Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 3

htm I Michigan Dateline, Page 14A. i Obituaries, Page 14A. Page 3A March 23, 1993 UP Cheap, potent drug spreads from Hugh KCDlARMID highly addictive, dangerous name, cat, and by the time he learned what was used to make the drug, Swenor couldn't stop doing it even though he was shocked. Cat is made with battery acid, paint thinner, drain cleaner, muriatic acid, other assorted poisons and over-the-counter drugs. Police laboratory scientists had no idea what cat was when it popped up in the UP a couple of years ago.

After the first seizure of the drug in early 1991, it took two weeks of analysis to identify it. The veteran state police chemist who finally rooted out cat's scientific name methcathinone still had never heard of it. Since police made that first puzzling contact, authorities say cat use has blown into an epidemic in the ByJimSchaefer Free Press Staff Writer MARQUETTE For two and a half years, Vince Swenor snorted the seductive, off-white powder up his nose, and with each power-packed hit the mysterious drug reeled him in tighter. Swenor, seeking to spark up his life in the Upper Peninsula, had tried cocaine. But this wasn't cocaine.

This was something new, something more interesting, something that Swenor could make at home with common chemicals, some jars and rubber tubes. In mid-1990, the formula for the drug was being shared around the Marquette area "like a good cookie recipe," Swenor said. Two friends began making it at his house. It packed a wallop like no other drug that Swenor had tried. "I thought it was the greatest thing in the world," Swenor, a soft-voiced, 24-year-old unemployed man, said last week.

"I could make it in my own house, never run out. I had it made." But with frightening speed, the strange powder had Swenor helpless. He referred to it by its street 4 II "2. Politics Senator smothers note with poor taste 1 fl appy Tuesday. And what are you having for breakfast this morning? 1 I Dead fetus? Yecch! Anyway, that, in so many words, was the tasteless rationale offered up by Michigan's stridently antiabortion state Sen.

Jack Welborn, R-Kalamazoo, for declining an invitation to last Friday's private legislative briefing (and, yes, continental breakfast) being given in Southfield by Jack Welborn the Northland Family Planning Clinics and the Summit Medical Center. Welborn, never one to let civility intrude on poor taste, spelled it out in a crude March 4 letter that served as his official RSVP. Here are excerpts: "I cannot for the life of me think of any reason in the world why I would want to meet with a congregation of baby butckers. I hate to think what you might be serving for breakfast. "You must be rolling in money now that you have President Clinton allowing you to not only kill unborn babies but to sell them as well.

"I was interested in the picture on the invitation of a doctor holding a stethoscope. What's the stethoscope for? To listen to make sure the baby is dead or to use it to strangle the baby?" Not surprisingly, Welborn's letter outraged sponsors of Friday's briefing, including Northland's administrator, Renee Chelian. I 4f OUT OF THE BAG The drug known as cat is made with legal and inexpensive ingredients. Production is simple. Little is proven about the physical effects of cat.

It is highly addictive. Some users have reported seizures, heart palpitations, hallucinations and an inability to eat, leading to considerable weight loss. "Hi to deal with them separately." He still does the self-portraits, but right now "I guess the nature stuff is on the front burner." At 29, he said, "I don't know if this is my purpose, but it feels a damned lot better to me than a lot of other things." LaBeau said every nature painting is a compromise. "You're taking something already perfect and putting it down in a way you can view." He does it in a garage converted into a two-room studio-cottage behind his parents' house on Ada Drive, not far from Amway world headquarters. He works in comfortable clutter, under incandescent lights, surrounded by dark paneling, among hand-me-down furnishings and appliances.

Unfinished or rejected canvases lean in stacks in the studio. ITor all those ocean-side residents, we ask that you put a light in your window tonight as the light of Mari Muer, daughter of missing skipper 4 Upper Peninsula, which they call the birthplace of illegal methcathinone in the United States. They still aren't sure why it's so prevalent in the UP. Cat has established a surprising link between the UP and another cold but faraway land, Russia. UP authorities in law enforcement and medicine say it's the only other place in the world where illegal use of the drug has been known.

But cat use now is spreading into northern Wisconsin and the Lower Peninsula as police and doctors scramble to squash it in the UP. They fear the drug could roar across the United States as the recipe spreads. See DRUG, Page 8A Kalkaska closure in U.S. spotlight School radio to miss story, must sign BY DAVID HACKER Free Press Staff Writer KALKASKA CNN, ABC, CBS, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal all plan to be here Wednesday, Kalkaska school officials say. But radio station WKAL, the voice of Kalkaska High School, will miss the biggest story of its brief life when the bankrupt Kalkaska public schools close more than two months before the rest of the state at noon Wednesday.

"The station goes off the air at 11:30 a.m." Mark Repp, whose telecommunications class went on the air with the AM station in December, said Superintendent Doyle Disbrow said closing ceremonies for the school district are scheduled at noon. Teachers, superintendents and board of education members from about 50 Michigan school districts will attend the ceremonies at the Kalkaska Middle School in a "vigil for education." Also in attendance will be Keith Geiger, president of the National Education Association, a teachers' union. They will be showing their solidarity after Kalkaska's decision to close school 10 weeks early because the district ran out of money. "All of our districts around the state see themselves as potential Kal-kaskas in the not-distant future if we don't do something about how we fund education in mis state," Julius Maddox, president of the Michigan Education Association, said last week. Many of Michigan's 542 school districts are struggling financially.

A few began the fiscal year with budget deficits. Others have cut busing or other basic programs to stay in the black. Three times this school year, voters in the 444-square-mile Kalkaska district have overwhelmingly rejected a 7.36-millage increase to keep the See KALKASKA, Page 4A Barney, 47, faces arraignment today on felony cocaine and marijuana possession charges. He was to be formally charged on Monday in 36th District Court in Detroit, but the Lem Barney IV ALAN KAMUDADetrolt Free Press Jon LaBeau of Ada, Michigan Wildlife Artist of the Year, works on a print at a drafting table in his bedroom. Photostory, Page 16D.

AT HOME WITH WILDLIFE By David McKay Free Press Staff Writer State artist likes recent honors, but fly-fishing suits him just fine DA When Jon LaBeau paints from the gut, his self-portraits are darkly broody. He's not sure why, except "Sometimes you "It takes only a few strokes to change a painting. Sometimes you just can't make those strokes, and you have to come back to it in a year or so." From a distance, his work seems almost photographic, but a closer look shows what LaBeau describes as a "brushy" style. Mitch Smith, MUCC art director, said, "It's kind of photographic and not photographic. It's very loose." Louise Jabara, director of the Wild Wings Wildlife Art Galleries store in Grosse Pointe, said La-Beau's trout stamp print sells well there and at galleries in Plymouth and Birmingham.

"I thought it was fine quality, and the response has been excellent." Signed, numbered prints of "Short-Eared Owl" and a wood duck painting that won LaBeau the 1991 wildlife artist award are available for $75 plus shipping and handling from MUCC, 2101 Wood Lansing 48912. A proof of the owl print can be had for $90 from the artist, Box 82, Ada 49301. Dispelling an image "I found it insulting and demeaning," Chelian said Monday, noting that all members of the Legislature and all Michigan members of Congress had been invited and that, while many regrets were received, only Welborn's was offensive. "We weren't trying to change anyone's mind about abortion," she said, "Our purpose was to try to dispel the public image of our clinics created by our opponents that they're dirty, that we hate children, that we lure in young women, take their money and ignore them and that our doctors are scumbuckets." None of that is true, she said, noting that the clinics are run much like conventional doctors' offices and function like any other facility devoted to a specialty of medicine. Meanwhile, Chelian and others who support choice on abortion note with some dismay that Welborn is again the choice of Senate leadership to chair hearings on all abortion-related legislation.

Thus, they say, the skids are greased for the antiabortion "informed consent" bill (mandating, among other things, a 24-hour "wait" period) but decidedly -greased for a new bill designed to impose civil penalties on those who would illegally restrain clinic operations. Welborn, 60, of course, is no I stranger to abortion controversy. He was a ringleader in the noisy 1986 fight to strip so-called "Medicaid I abortion" funding out of the state budget and, for years, has aggressively backed issues supported by Right to Life of Michigan, including the ban on assisted suicide (he refers to Dr. Jack Kevorkian as "Jack the Ripper" and warns that Michigan will become a "suicide 'Queers and perverts' Nor does Welborn shy away from other controversies. He supported Alabama's Democratic Gov.

George Wallace for president in 1972; bucked Michigan's Bill Milliken-led GOP establishment to have to let things out." The other side of him designed the 1993 trout-salmon stamp for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and won for the second time the competition for Michigan Wildlife Artist of the Year, sponsored by the Michigan United Conservation Clubs. Among Michigan wildlife artists, LaBeau is hot. His acrylic likenesses of a grayling hooked by an artificial fly for this year's trout stamp and a watchful short-eared owl for the MUCC have established LaBeau as a prizewinner, but he still makes his living as a computer-aided designer for Keyes Refrigeration in suburban Grand Rapids. If he had a choice, the slender man with a short beard and ponytail would paint for a living, but, secretly, he says he'd like to earn a living fly-fishing. "If anybody told me I couldn't, paint or fly-fish, I'd be pidiy depressed," he said.

His painting, LaBeau said, is a combination of joy and gratitude that he is fortunate enough to be able to do it, plus a churchgoing Christian faith that "a gift is something you get from somewhere else." At any time, he said, he could take either path: The expressionistic look of his orange-and-black self-studies "sometimes it's just nice to hurl out some paint." The more precise realism of wildlife art "it's internal and external, I guess and it's been there longer for me." "There's nothing wrong with expressionism. There's nothing wrong with realism. You just have Scan International, would depend on the availability of volunteer pilots, sailors and shore searchers. "They still want to get as many planes up as they can," he said. For most of the last week, up to seven military aircraft and as many as nine private planes crisscrossed the ocean in an area east from Jupiter, to the Bahamas and north to Savannah, Ga.

Some of the aircraft had been hired by the seven Muer children and three Drummey children. Mari Muer thanked volunteers in the Bahamas and the United States who had taken part in the search. She made a special request. "For all those ocean-side residents, we ask that you put a light in your window tonight as the light of hope," she said. Barney's friends laud his charitable work Muer family scales back search for missing boaters By Stephen Jones Free Press Staff Writer After a frantic but fruitless week, the family of Detroit restaurant owner Chuck Muer announced Monday that it is scaling back the search for Muer and his boating companions, lost in the storm-roiled Atlantic Ocean.

In a written statement, daughter Mari Muer said the search toiind her parents, Chuck and Betty Muer, and their friends, George and Lynne Drummey, would continue with the help of volunteers. The Coast Guard, Air Force and Navy ended a three-day air and sea search over 80,000 square miles late Friday. Bob Moreillon, spokesman for C. A. Muer Corp.

in Detroit, said the private search, coordinated by Air By Jeffrey S. Ghannam And LA JOHNSON Free Press Staff Writers In the background of a 1971 Motown hit, Lem Barney and his former Lions teammate Mel Fair were the jivin' duo for the intro to "What's Going On." In their own words Monday, Barney's friends and associates borrowed the refrain from Marvin Gaye's song to ask what's going on with Barney, a respected civic leader now facing drug charges. "I'm just shocked," Farr, now an automobile dealer, said through a spokeswoman, Charlene Mitchell. Mitchell said Farr, after learning of the charges, "was to the point of being numb, not able to believe that this hapDened to Lem Barney." serve as Ronald Reagan's Michigan presidential campaign manager in 1976 and early in 1980, and ran for governor in 1982 (losing badly in the i GOP primary) on a platform that, among other things, said that departing Gov. MMken "almost single-handedly destroyed our state." And in 1986 when House Republicans formally complained about Welborn's antics at a GOP rally in Kalamazoo where he'd railed against, among others, "union bosses," "socialists and the pinkos," "queers and perverts" and, of course "baby butchers" well, Welborn told reporters: "I said what I said, and I mean what I say." Churlish or not Hope has been tough to maintain as the air-and-sea search has dragged on with no sign of the boaters or Muer's 40-foot sailboat, named Charley's Crab.

The boat was last seen March 12 as it began what was expected to be a 30-hour cruise from the Bahamas to Jupiter. But Charley's Crab was headed directly into the path of the powerful See Page 4A hearing was postponed so Barney's lawyer, Cornelius Pitts, could attend. Pitts said Monday he would not comment until he has reviewed the charges against his client. Barney could not be reached. The former three-time All-Pro De- See BARNEY, Page 4A -4.