The Indianapolis Star from Indianapolis, Indiana • Page 21

ALL CD (no Ail The Indianapolis Star SUNDAY, JUNE 10, 1990 CityState Classified ads begin on Page 17 Inside: Business mt McKinley makes for rocky adventu Hoosier climbers find life above clouds is no piece of fluff Carpenter i If i Ultimately, high winds and the rigors of McKinley's 20.320-foot altitude kept the expedition from reaching the summit. And the conditions exacted a heavy personal toll: Team member David Tanner of Bloomington nearly died from a bout with extreme altitude sickness. Michael Rilenge, an Indianapolis man believed to be the first person with muscular dystrophy to make a major climb at McKinley, had pushed his energy to the limit when exhaustion nixed his quest for the summit. David Cordray of A villa had to slay behind in Alaska, nursing a leg Injury lie suffered In a fall. See MCKINLEY Page 7 The climate, simply put.

was harrowing: Blizzards. Temperatures that dipped to 30 below. Winds that howled at 40 mph or more. Intense sunlight. The ever-looming threat of landslides.

"The weather is very unpredictable," understated Stager, research director for the Indiana Denali Expedition Team, a group named for McKinley's official Native American title. "You can be walking in an area with pleasant conditions and absolutely no wind, then turn a corner and get hit with 40-mph winds and a complete whlteout. Because of the sudden changes, you learn right away how to put on and take off clothes real fast." Soon, his thoughts drifted back to the rugged slopes of McKinley. "It never got dark it was very strange," he recalled. "The sun Just circled around high in the sky and.

around midnight, it was behind a mountain." Stager, an Indiana University professor of kinesiology, and seven teammates recruited by Ill's Human Performance Laboratory returned from Alaska last week after spending nearly a month on a mountainside above the clouds. But their Journey for research into acute mountain sickness, energy expenditure and the effects of diet and nutrition on physical endurance at extreme altitudes was hardly a Jaunt into the high life. By LYNN FORD STAR STAFF WRITER Sunset. Not an unusual sight in Indiana. But for a Hoosier just back from a climbing expedition on Alaska's Mount McKinley.

it was a refreshing return to reality. Awestruck by the huge orange disk hanging low in the Indianapolis sky, Joel Stager and his mountain-climbing colleagues marveled at the contrast between that scene and the view they'd had from North America's tallest peak. "Look! Sunset!" Stager said with childlike fascination, pointing to the warm glow that spilled through a window at Indianapolis International Airport. Community bridges the past and present St. Meinrad, Ind.

We approached from the west, which is the wrong direction for feeling the full feudal grandeur of the religious edifices that overlook this tiny southern Indiana town and share its name. The western way snakes up along the hillside behind a veil of trees, leaving none of our objective visible from a distance ex cept the tops of the twin church 'i -mmm mmm iRWJiB spires. Law demands 'report cards' grading school From the east, the long view climbs and sweeps in wild luxu ry, like a hawk without a rival. joining the hummocky quilt of farmland and the leaty cameo village to the great crowning sandstone fortress that is St. Meinrad monastery, seminary and church.

By BARB ALBERT Even at its most imperious an Information gle, St. Meinrad could not match STAR STAFF WRITER Annual school report cards my memory, more ancient to my life span than the 136-year-old that Indiana districts will be re Benedictine monument is to New World history. I had not remembered It as it takes to make grade Here is a breakdown of the larger or more majestic so much as older-looking and detached i a conjured castle in the information Indiana public: clouds. Swing around a bend on Ind. 62, Just past the gas station, attd enter the Twilight Zone and the 16th century.

I knew enough not to trust that residual Image. It dated to grade school and was Ignorant of the Swiss and German heri tage that enfolds St. Meinrad right along with the little wood en cottage churches that dot this part of Indiana. As an adult, I was returning to this place not to travel back to the past, but to reach a vantage point from which the long con- schools must compile and publish in local newspapers between Aug. 1-15.

The financial report section must include: Comparison of approval budgeted receipts and expenditures and actual receipts ami expenditures by major accounts for 1 989. Certified staff salary schedule, including number of employees at each salary level and the number of full-time and part-time employees. The salary schedule for staff sponsoring extracurricular activities. Range of rates of pay for all non-certified employees by specific classification, including the number of full-time and part-time employees. The lowest, highest and average salary for the administrative staff and the number of administrators working on June 30.

See GRADE Page 6 nectlon between present and past would be discernible. ill 1 quired to publish In local newspapers starting In August could be valuable tools for citizens who want to evaluate public schools. Or, they could be vast collections of data that virtually no one will understand. Educators and lobbying groups that crafted the legislation creating the report cards disagree over how they would grade their efforts. But most stress that until the report cards are actually published in newspapers, it's impossible to decide If they should be changed.

The law, passed by the 1989 Indiana General Assembly as part of Gov. Evan Bayh's EXCEL education package, requires districts to publish an annual report card with two sections financial and school performance. Budget information, sajary schedules and a list of vendors districts use are among the financial data. Student test scores, graduation and attendance rates and class sizes must be printed as part of the other section. The report card must be published by each district in two newspapers from August 1 through August 15 for the first time this year.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction H. Dean Evans and others, including some school business managers, say the financial and school performance data Is too' massive and won't be easily digested by the public. "There's going to be an awful lot of reporting of non-essential, uninteresting data that Is open to public scrutiny without the expenditure of funds," said Evans. He said he likely will press for I wanted my wife and young son to see it because it traced, or at least located, roots of mine that are buried to them. For what it's worth, the middle-aged man they know spent one of the few out-of-town trips of his boyhood In this sanctuary.

That afternoon outing of 30 years ago was the idea of the i parish priest, who thought I "4 1" 8, changes In the law In the 1991 legislature. But a spokesman for Gov. Bayh and a Hoosier State 1'icss Association official among others praised the report card as a way to bring together Information about schools the public needs to know. "There Is no question tin public Is asking for more and more accountability from their public schools. This is clearly one way the public schools can provide accountability," said See CARDS Page 6 andor a couple or my classmates might be clerical material.

We toured the vaulted church, ate lunch in the dining hall, gaped as a shark of a priest cleared the rec room pool table, heard the absolute bells reset and reset the walking tempo. Neither the vitality nor the peace of that community was sufficient to call me into its arms. The most lasting impressions it left were otherworldli-ness and intimidation, like something out of science fiction. What I yearn to believe now Is that the reality and sanity of such a place, built as nothing today could be built and Inhabited at a pace that never squanders a day, somehow stuck with mc also. St.

Meinrad Archabbey Is real, STAR STAFF PHOTO BUD BERRY Water escape Bouncy waters and a breezy day were all Bill and Maria Swanson needed to board a sailboat for this ride Saturday at the Indianapolis Sailing Club on Geist Reservoir. They climbed aboard as the club offered an open house of rides and races. Unions step up efforts to organize state employees By JAMES G. NEWLAND Jr. STAR STAFF WRITER Indiana labor unions, intent on organizing thousands of state employees and claiming millions of dollars In representation fees, have launched broad organizing campaigns that are proving both intense and expensive.

In the three weeks since Gov. Evan Bayh signed an executive order allowing union elections In limited parts of Indiana government, state em- ployees have been besieged with entreaties from various unions, all hoping to win exclusive repre-, sentatlon rights In one or more of 1 1 bargaining units. At stake for organized labor Is the chance to gain a foothold in state government, where most of the more than 30,000 employees do not belong to unions. Consequently, government Is seen as one of the brightest potential growth areas for Indiana unions, most of which suffered a steady decline in membership during the 1980s. So far, at least four unions are conducting organizing campaigns among state workers American Federation of State.

County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME): United Auto Workers (UAW); Indiana State Employees Association (1SEA): and the Teamsters Union. Under Bayh's executive order, the unions may attempt to become the exclusive agent for em-loy-See UNIONS Page 8 Fort Wiyne woman keeps female fliers' sagas alive By BETH ROSENBERG ZWEIG STAR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT Fort Wayne, Ind. Marty Wyall never dreamed she'd see her photo In the Soviet newspaper Pravda or appear on Soviet television. She also never thought she'd meet a real "Night Witch." But mark those all in the record book under May 1990. Wyall will.

That's her Job. The 68-year-old Allen' County woman Is the longtime keeper of an extensive archive on the World War II-era Women Alrforce Service Pilots, better known as WASPs. whose ranks she Joined in 1944. Among the newest additions to the group's historical collection will be the experiences of Wyall and 47 other WASPs during their trip last month to Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev. They went to meet with the "Night Witches" female Soviet pilots from the same generatjgn as part of a special "peo- not so much because It has a gift shop and a volunteer fire department, but because It keeps its past present.

In the three decades between my visits, rural Indiana communities were decaying from a blight of sameness spread by absentee interests for short-term profit. Every town on the way to St. Meinrad seems to have the same fast-food outlets as every other town its size; every patch of woods or water seems potential prey for the tourism Industry. This sounds like the sermon with which I bore my family in crabby midlife; but for all its futility, I sense it is right. Gazing at gray photographs of round-spectacled young priests In the tunneled white light of a century-old corridor, I felt as though I had delayed my return long enough to catch up with the slow, set movement of a faith community.

I felt religious here, no more because the spires reach heavenward than because they are sunk into the hills. We headed home with two pamphlets on the monastic life, purchased from the gift shop, a separate building to the east of St. Meinrad that affords that hawk's view of Its splendor. "Are you getting ideas?" my w'fe asked, and she was not lighlng. STAR STAFF PHOTO Marty Wyall keeps the records for the female pilots of World War II.

have an appointment to find out what it says underneath our picture." Wyall's perseverance In tracking down every tidbit about the WASPs is clear In looking through the scrap-books she keeps and the detailed stories she tells about women with wings. And then there are the file cabinets. They hold everything from student term papers written about female pl- See FLIERS Page 17 pie to people" exchange program that attracted unexpected media coverage. "The day we met the minister of defense there were a lot of television crews," said Wyall, an Indianapolis native and grandmother of 10. "We got back to Leningrad and saw ourselves on television.

I couldn't believe it. Then we saw the newspaper. For one thing. I don't take a good picture, but this was a good one. I was quUe amazed they would feature us.

I.