Wausau Daily Herald from Wausau, Wisconsin • 26

12B Nation Wausau Daily Herald, Monday. October 27, 1986 Elvira: Living Halloween began as girlhood dream 41 ByMikeCldoni Gannett News Service For Elvira, hottest Halloween patron, this is her week to bowl. Just five years after co-creating a campy, horror film hostess on a Los Angeles TV station, Elvira's movie nightmares have become an American Dream. Keeping up with this gal means going through more shoes than Imelda Marcos. Consider Elvira's growing influence: At Knott's Berry Farm, a Los Angeles amusement park, there's an Elvira musical-comedy revue.

In novelty stores, Elvira's costume is among the biggest-sellers. On the tube Halloween night, Elvira competes with herself as she hosts a four-hour MTV Halloween special (7 p.m. CST) and appears on Joan Rivers' "The Late Show" (check local listings). In addition, her face pops up on best-selling Elvira comic books, Elvira-hosted Thriller Video cassettes, TV spots for Coors Light Beer, an upcoming cartoon series and a starring role in a major motion picture, scheduled for a Halloween 1987 release. And there's more.

In more than 70 percent of the country, weekends seem to be made for "Elvira's Movie Macabre." In each series installment. Elvira lounges on a set that marries a bordello with Dr. Frankenstein's basement lab. Cobwebs and smoke engulf a red velvet love seat, over which Elvira dupe The Costume: the beehive wig, the black pumps, the low cut gown with the push-up bra, and enough eye makeup to make Mas Factor squeamish. For 35-year-old Cassandra Peterson, a real-life redhead, living the Halloween fantasy is nothing new.

At her farm in Randolph, the 2-year-old Peterson was burned by boiling water in an accident leaving her physically and emotionally scarred. (As Elvira, the scars are covered with makeup.) Six years later, after the family moved to Colorado Springs, Peterson found a refuge her mother's costume rental shop. "I was the only second-grader who went to school looking like Miss Kitty from 'Gunsmoke." I was already wearing fish-net stockings and high heels in second grade and everybody thought it was too weird," Peterson says. Within a few years, the fantasies went wide-screen. She saw Ann-Margret in the 1964 Elvis Presley film "Viva Las Vegas." "I was in seventh grade and it was like a bolt of lightning," she says.

"I thought, 'This is my destiny. I'm going to be And not even the real Ann-Margret, I wanted to be the character in the movie: a showgirl in Las Vegas and going out with Elvis Presley. "I just lived out the fantasy until by the time I was 17, the fantasy came true. The next thing I knew I was living in Las Vegas. I'm a showgirl.

I'm dating Elvis Presley" (recently divorced Elvira In demand at Halloween from Priscilla Presley). "Well, I don't know if you'd really call it dating. We just hung out together. He was wonderful. He was charming, funny, naive.

When I hear bad things about him, I almost want to punch the person in the face." Priest fired for gay views admits homosexuality would never have gotten a job. I felt I could be more effective in this church by not making public statements about that." Bishop George Speltz of the St. Cloud Diocese fired Dora three weeks ago from his job as co-director of the Christ Church Newman Center at St. Cloud State University and as adviser to a campus gay and lesbian support group. The bishop took the action after Dorn wrote an article for a diocesan ST.

CLOUD, Minn. (AP) A Roman Catholic priest fired for criticizing the church's stand against homosexuality publicly admitted being gay after a newspaper reported his 1982 abduction outside a Florida gay bar. The Rev. William Dora 34, said he knew he was gay "as long as I can remember." In a story today in the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Dispatch, he said, "As a publicly gay priest, I ago by two men outside a gay bar in Tampa.

He originally lied to police to hide the fact he had visited the gay district, the Pioneer Press said. He was eventually fired as director of the Newman Center at Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Fla. Speltz said he was aware of the Florida incident before Dorn was hired to work in St. Cloud, and said it had no impact on his decision to dismiss him. newspaper criticizing the church's attitude toward homosexuals.

Although Dorn cannot work in the St. Cloud Diocese, he remains a priest and may seek reassignment from the Crookston Diocese in northwest Minnesota, where he was ordained in 1979. On Sunday, the Pioneer Press and Dispatch reported that Dorn, while working at a campus ministry in Florida, was abducted four years Phots XatOWeen Dummy': Pudgy, a cat belonging to photographer Ron Maxwell, of Winslow, Maine, poses on the top step to provide a head for what might be termed a "Catoween Dummy." The Haloween dummy adorns the front steps of Maxwell's home. Pudgy is Just waiting for someone to come by with a treat. Lady liberty City names pathway for poet of statue's The New Colossus' Dave Obey Stands Up For Wisconsin Farm Families IE inr ill! Q1 a V) 1 Sr 1 VP i NEW YORK (AP) In this centennial year of the Statue of Liberty, one group has sought to honor Emma Lazarus, the poet who wrote the Lady's enduring welcome to the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free." On Tuesday, the anniversary of the 1886 dedication ceremony, their efforts will be rewarded as the city renames a Battery Park pathway leading to the Liberty Island Ferry as Emma Lazarus Walk in tribute to the author of "The New Colossus." Behind the effort are the women of the The Emma Lazarus Federation.

They number about 2,500 nationwide and are mostly in their 60s and 70s, according to their president, Rose Raynes. "We're doing everything we can to promote her status," said Mrs. Raynes, who is 83 and a charter member of the 35-year-old women's service group affectionately known as "The Emmas." "We wanted a commemorative stamp issued in her memory," she said. "We almost got one in 1986, but lost out with the postal authorities." The group plans to try again next year on the 100th anniversary of Lazarus' death. At Beth Olom Cemetery in Brooklyn, where the poet is buried, the Liberty celebrations have not brought an influx of visitors to her ivy-covered grave.

"Few people recognize her," acknowledged Max Rivero, 30, the caretaker. "When I first came here, I said to myself, who's Emma Lazarus?" The simple granite gravestone is inscribed with the dates of her birth, July 22, 1849, and her death, Nov. 19, 1887. Several years ago, members of the Manhattan congregation that the Lazarus family belonged to, The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, set up a footstone inscribed with the text of "The New Colossus." Some people do stop. Rivero reached between the footstone and the ivy and pulled out a five-inch bronze-colored replica of the Statue of Liberty, left by a local historian who visited.

Lazarus, a fourth-generation American, was born and spent most of her life in Manhattan. Her father, Moses, made a fortune in the sugar refining business. Her first book, "Poems and Translations," was published when she was 18 and received critical acclaim from Ralph Waldo Emerson, among others. It was Emerson who urged her to turn away from classical themes and write more about "the despised present." "She developed a social consciousness in the 1880s" after the start of the Russian pogroms and the flood of Russian and Eastern European Jews began, according to Morris Schappes, 79, a historian who has edited three books of Lazarus' prose and poetry. After a tour in 1882 of a refugee shelter on Ward's Island, where hundreds of immigrants were living in substandard conditions, she became 1 HARKIN, OBEY INTRODUCE MAJOR FARM BILL (September 23, 1986) News media from all over the country were on hand as Congressman Dave Obey explained why he and 27 other farm state Congressmen and Senators introduced in Congress the "SAVE THE FAMILY FARM ACT" The bill would give farmers a chance to vote on a five-year supply management plan to eliminate commodity surpluses, reduce the cost of farm programs, provide farmers a decent price for their products and provide additional farm credit help.

Standing behind Obey in this photo are(L-R) Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri, Rep. Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa. Dave Uses His Clout In Washington For Us Back Home! Emma Lazarus Poet of Liberty an advocate for their welfare.

"Out of these experiences, the sonnet was born," Schappes said. The poem that assured her place in history was almost not written. In 1883, well-known American writers and artists were asked to contribute works that would be sold at auction for the benefit of the statue. Lazarus was asked to contribute, along with Walt Whitman and Mark Twain. At first she declined, explaining she wasn't able to write to order.

But two days later, she wrote "The New Colossus," containing the lines: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore; Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" The sonnet sold for $1,500. Three years later enough money was raised to build the statue's pedestal, but Lazarus wasn't among the dignitaries at the dedication ceremony. Suffering from cancer, she traveled to Europe in 1884. She returned to New York in July 1887 and died four months later.

Her sonnet was not read at the unveiling of the statue. According to Schappes, "Her poem was completely forgotten until 1903, when a friend of hers came across it and wanted it put on a bronze plaque inside the statue." In 1945 the tablet bearing the poem was moved to the statue's entrance. Emma Lazarus was "a very good minor poet," according to Schappes. "If she hadn't written 'The New she would be remembered more by Jewish literary circles rather than the general public. It so happens the poem is one of the best of her poems." If public recopition of the poet has been a bit belated, it is no less welcome to the Emmas.

"We hope that the spirit of Emma Lazarus will live on," Mrs. Raynes said. "We made a little dent during the Liberty festival. More people are now aware of her name." He pushed the provision in the House Trade Bill that cut off dairy price supports to large foreign-owned dairy operations being built in Georgia with tax-free government bonds and the provision reclassifying casein imports. Dave voted against the Administration's disastrous 1985 farm bill and sponsored the amendment to give dairy farmers a chance to vote on a supply management alternative.

Dave used his Appropriations Subcommittee Chairmanship to cut more than 2 billion dollars from the Administration's foreign aid program to free up room in the budget for programs that benefit rural America. When 10,000 farmers who signed petitions calling for the repeal of the 1985 Farm Bill provision on Class I milk price differentials wanted someone to deliver their message to the White House and USDA, they chose Dave Obey. That's why two Wisconsin farm organizations gave him awards this year for being the most effective member of the Wisconsin congressional delegation for farmers. fights nm FIGHTS FOR US! Re-elect Congressman Dave Obey DemocratNovember 4th Paid for by Citizens for Dave Obey Committee, John Spencer, Treasurer, Post Office Bo 1322, Wausau, Wl 54401.