Herald and Review from Decatur, Illinois • Page 4

Page A 4 Central IllinoisCommunity- Decatur, Illinois, Monday, November 9, 1981 'i mmm Virden FM station to be ready in 1982 HGiniESffi WEDNESDAY NOV. 11 WEDNESDAY NOV. 11 By DAVE PETRINA Herald A Review StaH Writer SHELBYVILLE As an early teenager, Randal "Randy" J. Miller, 26, was attracted to the broadcasting business. And before he received his radio broadcasting license at age 16, Miller's "station" was a 100-milliwatt transmitter with a 300-foot range.

The signal was just strong enough to broadcast to the upstairs of his parents' rural Shelbyville home and reach to some outbuildings. The transmitter didn't require Federal Communications Commission licensing because of its low ponter. And now after jobs at several Central Illinois radio Miller and a silent partner are building a new FM radio sta tion at Virden in Macoupin County. The easy-listening music, station will have an approximate range of 25 miles and cover an area including 10 small towns. Miller's early '-broadcasts" on his home transmitter were usually recorded music he would beam from a record or tape player to radios in other parts of the-house.

He also conducted an election-day broadcast, Securing permission from Shelbyville and Decatur radio stations to rebroadcast their resujts over his transmitter. "Then I began writing high school news and worked part time at the local radio station," he said. Miller is a certified radio marketing consultant at WTIM-AM and WEEE-FM at Taylorville. He also has worked at radio stations in Sullivan and Litchfield and was manager of a local cable television channel in Carlinville. He is a 1973 graduate of Shelbyville High School and a 1975 graduate of the radio broadcasting program at Lake Land College in Mat-toon.

Miller will leave his job at the Taylorville station when the Virden station goes on the air in February, 1982. The studio will be in Virden and the 300-foot tower will be about 2 miles south of Virden. He is president and general manager of Virden Broadcasting which filed for the 96.7 FM frequency in 1979. The company expects to receive a construction permit from the FCC about Dec. 1 and then will file for a broadcast license with the call letters WVIR on Jan.

1, 1982, Miller said. The new station will concentrate on local news and sports, he said. It will be on the air from 5:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Saturday and from 7 a.m.

to 11 p.m. on S.unday. Virden, with a population just under 4,000, will be one of the smallest towns in the state to have a radio station. "At first. I guess, people were kind of skeptical but now that they see we are following through with our plans they are very receptive," Miller said.

AC OR BATTERY AM-FM. PORTABLE RADIO $ft99 ON SALE WEDNESDAY SUPER GIFT THINK AHEAD NOV. 11 ONLY WD 1 REG. $249 BRACH'S SELECT 1 1 MEDALLION BIG 16 25 'nominated as standby board members 1 U.S 51 negotiations to start PARIS Negotiations for the purchase of land for widening U.S. 51 from Hickory Point Mall to the north edge of Forsyth are to begin this month, and the Department of Transportation is readying plans to assist landowners and tenants in relocating.

The Illinois Department of Transportation's relocation assistance and payments program is designed to ease the relocation problems, according to Robert E. Kronst, 'Paris District engineer. For more information, contact the relocation representative at the Paris office from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, at 217-465-4181.

Twenty-five Central Illinois residents have been nominated to serve as standby members of local draft boards in the U.S. Selective Service System. Members will be appointed by President Reagan to serve on the boards. In all, 495 Illinoisans were nominated by Gov. James R.

Thompson. Area nominees are: Aubrey Bond. Decatur, Paul Sheehan. Decatur, Junius Futrell. Mount Zion.

for Macon County: Kenneth Dalenberg, Mansfield, for Piatt: Dean Cates, Mount Pulaski. Harold Fulscher. Lincoln, for Logan. Also. John Peterson, Edinburg, for Christian; Robert Dyer.

Toledo. Donald Scoles. Neoga, for Cumberland: Robert Hickman, Charleston. Earl Walden. Mattoon, for Coles; Gary Welsh, Marshall, for Clark.

Also. Anita Campbell. Shelbyville, for Shelby; Richard Clapp, Hindsboro, for Douglas; Donald Gibbons, Bethany, for Moultrie: Robert Kronst. Paris, Walter Trapp. Paris, for Edgar; Ri'chard Bradley.

Greenville, for Bond; Raymond Evans, Beecher City, for Effingham; Norman Hagy, Van-dalia, for Fayette; Robert Hermsmeyer, Litchfield, for Montgomery: Also, Billie Bachelor, Robinson, for Crawford; John Katsorelos, 'Newton, for Jasper: Donna Kaufmann. Louisville, for Clay; Donald Wence, Olney, Richland. v.ntnniti COUNT w-- CHOCOLATE COVERED CHERRIES $noo ON SALE WEDNESDAY VET'S DAY SPECIAL EMPEROR GRANDFATHER 1 1 SOO SWEETEST GOOD! DEAL IN CLOCK SHOW TOWN Monticello man wins side of beef FORSYTH Gary Bordson of Monticello was the winner of the side of beef given by the Hickory Point Fire Protection District as first prize in its fund-raising Other prizes from Tuesday night's City, County SyfiiDJES Scene REG. $28.95 LIST GREAT FOR MEN WOMEN OUJJCI IIKUV-i 1000 WATTS lUUU SPRINGFIELD SHOWING TUESDAY WEDNESDAY November 10 11 Holiday Inn-South 625 E. St.

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REBATE $4.00 Do-lt-Yourself Kits Finished Clocks Movement Carries a One Year Warranty One Week, Weight Driven Brass Movement Westminster Chimes Solid VA" Black Walnut, Cherry, Oak or Mahogany 1 SS 1fl99 V- A COST I WEDNESDAY NOV. 11 ONLY MODEL 9230 INCLUDES COMB ft BRUSH SPECIAL SALE PRICES DURING ENTIRE SHOW drawing and their winners are: black and white television, Robert Auten of Forsyth: $50 cash. Randy Runyen of Maroa; S23 cash. Terry Burke of Forsyth, and a gallon of ice cream, Paul ucker of Areola. I Miantie board is seeking inew Water superintendent JCIANTIC The Village Board is looking for someone to succeed Hal Arnold as village water and sewer superintendent, according to board President Jerry Patterson.

Patterson said Arnold resigned in mid-October and apparently is moving to Florida. Since Arnold left the job. the board has contracted with Charles Williams of the Decatur Sanitary District to handle the village's sewer system and treatment plant and with former village Water Superintendent Robert Kapper to handle the water system. But these arrangements are only temporary, Patterson said. "We're looking for another operator," he said.

One will be hired as soon as possible, Patterson added. Village officials have talked to one candidate and have obtained a list of state-licensed water and sewer system operators. Anyone who is licensed and interested can contact any village official, Patterson said. Hone re-elected to post in personnel association Dr. Richard D.

Howe, son of Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth E. Howe Sr. of Latham, has been re-elected to a two-year term as a vice president of the College and University Personnel Association, headquartered in Washington, D.C.

The 1957 graduate of Warrensburg-Latham High School is director of equal opportunity programs at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C., where he graduated in 1961. Sj.iUh.cwc VISA SUPER SPECIALS FOR VETS DAY ONLY PROMPT SHIPMENT GUARANTEED from our Fairnope. Ala. plant. See these beautiful traditional Emperor Grandfather Clocks at this Special FREE Showing.

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fifteen arm- Dr. n- True professor oi discusseb 'Cottege oi wve "1 particui l0 gooa m-; liic v- ana leas TXHS pare vt i--- or. IE KJATTIIdDM5 h.Lh nr yie.T nvL. nnrkpt fnr TTV out of their own pockets for mi tNation while not quite as bad, also show a major health gap. But it is poverty, not racial or Show a maiOr '4 medical care than they did in 1965, and Medicare pays only 40 percent of the elderly's medical care costs.

Limited access However, providing payment for medical care does not for the poor, at least assure access to that care, or mean that it will -be focused on their problems. Sixty percent of the poor now live in inner cities. But doctors have been migrating out of cities and into affluent suburbs. Today, there is only one physician for every 2,000 urban residents. And in many areas, almost half the physicians refuse to accept Medicaid patients.

So in our inner cities, where health problems are most severe, 25 percent of the urban poor have no regular source of care. For millions of others, medical care means only the hospital outpatient clinic or the emergency room. It means long waits, inconvenient hours, difficult transportation, different physicians on each visit, and, too often, hasty, episodic care with inadequate followup. And that is why the poor are 60 percent more likely to die of preventable or treatable diseases like pneumonia, twice as likely to die of diabetes, five times likelier to die of tuberculosis. That is why 30 percent of poor children are incompletely immunized.

That is why the babies of the poor die needlessly, and why adults, when hospitalized, must stay in the hospital longer, for they are already suffering more advanced disease. Sidestepping the solution These problems are not insoluble. Our society has already demonstrated in some cases that we can close the health gap for ttie poor. We are simply choosing not to do so. One answer is direct governmental provision of comprehensive medical service to low-income and minority populations whom, the private sector cannot or will not serve.

We do this through a network of comprehensive community health centers for ambula tory and primary care, located in the communities of greatest need and responsive to them. These centers staffed by young physicians, nurse-practitioners, physician assistants, social workers, outreach workers, sanitarians, and others eager to do the job provide comprehensive medical services for the neediest. They are also vehicles for special programs in maternal and child health, immunization and other forms of preventive medicine, identification and treatment of hypertension, and home care for the elderly. Federal, state, and local governments started developing such community health centers in 1965. In Newark, they cut the infant mortality rate in their target area by more than 50 percent in five years, in Omaha by almost 70 percent.

One such center in Mississippi feduced malnutrition, improved housing, and trained people for medical careers. But we have only 200 such centers, serving 2 million people, when the government itself estimates that 800 centers are needed to serve 10 million. The twin burdens of the poor inadequate health and inadequate health care raise important questions about our society. Do we really care? And jf we do, will we continue to underfund the programs that work while investing ever more public funds in a private medical sector that seems unwilling or unable to do the job effectively? The short-term prospects for the poor are, I believe, worse than at any time in the past quarter-century. Inflation and an uncertain economy point to more poverty and inevitably more illness.

At the same time, the great public hospitals and the social, programs that lessen the effects of poverty food stamps, -school lunches, neighborhood health centers, the National Health Service Corps are being cut back by the government. The Great Leap Sideways may turn into something worse: a Giant Step Backwards. For millions of Americans in poverty the working poor, blacks and Hispanics of inner-city slums, migrant farm workers and scattered rural residents the last 15 years in health and medical care have been a Great Leap Sideways. These groups have better health today hut they are just as far behind the rest of us as they were in 1965. The nation overall has been reaching record levels in improved health.

But the poor and. disproportionately, nonwhites are 'still paying an inequitable toll, in dead shortened lives, days of lost work, and avoidable suffering. It is still the poor who are likelier to be sick, the sick who are likelier to be poor, and the sick poor who have the least chance for effective help. If there is an important difference from 1965, it is that American society, after years of the war on poverty, billions of dollars in Medicare and Medicaid expenditures, and a skyrocketing national bill for medical care, seems less aware that the health gap for the poor and minorities is still real and serious. But it is.

Consider these figures: Our infant mortality rate has been dropping 5 percent a year since 1965 and is now at an all-time low of 14 infant deaths( per thousand live births. But the black in-' fant mortality rate, which in 1950 was 64 percent higher than the white rate, is now almost 100 percent higher. Black children under age 5 die at twice the rate of white children. In the most pro-; ductive years of life, ages 25-44, the black rate is three times higher. A nonwhite is five times likelier than a white mother to die of a complication in child-" birth.

Overall, the average costs of being nonwhite in America include 40 percent more days disabled or sick each year; higher risks of cancer, heart disease, stro- kes and diabetes; and six years off the aver--Iage lifespan of 73.2 years. IV" --'Burdens of poverty The figures for Hispanic-Americans, Na-j tive Americans, and other minority groups, minority status in itself, that is the great cause of excess sickness and death. In every population group, white and nonwhite, most of the excess ill health and death are in the lowest income levels. Within each population group, the differences in health status between the poorest and the richer members are much greater than health differences between whites and nonwhites at any given income level. Povertymeans not enough to eat: one-fourth of the nation's children live in families with incomes too low for adequate nutrition, and 30 percent of poor American children have iron-deficiency anemia.

Poverty means overcrowded and dangerous housing. Povertyneans dirty, dangerous jobs with high exposure to workplace hazards. And poverty means stress an exhausting, continuous struggle to survive, escape crime, get an education, raise children, and stay healthy, without the real means to do so. Paying out of pocket Even while the poor continue to suffer excess illness, we have tailed to assure their access to doctors, hospitals, and other medical care despite massive expenditures for programs like Medicare and Medicaid. Despite those programs, 23 million Americans, roughly 11 percent of our population, still haVe no medical care coverage of any kind, governmental or private.

Most of them are the working poor, with incomes just above the survival levels that would make them eligible for Medicaid. Medicaid eligibility standards and benefits vary enormously from state to state. Thus, many families with incomes below the federal government's poverty standard are still declared ineligible. Even with Medicare, which covers everyone over 65 regardless of income, there are problems. The combination of requirements that patients pay part of the bill, general inflation, and medical cost inflation means that old people are now paying more Herald Review Jti mm and This Courses by Newspaper lesson is brought to you by Ri Richland Community College.