St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 35

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH EVEM SECTION WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1989 BAY JERRY BERGER i mmmmm TZ5 I "vi i i -v-x i i i km But Not MOD i Tiara Miller playing in the Salvation Army's day-care center. Baker Wraps Up Deal For Texas TV Station TUBELING: Telecaster Barry Baker says he has completed the acquisition of indie KABB-TV in San Antonio, Texas, for $11 million. Baker, who is the managing general partner of River City Television, which owns KDNL-TV, Channel 30, says he has also settled his lawsuit against the San Antonio station's former owner, Alamo Broadcasting, for allegations that included "its failure to honor the contract to sell the station." Baker declined to provide the settlement figure. LET'S GO BERGERING: The small-business council of the Regional Commerce Growth Association has invited proposals from area firms to orchestrate the marketing and production of a trade show, "Try St.

Louis; Buy St. Louis." Does that mean the RCGA will finally get off its duff and peddle our assets on the road? Maybe later, but for now the plan is for the show to play the Cervantes Convention Center Sept. 27-28, 1990. The purpose is to showcase the outstanding products and services available here to those living in the region. (Why stage the show here? To sell Mayor Schoemehl and his family on the city?) GLASNOST IN GATEWAYVILLE: Dr.

David Ohlms, chief medical officer of Carpenter Health-Care Systems and his wife, Terri Rodriguez Ohlms, will be hosts of seven Soviets here Nov. 28-Dec. 4. The visitors are to be trained in the modern treatment of alcoholism and substance abuse. Ohlms, the medical director for the chemical dependency units at Deaconess Hospital and St.

Joseph Health Center, will also help three Soviet physicians in their study of employee assistance programs. "The Soviets do a good job of treating alcoholics medically," Ohlms said, "but they don't know how to keep them dry once they're sober. We're going to show them how they can use a combination of in-patient, outpatient and family therapy and that's the key to treat the entire system in which the alcoholic lives." A) -7 I i njMW'AW-- 1 i i i i' i '21, i. The Salvation Army's live-in training centers help families stabilize Story by Florence Shinkle Photos By Wayne Crosslin Of the Post-Dispatch Staff DATELINE: Tuesday, 4 p.m., the lounge at Family Haven, the Salvation Army's shelter and relocation training center on Lindeil Boulevard. The television, which operates on a timer, shuts itself off.

Talk in the room revives, returning to one of two favorite topics. "I think I may have found me a place," the younger of two women says. She has a tiny gold ornament fixed to her left nostril like a beauty mark. She is pregnant, and she is scowling. "One bedroom.

Market-rate." Market-rate is the term for an apartment rented from a commercial landlord and not federally subsidized. The housing opportunities of St. Louis' homeless veer among "market-rate" and "the projects" and "Section 8." Beautiful, beautiful Section 8, privately managed buildings, federally subsidized, sprinkled like gemstones throughout the city's desirable neighborhoods. Access to Section 8 is via a tidal sludge of paper culminating in the issuance of a certificate. With the evaporation of federal housing dollars, stories circulate about someone who knows someone who "got herself a certificate, and it's just a little slip of paper." "I'm not waiting for Section 8," the young woman, Lanier (lan-Y AY), announces.

"I know womens who have been waiting five years for a certificate. They tell you, 'Hold on; you could be a big Pretty soon your time here is up, and you got nothing." Her scowl gets a little denser, but she is always angry. She has the personality of a toothache. In a closed environment where people are wary of setting each other off, the caution goes doubly for her. "You should wait," the older woman says.

"You've at least got a chance at one of those papers." This woman is arrestingly beautiful. She has the planed cheekbones and cat eyes of the Nefertiti but none of the hauteur. She is 36 years old, stick thin and drags her weight around like a terrible cargo. She has nine children. "Nine, nine, nine, nine, nine.

And don't nobody be putting me down for how many I got because I be asking them, 'Where are the rest of yours? Poor babies. What did you do with the rest of Five years without a permanent place seem to have jarred something loose in her mind. When her demons set her off, she talks and talks and talks, wandering and urgent, her opal eyes glowing, and yet when she stops abruptly, I still feel as though the conversation has been severed before the crucial thing has been said. Right now she is lucid. "You should stay," she repeats to Lanier.

"You might get something." "I'm not bringing this baby back to this shelter. I'm not." The older woman shrugs and lets the conversation lapse. She hovers by the window, gazing dreamily down Lindeil. Just a few blocks west is the National supermarket, golden in the sunglow, beckoning. "I'm going down to National and get some yogurt and pineapple," she says, initiating the second favorite topic of conversation.

"No, not pineapple, peaches. Yogurt and peaches. The big ones." Lanier plays along. "I'm going to get a chicken breast, barbecued." "One of thosertoo," the older woman says. Her carriage stiffens with purpose.

"And some chocolate. You coming?" Before the older woman came to Family Haven, she succumbed to sprees regularly. On one first of the month she spent a chunk of cash on a long taxi ride to no particular destination. Another time she ordered a huge meal of Chinese food delivered to a 9 Gwendolyn Miller and her children (clockwise from left) Dajuana, 3, Crystal, 2, Tiara, 4, and Christopher, 2. Miller's fifth child was in school.

The family has been in the Salvation Army shelter for a month. From left, Jack Villa, Albert "Red" Villa and Tom Villa at Lighting Associates Inc. ENLIGHTENING: Aldermanic President Thomas A. Villa kicked off his re-election campaign with a bright idea a party in the showroom of Lighting Associates, 917 Locust Street. Villa wined jand dined more than 250 business leaders, pols and 'supporters amid a virtual museum of light fixtures.

Basking in the limelight were luminaries including Sam Hayes III, Charles and Tim Drury, Gene Wro-bel, John Kilo, Rich Winter, Norm and Judy Champ, Kathy end Mike Piel, Bill Schicker, Michael Kennedy, Ron Richter, Gary Link and Hoppy Randazzo. FACES IN THE CROWD: Amanda Marilyn Reagan entered our world at St. Luke's Hospital, where she made her parents, Michelle and Dennis Reagan, the happiest couple around. Dennis is operations manager of The Muny The National Landscape Architect Association awarded outgoing County Parks director Wayne C. Kennedy the Alfred B.

LaGasse Medal in Orlando, for "excellence in the management of public lands and facilities in the public interest At the City Cousin, Maureen and Bill Franz toasted the opening of their new law offices, Franz Franz, in the former Chemical Building offices of Gulf, Mobile Ohio Railroad. Calling all former Globe-Democrat staffers to a reunion after 6 p.m. Saturday at the Missouri Bar Grill. Said shutterbug-turned-impresario Jack Fan-land, "No, Jeff Gluck has not R.S.V.P.'d!" By the by, Fahland is the bossman of River City Pub. ROCKET MAN: With the Cardinals brass courting free-agent pitcher Mark Langston over the weekend, another well-known pitcher was in our environs to party and visit pals.

Boston Red Sox hurler Roger Clemens kibitzed with former teammate Al Nipper, who's rumored to be going to spring training with the Red Sox or Cleveland Indians. The duo hit the trail Saturday with stops at the Locker Room and The Big Kahuna and ended up closing the Sauget dance palace The Oz in the wee hours Sunday morning. Clemens picked up golf tips from pro Matt Pende-grass, the assistant pro at the Clinton Hill links (near Belleville), schmoozed baseball with newly hired New York Yankees coach Neil Fiala, Oz general manager Jim Greenwald and mixologist Matt Lombardo. "This beats Cheers in Boston," quipped Clemens. "Get me traded to St.

Louis. I love this place." nor the residents, getting housing is the whole point of being in the program. Never mind the housing specialist's insistence that 'we promise them just the fact of having gained admission to Family Haven carries some sort of assurances. "You coming?" she invites Lanier again. "Nah." The older woman leaves.

A buzzer goes off somewhere disengaging a lock. "You want some chocolate?" I offer Lanier. I mean it as a commendation of sorts for resisting National's siren call. "My treat?" "Treat yourself," she snaps. Meals at the Salvation Army's Family Haven are served cafeteria style in the third-floor dining room.

The children sit, and their mothers or fathers bring them the dinner trays: tacos, barbecued pork, i meat loaf and a volcano crater of mashed potatoes filled with gravy. Right now, there are 16 adults and 34 kids in the shelter. Of the adults, two are men one married and one single father whose two beautifully behaved children know exactly how exquisite they are. The other children are always trying to subvert them. Families have been recruited out of the short-stay shelters to come to this one with its relative breadth of security, 60 days( because they have shown what CapL Violet Doliber, the center's director, calls "an effort toward stabilization" "not violating curfew, not leaving their children uncared for, trying io save See ARMY, Page 6 friend's where she was staying, not just the fried rice, but also the sweet and sour pork and peapods and crab rangoons.

She still remembers the high, sitting amid the rubble of cartons. Disaster followed, of course. She ran short of money; her friend booted her. It's hard for us to imagine the menace in a taxi ride or a splurge at National, the way it can start a life coming apart as haphazardly and inevitably as a marble rolling down stairs. Salvation Army Begins Today On Tree Of Lights Campaign IVERSAKY 'StLaifsTamdinq r' I r.Vv 17641089 THE SALVATION Army's Tree of Lights campaign begins today.

The goal this year is $2.5 million. Among the programs the money will be used to support are: Family Haven, with all of its relocation services. Hope Center, the only treatment center for abused children from the ages of 1 to 7. Harbor Light, an adult shelter with alcohol and drug rehabilitation services. Donations will support the Salvation Army's youth camps, its day care for working parents, its training for foster parents of disabled or behaviorally disordered children and its emergency shelters.

In addition, the Salvation Army has a network of preventive services designed to keep families who are still stable from losing their homes. Mortgage assistance, landlord-tenant mediation, budget counseling and monitoring of tenant responsibilities will be supported by donations to the Tree of Lights campaign. On Nov. 22, 1820, the Missouri Gazette reported the recommendation of the Rev. Mason Peck that classes be taught in the vestry rooms of the Baptist Church.

Students would be charged $5 per quarter for reading and spelling classes, and $5.50 if handwriting was included," From The St. Louis Ambassadors Source: Missouri Historical Society Paula Royce of the St. Louis public schools instructs Gwendolyn Moses at the Salvation Army shelter..