Battle Creek Enquirer from Battle Creek, Michigan • Page 1

LOCAI TUESDAY, DEC. 24, 1985 BATTLE CREEK ENQUIRER 3A Snowy Nativity What little doubt that remained whether Battle Creek would have a white Chritmas was removed when VA inches of snow fell overniaht. Members of the Drive goal isn't likely to be hit congregation at Birchwood United Methodist Church, "1st 3003 Gethings Road, didn't let the falling flakes prevent them from staging a live Nativity scene, complete wun real animals. Scattered snow showers and a high of 10 to 15 are predicted for Christmas Day. Photo by J.

Singleton Metro Briefs FmHA supervisor Joseph Shook transfers Russell Keech, director of the FmHA district based in Hastings, is overseeing the office until a new supervisor is appointed. The office makes farm and rural-housing loans in Calhoun and Kalamazoo counties. Last January, about 20 farmers gave confidential statements to U.S. Rep. Howard Wolpe, D-Lansing, detailing complaints that Shook had mistreated them in processing loans.

Wolpe passed the complaints to Lutz. serving Arenac, Bay and Gladwin counties, said Jon Moore, chief of farmer programs for the state FmHA office. State FmHA Director Calvin Lutz, who authorized the transfer Dec. 9, refused to say why Shook's assignment was changed. "It's a personnel matter.

It's confidential," he said. Shook, who has denied the accusations against him, could not be contacted for comment this morning. By BILL MILLER Assistant City Editor MARSHALL Joseph O. Shook, the local Farmers Home Administration supervisor accused earlier this year of harassing some farmers and holding up payments, now works at an FmHA office in Arenac County. "Mr.

Shook has taken a transfer to the Standish FmHA" as supervisor of the office A last-minute flurry of giving apparently won't be enough to push the Salvation Army over its $1 10,00 goal for this year's Tree of Lights campaign. The Army has received $96,213 in donations through this morning. That amount is $5,425 less than was collected at this time last year, and leaves the Army at 87 percent of its 1985 goal. Marilyn Wallace, office manager, said the total includes some $2,000 in donations made in person at the local citadel on Monday. "We usually do get some contributions coming in after Christmas," she added.

"W'e're still hopeful to make our goal, but things do not look cheerful." The Army also received 1,525 applications from families seeking Christmas help and adopted out 804. Last year, it received 1,484 applications for assistance and adopted out 650 families. Thick enough to fish Ice is thick enough on most Calhoun County lakes to ensure the safety of ice fisherman, but none of the lakes is frozen enough for snowmobilers, according to Undersheriff Thomas Whitesell. Ice is about five inches thick on many smaller lakes and "that is fairly safe for people just walking out to do some ice fishing," he said, cautioning that six to eight inches is safer for He advised checking for visible open spots on lakes or spring-fed areas that never freeze. People walking on ice also should check for differences in its color, avoiding fairly dark spots indicating less thickness.

CT scan permission sought An Ann Arbor company has taken the FmHA preparing to send letters to delinquent "adverse action" could be taken including foreclosure of loans and liquidation of the farmer's assets, said Jon Moore, chief of farmer programs for the state FmHA office. Up to 1,400 letters will be sent in Michigan. A 1984 federal court injunction prohibits FmHA to foreclose on farm loans, but FmHA state Director Calvin Lutz said the government will take legal action to overturn that injunction. The letters will be sent to all farm borrow Indian test, Christmas blend By BILL MILLER Assistant City Editor The U.S. Farmers Home Administration is preparing to send letters next month to farm borrowers with delinquent accounts warning that no reply could bring foreclosure.

The letters give borrowers 30 days to request loan servicing or other alternatives to correct their accounts. FmHA warns that if no reply is received, Mervyn's to open, 1 locally Combined News Sources Mervyn's, a department store chain and subsidiary of the Dayton Hudson plans to open about 30 department stores in Michigan including one in Battle Creek near the end of the decade. Stores planned in outstate Michigan won't be opened until after about eight are opened in the Detroit area. The expansion would create 6,750 jobs in Michigan and involve construction work worth $100 million. The chain plans to open 160 stores throughout the United States over the next five years, more than doubling the number it presently operates.

John F. Kilmartin, chairman of the Mervyn's, said that the first seven or eight Michigan stores would be in the Detroit area and that 1 5 stores eventually would be built in southeast Michigan, beginning in 1987 or 1988. Fifteen stores are planned for other Michigan cities, including Battle Creek, Kalamazoo, Jackson, Flint, Grand Rapids, Lansing, Muskegon, Bay City, Saginaw and Ann Arbor. The public relations manager for the chain, based in Hayward, said construction of the West Michigan stores likely will not come until a year or two after the Detroit projects are started near the end of the decade. The 148 existing Mervyn's are mostly in the West and Southwest states.

They emphasize family apparel and soft goods. She profiled customers as in their mid-30s, one or more children and with an income of $30,000. The Mervyn's expansion is part of a $4 billion capital investment program announced in October by Minneapolis-based Davton Hudson. Star! riter Ron Lietzke and The Associated Press contributed to this report. In July, a lawsuit by three area farm couples charging that Shook refused to give them adequate living expenses was thrown out in federal court.

But David Anderson of Lansing, the couples' attorney, counted it a victory because living expenses were released while the case was pending. Reacting to Shook's transfer, Anderson said, "I'm very pleased. Farmers hopefully will have someone they can work with." borrowers will notify the borrower if the option is accepted or rejected. Borrowers may appeal a denial or ask for administrative review. Moore stressed that letters are not foreclosure notices, but notices to service accounts.

The letters were authorized by new FmHA rules that arose from court-ordered moratoriums on foreclosures in other states, said Lutz. The rules attempt to correct court findings that the agency had treated farmers unfairly in servicing accounts. fa Staff Photo by Don Nelson Indian native Marut Patel gets into the American Christmas spirit, by decorating the tree in his apartment. celebrating is just one of many. They do play Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and other Christmas songs there, but not as much as here, of course." After he moved to the United States, Patel first lived in an Indian community in Chicago.

"It was when I moved to Battle Creek in 1983 that I really got exposed to the American Christian Christmas. In Chicago, it was similar to India because I was among all Indians," he said. "In Battle Creek, I really feel great about this time of year because you can feel everyone is really into it. "I see Christmas here as being a time to appreciate friendship or a time to help someone who has helped you." Christmas candle stubs and pouring the hot wax into makeshift molds? While a tradition can be born on a whim, it usually takes a major trauma to weed it out once it has established a toehold. A friend of mine, following an old family custom, used to put up her tree and trim it after her children were asleep on Christmas Eve.

Custom, in this case, had it that the tree was trimmed by Santa himself (the only person with more to do during the holidays than the average housewife), and the children in the family were presented with the glittering fait accompli when they awoke on Christmas morning. This presented no problem when they were toddlers, but as they grew older, the hour for Santa to do his work grew later, until one year the exhausted parents slept through the magic of the unveiling on Christmas morn. Now they put their tree up right after Thanksgiving like everyone else. Every year about now, when I'm starting to feel the crush of all that has to be done in the swiftly shrinking number of days until Christmas, I can't help thinking of Grandma and her smorgasbord. I don't know how much work was involved in making the lutfisk or the herring, but her recipe for head cheese has survived.

The process takes four days all told, and 'the recipe begins, "Obtain the whole head of a hog ers who have been more than 1 00 behind in payments throughout 1985. Options to resolve the debt will include deferring scheduled payments, rewriting loans at lower interest rates, the right of appeal, paying the delinquent account within 60 days and voluntary liquidation. When FmHA receives a response to the letter, a conference will be set up for the borrower and county supervisor to discuss the option requested. Within a week, FmHA of sweets made during the celebration. You will go into a home and there may be sweets stacked up four feet high, but they will be of all different tastes and sizes." There is also the eivine of eifts.

another similarity to the American Christmas, he said. In India, gifts are given for five days during the time the Goddess of Wealth walks among Indians, he said. "But, we're very informal about giving gifts," Patel said. "Here, people exchange gifts with each other. There, you may give gifts which then may be used as gifts for someone else.

One year, my sister got me a gift and she told me I could give it to someone. I told her that she was the one I wanted to give it to so I gave it back to her. We're pretty flexible." He said a lot of firecrackers are used during the New Year and if friends don't have them, sometimes they will be given as gifts enabling everyone to share in the festivities. The sending of holiday greeting cards is another significant part of the Indian celebration. The phrase for Happy New Year in Indian is Diwali.

"We make our cards out of dried heart-shaped leaves," Patel said. "Once the leaves have dried, we paint the veins and they are very beautiful. The leaves are very sturdy when they dry. We have both 'Happy New Year and 'Season's Greetings' writings inside the cards." Earlier this month, Patel and other Battle Creek friends from India got together for an Indian New Year's celebration.He also celebrates what he calls the "American Christian Christmas." "I have a tree and plan on exchanging gifts with my sister when we get together on Christmas," he said. Although Patel is Hindu, while growing up in India he attended a Catholic school that introduced him to the Christian celebration.

"In India you will see Santa Claus and Rudolph decorations, but it's not as widespread as here," he said. "There we have so many different cultures. That way of rnntraHiction. if vou've never rolled 10 pounds of ground meat into balls the size of a walnut, you don't know what tedium or backache really is. One year, as I was planning the holiday menus and making out a three-page grocery list, my daughter peered over my shoulder and said with the disdain that only a teenager can muster.

"Yuk! Swedish meatballs!" Joyously, I started to scratch 10 pounds of ground round from my list, but then she quickly added, "Oh no, Mom, we gotta have them even if nobody likes them. It wouldn't be Christmas without the meatballs." It's customs like this that are shortening my life. For years I've been saying, "This year we're going to keep it simple." But every Christmas becomes inexorably more elaborate. Traditions multiply like rabbits. Stringing popcorn for the tree may seem like a lark some snowy December afternoon, but unless you restrain yourself, it will become No.

23 on your annual hit parade of mandatory rituals for the proper celebration of the holiday, ad infinitum. Make your Christmas candles out of old candle stubs and some cardboard milk cartons just once, and every December thereafter the children ask, "Hey, when are we gonna make the candles?" Finally they're all grown up and have better things to do, and who's still melting down the first step in seeking state approval to pro vide mobile CT scanning to hospitals Albion, Coldwater and several other smaller communities. Huron Arbor Corp. has filed a notice of intent with the Southwest Michigan Health Systems Agency, an area health planning body. The notice declares its in tention to later apply for authorization to offer the service.

CT (computerized tomography) scanning uses a computer to synthesize an im age generated by a series ol pencil-thin X- rays. The image it produces is far superior to traditional X-rays. Robert Kuder, senior health planner for the Health Systems Agency, said no action on the Huron Arbor request can be taken until the state issues guidelines on mobile CT scanning sometime next spring. Shopping advantage More than 1 5 people made reservations to take advantage of free transportation for shopping offered today by K.I.T. Bus Service.

James and Cindy Burgett set pickup and return runs from 8 a.m. until early evening at Super Value, Lakeview Square, Jewel-Osco, Meijer's Thrifty Acres, Perry Drugs, mart, the Michigan Mall, Fel-pausch Food Center and Columbia Plaza. Burgett posted his transportation schedule throughout town. Those with reservations included five senior citizens and three young mothers and their children. Springfield attorney named Holmes, Mumford, Schubel, Norlander Macfarlane has been retained as Springfield's city attorney.

The firm fills the vacancy left by the resignation of Joseph V. Wilcox of Albion, who had held the post since 1958. Wilcox resigned effective Nov. 12. The new city attorney contract is effective through June 30, 1987.

Hastings appoints 8 to DDA HASTINGS A Downtown Development Authority is now in place with the. naming of an eight-member advisory board Monday night by the city council. The DDA will use tax-increment financing to fund downtown public-improvement projects. However, unlike DDAs in other cities, this authority will not be allowed to issue general obligation bonds, create special assessment districts or impose a 2-mill levy as provided for by state law. Also, one member of the board must own residential property within the 15-block development district.

Named to the board were: Mayor William Cook, for his term of office; Mark Feldpausch and Larry Kornstadt, four-year terms; Richard Beduhn and Daniel Bolthouse, three-year terms; Dr. Fred Hauser and Marjorie Radant, two-year terms; and Mary Gilbert and Cindy Wil cox, one-year terms. Hauser owns resiaen-tial property within the district. Expanded newscast WUHQ-TV (Channel 41) will begin broadcasting an hour of local news, beginning Jan. 6.

Trudy Yarnell will anchorthe 5:30 p.m. weekday slot featuring local news, features, in-studio interviews and a weather report by meteorologist Bill Rogers. The more traditional 6 p.m. news will be anchored by Jack Hawkins and Ellen Akins, who also is a reporter. Randy O'Brien will give a sports report, and Rogers again will give the weather.

"The No. 1 reason (for the expanded news broadcast) is that we are the only locally owned affiliated station in the market," said news director David Allen. Allen said market studies show that about 2 percent of area television viewers watch the Channel 41 news program. The "12 Divx nf Christmas" feature focus es on traditions and customs that are part of y. if tt tt the yule season Jor people jrom ail wains oj life who live in the international community of Bade Creek.

The series ends today. By RENEE VILLENEUVE Staff Writer This time of year, Marut Patel has more than his share of holidays to celebrate. Patel, a native of Baroda in western India, not only has gotten into the Christmas spirit since moving to the United States in 1981, but also has spent December celebrating his homeland's New This year the In- ofCHRISlNlAb dian New Year cele-bration began in mid-November and continued into December. There is no set date for the month-long celebration, but he said it falls close to Christmas. "There we celebrate the Festival of Light," said Patel, a robotics instuctor at Kellogg Community College.

"People put up lights all over their home by burning cottonseed oil or candles. They do this right before dusk." While living in India, Patel said he would drive around the city with family and friends and look at the lit homes, similar to how Americans admire houses decked out with Christmas lights here. The Indian New Year also is a time for feasting that continues for the duration of the celebration. Throughout the New Year, people will come by one's home and food will be exchanged, Patel said. "Sometimes you will bring groceries to friends' homes and we have quite a feast!" he said.

"There are also all different kinds Guest Columnist Sally days as the food lasted. Of course, houses were cooler in those days, or perhaps the revelers washed the food down with enough aquavit to kill the bacteria. But the point is, my husband still cherishes fond memories of the only dish on the whole table he considered fit to eat Grandma's Swedish meatballs. After we were married, he suggested that it would be nice to perpetuate his family's custom by having a few meatballs of our own on Christmas Eve. Even to a bride, that seemed like a reasonable request.

Making meatballs for two was a fairly simple matter, but as the years passed, our ranks swelled. Children were born. Company came. (Invite the neighbors over one year on Christmas Eve and you've got 'em 'till-death-do-you-part, or they move. Such is the iron-clad stuff that traditions are made of,) At any rate, I can say without fear of 1 I Smorgasbord of traditions make Today's Guest Columnist is Sally Hull-strand of Hickory Corners.

She is director of marketing for Performing Arts Abroad, a company that books overseas tours, mostly for school groups. She has done freelance writing, is married and is the mother of four children. Work by other guest writers will appear each weekday until Jan 6. By SALLY HULTSTRAND It was the family practice, when my husband was a boy, to gather at his immigrant grandmother's home on Christmas Eve for a traditional Swedish celebration. The centerpiece of the evening was a long table heavily laden with a real old-country smorgasbord.

While he remembers with pleasure the raucous hilarity that erupted whenever his many uncles were under one roof, my husband admits to viewing the smorgasbord with suspicion. Most of the Swedish delicacies that crowded the table the lutfisk, the pickled herring, the head cheese and limpa bread were not dishes to whet the appetite of a red-blooded American boy. Actually, the whole family would have done well to regard the menu with suspicion since the food was left standing for days, with Grandma simply flinging a clean bedsheet over the table after each sitting. In blithe innocence of deadly salmonella, the celebrants feasted for as many.