Waco Tribune-Herald from Waco, Texas • 15

TAKE NOTE Babies need four immunizations by age 2. Shots cost $6 at the WacoMcLennan County Public Health District. Call 750-5450 for details. WACO TRIBUNE -HERALD BRIEFLY Sloan to meet, greet public Baylor University president Robert B. Sloan who has been on the job almost three months, will meet and greet the public at an informal reception from 3 to 5 p.m.

today in the Brazos Room of the Waco Convention Center. Sponsored by Baylor University, the reception is -hosted by more than 20 local leaders in business, education, medicine, religion and politics. Sloan replaced former president Herbert Reynolds. The reception originally was slated for June 11, but was rescheduled when former Baylor president Abner McCall died early that morning. Wortham school bond OK'd Voters in the Wortham Independent School District approved a $1.3 million bond issue Saturday that will allow for a new junior high, a new first grade and renovation of the elementary school.

The measure passed by a vote of 188 to 154. A spokeswoman for the school district said the building currently used for K-1 was built in 1903, and the current junior high building was erected in 1922. Student enrollment at Wortham ISD is about 400 students. Literacy coalition Anyone interested in literacy issues may join the Central Texas Literacy Coalition at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Hamilton House, 1521 Austin Ave.

The advisory board for 1995-96 will be elected, and all guests and members will take part in a planning session for next year's programs and services. Fiesta on the Brazos festival Fiesta on the Brazos festival will 1 be Friday and Saturday at Cameron Park East. The festival features music, food, children's rides and a car and bike show. Money raised will go to the Waco Boys Club and the Cen-Tex Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Groups, organizations or individuals may rent booth space for $75.

To ask questions, call Larry Perez after 5:30 p.m. at 754-1430. Labor Day Fish Fry LAGUNA PARK West Shore Volunteer Fire Department's 26th annual Labor Day Fish Fry will be Saturday at the fire hall on Shore Acres in Laguna Park. Serving begins at 5 p.m., and the minimum donation is $5. The fish fry is the department's major fund-raiser.

Two bands, Jimmy Schmidt and the Dutchmen and the Midnight Wranglers, will provide live music, and a concrete floor is available for dancing. Other entertainment will be provided by vocalist Kelli Lawson of Laguna Park, and the Dance Variation a song and dance group from Dallas. Doll and toy show, sale The Central Texas Doll Club's Doll Toy Show Sale will be 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sept.

9 in the General Exhibits Building at the Heart O' Texas Fairgrounds. The show and sale will include antique, modern and reproduction dolls; doll clothes and supplies; and paper dolls. Admission is $2 for adults and 50 cents for children. Proceeds will benefit Toys for Tots. To ask questions, call Ollie Maye West at 752-5179.

'Kids in the Kitchen' Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center's Department of Preventive Medicine will offer "Kids in the Kitchen," a cooking class for children age 8 and older, from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Sept. 16. The program will be in the fellowship hall of Western Heights Baptist Church, 6301 Bosque Blvd.

Speakers will discuss safe food handling, appliance and utensil safety, table manners, place settings, food labels and food groups. Participants will prepare a low-fat meal and serve it at noon. Cost of the program is $6 per child for CREST card members and $7 for nonmembers. The children may invite guests to the luncheon. Cost for guests is $4 for CREST card members and $5 for non-members.

Reservations are required. To ask questions or to receive a registration form, call 756-HBMC. LOCAL 19 340 PAGE 1B SUNDAY AUG. 27. 1995 Oklahoman dies in Hwy.

6 wreck By MARLA PIERSON Tribune-Herald staff writer A 30-year-old Oklahoma man died early Saturday morning after the 1993 Chevrolet pickup he was driving struck an 18-wheeler tractor-trailer, said a Department of Public Safety spokesman. David Brent Howerton of Burneyville, was heading south on Highway 6 about 1:55 a.m. when he crossed into the northbound lane and struck a 1989 Mac 18-wheeler tractor-trailer, the spokesman said. Howerton was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident, miles north of Marlin, the spokesman said. The 34-year-old driver of the truck, Esperanza Marroquin of Dublin, Texas, POLICE REPORT Stabbing A 33-year-old man was released from Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center Saturday, a day after he was stabbed at Old Hickory Motel, 1204 S.

Loop Drive, officials said. Details about the incident remained sketchy Saturday, but a Waco police department release said the man, who apparently lives at the motel, was stabbed in the torso with a knife. It was not clear if any arrests had been made in the case Saturday. Aggravated robbery A robber reportedly went into Little Caesar's Pizza, 1105 Wooded Acres Drive, with a handgun about 4 p.m. Friday, demanded money and left.

No one was injured in the incident, and it wasn't clear Saturday how much money was taken, police said. A robber went into Fuddruckers, 1411 N. Valley Mills Drive, with a caliber handgun about 11:40 p.m. Thursday, demanded money and then took more than $2,400, police said. No arrests had been made i in the case Saturday, police said.

I A 13-year-old boy was riding a scooter in the 200 block of Rose Street about 10:30 p.m. Friday when a robber reportedly pointed a gun at him and demanded money, police said. It wasn't clear what, if anything, was taken in the robbery, police said. A 32-year-old woman reported she CA ONLY IN TEXAS ABOVE: Illuminated snake exhibits attract lookers Saturday during the opening day Explore the new addition to the Cameron Park zoo. The first exhibit series features snakes and spiders.

LEFT: A timber rattlesnake stays curled in its new exhibit. Staff photos Rod Aydelotte Writer turns attention to self True-crime author's new book looks at the criminal in his own family By MIKE COCHRAN The Associated Press DALLAS When his wife met him at the door that day, Carlton Stowers realized she had been crying and he sensed at once that something was dreadfully wrong. "It's Anson," she said, burying her head in his shoulder. Though not Anson's mother, Pat Stowers knew too well the troubled relationship between her husband and his 25-year-old son. "He's in the county jail," she said.

"I was so afraid you'd hear about it on the radio. I'm sorry. so sorry." Anson's history of drug abuse, thefts and robbery raced through his mind as he mentally inventoried the possibilities. "What's he done?" Stowers asked wearily. "He's killed Annette," Pat whispered.

So writes Carlton Stowers in Sins of the Son, a heart-wrenching book about his firstborn's descent into the criminal underworld. On Nov. 16, 1988, as Stowers was completing one of his chilling truecrime books, Innocence Lost, Anson graduated from major mischief to homicide. Strung out in a drug-induced fury, he murdered his ex-wife Annette, 25. Sins of the Son is not a true-crime story in the traditional sense.

was robbed by a man who picked her up at East Waco Drive and Clifton Street, police said. He reportedly took her to Dripping, Springs and Gholson roads, where, armed with a handgun, he took her purse, according to a Waco Police Department incident form. Fire An extension cord attached to a window air-conditioning unit overheated Saturday evening, spreading smoke through a duplex at 2650 S. 14th offi-, cials said. "There was actually no flame be-: cause it smoldered," said assistant fire chief Stan Devers.

But residue from the smoke damage scattered "everywhere" through the home, he noted. Please see POLICE, Page 2B Refusing to bury a promise Scout cleans cemetery near Mart to, help dad fulfill pledge By ERIN HANAFY Tribune-Herald staff writer A promise is a promise, even if that promise was made 40 years before you were born. For 13-year-old Barrett Kroll of Woodway, fulfilling a promise his father made to keep up an ancestor's grave became a labor of love this summer. "My great-great-grandfather's buried out there, and the cemetery hasn't been touched since 1940," Barrett said of the old St. John Lutheran Cemetery in Battle, east of Waco near Mart.

The weekend before school started, while many kids were trying to cram in as much sum-' mer fun as they could, Barrett was hacking at overgrown weeds and trees in the cemetery, tidying up a family gravesite. "My dad's grandfather made him promise to take care of the grave, and I wanted to help. It's been on my conscience," he said. "I just didn't feel right about it." St. John Lutheran church and cemetery were established in 1909, but the church burned in 1940 and the cemetery's been virtually untouched for more than 50 years.

To correct the situation, Barrett persuaded his Boy Scout Please see SCOUT, Page 3B "It is, simply, a story of the lives of two people my son and me who have traveled a bumpy, sometimes misdirected 30-year course marked by the ordinary and the extraordinary," Stowers writes in the book's preface. "At best, putting the story to paper has provided me some understanding, some logical sorting of things that have benefited me and, I hope, might be of some aid to others." Sins of the Son is powerful and tragic personal journalism. The 53-year-old Dallas author established himself with Careless Whispers, which won the Mystery Writers of America award for true crime, and the more recent Open Secrets. Careless Whispers tells the story of three teens stabbed to death at Lake Waco's Koehne Park in 1982. David Wayne Spence is on Texas' Death Row, after being convicted twice, in 1984 and 1985, of capital murder, in two of the three deaths.

But this book, says author-child psychiatrist Jonathan Kellerman, will "immerse you in a heartbreaking and courageous and compulsively readable story devoid of self-pity or pat theories. A remarkably honest, sometimes cold-eyed account of a special kind of parental terror wrought by one of our finest crime writers out of the depths of his own nightmare." 000 As a young sports writer, Stowers, with his first wife and infant son, bounced around the newspaper cir- cuit, from Abilene to Roswell, N.M., to Lubbock and finally Dallas. Anson was 5 years old and Stowers was working for the Dallas Morning News when a second son, Ashley, was born. But the marriage would not last. Divorced, working as a freelance writer and living alone in the Texas Hill Country, Stowers was delightfully stunned one day when his ex called to say he could come get his two boys.

He would later gain formal custody. Anson was a third-grader and Ashley was in kindergarten when they joined their father in the small town of Comfort. "Comfort, with its gentle, carefree lifestyle and warm acceptance of a bachelor father and two sons, had provided a marvelous healing ground," Stowers wrote. "In the years to come, however, I would learn that deep invisible wounds remained. They would finally reveal themselves in the steadily growing anger of my elder Anson was 12 when he and his best friend were caught stealing cigarettes from the local drugstore.

But it was three years later before the awful reality set in. By then, Stowers was back in Dallas working for the News' Sunday magazine. "Adult authority, on the homefront or at school, became his mortal ene- Please see SON, Page 4B -TV completes prime team CARL HOOVER Tribune-Herald entertainment editor Waco television station KXXV-TV, Channel 25, completes its prime time news team Monday when meteorologist John Basham from Wichita Falls joins KXXV's evening newcasts. Basham's arrival will round off the station's weeknight news team, which consists of Pam Harris and Ray Peters as news anchors, Basham on weather and John Wallin on sports, KXXV News Director Tom Pratt said. Peters, the station's sports director for several years, takes the position vacated when veteran anchorman Ric Streed was fired in late June.

Steve Snyder, former sports director for KCEN-TV, will handle weekend sports for KXXV. Weatherman Shea Rial will move to weekends with the addition of Basham and will be the meteorologist for the station's weekday morning newscasts that will begin in October, Pratt said. On-air personnel changes are also upcoming at KCEN, where News Director Mike Snuffer said managers are looking "within and nationally" to find Patricia Meusburger's replacement. Meusburger, who had anchored the 6 and 10 p.m. newscasts for the station since July 1991, gave station officials two weeks' notice Aug.

3..