Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 7

MfettlTdD Local news 222-2300 Home delivery 222-NEWS Classified ads 977-7500 The Detroit News Monday, May 28, 1990 Page 7A Boating scoff laws from Ohio may cost Michigan (millions in fees Goorgo Cantor put the figure in the millions of dollars. Officials and frustrated Michigan boaters say many of the nautical scofflaws are from the Toledo area, opting for a short drive up Interstate 75 to find boat slips and take advantage of the cheaper fees. OHIO REQUIRES proof of permanent or vacation residence in the state before issuing boat registrations, discouraging Michigan boaters from buying its cheaper state vessel also have a Michigan registration license if it's in state waters or at a state dock for 60 consecutive days or more. "We boat owners in Michigan are supporting Ohio boat owners," said Robert Nicolai of Livonia, who keeps his 20-footer at Toledo Beach Marina near Monroe. "You see Ohio boats year around in our Michigan docks and marinas." MOST OHIO boat registration fees are less than half of Michigan's.

By James L. Kerwin Detroit News Staff Writer Hundreds of Ohio boaters may be chiseling Michigan out of watercraft registration fees, and Michigan officials admit they can do little to stop them. Marinas along Michigan's Lake Erie shoreline are filled year-round with boats, many costing $100,000 or more, that only have Ohio registration decals on their hulls. State law requires that any out- Nicolai has waged a one-man crusade for two years to crack down on out-of-state boaters who refuse to buy Michigan boat tags. "We're so close to Ohio, and they need the boat slips, but they should be paying the same fees we do; not the cheaper ones in Ohio," he said.

But he said his letters to Michigan Atty. Gen. Frank Kelleyland Secretary of State Richard Austin have "gotten a polite brush-off and Please see Boating8A The fee for a 26-foot power craft runs $46 for three years, compared with $115 in Michigan. The fees runs up to $244 for larger boats in Michigan. More important, depending on when a vessel is bought, Ohio boaters who legally dock in Michigan also may be required to pay a 4 percent Michigan sales tax costly for cabin cruisers or yachts that sell for $200,000 and more.

No one is certain how much Michigan is losing in license fees and sales taxes, although some estimates Movies ferry travels sea of confusion No momorial sorvicos I it v. I I I mu tit It 'II I My very favorite part of the no-brainer movie of the year, Bird on a when Goldie Hawn and Mel Gibson hopped aboard the ferryboat from Detroit to Racine, Wis. Love that boat ride. It's one of my favorites, especially when you sail through Kalamazoo. The next best scene was the extensive chase through Racine's famous Chinatown.

Best egg rolls in Wisconsin, if you ask me. That will give you some idea of the intellectual level of this piece of garbage. IMAGINE, if you will, a first-run motion picture featuring a scene in which the stars hop the boat from Los Angeles to Yuma, Ariz. That wouldn't be much different from a Detroit-Racine jaunt, except that you'd have to sail around Baja, Calif. The geographical idiocy of that scene would be apparent in Los Angeles, which of course is where everyone who matters lives.

But out in the Midwest, hey, who cares? The Detroit scenes were shot in Vancouver, by the way. Aside from climate, scenery, and ethnic makeup, the cities do resemble each other. Although I always thought Detroit looked a little more like Budapest "41 XI Tax-cut petition drive if a may fail Headlee: 'Wfere! a little short' i By Brenda Ingersoll Detroit News Staff Writer I A petition drive aimed at cutting property tax assessments by over the next two years is 40,000 signatures short of the 191,726 needed by Wednesday to win a place on the November ballot, organizer Richard Headlee said Sunday. "We're obviously a little short and we probably should have started this effort back in January," said Headlee, whose Headlee Tax Cut Initiative campaign kicked off March 15.. The proposal would reduce assessments from 50 percent to 40 percent of the cash value of residential, commercial, industrial or farm property, over a two-year period.

The state would be required to reimburse local governments, with cash, for any tflx losses and taxpayers could sue to enforce the statute. BACKERS OF the petition drive planned a rally today the Alexander Hamilton Life Insurance' Co. headquarters in Farmington Hills. They hoped that people would come forward with petition signatures that had not yet been turned in. Property is assessed at half its market value and property taxes are calculated based on the assessed figure.

Property taxes go to support local government and schools, Although it appears the petition drive will fall short, Headlee is optimistic the Legislature will pass a bill accomplishing much the same goal. Please see Headlee8A Conference to examine food fears ui DUANE BELANGERThe Detroit News Hundreds of Michigan's missing and homeless people every year receive anonymous funerals like these three at a site in Ann Arbor. Hundreds receive a pauper's funeral Unclaimed bodies are buried alone By Doug Bradford Detroit News Staff Writer than Vancouver. Hollywood feels it can get away with this sort of thing because most people don't travel anymore. Oh, they go places, but they don't experience anything on the way.

Instead, you hop on a jet or head the van onto the interstate. Jets and interstates are wonderful inventions for people with a long way to go in a hurry. You don't see much, This holiday is the traditional start of summer travel. When I was a kid, my family always drove somewhere this weekend. Interstates were sparse, so we took two-lane roads through small towns.

That was part of the fun. You got to see something of the country. A few times we were held up as the Memorial Day parade came down Main Street. On the interstate, we never would have heard the tubas. I don't think anyone who ever traveled this way could write a De-troit-to-Racine ferryboat scene.

Or watch a scene like that and not gag. THE OLD ROADS are still out there. If you drove along U.S. 20 in New York today, you'd pass through Waterloo, the first town to observe Memorial Day. The tubas are getting a major workout there, I bet.

When I was a travel writer, it was these sorts of experiences I most enjoyed describing. To me, they define travel in America. In one such column, I wished I could find a book describing what you see on old roads. I never could, so I wrote one: Where the Old Roads Go, published by Harper and Row. The first volume is about New England and New York; we hope to deal with the Great Lakes in a second one.

These days, we're a destination-oriented country. That means we pick a place, rush there as fast as we can and avoid everything between. Walt Disney World, the archetype here, is supposedly wonderful for kids. But what a strange, pre-packaged view of this country where reality is never permitted to disrupt illusion. The reality can be pretty powerful and inspiring.

And you never get to see it on the ferryboat to Racine. little kid, he cut his finger somehow and it never healed right it was bent. Soborowski was to have been buried with the three others at United Memorial Gardens, near Ann Arbor, on April 6. All four bodies came from the Perry Funeral Home in Detroit by way of the Wayne County Morgue, which keeps unidentified bodies 30 to 60 days, then sends them for a pauper's burial. Hamilton said the morgue gets several hundred such bodies a year.

All but about five are identified. The former Detroit and Grosse Point policeman keeps records on each body. Most of the unidentified are from society's edges drug addicts, prostitutes and derelicts. Others may be amnesia victims or runaways, or murder or accident victims. The graves of the roughly 100 unidentified people buried at United Memorial Gardens are marked only by numbers.

"We keep a record of where each person on the death certificate is," said Edwin Wensley, who opened United Memorial in 1953. The Michigan Department of Social Services (DSS) pays for the funeral home preparations and the burial. The costs vary. If found, relatives may be asked to pay. "We get only $85 a burial" for most unknowns or those unclaimed, Wensley said.

"It's not what we want to do, but it must be done by someone." A DSS spokesman said that in fiscal 1988-89, the state paid $4.3 million to bury 5,094 unclaimed bodies. Of those, 2,154 were from Wayne County and cost $1.9 million. No figures are available on the numbers of, and costs for, unidentified bodies. Hamilton sent word to the Perry home to bring the body of Joseph Soborowski back from the cemetery. Szajner said her brother, who was a maintenance worker who cut grass to add to his income, GUS CHAN1 he Delroil News There were no services.

No one was there to pray. No one was there to cry. It was just another group burial of unidentified bodies at United Memorial Gardens in Washtenaw County's Superior Township. Workers lifted the three plain wood boxes, containing the bodies of two women and a man identified only by numbers, and lowered them side by side into the big hole in the ground. There was to have been a fourth body in the mass grave.

But it was identified just one day before entering eternity in anonymity. The body was that of Joseph Soborowski, 57, a reclusive lifelong Detroiter who had been found dead of a heart attack by police on Jan. 23. There was no identification in the apartment, said his sister, Albina Szajner of Detroit, and police did not know whom to contact. Szajner had been recuperating from a heart attack when her brother was found, she said.

After days without hearing from Soborowski, she was worried. "He used to come over at least every three weeks, used to cut my grass," Szajner said, "and then he stopped coming around." She began to pray; then she began making inquiries. Eventually, she talked with Harry Hamilton, chief investigator of the Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office. The description of her brother matched one of the files of unidentified bodies. "They found it was him through his fingerprints," said Szajner, "and through his bent finger.

When he was a Albina Szajner of Detroit holds a picture of her deceased brother, Joseph Soborowski. went to school through the eighth grade. He read a lot and was well-versed in numerous subjects, but did not like to be around people and often told her he just wanted to be alone. His mother died when he was 10; his father died when he was 14 or 15. He never married.

Soborowski, survived by four sisters, including Szajner, and two brothers, had a funeral April 11 in St. Stephen Church in Detroit. He was buried in Mt. Hope Cemetery in Livonia, with a name instead of a number. "We're going to get him a stone, too," Szajner said.

"So, anyway, it's a beautiful ending." lUnmailed letter finds its destination 32 years later By Dwight E.M. Angell Detroit News Staff Writer The safety of the world's food supply and how consumers cope with fears and reality will be the focus of a four-day international conference that starts Tuesday at Michigan State University. More than 300 people are expected to attend, hearing presentations by 50 scientists and researchers from around the United States, Europe and the Soviet Union. It comes at a time when public confidence in food safety has been shaken by concern over alar in apples, drug residue in milk and salmonella in eggs and chicken. "The conference is very important because there are so many divergent points of view of the problems of food safety," said Robert Leader, the conference coordinator and a professor in the Center for Environmental Toxicology at MSU.

The Center is a co-sponsor, along with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. -J "NEITHER THE government voice and industry voice agree, and the public has little confidence in each of them." Speakers from government, industry, universities and consumer groups will address such issues as food consumption patterns, biotechnology, food processing and packaging, gene-altered crops and livestock, bacterial contamination and drug residues. Please see MSU13A Cantor's column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays in The Detroit News. Pete Waldmeir has the day off I- the week after Easter.

I stopped by to see Margaret's daughter, Alease, while visiting a relative. "While there, Alease said, 'I have something for and she handed me thiB letter. It had apparently been stuck in a book, since the outer edge of the envelope was faded." Burton first met Margaret Fields, who was already married and the mother of seven young children, when Burton's family moved from Detroit to White Plains in 1933, settling into the upper-story flat. "There was a family tie that bound us," Burton said. "Margaret's sister-in-law was my cousin.

The cousin later raised a niece here in Detroit and that's how I found out about Margaret's death." But beyond that tie, Margaret Fields and teen-ager Theima Burton Please see Letter1 3A By Barbara McClellan Detroit News Staff Writer Theima Burton sits in her first-floor flat on Pingree Street, a few blocks from Detroit's New Center area, reading a letter she recently received from her friend, Margaret Fields of White Plains, N.Y. "I received your wonderful letter, and I was so glad to hear from you," the letter began. Burton was pleased to hear from her friend, as well. Startled, in fact. The letter is 32 years old, dated March 28, 1958.

Her friend has been dead nearly that long. "I was more than surprised," said Burton, a petite retiree who admits to being older than 65, although she looks much younger. "I go to White Plains maybe once every two years. This last time was 1 1 1, .4 1 For tho Record Corrections and clarifications: Donald Pilette, reader representative 222-2212. The Detroit Tastefest, in the city's New Center area, runs from 11 a m.

to 9 p.m. today. HAROLD ROBINSONThe Detroit News 1 just could never forget her," said Theima Burton, holding a long-delayed letter from her friend Margaret Fields, who died more than 30 years ago..