Argus-Leader from Sioux Falls, South Dakota • Page 11

Argus Leader, Sioux Falls, S.D. Monday, Jan. 21, 1991 in Dateline: Kimball Guard chaplain calls home to spread word 3 Obituaries2 South Dakota Digest2 Classified ads 5-8 Sioux Emoire to covir tfoir Ibydlgeft sltorftraSD New cat habitat among planned improvements him mmm V.Af... Xil ,1 i Argus Leader photos by PAUL BUCKOWSKI Kevin Steele has been signing the early Saturday newscast for KELO By USA GAUMNITZ Argus Leader Staff Woolly mammoths didn't capture the same interest dinosaurs did at the Great Plains Zoo and Museum. That's one reason attendance and revenue dropped during its summer season.

As a result, the zoo didn't make enough money to pay its bills through the winter and into the next summer season. So zoo officials now are asking the city for $60,000 to cover the first months of 1991. "We anticipate that as we get into February and March, we aren't going to make enough at the gate to pay bills," said Doug Porter, the zoo and museum's executive director. Attendance usually runs about 200,000 people annually, and in 1989 that number increased to 230,000, largely on the strength of the dinosaur exhibit. But in 1990, attendance dropped to 198,000 as the Wild and Woolly exhibit, a traveling collection of stuffed prehistoric animals, drew poorly.

Porter says the zoo can't cover the shortfall itself because it draws most of its operating money from admission fees. "Our fees would have to go up to the point where it wouldn't be acceptable," Porter said. The private, non-profit Sioux Falls Zoological Society runs the zoo, and the city owns it. The society relies on admission fees, concession sales and zoo memberships to cover nearly 90 percent of the zoo's $676,000 operating budget for 1991. The city will contribute about $77,000, said Dr.

Tom White, zoological society president. Zoo prices are scheduled to increase in April, but that will be too late to help the budget shortfall. Adults will pay $4 instead of $3.50 and children $2 instead of $1.50. Porter wants the city to cover the immediate shortage and to increase its share of the zoo's operating costs so it doesn't run into similar problems in ensuing years. Because attendance drops in the winter, the zoo has to earn enough money in the busy summer months to pay for the entire year's operation, White said.

Last summer, that didn't happen. Rain kept people from special events and hot weather cut attendance, Porter said. By November, zoo officials knew they wouldn't have enough money to run the zoo until the summer season started again. So they made some cuts and kept open a position 1 The words of KELO anchor Steve Hemmingsen Closed captioning appear at the bottom of a screen. Closed captioning to simultaneously will begin Jan.

28 for hearing-impaired viewers. Closed captions coming Jan. 28 to local television newscasts Briefly Ashes ignite apartment fire Fireplace ashes left in a cardboard box started a fire Sunday afternoon and caused extensive damage to a Sioux Falls apartment building. Firefighters were called to an apartment at 3105 E. 11th St.

at about 4 p.m. Capt. Vern Spronk of the Sioux Falls Fire Department said ashes from a fireplace had been put in a box and then placed in a closet. The ashes ignited a fire after Anthony and Vanessa Johnson had left their apartment. Damage was estimated at $10,000 to $15,000.

The building is owned by Jerald Leesch. The building was evacuated. A man in the apartment across the hall from the fire was evacuated from his balcony by a ladder truck because of smoke. No injuries were reported. In addition to the Johnson apartment, others received smoke and or water damage.

Mine accident kills Homestake worker LEAD A Homestake Mining Co. worker died Sunday morning deep inside the company's gold mine, officials said. Authorities said the victim, George Klein, 57, was fatally injured when a compressed air line exploded about 7:30 a.m. at the level of the mine. An investigation into the cause was being conducted by the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, United Steel Workers Union Local 7044 and Homestake Mining Co.

Klein was a veteran of 34 years at Homestake. Support group meets for families of 323rd A support group for families and friends of members of the 323rd Chemical Company of Sioux Falls met Sunday, the day after their loved ones left for the Persian Gulf. Helen Monke, group organizer, said several people had received calls saying the company had arrived in New Jersey Saturday afternoon. From there they fly to Germany and then to the gulf. The 120 members of the Guard unit left from Fort Carson, Colo.

Julie Hegstrum, a Sioux Falls psychologist, talked to the group about how they and their children can deal with the stress of having someone go off to war. Programs planned for King holiday Several events are planned for today's Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. Sioux Falls College will have a commemorative program at 11:15 a.m. in the Salsbury Student Union.

The program features lunch and remarks by Robin Duncan, organizer of a later King event. The program will include King's Have a Dream speech. At 7:30 p.m., there will be a speech and musical program at First Baptist Church, 22nd Street and Covell Avenue. The Rev. Leonard Lovett is the keynote speaker.

EROS worker to speak to Future Society R.J. Thompson of the EROS Data Center will speak at the winter meeting of the South Dakota Future Society. His speech titled Computers: Changing Our Future will begin at 2 p.m. Sunday in the Sioux Falls Public Library. He will discuss advances in modern computer technology and how information becoming available through the use of computers is changing the way people live and work.

He will describe the role of computers in the study of natural forces that control the environment. The event is free and open to the public. Museum features gem, mineral display South Dakota gemstones, minerals and fossils will be on display Saturday at the Old Courthouse Museum. Demonstrations, slide shows and a movie will be presented from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

at the museum, 200 W. Sixth St. The exhibits are free. The zoo's lions and tigers will trade their cages for natural habitat in coming years. Sometime in the mid-1990s, the big cats will move to a complex that gives them a setting more closely resembling their own natural habitat, executive director Doug Porter said.

He said the zoo hopes to raise $1.2 million in a 1993 fund drive to pay for the complex. The cat complex is among a series of improvements planned for the zoo and museum in the next few years, he said. A $60,000 operating budget shortfall in the first few months of 1991 won't affect the improvement plans because the improvements are paid out of a different budget, said Dr. Tom White, zoological society president. The private, non-profit society runs the zoo for the city, which owns it.

A $500,000 addition to the museum was recently built with private contributions. The city has given the zoo $500,000 to pay for interior improvements to the building, including dioramas three-dimensional miniature scenes with model figures and backgrounds. Porter said the zoo is working on a diorama that recreates an African waterhole. It also plans to develop more dioramas and bring in traveling exhibits in the future. This year, improvements will also be made on the grounds.

The city is paying $100,000 to develop a new exhibit for the wolves, coyotes and foxes, he said. In addition, the waterfowl pond will be redeveloped at a cost of $50,000. By Lisa Gaumnitz to save money. "It was our anticipation that we were going to make it," White said. "But that prediction was based on the Wild and Woolly exhibit, and hoping it had the same turnout as dinosaurs did at the same time last year." Mayor Jack White told Porter to collect information for city commissioners on reasons for the shortfall and on how much the zoo would need.

Commissioners will draw up a resolution to supplement the budget and will consider it at a future meeting. is at 7 p.m. Feb. 4 at City Hall. Gunlicks' business follows a club that seemed to win the support of everyone but those people who were supposed to use it teen-agers.

The business owners had consulted parents during the planning of the $800,000 club and gave them tours once it was open. City and school officials had been encouraged that students would have a place to go other than the loop. But teen-agers quit going to the club shortly after it opened in March. Attendance dropped from 800 to 600 people nightly to about 200. Building owners Don Dunham and Richard Dougherty Sr.

asked the city in July for a conditional-use permit to sell alcohol at the location, turning it into a restaurant Nightclub See 2B One of my favorite movies: "The movie that I've seen the most over and over again is 77ie Big Chill. I like the relationships in that story. I like the movie in general." An ideal day for me: "Would be to get up, put on my jeans, spend the time with my sons, on the ham radio or playing a musical instruments." My most vivid childhood memory: "Was when I was in high school and fell through the ice on a lake. I thought I was going to die. I remembered what I'd learned in the Boy Scouts and was able to lift myself from the lake.

Then some people saw me and threw me a rope. It still makes me nervous to go ice skating." Compiled by Crls Molllsoa Adult nightclub replaces defunct teen hideaway TV for the past 10 years. will eliminate the need for a person sign the broadcast. All KELO closed captions. era for signer in that area.

KELO began using signers in 1973 at the urging of the South Dakota Association of the Deaf, and Esther Simonson, wife of a local pastor. Two years later, Communication Services for the Deaf started providing interpreters for the weekly newscasts. Ben Soukup, executive director of Communication Services, said KELO's decision to use signers on Saturday newscasts was made because it had a limited number of cameras, and because "Saturday was the only night a camera was available for an interpreter." Back in the 1970s, interpreters were considered a distraction to the public, too, Soukup said. So their visibility was limited. "Those are the old times, of course," he adds.

"Attitudes toward interpreters have changed." Steele, who had done part-time signing on KELO, gave the station a consistency it was looking for when he became its full-time inter-SignerSee 4B viewers will receive weather, news and sports daily. Reporters will be required to type their stories into the closed-caption system, Braker said. Everything that goes onto the tele-prompter will be seen in closed captions as well. One thing the hearing impaired will not get is the ad-libbing that goes on between stories, Braker said. Closed captionsSee 4B of most interest to me.

I'm really interested in brain impairment and rehabilitation and the other is smoking cessation. I run the free-dom-from-smoking pro Richard Gunn gram at the hospital and there's been a good quit rate. We have 50 percent that go through the program and still aren't smoking by the end of the year." The best part of my job Is: "It allows me some freedom to get out around the community and in the state. I've met a newscasts will Progress ends Kevin Steele, who spent the last 10 years speaking to South Dakota television audiences without uttering a word, is signing off Saturday evening. Literally.

With KELO-TV's move to closed-caption newscasts Jan. 28, Steele's service as a signer for the hearing impaired on the station's 6 p.m. Saturday newscast is ending. It is a parting the Sioux Falls native views with joy and a hint of remorse. "There's no question it's going to be real good from the standpoint that the deaf are going to get captioned news more than one night a week.

And that's great," Steele, 38, said. "But I'll miss it. I don't get a lot of opportunities to use my signing skills like I really want to." For the past decade, his presence on the television screen interpreting news and sports for KELO has been a public-awareness bonanza for the hearing impaired in this state. But Steele was not the trailblazer beyond written media was a signer on KELO's Saturday 6 p.m. newscast, Soukup said.

"Other nights, we have been in the dark," he said. "The only source of information we got was through the newspaper, which was the next day. We did not have the immediate means of communication available to us." With NewStar, which KELO news director Mark Millage called "the Cadillac of newsroom computers, top of the line," deaf Education: Bachelor's and master's degrees from Brigham Young University in Provo and doctorate from the University of North Dakota. Family: Wife, Mary; and five children: Mary, Marnie, Scott, Todd and A.J. Why I became interested in mental health: "I got into the area of psychology really by the back door.

I was originally going to teach English and math in high school, but as I approached my senior year I found I didn't like that. I had been working as a guard in a state hospital and some people there suggested that I take more psychology courses." The mental health care issue I'm most concerned with: "There are two things that are have By STEVE YOUNG Argus Leader Staff When KELO-TV switched from manual typewriters to computers in its newsroom last December, it opened a new world to the hearing impaired in this area. Now, thanks to a closed-cap-tioned capability that the station has added to its computer system, thousands of hearing-impaired South Dakotans will receive local news on a daily basis. "It's a great thing for the deaf people in South Dakota," Ben Soukup, executive director of Communication Services for the Deaf, said. "Finally, this new program will allow us to have access to information we've never had before." KELO will begin offering closed captions on Jan.

28, general manager Mike Braker said. The station's 6 p.m. newscast that day will provide open captions, so that all viewers can see what the written text on the television screen will look like. It will then begin closed captions at its 10 p.m. newscast that day.

In settling on its NewStar computer system last December, Braker said KELO officials specifically wanted something that could be used with closed captioning. "We understand there is a substantial hearing-impaired community here, and we wanted to be able to reach them," Braker said. Soukup said there are 42,000 South Dakotans with varying degrees of hearing impairments, including 1,200 who are profoundly deaf and 6,200 who have severe hearing losses. They will benefit substantially from mis new service. For the last 17 years, their only news outlet By USA GAUMNITZ Argus Leader Staff City Streets, the Sioux Falls teen club that operated three months before closing, will tentatively reopen in February as an adult-only supper and nightclub.

The new club, to be named The Safari, will offer a combination of live and recorded music seven nights a week, said Tom Gunlicks, operating partner of the business. "We're not going after other nightclubs in town," Gunlicks said. "We're going after the mature adult who doesn't have a place to go. We just feel there's a void, based on what I've heard and seen, and that's live entertainment." The club is tentatively set to open Feb. 11, contingent upon the City Commission's approval of the transfer of a liquor license from the building's owner to The Safari.

A public hearing for the transfer wide variety of people and I like that the best." The current war in the Middle East: "Has worried everybody. It's made everybody more tense and concerned. Right away, we won't see the psychological affects of the war. But if the conflict drags on for several months, then we'll see people experiencing some of the stress. Not only do we have to be worried about fathers and mothers being involved in the gulf, we have the possibility of an economic recession.

The parent back home is now a single parent. They have to assume new roles in the family. People's emotional batteries will get run down. There are no big stressers yet, just a lot of little stressers." VA psychologist still gets thrill from 'Big Chill' Richard Gunn a question-and-answer session with people in the public eye, is a Monday feature of the Argus Leader. Dr.

Richard Gunn is chief of psychological services at Royal C. Johnson Veterans Memorial Hospital and assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of South Dakota School of Medicine. Gunn, 48, also is the president of the licensing board for psychologists in South Dakota. Born: Jan. 27, 1943, in Provo, Utah.

Yesterday On this date in 1981, Gov. William Janklow called the Iranians who had just released American hostages "a bunch of savage barbarians." Janklow said Ayatollah Khomeini was "a screwball who lives in his dream world.".