OCR Text |
Show M)0-LfO(2A- G Free Press - Wednesday, May 20, 1992 - Page 2 Editorial Council showed class with this decision Memorial Day is time I was very impressed with our city council in last week's council meeting. Due to increased power costs which have narrowed the profit margin for Lehi City Power, and also decreased projected city income, the council has had a budget crunch that has caused them to take some very to honor our war dead Memorial Day captures our attention because it is the first holiday of spring. We look forward to fishing or camping or biking or playing in the sand dunes. This year, let's be sure to look back as well. As we enter a time of promised world peace, itis appropriate that on Memorial Day we spend a moment remembering those lives that have purchased that peace. Memorial Day, or Decoration Day as it was first known, began as a day of commemoration for soldiers and sailors in the Civil War - and was probably initiated in 1866. The tradition of decorating graves dates back much further, with some cultures still carrying on the tradition on Nov. 2 - celebrated as the Day of the Dead following All Saints' -- Day on Nov. 1. But with Memorial Day on the last Monday in May, we take an opportunity to honor our war dead - those who have died in defense of their country, and in defense of our liberty. It is a chance to pay homage to the hundreds of thousands of lives that have been paid as the price for freedom. -- For many of us, the price is far removed. Recent conflicts in the Per-sia- n Gulf, in Panama and on Grenada, have not come at the same cost of lives as those earlier wars as Vietnam, Korea, and the World Wars. Other families still hurt from the losses of loved ones in far away places, at times for uncertain causes. The fact is that every one of those lives represents the greatest sacrifice each individual soldiers could make for his or her country and home. And each merits a few moments of our time as we remember, on Memorial Day, how great has been the cost of our freedom. It might also be a good time to consider donated for the new Veteran's Memorial in place at the American Fork City Cemetery. The memorial is a stirring tribute to our war dead in all areas of military service, and is well worth a visit during the Memorial Day weekend. It was dedicated last November, but the local veteran's organization is still raising funds to pay for the work. Donations can be made at American Fork City Hall to the Veterans Memorial Fund. Vou'sO foelieue tough measures to stabilize the city's ing. However, they gave the Historical Preservation Committee three months to come up with some good reasons why the old building should not be torn down. That was in February, the committee's deadline was May 1. A group of g and caring in worked hard to prove that the old building should be preserved and used. Committee Chairman John Rockwell presented the committee's findings in last hard-workin- definitely is not Congratulations to the Historical Preservation Committee. Members took their search jobs seriously. They did an for evidence, and they presented their case wishy-wash- economy. Budget cuts in every city department have been required, and the council has seen the need for spending cuts that have not been easy to make. There will be absolutely no money spent for anything that is not necessary for the city to conduct its business. That is one of the reasons the council made a decision to demolish the old Fifth Ward Building. There just isn't any money for maintenance or restoration of the build- devotion to the city and its citizens. No, the council didn't cave in to pressure; they merely weighed the good versus the bad, and came up with the only possible decision they could have made. The council itt th By BETTY FOWLER well. I know week's council meeting. He gave each council member a binder with a comprehensive report of meetings held in the building, possible uses for the building, and maintenance cost estimates. The council listened carefully to Rockwell's report, weighed the evidence presented, and then rescinded their vote to tear the building down. That takes guts, folks. The previous decision to tear the building down had not been an easy one to make, but last week's well-prepar- vote to spare the demolition, was the council's admission that perhaps they'd been hasty in their previous decision. An admission like that is a sign of maturity seldom seen in politics. I respected the council and walked out of the meeting with a new admiration for their dedication and An obituary for the y. that any doubting Thomas or Thomasina out there would not have been able to counteract the evidence presented by Rockwell. By the way, members of the committee work without pay, their positions on the committee are strictly voluntary. And, the council members are not getting rich, either. They serve the city for a pittance. Honest, we should all be very grateful to our Lehi City Council. The same goes for our Chamber of Commerce. You received a copy of Lehi's first business directory, a service given to Lehi's citizens by the Chamber of Commerce. They're bring a circus to town which will be a lot of fun for all of us. And they are hoping you will support the circus so they can earn some funding for future service projects. Don't miss the circus and use the business directory. It can be invaluable to you. obituary old-sty- le There was a time when obituaries were change, and it was the last holdout among considered the purest form of journalism. Utah daily newspapers. We don't charge, but that doesnt mean The standard obituary was succinct, the that in the future we won't. It is a trend that language often terse to the extreme. Facts were essential in the old obituaries, as the is gathering the kind of momentum that salient facts of a person's life were boiled makes it inevitable. down to their most essential elements: I understand the reasons. Competition Date of death, cause of death, date of for advertising dollars gets tougher every birth, names of parents, marriage or marday. Paid obituaries help meet the budget. once people can get their loved one's And MARC HADDOCK riages, education, occupations, avocations, By survivors and details of the services. obituary printed exactly like they want it, for a price, in one newspaper, they expect Different newspapers gave different the same kind of treatment everywhere. too. Dailies to have treatment obituaries, And they are usually not satisfied with the hinder-pagein the them always placed were But weeklies often gave special treatment know why people obituary that sticks strictly to the dying. facts. Those obituaries made no judgto obituaries. Obituaries have been losing their purity ments about their subject, either. The imThe my own hometown paper, used to run obituaries on the personal language allowed the writer to tell over the years anyway. More often that not, the cause ofdeath is no longer listed. Somefront page, along with the program of the an individual's life story without interjectare eliminated from mentimes whether comments about editorial funeral. These were always printed ing any a person was good or bad. Everybody got the tion by current spouses, or and always took up 10 to 12 column inches - a healthy piece of news space. same treatment on the obituary page. family members erase life events that othThat impartiality is a skill to which all ers might consider significant. The listing But in a town of 3,000, a death in the at community often was the most important journalists aspire, and it was often learned of survivors has become haphazard of times. With paid obituaries, that lack objecevent of the week. And those front-pag- e by writing obituaries. A good number of obituaries were one of the best read fea- Pulitzer Prize winners got their start at the tivity becomes complete. No longer an imobit desk. personal voice carefully laying out the detures of the newspaper. of a person's life for the community to form of tails most Several decades ago, obituaries were However, this elementary a paid obituary becomes an expreshas read, considered a prime teaching tool for incom-inchanges many undergone newswriting ' ; journalists in daily newspapers. in recent years. The most significant is that sion of the individual's survivors. turned The terse has to from an flowery, news has in considered the trade a was language changed obituary Newspapering and the length is dictated by the purchaser's ad. those days, something learned through appto decides is the what News rentice-type pocket book rather than the individual's newspaper training. written the way editors think it achievements, since the obituary's cost is run Often, the first task assigned to an aspirshould be written and informing the public determined by its length. ing reporter was the writing of obituaries - where the focus was the facts with no frills. what the editors think is important. Accomplishments are aggrandized by An ad is what the person paying for the adjectives; shortcomings are ignored comOnce afledglingreporter had mastered obit pletely, for better or worse. The new paid writing, he was ready to move up to more space thinks ought to appear in the newspaobituaries are usually more entertaining, difficult assignments. per. but less informative, than the old, and the With the advent of paid obituaries, newsObituaries were seen as the most eland the loser is the general reader ementary form of newswriting. And some papers have lost editorial rights to an indielements were considered essential. Like viduals life story. That is now in the hands individual who has passed on. The winners of the person payingthe bill. So the obituary are the newspapers, who now get paid, and the cause of death, for example. too that wasn't It long ago every obituary isn't news any more. Now it is often a the individuals who pay and then get to see included the cause of death, no matter how tribute and the person with the most their prose in print. I guess I'm old fashioned. I liked it better money gets the largest tribute. unseemly that cause may have been. ObituNow not every newspaper charges for the old way. aries were part of the news, and news was And that's why I'm writing an obituary supposed to help people know what was obituaries. The Daily Herald has been the for the obituary. the to make in Utah recent most to in was It on. the interest newspaper public's going The Editor's Column s. Life is tough for father of the smart alec kid The life of a father can be very trying at times, especially when he has a smart alec kid. I reckon at a certain age I fit into this category. As a boy, our family had moved to a little town called Crumlin. It's only claim to fame was that it had a brewery which you could smell when you entered the town. Our home was one of a long row of houses. The back of each house was separated by an iron fence that was spiked on top and each house had a small garden. Our next door neighbor had a boy about my age an d he fit into the picture of a "mean little kid." One day while I was out weeding my dad's garden, the mean little kid started throwing stones at me. At first I ignored him, but when one of his stones struck me on the back I decided to throw a few stones Browsing About this time my older brother, Bill, came out ofthe back door and decided to join in the fray. He picked up a stone and let it fly. It hit the mean little kid on the nose, lacerating the same. Unfortunately for me the injured kid didn't see my brother throw the stone and thought it was me. When the mean little kid's father came home from work and was made aware of his son's nose, he came tearing over an d my dad met him at the door. The man was quite a bit disturbed, but he explained that his boy was playing in the back yard when I, meaning me, threw a stone at him, striking his boy on the nose, causing a laceration that thedoctor charged five shillings to sew up, and heexpected the father of the stone thrower to compensate him for the five shillings. Poor dad, he had to diwy up the five shillings which he could hardly afford. Then he called me in and he was angry. "Did you throw a stone at the neighbor boy?" he asked. "Yes, I did, but he threw first." With that he took off his belt and gave me quite a few good ones on my posterior that really hurt. Then he sent me to bed without "News-Examiner- ," after-the-fac- well-meani- - -- Sometime later brother Bill came horn and inquired where Tom was? Dad explained that he had punished him and sent him to bed without his supper. Then Bill dropped the bomb. "It wasn't Tom that threw the stone that hit the kid, it was me. When I saw what I had done I just took off for the village." Bill was too big for physical punishment and he had taken his anger out on me. He came upstairs to my room and apologized for whipping me, then he made a big mistake. "What can I do to make it right?" he asked. "How about a sixpence for fish and chips, and a thruppence for the cinema on Saturday," I asked. For the first time in my life I had the upper hand with my father. "Fish and chips it will be, and a thruppence for the cinema," dad replied. I was about to ask for a tuppence for toffee to eat in the cinema but dad gave me a strange look so I thought I had better leave well enough alone. Dad left my room and returned in a few minutes with my supper. As he left my room he hesitated for a moment, then said, "Remember son, no more stone throwing." - Letters to tthe eeflittor Cruel death of pet was blow to the family Editor: There was a murder committed today, but the murderer will never be prosecuted. Because the victim was "only a dog!" His pain was just as great as a human's, his fear was just as great probably greater since he didn't have as much control as a human would have. His name was Jake. He was a very gentle, sweet, loveable Golden RetrieverLab cross. I guess he wasn't worth a lot of money as a purebred dog would be, but to us his value was great - Cultural woes demand cultural solutions South Los Angeles has a higher poverty rate now than it did at the time of the Watts riot 27 years ago. In income, employment and education, the area's residents are worse off now than then. The newest public opinion survey by the New York Times and CBA shows most Americans alarmed by our nation's worsening race relations and most insist that "government should spend more money helping poor people." Is more public money appropriately, or is that a palliative which demonstrably does not work? Professor Walter Williams of George Mason University notes that 30 years of Great Society programs for poor people have already cost more than $2.5 trillion. Pool all of the assets of all of our nation's "Top 500 Corporations..." Add the value of all the farmland in the United States... And that combined total is less than our nation has spent on poverty programs since the 1960s yet the problems of the inner cities are worse than before. William J. Bennett of the Heritage Foundation says what happened in Los Angeles is not about porverty, but rather "about a corrosive pop culture, spiritual - t, g any supper. myself. old-sty- le old-sty- le Paul Hcuruey News Los Angeles Time Syndicate O 1991 depletion and the breakdown of the family." He says cultural problems demand cultural, not economic, solutions. New York's mayor David Dinkins is being credited with preventing rioting in his city. With mobs setting fires and looting in five other cities, Mayor Dinkins put on a red baseball cap emblazoned with the message: SAVE OUR CITY; SAVE OUR KIDS! Wearing that cap he walked Harlem streets. He went on the air every hour to urge constituents to keep the peace. He dispatched youth workers to watch for trouble in the ghetto and defuse it. Days previous it appeared Dinkins could never win a second term; now it appears he couldn't lose. In selected atmospheres, talk was effective. Graduates at Talladega College were told by entertainer Bill Cosby: "Your family has now done enough; now get a job and go to work!" Advertising Age is seeking to mobilize the big ad agencies to make key people available for reaching all Americans with nt messages encouraging responsible behavior. The doctrine that "everything is someone else's fault, that nobody has personal responsibility for anything that goes wrong" has turned Americans against Americans. The lesson needs reteaching that while free people are free to do good or to go bad, if we choose the bad, we have to take the consequences. Most churches have dispatched their missionaries too far from home. Perhaps these gifted word merchants of the ad industry whocan make a penny's worth of perfume worth $30 can resell the Gospel in the language ofthe streets: "We will behave or be damned." It's worth a try. indeed! He was family just as much as any of us. We all loved him very much. When we got Jake as a puppy, his paws were almost bigger than his head! He felt bad about leaving his mother but quickly forgot or at least resigned himselftohisnew family. His body grew so quickly he had a hard time learning to control it to make it do what he wanted. And just as he would get it all under control WHAM! It would grow again and he would have to learn all over again just how to keep it under control. Final ly it got as big as it was going to and he changed from a pup to a beautiful (at least to us) grownup. He loved to ride on the dune buggy, in the back of the truck or just run, run, run when we went to the mountains on our horses. He would stay nearby, but with all that energy to burn, he would run circles around us while we were making our way up the trail. Oh, how he loved to get out and run! He really looked forward to the weekends when "Boy"( who he really belonged to) would come home and play with him.. This is when the REAL FUN was. In fact it was a Friday when it happened - he had been waiting all week for this day. The day "Boy" would come home and take him somewhere fun. He decided to take a little stroll to see his friend down the street. I guess his family should have kept him in the dog run, but he had been feeling so depressed all week for some reason. "Boy" took him to the vet to see what was wrong with him. The vet checked him over and said he was fine but he just seemed a little depressed (maybe dogs have a premonition of the impending doom). Even his good friend "Boots," the big, loveable orange cat with four white feet, who was his good friend, couldn't seem to cheer him up. The family thought maybe letting him free to exercise in the yard would help cheer him up, instead of keeping him cooped up - and he was so good about staying home.... - - -- -- ..Another "Boy" called to him. It wasn't the same "Boy" but he had no reason to distrust a human - especially "Boys" - they were so much fun! He'd never been mistreated in his life. Why should he suspect anything? But this "Boy" didn't have fun in mind. Jake went up to him, willingly. After days of searching for him, calling Animal Control Centers, putting ads in papers, talking to neighbors, "Boy" found him the grisly scene of five bullets that had invaded that soft, gentle body, layingin a literal pool of now dried blood which had drained away his precious life, a painful grimace on his beautiful face. What did he think in that last moment when he realized a human had done this to him? His suffering must have been just as painful in his disillusionment in humans in those last moments, as the pain of those horrible bullets that were stealing his life -- - away! The sheriff, animal control and Humane Society people were nice and did what they could do, but animals don't have the same rights as humans, and that "boy" will never have to pay for this terrible injustice not like he would if his victim had been human. And perhaps his next victim will be. Who knows what would drive that "Boy" to do such a thing? Was he on drugs? Was he showing off to friends? Jake was an easy target. Why would anyone snuff out another life? Why would a parent give a young boy a gun for a toy? Was this "Boy" angry about something in his own life and took it out on Jake? Was he really mad at us? He couldn't have been mad at Jake! Jake never did anything that could really make "earth-brother'- you mad. What a wonderful privilege and gift a dog's love is! The completely loyal, unjudgmental ioveof adog! Isn't that pretty close to how our "Maker" asked US to be? We love you, Jake, well miss you and we won't forget you. -- Name withheld |