The Des Moines Register from Des Moines, Iowa • Page 12

2B DES MOINES SUNDAY REGISTER April 17, 1988 HARRY BAUMERTThe Register Fiery death A movie's influence may have been too much for Lorinda Carpenter. Authorities believe the 20-year-old Norwalk resident saw the movie "Bad Dreams" twice before setting fire to herself Monday night on a rural Polk County road. In the movie, members of a cult burn themselves to death. Carpenter, an employee at a Des Moines greenhouse, had written a note on wrapping paper from roses given to her by a fellow worker, then placed the note in her car with a single rose on top of it. She poured a coffee can full of gasoline on herself and ignited it.

Lorinda Carpenter lilt I i fi-Vi11 Hf 'jt! -ft' 4 iiWhat the hell are they then if they're not Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad about Census Bureau projections that Iowa will lose 16 percent of its population in the next 23 years. Dream boat Retired heart surgeon William Myerly of Okoboji is living his dream, living six months of every year on the Florida coast on a 57-foot boat he built himself. Myerly started building the "Okoboji," a 40-ton ocean-going vessel, about eight years ago and gained attention three years ago when he hauled it to Milwaukee from Okoboji. "There were about 2,000 people there to see it off," Myerly said.

He and his wife, Georgia, often sail the boat up and down the East Coast. Myerly isn't sure of the boat's value, but said Lloyd's of London would insure it for no less than $750,000. Kicking up her hooves Shalico, a young mare owned by Brian McElhinney of Morning Sun, her pasture. The frisky horse was romping and grazing at Green Pas-rolls over in the afternoon sun while celebrating spring with a frolic in tures Farm, owned by a friend of McElhinney north of Morning Sun. 1 i Fort Dodge Sibley Algona 1 Sioux Humboldt 1 Ida Grove I 1 Logan i rr 4 uncilJ I Parkersburg oo r' Bluffs Creston 1 1 Chariton WW.

LUUUiJU minii mm William Myerly 1 Iowa Coralville City iDavenportl Sigourney Sigourney HIGHWAY HEARING Sigourney residents can make their thoughts known on improvements to Iowa Highway 149 in a hearing at 7 p.m. Thursday in the Sigourney High School cafeteria. The Iowa Department of Transportation wants to reconstruct the highway from -its east junction with Iowa Highway 92 north to South English. The reconstructed highway will be 24 feet wide, with 8-foot wide shoulders. A curb along the highway will replace the shoulder through Webster.

Traffic would be detoured during reconstruction. Coralville TOP GUN SOUGHT Coralville is looking for a new city administrator with the resignation April 1 of Fred Bluestone. "I have enjoyed working for the city of Coralville. I now intend to move on and pursue other fields of endeavor," Blue-stone, who had held the post since Jan. 26, 1987, said in his letter.

He could not be reached for comment. Mayor Michael Kattchee was appointed acting city administrator by the city council until a replacement can be found. He said the council hoped to fill the position in 90 days. The job pays about $34,000 a year. Burlington KING MONEY Eight Iowa students, among them Stacy Dean of Burlington, received scholarships recently from the Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship Fund this year. Stacy, who will graduate from Notre Dame High School, received $500, as did Michael Bruce of Knoxville, Brian Ollison of Urbandale, University of Iowa student Marcee Turner, and University of Iowa pre-law student Lillie Miller. Recipients of $1,000 awards were Jason Schwartz, a Decorah High School senior, and Niambi Webster, a University of Iowa student. Son T.

Ho of Boone received $250. The scholarship competition is for minority students from Iowa enrolled or accepted for enrollment in a public or private post-secondary institution in the state. Iowa City HE'S A GOOD FELLOW A University of Iowa poet was one of 262 artists, scholars and scientists selected by the New York-based John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to share in fellowship awards totaling $6.34 million. James Galvin, an associate professor of English, was honored for poetry in the 64th annual competition. The awards are given on the basis of unusually distinguished achievement in the past and ex ceptional promise for future accomplishment.

Davenport SMOTHERING A GIGGLE Golf fans who attend this year's Hardee's Classic Celebrity Pro-Am Party will get an added treat when the Smothers Brothers join the action at the Oakwood Country Club on July 13. They'll also perform as part of the tournament. "We are very pleased that the Smothers Brothers will be here for the classic," said Pete Burks, 1988 chairman of the tournament to be held July 11-17 at the Oakwood Country Club in Coal Valley, 111. Tickets to the Smothers Brothers performance are included in most VIP ticket packages for the Hardee's Golf Classic. 1 MB I Marshalltown Ames Marshalltown OUT OF SCHOOL Marshalltown's Lenihan Junior High School will close at the end of the 1989-90 school year under a plan approved last week by the Marshall-town School Board.

Under the plan, the district's ninth-graders would move to the high school, and the other two junior highs will become middle schools, where students in grades six through eight would attend. The board cited the loss of 2,000 students in 16 years and a tight budget as reasons for the reorganization. Fort Dodge IN THE CLUB Fort Dodge will be invaded Thursday through Saturday by members of women's clubs from around the state when the Iowa Federation of Women's Clubs convocation is held. Much of the meeting will be held at the Starlight Village motel, but a board dinner is planned for Wednesday at the Fort Dodge Women's Clubhouse. Past presidents will be honored at a luncheon Thursday, where the speaker will be Lin Lilley, co-owner of Starr and Associates of West Des Moines.

On Thursday evening William Lepley, head of the Iowa Department of Education, will speak, and on Friday Gladys Robb of Clarion will be installed as the new state president. Ames IT'S AN ART Ames student Gregory Allen Fuqua has gained recognition as one of the nation's top young achievers in the arts. He's one of 39 high school-age students chosen by the 1987-88 Arts Recognition and Talent Search program for consideration as 1988 U.S. Presidential Scholars in the Arts. The students, representing dance, music, theater, visual arts and writing, were recommended to the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars.

Fuqua is one of 10 nominees in the visual arts category. Pella ELECTRIFYING Mike Quick is handy with a fuse box, as he showed in competition sponsored by Associated Builders and Contractors Inc. in San Francisco.Calif., last month. Mike, who trained at Menninga Electric of Pella and attends classes in Des Moines, won the electrical apprenticeship competition in the Craft Olympics, placing first in the written and practical tests. Leon Thede of ACI Mechanical of Ames placed second on the written part of the plumbing competition and third overall.

The Olympics are designed to test the skills of apprentices in carpentry, plumbing, electric work and sheet metal work. Grinnell SQUID STUDY James A. Dykens thinks an answer to heart attacks lies in studying squids. Dykens, an assistant pro fessor of biology at Grinnell College, has been awarded the prestigious Frederick B. Bang Fellowship from the Marine Bio logical Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass.

Dykens will study the Loligo paelei squid in modeling the biochemical events responsible for damage to the human heart during a heart attack. Dykens said the heart often is damaged less by being denied oxygen during an attack than it is by the resupply of oxygen when blood flow to the heart is restored. He's studying the squid as an example of animals that tolerate denial and resupply of oxygen. I I I Grlnnell II PeHa -Jj entral City 1 Norway MCedanRas Parkersburg TAKING A CONSTITUTIONAL The 19-member Parkersburg High School senior government class will represent Iowa in the national Bicentennial Competition on the Constitution and Bill of Rights in Washington, D.C., April 25-27. One school from each of 43 states will be in the competition, Parkersburg government instructor Rex Kozak said.

The Parkersburg class, which recently won the state competition that drew entries from approximately 50 schools, has secured $13,780 in donations to pay for the trip, Kozak said. The contest is composed of tests, oral presentations and question and answer sessions on Constitutional and Bill of Rights issues and cases. Waterloo PAPER CHASE Not all a doctor's work is a gas, so Covenant Medical Center in Waterloo is offering some incentives for doctors to finish the more tedious aspects of their jobs. If doctors finish their patient summaries quickly enough, the hospital will reward them with coupons worth $1, $5 and $10 off gasoline purchased at two nearby service stations. The stations will be reimbursed by the hospital.

Virginia Holmes, Covenant vice president for case management and quality assurance, said the idea was suggested by a top hospital official. The hospital stands to benefit because once a summary is completed, the medical records staff can begin billing patients, Holmes said. Norway HEADING SOUTH Nearly half of Norway High School Is going south of the border April 21-29 in a combined band and Spanish class trip. "People talk about small schools not being able to offer as much but here we can offer this opportunity," Spanish teacher Trudy Harms said. Most of the band students also are in Spanish classes, she said.

The group of 85 includes 10 eighth graders and 48 high school students out of 114. The rest are teachers and chaperones. The itinerary includes four days in Mexico City, one day in Taxco and three days in Acapulco. The band will perform three concerts. Central City EMERGENCY MONEY Central City's volunteer ambulance service is getting a helping hand from what might be considered a "big brother." The St.

Luke's Health Care Foundation in Cedar Rapids has given the service $3,000 for radio communications equipment. The Hopkinton ambulance service got another $1,000 to help buy a used ambulance, and the North Benton service in Vinton received a $750 matching grant to help pay for training volunteers to become emergency medical technicians. Cedar Rapids DODGING IT David Troester, 17, could be an evangelist with as much luck as he's had in getting people into Sunday School. The Cedar Rapids teen picked up his second Dodge Aspen (the first had been his family's station wagon) as a re ward for bringing 20 friends to Sunday School. "I bugged people a lot," admitted Troester, a junior at Jefferson High School, who won the car in a contest created by the Rev.

Gene Phillips of the Oakland Church of the Nazarene. Sioux City MEDI-CARING In a pilot program soon to expand statewide, two-thirds of the doctors in Woodbury County have agreed to hold down charges for the elderly poor so that Medicare will cover their expenses. The program, called Medicare Partners, is a joint effort of the Iowa Medical Society and the Iowa Association of Area Agencies on Aging. Daniel Youngblade, a family practice physician and president-elect of the Iowa Medical Society, said about 35 percent of Iowa physicians already have agreed to accept Medicare for certain procedures and not charge higher amounts. Humboldt LIBRARY SHELVED It's back to the drawing board for the Humboldt Library board of trustees after a $500,000 bond issue for a new building was voted down last month.

The 80-year-old library is crowded, isn't accessible to the handicapped and is deteriorating, board president Dennis Reed said. The building's listing on the National Register of Historic Places makes renovation difficult, he said. The board can't submit another bond issue for at least six months and will decide on a plan of action by then. Algona WINGING IT The Kossuth County Hospital Board of Trustees has approached the county Board of Supervisors about issuing $1.2 million in bonds to finance a new wing for the hospital. David Schultz, a hospital administrator, said the board has been advocating a new wing for some time.

"We've been headed this direction for a long time. For the past six to seven years, we've been aiming toward this," Schultz said. Though the board has not acted on the resolution, there has been some opposition to the idea, Schultz said. Because the county extends to the Minnesota border, many residents live closer to hospitals in Minneso ta, and those people object to paying for improvements to the county hospital. Sibley SERVE AND SHARE Osceola Coun ty residents are being asked to contribute some time in return for a share of food offered by the Fair Share program.

Participants in the program must pay $14 cash or food stamps and sign up for two hours of community service in exchange for the food, said Barb Berkenpas, a member of the advisory board of the Upper Des Moines Office of Economic Opportunity. About 300 have signed up for the third distribution, to be held April 23 at the VFW Club in Sibley. "The exciting part is people working together as volunteers to make the program work," Berkenpas said. Ida Grove IN A RING Bell-ringers hand bells, that is, not the massive church kind from around northwest Iowa will be practicing their art today at 4 p.m. at the Ida Area Bell Festival at St.

Paul Luther an Church in Ida Grove. Churches participating in the festival include the host church, Ida Grove United Methodist and Battle Creek First Presbyterian Church. The groups will play both as a massed choir and in solo numbers. Janice Rupert also will perform a hand-bell solo. Dona tions will be accepted.

Logan IN BLOOM Folks in Logan know Gerald Bloom as the publisher of the Logan Herald Observer and the Woodbine Twiner. Folks in Iowa newspapering know him as the new president of the Iowa Newspaper Association. Bloom was elected Friday to succeed Ed Sidey, publisher of the Adair County Free-Press at Greenfield. Publisher named officers at the INA annual convention include Vice President Bob Parrott of the De Witt Observer, and SecretaryTreasurer Gary Spurgeon of the Bloomfield Democrat. Publishers Dan Feuling of the New Hampton Economist and Tribune, Rick Morain of the Jefferson Herald and Bee, Dick Hogan of the Vinton Cedar Valley Times, James Lewis of the Waterloo Courier, and Joseph Hladky III of the Cedar Rapids Gazette were named directors.

Chariton COMING IN FOR A LANDING The Chariton City Council is taking a look at building a new, longer runway at the city airport to accommodate bigger planes. Mayor William Marner said the city has only a runway at present, and it is located between a highway and a paved county road, making it difficult to expand. An Ankeny planning firm is assisting the council as it studies building the runway. The new runway would be angled to the northwest, ending just short of the present runway. Council Bluffs JAMES TRAIN Jesse James will ride again well, not exactly, but a recreation of Old No.

2, the train he robbed just west of Adair, will be puffing around town this summer. The James Gang derailed the original No. 2 of the Chicago, Rock Island Pacific Railroad and committed the first robbery of a moving train in the West in July 1873. Marvin Gittins of Council Bluffs has been working on the one-fourth scale model of the train for almost a year. It's powered by a gasoline motor and the wheels will be capped with rubber to take it anywhere.

The train will be used by the Jesse James Museum to show the type of train that passed through the community in the late 1800s. Irwin BUTTON, BUTTON Leona Wiese isn't pushing buttons. She's collecting them campaign buttons dating back almost 150 years. Wiese, 82, of Irwin has hundreds of the buttons, with the oldest a 1840 button recommending William Henry Harrison for president. Another is from Abraham Lincoln's campaign in the 1860s, her daughter-in-law, Theda Wiese of Manning, said.

Leona Wiese also has made up scrapbooks of news events for every year since 1936. Creston CHALLENGING SITUATION Greater Community Hospital of Creston is issuing "The Creston Challenge," a bi cycle ride starting at the hospital at 9 a.m. May 14. Participants can choose three courses of 10, 25 or 50 miles over paved roads through southwest Iowa. An entry fee of 1 0 1 2 after May 1 entitles the rider to a T-shirt and ticket to a com plimentary lunch at McKinley City Park from noon to 2 p.m.

Other activities for families also are planned at the park. A sag wagon will be provided on each route..