Rapid City Journal from Rapid City, South Dakota • 11

Section Friday, September 28, 1990 the Rapid City Journal Inside: Obituaries B2 LocalClassified City launches recycling study Woman takes story of abuse across America Ytffl mmmmmmmmmmmffymmmmmml- '1 the landfill has about 30 to 40 years of life left. The free curbside program is only being offered to people living south of Fairmont Avenue and west of Maple Avenue. Every Monday a Waste Management truck will pick up the recyclables. People not participating in the curbside program, or those who live outside the city, may drop their recyclables off at any of the six bins placed around the city. So far.

bins are being placed at the Family Thrift Centers at East St. Patrick and West Chicago streets. Prairie Market on New York Street, and the Safeway stores on Mount Rushmore Road and Mountainview Road Wright said officials were looking for a spot in the central part of the city to put the sixth bin Aluminum and tin cans can be put together in the bin. Recyclables being collected are: newspaper, glass, aluminum, tin cans and plastics, such as milk jugs, pop bottles and detergent bottles. Wright asked people to please rinse out the containers because cleaner materials would sell better on the recyclable market.

People who wish to recycle corrugated cardboard must take it to Waste Management or to one of the three dropoff centers at the City School Administration Center, and Robbinsdale and Canyon Lake schools. Wright said he had high hopes for the pilot program, especially since 20 people signed up Thursday while he was still handing out brochures on the program "I hope it's well supported," Wright said. "I hope people will get Erin Andersen Staff Writer Grandview area residents are being asked to try curbside recycling for a year and the city and state will pick up the tab. It's part of a year-long pilot program to study how Rapid City prefers to recycle. Through a $50,000 state recycling grant and money from the city's solid waste fund, the first 500 people who sign up for the program will have their recyclables collected by Waste Management of the Black Hills at no cost.

The program regularly costs about $3 a month. In addition, six large bins will be placed at area grocery stores, for people to drop off their recyclables. Jerry Wright, streets and sanitation division manager for the city, met with about 30 Grandview area residents Thursday evening to discuss the program. "Recycling will be in the future of Rapid City," Wright said. "But how it will be done we're not so sure." The study will be used to determine which is more successful curbside or voluntary drop-off programs.

Wright said the Rapid City landfill receives about 350 tons of waste a day A good percentage of that is recyclable. He said about $2 million worth of cardboard, plastics and aluminum were dumped in the landfill in a year. Last year 800 tons of aluminum cans were dumped in the landfill. Wright estimated 40 percent of all waste buried in the landfill was cardboard and paper, 20 percent of it was yardwaste. By removing those recyclables, Wright "said the life of the city landfill could be extended by 10 percent or four years.

Right now Ren Lallatin speaks to Central High School students. Her belongings are behind her in a rickshaw- I I II IV like device. (Start pnoto Dy Jim nonanuj Erin Andersen KaH Writer Ren Lallatin's first memory is of a ijBotty training session turned violent. 1 Her mother, pregnant with her fecund child, savagely beat the tod- naier for soiling her diapers. Gasping pjjor breath between sobs, Lallatin lay on the bathroom floor unable to move.

"She has told me she wanted to kill me that day," Lallatin said. I "But the most terrifying part is that She left me and went down the hall. I felt so alone. I really felt that 1 was going to die," she said. Six months later, her mother Started sexually abusing her oldest daughter.

Lallatin's uncle raped her when she was 5 years old and continued to sexually assault her until she was 12. Seven generations of the Lallatin I family have physically, sexually and emotionally abused their children, I wives and husbands. By Lallatin's I count, that is 200 years of violence. "The child abuse stops with me. 1 think that's my motto," said Lallatin, who is now 40.

The oldest of 13 children, Lallatin is a survivor and the only child in her family to confront the abuse She has taken her story to the streets of America, walking from Seattle, to Rapid City. Her mission is to strengthen child abuse laws and encourage other victims of abuse to become survivors A member of When Abuse of Children Ceases (WACC), Lallatin's trek will end here, for now. But next April she will resume the walk at Denver and continue on to Washington, C. Thursday, she spent 30 minutes talking with Central High School's peer facilitator class. When it was over, the students begged her to return.

"When I was 10 years old, 1 started running away from home. 1 walked 17 miles and talked to two teachers and two of my grandmothers. I think they believed me, but then sent me back home and I was almost beaten to death," Lallatin said. In a rage, her father shattered a vertebra in Lallatin's back, ruptured her eardrum and kicked and stran- tistics have found that one in three girls and one in seven boys will be abused before they reach age 18. "1 had to start talking to other people It needs to be spoken about." Lallatin said A few years ago she got the idea to walk across America and share her story.

When her therapist endorsed the idea, Lallatin sold all her personal possessions, paid her bills and bought a lent, sleeping hag and a good pair of walking shoes. An old ankle injury prevents her from walking more than IS miles a day. She carries her 120 pounds of belongings on a rickshaw type of rack Throughout hei trek, Lallatin has discovered she is not alone Abuse victims have walked with her, given her money and a bed for the night, and have started survivor groups of their own Lallatin said she had no dreams of changing the world. "If I can just touch one life by bringing my pain out in a constructive way, then it will be worth it. And it certainly helps me," Lallatin said.

She divorced herself from her family and all their problems with drugs, alcohol and violence. She moved to California but couldn't avoid being a victim. When she was 19 she was brutally gang raped at knifepoint by six men who had picked her up while she was hitchhiking. For 20 years. Lallatin never told a soul about the incident Like many other victims of abuse, she had taken the vow of silence But suddenly, Lallatin started having nightmares and weeks of sleep less nights.

She shut out her friends, and instead of concentrating on her college studies, her thoughts turned to suicide. "1 thought 1 was going crazy But 1 wasn't I was starting to heal," Lallatin said. The doctors have diagnosed Lallatin's problem as Post Traumatic-Stress Syndrome commonly known as battle fatigue or shell shock among most war veterans. With the help of a therapist, she is coming to grips with the past. But Lallatin said she wants to do more especially since national sta gled her into unconsciousness.

The family locked her in the house until her wounds healed. For five more years Lallatin endured her family's torture. But at 15 she walked to the juvenile detention center and asked the court to protect her from her family. It did But the pain did not go away, and at 16 Lallatin decided to kill herself. "But i was afraid.

1 began to think there were worse things than dying, like being a paraplegic from a broken neck," she said "I walked to the detention center A man picked me up and raped me It was not a forcible rape, but I didn't know I could say no." She got pregnant from the rape and gave her daughter up for adoption. It was something no one suspected I would do But 1 did not want my life to be like that of my parents and grandparents," Lallatin said. "I never had any regrets. It was the one thing 1 could do for her. My mother was very angry with me.

She wanted the baby for her own, and she threw me out of the house one month after the baby was born." The record a BB gun shot out a plate glass window in the 600 block of Kansas City Street sometime between Sept. 9 and Thursday morning Damage is estimated at $1,000. If you have observed a crime or other suspicious activity, call Secret Witness. 394-2600. All information is kept confidential Police blotter A billfold and two rings were stolen from a home in the 1600 block of Kellogg Place sometime between Sunday and Thursday, according to Rapid City police logs The missing items are valued at $530.

In other police news, vandals using I r- i irf'. B-29 Superfortress nearly restored at Ellsworth museum Bill Harlan Staff Writer Ron Alley needs a side blister. It's not for himself. It's for "Legal Eagle II," a B-29 Superfortress bomber being restored at the South Dakota Air and Space Museum at Ellsworth Air Force Base. Alley is curator there.

Side blisters are the small plexiglass observation bubbles gunners used on the giant B-29s. lgal Fagle II already has two side blisters, one of which is actually a "top blister." In search for rare spare parts such as side blisters and turret covers. The bombers haven't been manufactured in decades. Even worse, when they were retired, some were used for target practice. Others, like Legal Eagle II, were converted for tanker duty.

Others just faded away. Ellsworth officials discovered Legal Eagle II in a Navy scrap yard at China Lake, in 1986. Bob Rypinski, a retired Air Force aircraft mechanic, volunteered to inspect the aircraft before it was moved. The bullet holes weren't so bad, he said, but serious damage Volunteers Bob Rypinski, left, and Lew Huling have been and Space Museum s.nce yvmn ius uy restoring the B-29 "Legal Eagle II" at the South Dakota Air McEnroe) had been done by more prosaic means. "When the Navy wanted to move it, they did it with bulldozers," Rypinski said.

The delicate tail section of Legal Fagle II had been caved (Bob) Rypynksi and five other volunteers have worked five days a week, eight to 10 hours a day, for four years to rebuild the aircraft, which arrived in pieces. They have scrounged parts including a rare Norden bombsight from air bases throughout the country. When they could not find parts, they made them themselves. unteers are Walter Best, whu also is an Air Force retiree. Michelle Priebe, whose husband is on active duty at Ellsworth, and Earl Alwaler.

a 77 year-old retired civil servant. Rypinski thinks he might have I line on where to get that elusive side blister, but that doesn't mean the team's work will be over Nol by a long shot Alley expects B-47 bomber to arrive today in pieces Pease Air Forte Base in New Hampshire is closing, so the Ellsworth museum will get the new acquisition In fact, the B-47's six jet engines arrived last weekend. The South Dakota Air and Space Museum is administered by the Air Force, and Alley is salaried employee at Ellsworth But a nonprofit foundation supports the museum through Rifts and the efforts of volunteers. That means the sign in the restoration hangar asking for donations still applies. "One dollar will buy a few rivets." it says.

And after a few thousand hours of mostly free labor, those nvets wtfl be in place volunteer Lew Huling, 66 He should know. Huling instructed gunners on B-29s during World War II. Peering out of then plastic "blisters" on either side of the aircraft, gunners could train their deadly 50-caliber weapons to defend against attacking fighters Huling said a crude "1910-type computer" also allowed one gunner to control several sets of guns remotely "They sure shot the daylights out of those Zeros," he said. Huling went on to serve 24 years in the Air Force as a boom operator on air-to-air tankers Rypinski is a retired Air Force aircraft mechanic, who claims if he had been ordered to work on an engine as difficult as the B-29's. he would have quit the service.

But both men are listed as "ground crew' on the fuselage of Legal Eagle II, which was named for a B-29 that was stationed at Rapid City Army Air Force Base, which later became Ellsworth. Legal Eagle I's other "ground crew" vol in, and large patches mmmmm mmmmmmmmmm mmm 0f tne aircraft's skm were missing So were most of the amenities, such as side blisters, instruments and even the seats. Rypynksi and five other volunteers have worked five days a week, eight to 10 hours a day, for four years to rebuild the aircraft, which arrived in pieces. They have scrounged parts including a rare Norden bombsight from air bases throughout the country. When they could not find parts, they made them themselves.

For example, at least one set of the aircraft's six pairs of 50-caliber machine guns is made from ordinary PVC plumbing pipe. The plastic barrels, made to exact specifications, look just like the real ones, said fact, the aircraft has been 90 percent restored at a cost of $25,000 and after four years of painstaking work, most of it by a handful of dedicated volunteers. When the B-29 is moved from the restoration hangar to the air museum itself, it promises to be one of the most popular displays First delivered in 1943, Superfortresses represented the pinnacle of World War II aircraft technology B-29s were used to bomb Japan during the last part of World War II. And the Enola Gay, which dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, also was a B-29. However, Alley can't predict when the last 10 percent of Legal Eagle li restoration will be complete because it mainly will be a Ron Alley says he needs another "side blister," like this one, to help complete the restoration of Legal EagUWI.

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