Behind the Headlines

from Paula Wethington, community page reporter / paula@monroenews.com

For various reasons, I occasionally get calls or e-mail queries from people who want a list of all clubs that meet in the area, along with their addresses and other contact information. I received one such call the other day.
That information can be found in our calendar section at www.monroenews.com. If a club announces its events and meetings in The Monroe Evening News Community Page, and has provided us with public contact information such as a phone number or Web site, I will include those details in the on-line calendar entries.

An article last week discussed the presence of VHS, or Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia, in the Great Lakes. It’s a fish virus that’s spreading partly through minnows, and a lot of bait shop owners are upset that it could increase their costs or ruin their bait business by requiring them to import bait from distance areas instead of buying them from companies that harvest minnows and other bait from the Great Lakes.

A federal order banned the sale of Great Lakes bait without a veterinary certification that the bait wasn’t infected.

The threat to the bait shops is real (see www.savethebaitbusiness.com), but it’s also scary about what it might mean to Lake Erie’s larger fish industry.

“We’re considering all of Lake Erie a hot zone” for the disease, said Gary Towns, supervisor of the Lake Erie Management Unit for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

He said more restrictions will come down the pike about who can have fish, how they can be moved, and sold. “There’s going to be a lot of very sticky issues with this disease.

VHS took a toll on drum fish last year, and also caused a less severe die-off among perch and muskie.

“It almost operates under the ice,” Mr. Towns said. “It’s a cold-weather disease. Once the ice went out last year, we found fish that were decomposing already.”

Readers will sometimes ask reporters “How did you get that story?” or “Who gave you that story?” or “Who put you on to that?”

Often we are, indeed, given stories in the form of press releases, or someone might just call up and make some newsworthy announcement. But a lot of articles come from tips or rumors that we chase down.

The process sometimes shows what a small world it really is.

Such was the story behind the recent story about the sale of Toledo Beach Marina.

On a Monday, I came into work and found a voicemail from Tom Treece, Luna Pier administrator, saying he heard a rumor that the marina had been sold.

The next day, while attending a service for Comair crash victims at Roselawn Memorial Park, I ran into LaSalle Township Supervisor Larry Rutledge. I asked if he had heard anything about the marina having new owners. He had, he said, only because long-time owner Tim Gladieux called as a courtesy and told him the LaSalle Township marina had changed hands. Larry didn’t have any details, just that the new owner was some Atlanta company that owned a batch of other marinas.

When I returned to the office, I began searching the Internet for background on any Atlanta company that had a group of marinas. Meanwhile, I got a voicemail from Beth Ann Choate, retired Monroe County equalization director who recently moved to the Atlanta area. She simply said she had heard the marina had been sold and she expected to see a story online at www.monroenews.com in the next day or so. She didn’t leave her phone number.

I contacted Mr. Gladieux and he gave me most of the details I needed. He pointed me to the Atlanta firm that he sold his marina to, and then I went to their Web site and called the business to knit together a few more details.

A day after the story was published, Mrs. Choate called again, thanking me for doing the article that she read online. She then explained that before she first had called me, she was having lunch with a new friend in Atlanta and the friend recognized others at the eatery and introduced Mrs. Choate to them. They asked where Mrs. Choate was from. She told them she was from Monroe. They said, what a coincidence, they had just bought a marina in the Monroe area, some place called Toledo Beach.

And now you know the story behind the headlines.

This really has nothing to do with anything, but… I remember a concept from somewhere that says basically this: once you acknowledge you’re experiencing an emotion, particularly happiness or joy, that moment is then robbed by that consciousness and you can no longer just feel, you indicate a feeling. Anyway, I was looking at one of my usually favorite websites yesterday and it seemed to lack something. www.slowwave.com is where you write in to the illustrator and then he draws your dream like a comic in four panes. It just seems like now that it’s in on the joke, it’s no longer funny or quirky in that unknowing way.

I feel like this happened last week with Bill O’Reilly and Steven Colbert. Was it me, or was watching that like eating oatmeal? Cold, flavorless oatmeal. And that makes me think about how this all relates to being a reporter. Does this mean, once we report on the news, it ceases to be news?

I wrote a story for Monday’s paper about John Atkinson, a 15-year-old high school freshman who spent his summer flying Ultralight airplanes and earning his license. The best part about talking with John was not only his passion for flying, but his passion for his future.

It is so refreshing to know teenagers are not wasting their time after school playing video games or watching T.V., but spending time on hobbies that will help them in the future. John is an amazing kid who really wants to get something out of his life.

He dreams big, but he is the type of person who will be able to accomplish those dreams because he has family who believes in him and most importantly, he believes in himself! He should be an inspiration to all people his age.

I just got back from the county sheriff’s office. I’m always a little sad after going through the police reports. From time to time after skimming the reports it occurs to me that there are two worlds that go on in a community and the line dividing them is sharp and seemingly impossible to cross. But, what I keep seeing in the reports and talking to different people - it’s actually way easier than anyone would suspect to find yourself on the other side. Other times, I’m just so amazed at what goes on around town.

There was one domestic this past weekend where the husband had allegedly struck his wife because he said she was not performing her wifely duties. Which, I hate to say, is a somewhat common occurance. What was different about this was how extreme it seemed, like that the man had locks on the refrigerator and the freezer and said the woman was not allowed to eat unless he had given her permission. His sister, agreeing with his stance and saying the woman deserved to get hit, allegedly broke the wife’s t.v. because she watched it too much.

Robberies, stalking, home invasion, drunk and disorderly, assault and battery. It’s all in there. And only a fraction of it makes its way into the newspaper in detail. We do the cops map and list of reported crimes every week, but a list of block numbers followed by generalized charges doesn’t necessarily convey what happens in our homes and those of our neighbors. When people ask why we include this kind of story in the news, it’s hard to explain that good or bad, it’s all part of the fabric. Writing about it at least exposes it and possibly facilitates change.

But after reading in the national news about a man suspected of beheading his daughter, a woman who put her baby in an oven and two women, unconnected, suspected of selling girls for sex on craigslist, I’m having a hard time buying that right now.

By Charles Slat ctslat@monroenews.com

Covering the Comair crash 10^th anniversary memorial ceremony Tuesday got me to thinking about fate and faith.

It seems when tragedy occurs, some people rationalize it as “God’s will,” or they say “There’s a reason for this.”

As I watched remnants of victims’ families torn and still touched by the disaster Tuesday, I couldn’t imagine this was the will of any good god or that there was a reason for any of this.

Sometimes bad stuff just happens.

Indeed, if there must be an assignable cause, it might be fate, happenstance or coincidence.

Consider Judy Thomas of Brownstown, whose husband, Douglas, routinely drove between Cincinnati and Brownstown as part of his job for Lukens Steel. On that fateful day of Jan. 9, he decided to fly.

Consider Vanessa Davis, whose husband, Geoffrey, not a routine air travel passenger, just happened to be flying on that flight on the couple’s 15^th wedding anniversary.

Consider James and Ruth Ogden, who were so proud of their multi-talented daughter, Darinda, the lone flight attendant on the jet. Among her talents was that she was fluent in French. She was hired by Comair partly because they were planning routes to Montreal.

I attribute all this to coincidence, not some larger cosmic plan.

Yet almost all of those who lost relatives in that crash will tell you that their faith shored them up and has helped them cope and move on.

Mrs. Thomas said support from her church was a mainstay. Her pastor was with her and her family at the ceremony Tuesday.

Mrs. Davis, who couldn’t bear to visit the county after the crash, did so for the first time Tuesday. Her husband had been traveling with their minister and she said her faith has been bearing her through this.

The Ogdens wear purple – Darinda’s favorite color – and support a memorial fund in her name for young musicians at Darinda’s church in Kentucky. Mrs. Ogden says she’s sure Darinda knows everything that has gone on since the crash.

So these people, who had little in common but relatives with tickets on the same ill-fated flight, now are bound by both grief and faith, which helps them deal with what fate seemed to deal them.

BY MICHELLE SWARTZ

I had the honor of covering the funeral service for Army Sgt. Christopher Messer on Monday. It was impressive to see so many people at the service. Besides family and friends, it was nice to see so many City of Monroe Police and Monroe County Sheriff officers also in attendance.

It was especially nice to see Kelly Greer at the funeral home giving her support. I know this could not have been easy for her since she lost her son, Nicholas, in the war just over a year ago. But she was willing to step into the funeral home in support of the Messer family despite her own personal loss.

The community’s true class was evident when visitors pulled into Bacarella Funeral Home. Members of the Patriot Guard Riders held American flags along the entranceway and along the sidewalk leading to the front door. It showed ultimate respect for a fallen soldier and his family.

This was the eighth time a local soldier has died since the war began. I hope this is the last time Monroe County will have to say goodbye to another local hero.

By Adam Bennett adam@monroenews.com

Many of the headlines in The Evening News this week revolve around the 10 year anniversary of the Comair Flight 3272 crash.

It devastated this area when the plane went down in the Raisinville Township woods, killing all 29 on board. It also galvanized the people of this region who helped the relatives, emergency workers and others heal.

I remember the crash very vividly. I was in high school and had friends and fellow students that lived very near the crash site. It was almost unreal to see the people I knew from school on television explaining the horrific sounds and sights of the crash.
That was long before I picked up a pen to take on this profession myself.

Now on the other side of the newsprint, I have been very interested to talk with the reporters that covered this story at that time.

Many of the stories around the newsroom recall the endless days of the search in the frigid cold. Our reporters stayed up all night to put out a special section on the crash the day after.

One of the aspects I didn’t recall was the ceaseless efforts of the emergency workers and the unimaginable sorrow of those families left behind after the crash.

It made such a profound impact that, even after 10 years, we’re still looking back to it.

Falling in that category: “He’s not quite as big as the muskrat yet.”

(The muskrat being Francois, our colorfully dressed statue who welcomes people to the lobby.)