2000, Kim has been an instructor at the Buck Baker Racing School in Atlanta after attending a workshop there taught by the now deceased legendary driver, Buck Baker, winner of 46 Winston Cups. Baker was impressed with her skills. He offered her a job. It was a moment of truth for Kim.

 

"When I told him I was an assistant principal, he told me to quit my job and come work for him," she said. "He told me he liked the way I drove and handled the car and that I had been the fastest on the track all weekend."

 

From that day on she no longer had weekends off.

 

To get more "seat time" she spent Saturdays and Sundays on the track teaching and honing her own skills with speeds up to 198 mph. She learned a lot in those years, she said, including what a professional stock car wreck feels like.

 

In 2003, Kim revved up her engine at the Kentucky Speedway in Sparta, Kentucky, hoping to qualify for her first stock car race.

Her opponents were men. She was the dainty 5 feet 4 inch, 120- pound blond woman from the bayou. It didn't faze her. At the sound of the qualifying start blast, she gunned it.

 

Moments later the ignition box exploded in her car, causing her eyes to jolt down for a split second. But traveling at 300-feet per second is all one needs to crash. She brushed a wall and the lower control arm bent. There was no time for repairs, but Crosby, true to form, "kept going." She qualified 25th out of 42.

 

On race day, she sped to 18th place before being rammed from behind by another vehicle. Repairs slowed her down, but she again, "kept going." She zipped past the finish line in 21st place. It wasn't the top 15th place like she wanted, but it was only one of her first big races.

 

"She gets in there and races with the big boys," said George Boudreaux, the owner of Boudreaux's Butt Paste and Kim's sponsor. "She's intelligent, beautiful and she can drive. What more do you need?"

 

Since signing Kim, Boudreaux's Butt Paste, a balming paste, has shot to international stardom. It was featured on The Oprah Winfrey show Tuesday and Kim's story has attracted ESPN the Magazine, The London Times and more.

 

"Sometimes we feel like a Shetland pony racing against a thoroughbred," said Boudreaux. "We got all the heart and all the desire, but the not all the equipment."

 

Nascar favorites rake in anywhere from $6 million to $10 million per year for the Nextel Cup, which Kim will race in. The most coveted advertising spot -- front hood and back bumper -- costs anywhere from $2 to $4 million for all 35 races in the season.

Butt Paste will be the main sponsor for 10 of the 35.

 

Although Boudreaux declined to discuss monetary specifics for the sponsorship, he did say the money is well spent.

 

"I met her through some mutual friends of ours at an LSU football game last year," he said. "And I had always been a fan of NASCAR. If you like something you should jump into it. So, we sponsored her."

 

Kim's dream was fulfilled. But her heart was torn. "To resign is hard," she said before heading off to a parish wide principal's meeting. "I'm doing this with mixed emotions." When she received the offer, Kim struggled with what to do. She made an appointment with Superintendent Gayle Sloan to tell her personally that she would resign. She didn't want to do it over the phone. Kim was on edge, not knowing how the education community would embrace her decision.

 

"I told her," Kim said. "And Gayle just looked at me and smiled. She said, 'It's not every day you get to fulfill your dreams.' Gayle has given me the encouragement and wings to do this."

 

Sloan said the opportunity Kim has is boundless, a testament to hard work that dreams do become realities. The mark of a strong woman gearing up in a fast cutthroat sport, is a "wonderful opportunity for professional racing," said Sloan. "It's a milestone."

 

But the sting of leaving her student's behind hasn't faded from Kim's heart.

 

"If you can come get to know them and you know how they think and who they are, you connect with them on a different level," said Crosby. "The whole education becomes a different process."It's like they're your own kids. They light up when they learn something new, she said. The interaction is fascinating.

 

She hopes her students will understand and look at her as an example of following your dreams, regardless of the sacrifice.

 

When asked what happened to their principal, Kim hopes her students will pause, remember her actions and say she "kept going."

 

 

_________________________________________________

Sheriff violated state law by putting his name on vehicles

Name removed after audit uncovered violation

By MATTHEW PENIX

Slidell Sentry-News

 

For the second time in his 17-year tenure, Sheriff Jack Strain violated state law by not removing his name from the side of his office's vehicle fleet, a move Louisiana statute calls illegal advertising on publicly owned property.

 

The violation unearthed in a December 2007 legislative audit but only recently released found Strain was “unaware”   of the nameplate and, once acknowledged, he quickly worked to remove the roughly 1/2-inch tall by 1-inch long emblem, said Bryan Huval, audit director for Metairie-based audit firm Laporte, Sehrt, Romig and Hand, who performed the audit.

 

“It  was  an  oversight  on  (the  Sheriff's Office) part, not realizing the decal was on (the cruiser),” Huval said.  “It is so small, we just happened upon it really.

 

Tucked in the middle of the Sheriff's Office crest on the side of police cruiser, Strain's name is barely visible to the average passerby.

 

But it's not the first time Strain was forced to remove his name from Sheriff's Office vehicles. Earlier in his career Strain was cited during a legislative audit for plastering his name on the side of cruisers. Strain said he could not remember specific times or the size of his name.

 

Those names were later removed using an undisclosed amount of taxpayer money, and Strain said recently he was unaware at the time any more violations existed on his office's 150 to 200 vehicles.

 

“This was an oversight by the sheriff's management,” the state audit report found. “Previously, the sheriff had removed a larger decal from all vehicles. However, it remained within the badge decal,” and Sheriff Strain was unaware it existed, the report said.

 

By Friday, Strain had removed roughly half of the nameplates from his vehicle fleet, Sheriff's Office spokesman George Bonnett said.

 

UNKNOWN LAW

 

The little-known law was thrust into public spotlight last year during a heated election for sheriff in St. John the Baptist Parish, where political pundits unearthed the law and used it in campaign to oust the incumbent candidate, Wayne Jones, Strain said.

 

“The law makes sense,” said Ed Sherman, a law professor at Tulane University. “It seems to me that the cars are the property of the parish. They shouldn't serve as the place to advertise any sheriff's name.”

 

But for many, the law is not commonly known. Several city attorneys, law professors and political science experts surveyed were first unaware of the law until it was pointed out on the state legislative Web site www.legis.state.la.us by the St. Tammany News.

 

The law, revised statue 43:31 states “no public official of any branch, department, agency or other entity of state or local government shall affix his or her name on any publicly owned motor vehicle,” according to the legislative audit.

 

Still Dr. Peter Petrakis, associate professor of political science at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, said it's incumbent on elected officials to know their boundaries while serving elected office.

 

“It’s not as trivial as what some people make it sound,” Petrakis said. “Given the political climate in Louisiana, with (Governor Bobby) Jindal making ethics reform a top priority of his administration, it's exactly the wrong time for this to happen.”

 

Petrakis suggest the practice likely occurs often and with no accountability.

 

“The whole notion suggests a tone-deafness from politicians to the political climate,” he said.

 

“In politics, name recognition is the first name of the battle,” Patrakis said, likening the practice to “free advertising with the aura of government support behind it.”

 

District Attorney Walter Reed spokesman Rick Wood, however, defended Strain.

 

“It was inadvertent by the sheriff. There was not the intent to promote his name on public property, and when it was brought to his attention, he took the necessary steps to comply with the law. The sheriff has to get some credit,” Wood said.

 

No charges were filed because the  violation  “would have to be intentional,”  Wood said, adding Strain was unaware of the violation. Under the statute, Strain could have faced a $500 fine.

 

 

_________________________________________________

Slidell builder turns life around

By MATTHEW PENIX

Slidell Sentry-News

 

Waguespack spends 20 years in jail, finds God, starts business By Matthew Penix

 

For the better part of 20 years Chris Waguespack was confined to a 6- by 9- foot jail cell, staring down jailhouse bullies, hurling obscenities during inmate football games and intent on getting out alive to smoke one more rock of crack cocaine.

 

During his brief stints of freedom, the hulking workout fanatic “stole anything that wasn’t tied down” to later sell for drugs, including kids’ bikes and even a car engine he lugged on his back at 3 am for several thousand feet. He had to feed his addiction any way possible, he said.

 

He drank uncontrollably to calm himself, slept on the streets, ran with stone- cold criminals and even once ripped off a dealer’s supply during a drug transaction, a move that nearly got him killed. At the time, he fled, and as he turned he heard the gunshots. Sparks bounced up from the concrete, the bullets just barely missing his legs, he said.

 

He was a loner, with no friends but the drugs. His parents, when he would knock on their door, often turned off the lights and shooed him away. He wanted to end it all by jumping in front of an oncoming car.

 

It was the beginning of the end.

 

Then a light turned on, and the greatest day of his life unfolded, one that sent him from the jailhouse to the rich house, rubbing elbows with the same millionaires who used to snub him while trying to drum up work on the outside.

 

The secret was simple: “I became a junkie for Jesus that day,” he said.

 

Fourteen years ago, while serving five years of a 10-year sentence in a northern Louisiana prison for a charge he would not disclose, Waguespack said he found God. It was in the mid 80’s, and Waguespack, a lineman on the inmate football team, unleashed his inner anger on the gridiron field, intent on crunching the opposing team’s bones. Curse words spewed from this mouth, echoing through the jail yard.

 

“Man, you need to find the lord, Allah, Buddha, somebody,” his coach, a Muslim man, told Waguespack. “You need help.”

 

It was the beginning of a new era.

 

Days later he attended a chapel sermon. He had no other options, he said. He tried AA, NA and every other treatment center or program he could find. Nothing worked. Plus, with 44 misdemeanor arrests and 15 felony arrests — not all resulting in convictions — he was staring at a multiple offender sentence.

 

During his last stint in jail, state lawmakers approved a bill that could send repeat offenders to prison for life. If he didn’t shape up now, he knew once he got out he’d fall back into his old ways, get arrested and be slapped with a multiple offender bill. He didn't want to spend the rest of this life in jail.

 

He listened intently to the preacher, searching for the answers. The words honed in like a GPS. They smacked him like a sledgehammer to the chest.

 

“For the first time in my life somebody said something that made sense to me,” he said. “That’s when the lights came on. It was like, ‘Wow!’” It was an instant transformation. He doesn’t even remember walking back to his jail cell.  “It’s like I floated back. It’s an experience. It was something I can’t explain other than the Lord,” he said.

 

That night he gave up smoking cold turkey, a first step to changing his life.

 

Now Waguespack, 45, runs Waguespack Construction, a 29-employee outfit that specializes in building hurricane-resistant homes. He is also an ordained minister, he said, smiling as he whipped out his wallet and fetched for the proof, finding a certified card from Malise Prieto, St. Tammany Parish Clerk of Court. “Amazing,” he said. “I never dreamed I’d be here right now.”

 

Waguespack is a muscular man, the black T-shirt emblazoned with the name of his construction firm stretching tightly around his thick arms. He sports a chunky gold chain, diamond studded earrings, a sandy goatee and visible tattoos along his arms.

 

He speaks in passionate bursts, dropping witty one-liners — “I started slinging God's tracks instead of rocks” — and tidbits of God’s praise — “If He can do it for me, He can do it for anybody.” He looks like your older cooler, tougher, brother, but his eyes now show a hint of vulnerability. He’s still macho, but macho enough to be vulnerable.

 

Some might say he’s earned the right to be this way.

 

After finding God in jail, he was cautious not to fall into “jailhouse religion,” a term used for inmates who say they are rehabilitated, then return to shady ways when paroled.

 

He attended Mass every day, clutching his Bible throughout the mess hall and preaching to anyone who would listen. “Even though I was in jail, those were the best days of my life,” he said. “I was bouncing around with my Bible, all happy, and I even led captains and corporals to the Lord. Everyone looked at me though like they’d been vaccinated with pickle juice. They had a sour face when I approached.”

 

With about a year left on his sentence, Waguespack enrolled in the St. Tammany Parish Jail work release program, where he worked during the day and reported to the facility at night. It’s there he gained confidence and his first real paycheck ever. Often times when released in years past, he was tossed to the streets like a “dog returning to vomit,” he said. But by having the opportunity to work odd construction jobs during the day, he developed a client base to work with when released from state custody.

 

He started out “slinging fish” to people on the banks of Lake Pontchartrain. He skimped and saved his earnings then bought a power saw, cord and nail bag. Growing up shadowing his brother in the carpentry business, he developed his

trade and parlayed it to build two clients a garage. Then two more people employed his service. With that money, he bought a compressor and other equipment. He eventually bought a yellow Ford pickup truck to drive to job sites.

 

The day he was released from jail, he had clients lined up across town. Waguespack Construction was formed.

 

“God had changed my life,” he said.

 

Then, just after he was released, thankful for another opportunity, his God dealt Waguespack another blow. His two daughters from his first marriage, Kiesha, 21, and Celeste, 23, died within six months of each other. Each had ingested too many “pills” and never woke up, Waguespack said.

 

He gave the eulogy at Kiesha’s funeral, ministering to her friends. By the time Celeste died, it was too hard to minister another funeral. When questioned if he faltered in his faith during these trying times, Waguespack looked a reporter directly in the eye and said, “No.”

 

“I had a reason to lay down and die,” he said. “But I can’t. I was given this heartache to break this generation’s curse. I’m here to help.”

 

He instead uses the experience to preach at Way Builders, a non-profit church for struggling drug addicts and inmates on Helenburg Road in Covington.

About 50 guys attend weekly, he said, and it boasts a recidivism rate of 45 percent, far lower than 80 percent at other programs, he said. “I watch these guys grow, pay bills, live. I watch them pay their rent check now, and their chest sticks out. It puts hair on your chest to pay a bill.”

 

He knows what this feels like. When he first was paroled, he had no home to call his own and so he refinished a friend’s 600-square-foot shack in order to fulfill an address requirement for his parole officer.

 

Now he owns more than 30 lots and his own home with an in-ground pool near Lacombe. He plans to build his dream house next year. And instead of his old yellow beat up Ford truck, in his driveway now sits a shiny new yellow

Hummer.

 

Nearby his youngest daughter Arial, 5, who he had with his new wife April, — “the only two AAs in my life now” — tosses fish food out for the reindeer that are “coming for Christmas.” He surveys the area. In his yard snowmen are blinking, and Rudolf’s red nose is shining bright. Christmas music is playing in the background. Across the street, he owns three lots.

 

“I can’t believe this is my life,” he said. “ I am the lucky one. I owe it all to Him.”

 

 

_________________________________________

A Cincinnati kid's time in the Slidell spelling bee

By MATTHEW PENIX

Slidell Sentry-News

 

It was coming, and I wasn't ready.

 

Competing in the 5th Annual Woody Woodside Spelling Bee at Slidell's St. Margaret Mary Church on Thursday night, Mayor Ben Morris slowly walked the length of the gymnasium to hand me the microphone. Out of my three-person team, it was my turn to spell.

 

The words thus far - receipt, torque, trough, phlegm - were easy. But this was me, the Cincinnati Kid, a Yankee journalist from Ohio working in Louisiana. My word would be different, harder. My luck always is.

 

My palms started to sweat. My heart thumped. Morris, posing as the master of ceremonies, stepped in front of me, handed me the microphone and smiled his trademark grin. Slidell Police Chief Freddy Drennan, professional competitors from other news outlets, my colleagues - they all stared.

 

Then enunciator Jack Cerny pronounced the word and with it, he kicked sand in my face, with all of Slidell taking notice.

 

Tocsin: pronounced tok-sin, meaning a bell used to sound an alarm. Huh?

Silence. My team scrambled to jot down the correct spelling, frantically scratching out different pronunciations before the bell rings.

 

This is it. I can't prolong the inevitable. I hope, pray and lean in and repeat the word back into the microphone in typical spelling bee fashion. I'm too close. My voice booms.

 

I hate to hear myself speak.

 

Then I look at the paper in front of me, the word scribbled down by my colleagues in the usual journalist style fashion, a sacred club of handwriting language better known to the rest of the world as chicken scratch. I rattle off each letter one by one, T-O-X-E-N, then cringe, waiting for the answer. My heart thumps harder.

 

I'm a journalist. We're supposed to know, or at least expected to know, the meaning and spelling of the entire abridged version of Webster's Dictionary. Many on the other hand, like me, cheat. We use spell check. It's vastly underrated.

Judge Donald Bryan pauses. "That is ... (pauses, pauses, pauses some more) ... incorrect," he said after an eternity.

 

Just like that my team lost. I'm the cause. I'm embarrassed, slapped in the face. It's the third round. We're done, nixed, out for good.

 

For $25, teams could buy a mulligan, and get a second chance at a different word. We patted our pants. Nothing. We're broke. We're journalists.

 

Lucky for me, despite what I am feeling, I'm not standing at the gallows. This is a philanthropic cause. I remind myself over and over.

 

Roughly 36 spellers from 12 teams packed the gym for the 5th annual Woody Woodside Spelling Bee, an annual fund-raiser for the St. Tammany Literary Society.

 

Named after Woodside, a native of England made famous by the British government for inventing a submarine valve, the event raised more than $3,600 with $300 registration fee per team.

 

The money goes a long way for an all-volunteer agency relying solely on donations to help people read and find jobs. Woodside, who lived in Slidell and was an active local Rotarian and advocate of St. Tammany Literacy Assistance program, devised the fund- raiser. It was named after him following his death.

 

"He put his whole heart into this," said Ken Thompson, a Slidellian who selected the spelling words this year.

 

It seems Woodside recognized the importance. In St. Tammany Parish, 18,000 people, or 17 percent of the population, cannot read, according to Nancy Copes, director for the St. Tammany Literacy Assistance Program who was on hand as the "Mother Bee" directing the contest's traffic flow.

 

Nationwide, she said, illiteracy numbers top 40 million with roughly 43 percent, or 17.2 million of those people living in poverty. That equates to an annual earning of $17,500 for a family of four and $8,959 for a single person. And nearly 17 percent of those live off food stamps. Even more shocking, 70 percent aren't likely to ever find a job, according to the National Institute for Literacy.

 

The problem is more profound when Copes explains it like this: These people can't locate two pieces of information in a sports article. They can't pinpoint an intersection on a street map. And they can't identify and enter background information on a Social Security card application. Subsequently self-esteem usually plummets and depression kicks into high gear, Copes said. And they are often too embarrassed to seek out help.

 

"The bad news for us is that we're going to be in business for a long time because the demand is increasing," Copes said.

 

And, to think, I felt bad for misspelling Tocsin. Tok-sin: A bell used to sound an alarm.

I'll never forget it.

 

 

_______________________________

Trucker  Troubles

By MATTHEW PENIX

St. Tammany News

 

At a now defunct rest stop off Interstate 12 southwest of Covington, burly truckers and their 18-wheelers once ruled the night.

 

As day became dusk, passersby could see a flurry of red parking lights piercing the darkness. The hydraulic wheeze of brake line pressure being released hissed as cross-country drivers bedded down for the night.

 

Now the closed lot is nothing more than a vacant, overgrown concrete jungle, with weeds sprouting through the cracks, an eye soar for motorists as construction begins on a $9.7 million, year- long construction project to build an interchange in its spot. 

 

But with the birth of a new interchange comes the death of a trucker’s sleep destination, a move that recently sparked a rift between homeowners and truckers sorting out where to park and rest at night.

 

Truckers claim the rest stop closure and 23 others like it statewide are forcing them to pick and choose random interstate exit and entrance ramp shoulders such as Louisiana Highways 434 and 59 to stop, park and rest for the night. And while many drivers know it’s illegal to park on interstate shoulders, truck drivers are finding themselves in a catch 22 with federal guidelines forcing them to stop immediately after 14 to 16 hours of driving, wherever they are, to rest. Add in the fact there are few signs indicating the illegality of parking on a shoulder, and State Police admitting they will only enforce the law on a case by case basis, the move has riled the voices of the largest homeowner’s association in St. Tammany, The Association of Associations, roughly 9,000 strong, which claims the practice is deadly dangerous.

 

“There has to be something we can do,” said Rick Wilke, an AOA media representative and former AOA director. “Somebody could be distracted and die.”

 

RESIDENT CONCERNS

 

The AOA is reaching out to authorities such as State Police, St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office and the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development to force the parked truck drivers out of St. Tammany. In many cases the agencies have little recourse.

 

With $14 billion backlog of projects, DOTD officials can’t always afford to place a $200 sign warning that parking on the shoulder is illegal.

 

“It’s like parking in front of a fire hydrant,” Brendan Rush, DOTD spokesman said. “There aren’t always signs there but you know it’s illegal to park there.”

 

And State Police spokesman Louis Calato said without any signs, enforcing the law is sometimes difficult, a move determined on a case-by-case basis.

 

For Wilke that’s not enough.

 

“It can be pretty scary coming off an off ramp with a line of truckers stopped on the ramp,” he said. “It’s issues like this where people look at it and say, ‘Geez. We have a problem.’ If citizens get together and work with the appropriate agencies, you can get something done. Many law enforcement agencies just drive by and don’t bother because they have better things to do, but if citizens start complaining we can push these drivers out of St. Tammany.”

 

While no official crash statistics have been compiled outlining the dangers, Andrew Varvouitis, 28, of Covington, feels it’s simply a matter of time before someone is seriously injured or worse, dies, while distracted by the parked 18-wheelers.

 

“St. Tammany’s shoulders are not your hotel,” Varvoutis, an AOA member said. “All it has done is create a traffic hazard for citizens in this parish.”

 

He added many trucks don’t reach optimal speed when pulling off an exit ramp causing dangerous situations for other motorists exiting. And many 18-wheelers dig ruts with their big wheels in the grassy portions of the shoulder, easily capable of causing average motorists to wreck, he said.

 

“If you pull off in one of those ruts, it’s going to throw your vehicle off for a wild ride,” Varvouitis said.

 

WHERE TO GO?

 

The community scorn has heaped more pressure on truck drivers to nap elsewhere, a move that is sometimes impossible as one of the most restrictive driving license classifications in the nation require drivers to stop driving after at least 14 hours.

 

But where do they go?

 

In the 1980s, state Department of Transportation and Development officials embarked on a 20-year master plan to build 34 rest stops throughout the state. Now, all but one has exceeded its design life and must be abandoned and possibly demolished, said Curtis Fletcher, rest area manager for the DOTD.

 

And with the $14 billion backlog of projects, DOTD officials are strapped to build and maintain new facilities with construction costs reaching $9 million per facility and $250,000 per year for maintenance, Fletcher said.

 

The result leaves 10 rest areas throughout the state to be redesigned with “state of the art” facilities, including security cameras, vending machines and security detail, still a 70 percent decrease in rest stops from 34 just two decades ago, he said.

 

“We just don’t have that kind of money to build these things,” Fletcher said, adding improvements to shoddy roads throughout the state trumps overhauling rest areas.

 

“The roads are the first impression people get when they come into Louisiana,” Fletcher said. “Maybe we ought to consider (overhauling the rest stops), but I’m glad it’s not entirely my decision.”

 

CRIME HAVEN

 

Fletcher is also quick to point out that St. Tammany’s rest stops are the most crime-riddled facilities in the state.

 

In years past, two rapes and one shooting erupted at rest stops on the east end of the parish, he said.

 

And at the now defunct I-12 rest stop, homosexual encounters were not uncommon, some going as far as to burn a wooden bridge behind the center to stop passersby from marching back into the woods and unmask the on goings, Fletcher said.

 

At other times, feces would be slapped against the rest stop bathroom walls and toilets were clogged after the sensory eye of electronic toilet flushers were gouged out with screwdrivers.

 

THE WORLD OF TRUCK DRIVING

 

Jim Stanton knows these perils first hand. As a truck driver for 15 years, the Pearl River resident and former St. Bernard Sheriff’s deputy has seen his share of shady characters on the road. He’s heard trucker lore of rest stop stabbings and shotgun murders, with waiting muggers climbing underneath parked trucks equipped with a bed, supported by a steel plate underneath, waiting to pounce.

 

“You can’t hear a 9-mm shot if you’re lying on top of that steel,” he said.

 

Stanton, however, is quick to defend those who park on the side of an interstate exit and entrance ramps. If pulled over by a state trooper and cited for driving over the required hours, “it’s almost like getting a DWI,” a death sentence for any trucker’s livelihood.

 

“The driver is safer on the shoulder than in rest stops,” he said, recalling several truck driving friends who were mugged at various

rest stops and his own encounter with a man posing as police officer likely to dole out the same fate.

 

Looking back, Stanton’s nerves tingled as he was pulled over with what he calls a fake siren. Stanton was tired. He wasn’t up for the hassle. Not after 10 hours of driving, he said.

 

“It took me all of two minutes to figure out he was full of bull,” Stanton said.

 

After several minutes of talking with the fake officer, Stanton, a man prone to not withholding his thoughts, radioed his trucker friends. They started en mass to pull over at his location. Seeing four trucks barreling toward the shoulder, the would-be robber fled, Stanton said.

 

“Welcome to the world of truck driving,” he said.

 

SHEER PHYSICS

 

Not only are truck stops like cheese to criminal rats, the sheer physics of falling asleep while driving is almost always fatal, he said.

 

“Would you rather want someone pulling over to sleep or do you want them falling asleep pulling 7,700 pounds of truck?” Stanton asked.

 

The results would strike like thunder, mangling metal cars and likely killing anyone in its path, he said.

 

“I don’t mean to be rude, but it’s physics,” he said.

 

Debbie Locicero of the Goodbee/Covington area agrees.

 

She first noticed truckers parking on the exit and entrance rampS soon after the I-12 rest stop closed. While she thinks the rest stop is “horrible, with trees falling over and the trees that are there dead and decaying,” she realizes and appreciates the need for truckers to stop and sleep.

 

“You just pushed a sore spot with me,” she said. “But it’s the lesser of two evils. Yea, it’s a great concept to push them out of our ramps, but would you rather them fall asleep on the highway?

 

“If (the state) is going to shut down the rest stops, the state needs to get on the stick and do something else for these guys,” she said. “What are their choices when they don’t have anywhere to rest … especially when they go to a rest stop that’s not there.”