Mayor Tim Davlin reflects on first year in office

Posted on by

davlinprofile2

In early 2004 I profiled Springfield Mayor Tim Davlin for an article about his first year in office.

SPRINGFIELD’S MAYOR REFLECTS: Davlin’s first year
April 4, 2004

Tim Davlin is obsessed with money.

The city’s money, that is.

Approaching the anniversary of his April 16 inauguration as mayor of the capital city, Davlin admits he has spent much of his first year consumed by financial matters – the budget, in particular, took over his life, he said.

“I really feel like about three or four Wednesdays ago, the day after the city council meeting where we passed the sales tax increase, I felt like that following day was my first day on the job,” he said Thursday.

“I felt like … literally, 10 months, 11 months into the job, I’m just starting. I’ve got a list of things I think we have accomplished along the way, but every day, it was two or three hours every day, Monday through Friday and a lot of times on Saturdays, where we just dealt with the budget.”

Davlin, a Democrat and an insurance and investment broker who previously held no political office, was elected mayor of Springfield a year ago April 1 in a come-from-behind win over Republican stalwart Tony Libri. His win was part of a statewide shift of political control from Republicans to Democrats.

The mayor and city council are officially nonpartisan.

“For the most part, he was unproven politically. He’d never been in office, never ran for any office. That was part of what the attraction was to Tim Davlin,” said Sangamon County Democratic chairman Tim Timoney.

“It was a popular name in town, a big Catholic family from Blessed Sacrament, popular in the political and business community. That made him attractive. He had a little touch of politics, but for the most part, he brought a business approach to politics. I think that’s what helped him win.”

He has faced numerous challenges his first year in office. Chief among them were healing race relations in the city and plugging a budget deficit.

Davlin, 46, earns $94,132 as mayor of Springfield. The job is pretty much what he’d anticipated when he decided to run for election, “but then just even a little more hectic, to just a little more higher power than maybe what I’d anticipated,” he said.

“The surprises that come are usually small. A lot of times you don’t anticipate things. There are little problems, and then some are bigger problems that happen. But for the most part when I took over, we knew.”

Davlin’s key advisers have included his brother, Kevin Davlin, who is treasurer of the mayor’s campaign fund, as well as Todd Renfrow, whom the mayor named to head City Water, Light and Power. Renfrow, a former Democratic county chairman and former head of the city’s public works department, worked on Davlin’s campaign.

Davlin tried to push a plan early on that would have placed control of both CWLP and the public works department under Renfrow, but aldermen resisted that idea.

One of the big surprises, Davlin said, was learning that what he thought coming in was a $1 million budget deficit actually was actually much larger.

“I believe I understand the budget more than probably anybody else in the whole world understands it – where money’s coming in and where it’s going,” he said. “I watch sales tax revenues every day. But I constantly have to be on the lookout for ways to save money.”

One of his campaign promises was that he would run the city like a business, and he claims he has stuck to that promise, eliminating what he saw as unnecessary or redundant jobs, proposing unpopular cuts to city services when faced with a budget deficit, reorganizing the structure of offices and jobs and settling a costly federal discrimination lawsuit against the city.

But he has taken some heat for his approach to running the city, particularly when in January he announced a plan to eliminate 20 police and 13 firefighter jobs, as well as some city services, to balance the city’s budget. Some accused him of presenting a sky-is-falling plan as a political maneuver designed to force aldermen to propose a tax increase so he wouldn’t have to.

“It was the end of the line. The sky was falling and it absolutely was as real as could be,” Davlin said. “I had no idea when I took over a year ago how bad the situation was. It was very real. I can argue with anybody all day long, but until they sit in this chair, they wouldn’t know how real it is.”

Aldermen, in a party-line vote, voted in early March to increase the city’s sales tax from 1 percent to 1.5 percent. However, it will only be in effect for two years, at which point aldermen can vote to “sunset” the tax or keep it in place.

Davlin, who already is anticipating a deficit of at least $3.9 million for fiscal year 2007, said he is not convinced the city will be able to sunset the tax, pointing to needed capital improvements such as replacing police cars and firetrucks, as well as building a new public works garage at an estimated cost of at least $2.5 million.

“Do we sunset it, or do we want to spend any money on capital (improvements)? That’s what it’s going to come down to. It’s going to be interesting because it’s going to come at a time right before the next election,” he said.

Despite the months he spent reorganizing the city and engaging in budget talks, Davlin can tick off numerous things he and his staff have accomplished: Negotiating a contract with city police officers who’d been without one for more than two years; naming an educational liaison to bridge services between the local government and city schools; taking steps to build an east-side community center; starting a task force on homelessness; making the north branch of Lincoln Library accessible to the disabled; and distributing thousands of dollars in grant money to agencies for housing and services for low-income residents.

Last week, he announced a citywide beautification plan called Springfield Gateway Green.

And he decided to distribute $700,000 in surplus downtown TIF (tax increment financing) money to local taxing bodies, including the Springfield School District, which is experiencing budget problems of its own.

Also last week, he announced an out-of-court settlement with former police officer Renatta Frazier, who sued the city in federal court charging racial discrimination and a hostile work environment. Davlin said he handled 100 percent of the negotiations on the city’s behalf.

Courtney Cox, Frazier’s Benton attorney, told The State Journal-Register on Tuesday that he does not believe the Davlin administration is committed to resolving racial issues within city government.

Cox also represents six black officers – five current and one recently retired – who have filed a discrimination lawsuit against the city. He said what has happened to the black officers is symptomatic of a larger problem.

“Unfortunately, at this point, it looks like (city officials) do not want to resolve the larger problem and continue to fight to preserve the status quo, which is unacceptable,” Cox said.

Davlin pointed out he has assembled a recruitment committee made up of employees from the police and fire departments, city legal staffers and the NAACP. The Black Guardians, which represents most black police officers, also was invited to join the committee but has not responded to the offer, Davlin said.

“My gosh, it would be so great if all of a sudden the next class of police or fire came in here and we were able to hire 20 or 25 percent (minorities). You’ve got to have the numbers come first. You have 150 people and if you have four or five minorities come in, what are the chances?” he said.

In addition to the pending lawsuit over racial issues at the police department, Davlin’s administration has been criticized for not being aggressive enough in hiring minorities for other city jobs. Expectations were high that minority issues such as east-side projects would be a priority after Davlin received critical minority support in his election bid.

Davlin hired Ken Crutcher, who is black, as the city’s budget director – a position the mayor said he considers the city’s No. 2 job.

He also hired a black woman, Letitia Dewith-Anderson, to be chief of staff, only to later rename the position “executive assistant.” The move was criticized by many in the black community, who saw it as a demotion and a breach of trust. Dewith-Anderson quit the job in January but declined at the time to say why.

Davlin said he and Dewith-Anderson still talk and she has offered advice to different departments since leaving.

“I think it was made a lot bigger than what it was. She left on her own accord, and I can’t put a gun to her head and say, ‘Letitia, you need to stay.’ You can’t do that,” he said, noting that he never intended Dewith-Anderson to have the same role as former chief of staff Brian McFadden, who worked for former mayor Karen Hasara.

“My management skill is nothing like those two. Chief of staff is chief of staff, and I made the mistake from the beginning of calling it that when in essence it never was,” he said.

Davlin said he is working to rebuild trust between the city and the black community. He also said he is committed to Hasara’s goal of achieving 15 percent minority staffing on the police and fire departments.

“I campaigned on it. I talk about it. And don’t think I’m not reminded every day by the community that a certain segment of this society has not had its fair share of city employees,” he said.

Some aldermen also have been critical of the mayor, saying he does not keep them informed about the things he’s working on or major developments in city government.

Ward 5 Ald. Joe Bartolomucci said he would like to see better communication between Davlin and the rest of the aldermen.

“I don’t think it’s right when you’re sitting on one of the committees and you have to read about something that happens that directly deals with your committee in the press or get word of it on the radio or television. That’s happened more than once,” said Bartolomucci, who, like the mayor, was elected last April.

Bartolomucci, a Republican, also said he believes Davlin has succumbed to political pressure too many times.

“He made some mistakes, I thought, in the first three to six months. I thought I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. I’m a freshman alderman and he’s a brand new mayor with no public office experience. I thought he’d really sharpen his skills as the leader of this community,” he said.

“It seems like he’s more worried about re-election in three years than being a leader. I think we’ve seen that in the budget process where instead of coming out front and really putting together an innovative, problem-solving budget, he came out with a very simplistic budget and really threw it in the laps of the aldermen and said, ‘Here, you fix it.’ ”

County Democratic chairman Timoney said the aldermen sometimes force the mayor to be more political than he would like to be.

“He’s tried to have a business approach to running city government, but sometimes it comes down to a five-to-five vote just based on politics, not on what’s best for the city. The Republicans are going to try to force him to cast the tie-breaking vote on a number of controversial issues just so they can use it against him in three years, such as the sales tax,” he said.

Timoney said Davlin is largely responsible for revitalizing the local Democratic Party.

“The Republicans aren’t used to the Democrats having some power in Sangamon County. Pretty much now we’re at a level playing field; they’ve been used to having an unlevel playing field where they’ve had all the power and control,” he said.

“I think his only weakness is possibly the political side of it because he’s not a politician. Some things he might look at from more of a business approach than a political approach. … Sometimes the business approach is better than the political approach; sometimes it’s not.”

Davlin said he has two priorities for his second year in office: city beautification and economic development.

“Number 1, I want to clean this town up. This town is dirty, in my opinion. I want it to look like downtown Chicago. Beautification to me is so important,” he said, noting that he is working to put a stop to fly dumping.

“I think everything is on the drawing board, from giving (garbage pickup) to one company to sectoring the city, put it on our tax bill, put it on our property tax, put it on our utility bill. Everything’s open.”

Economic development plans include establishing a new industrial park, getting the medical district going, retaining the 183rd Fighter Wing Air National Guard base and attracting new companies to the city.

“I want to make it so we’re more business friendly so that people want to come in and develop and they’re going to look at us as opposed to going to Chatham,” he said.

Prairie State Games: A bad investment?

Posted on by

In 2004, I started covering Springfield city government for The State Journal-Register. A plan pushed by the mayor and Convention and Visitors Bureau called for spending $215,000 to land “hosting rights” for an amateur sporting event known as the Prairie State Games.

I decided to investigate further and learned the Prairie State Games organization had some financial issues in the past. I wrote a series of stories about the organization, and eventually the mayor withdrew an ordinance approving the expenditure to lure the games here.

City to compete for sports festival / Prairie State Games could bring profit
May 11, 2004

The city is considering paying $215,000 to ensure Springfield is host to the Prairie State Games in 2005, 2006 and 2007.

Springfield is competing with five other Illinois cities in its bid to attract the amateur athletic competition and its estimated $12 million economic impact.

The Springfield City Council’s public affairs and safety committee will discuss an ordinance authorizing the bid at its meeting Monday. It could go before the full council the next day.

The $215,000 represents “host city fees” for three years: $70,000 for 2005 and 2006, and $75,000 for 2007.

The Prairie State Games, run by the not-for-profit Illinois Health and Sports Foundation, is the state’s largest amateur sports festival, according to the event’s Web site. Athletes from across the state compete in 28 Olympic-style events. The Web site indicates 7,000 athletes competed in 2003 and 13,000 people participated as coaches, officials, volunteers and spectators.

Interested cities requested bid packages from festival officials, and those bids are due June 1. The cities submitting the top two proposals will be looked at by a site selection committee, which will make a final determination by June 25.

The identities of the other bidders were not available.

The committee will consider the quality of the venues in each community and the local organizing committees, as well as the commitment of civic and corporate leaders, according to Maureen Moore, president of the Prairie State Games.

“We think that if Springfield would be the city that would get it, there are a lot of positives,” she said Monday, noting that the tourist sites of the state capital could serve as an added draw for athletes’ families and that it would bring people to town during a time when legislators and schoolchildren are not visiting.

“If Springfield would be the city, we’d be pleased because Springfield does have some good venues and a pretty strong commitment from the community and the convention and visitors bureau already,” Moore said.

This year’s games will take place June 25-27 in the Metro East. Fairview Heights has been the host city since 1995.

However, the city council _there decided in recent months that Fairview Heights was not receiving an adequate return on its investment, said Ald. Lydia Cruez. Fairview Heights paid more than $500,000 to host the games between 1995 and 2003.

Cruez said only three athletic events actually took place in Fairview Heights, along with opening ceremonies, a VIP reception and athlete check-in; the rest were in other nearby cities such as Belleville, O’Fallon and Edwardsville.

“When we have to bear the brunt of the cost, it doesn’t make good fiscal management in my opinion. That’s why I said something has to change here,” she said.

Prairie State Games organizers earlier this year asked Fairview Heights to come up with $290,000 over the next four years, or an average of $72,500 annually, to maintain its host city status. Aldermen denied the request, along with subsequent proposals to pay $60,000 and $50,000 a year. The city eventually agreed to pay $20,000 annually to keep the games in Fairview Heights, but organizers turned it down.

Moore said the games had a $1.67 million economic impact on Fairview Heights and a $4.17 million impact on the region. It accounted for 8,470 hotel room nights being sold last year, and athletes from 94 of the state’s 102 counties participated, she said.

In 1994, Peoria hosted the Prairie State Games for only one year of a three-year contract. The sports foundation and local organizers mutually agreed to drop the pact for a variety of reasons. About 3,900 athletes competed in the games that year, and local officials at the time estimated the games’ departure would mean a $750,000 to $1 million loss to the area.

The foundation that year began seeking bids from other cities to host the games.

Prior to that, they took place in Champaign-Urbana, where the event had been since its first year, 1984.

The state under Gov. Jim Thompson originally provided a majority of the Prairie State Games’ funding, but Gov. Jim Edgar eliminated the state’s support in the early 1990s. The games are financed through civic, corporate and private sponsorships as well as athletic fees.

City may find it easy to score / Competition for Prairie State Games apparently not great
May 14, 2004

Springfield’s competition for landing the Prairie State Games is not as stiff as originally thought.

Representatives in four cities rumored to be going after the amateur sports festival – the Quad Cities, Carbondale, Champaign and Peoria – all said this week they are not going to bid and have not heard of any other groups in their communities considering a bid.

Rockford is still trying to determine if it will make a formal offer to host the annual event, as is Bloomington-Normal.

Maureen Moore, president of the Prairie State Games, declined Thursday to identify which cities have expressed interest.

“The only reason I don’t want to do it is it isn’t fair to the cities. We’re trying to keep them on a level playing field,” she said.

The Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau in April submitted to Prairie State Games officials $5,000 and a letter of intent to bid, as required by the bid package. The $5,000 is refundable should the city not be selected.

The event has taken place in Fairview Heights since 1995, but officials there will no longer host it, citing budget constraints and a weak return on their investment.

One alderman there said she had no problem with the games or how they are managed. But, she said, Fairview Heights put up more than a half-million dollars since 1995 only to have many of the events take place in other nearby cities.

Next week, Springfield aldermen will consider a request from the convention bureau to offer a required $215,000 – $70,000 for 2005 and 2006 and $75,000 for 2007 – to be named the host city for the games. An ordinance authorizing the expenditure could go to the city council Tuesday.

Site selection is based on additional factors, including facilities, commitment, volunteer quality and corporate sponsorships.

Bids are due June 1, and the selected city will be notified by June 25.

Prairie State Games organizers estimate the festival could have a $12 million economic impact on Springfield for the three years, based on the thousands of participants, spectators and others involved.

That figure comes from Southwestern Illinois Tourism Bureau estimates of the games’ impact on the Fairview Heights area.

The games take place the final full weekend in June. This year, they are scheduled for June 25-27 at various venues in the Fairview Heights region.

Wendy Perks Fisher, president and CEO of the Rockford Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, said her organization submitted a letter of intent and the bid fee but is still assessing an actual bid. Crystal Howard, director of the Bloomington-Normal Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, said her organization also is considering a bid.

Oney Emory, executive director of the convention bureau in Champaign County, said his group is not seeking the games.

“It might be one of the park districts, but they certainly haven’t contacted us for any support,” he said.

Linda Wright, an administrative assistant in the Carbondale convention bureau, said her agency had not considered a bid.

The Quad Cities also apparently is not going after the event.

“Our budget would simply not allow coverage of the out-of-pocket expenses that would be required,” said Joe Taylor, president and CEO of the Quad Cities Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Debbie Ritschel, general manager of the Peoria Civic Center, said she was not aware of anyone in Peoria bidding for the games.

According to the Prairie State Games bid package, which stipulates exactly how much money and what kind of facilities the host city must provide, Springfield would need a number of facilities for 28 Olympic-style sporting events.

For instance, the host city must be able to provide three sheets of ice, a paintball park, shooting ranges, a bowling center with 50 lanes, an archery range, diving and swimming facilities, a golf course, a horseshoe park, various gymnasiums and arenas, a weight room or health club, baseball fields, tennis courts and a track and field location.

In addition to the initial $215,000, the host city will be responsible for financing opening ceremonies and a VIP reception for 200. The opening ceremonies cost about $20,000 a year, according to the document, and includes choreographed fireworks, a keynote speaker, big-screen videos and sound system, “sky divers or like entertainment” and an official torch lighting.

Obtaining corporate sponsorships is a big part of the host city’s obligation, and commitments must be locked in beforehand, Moore said. The bid package indicates $15,000 in corporate sponsorships for 2005 must be paid prior to Nov. 1, 2004, and $55,000 in contracts must be signed by Dec. 15, 2004, with payment due by Feb. 1, 2005.

Similar rules regarding corporate sponsorships are outlined for 2006 and 2007.

According to the Prairie State Games’ Web site, national corporate sponsors include Nike and Gatorade. Moore declined Thursday to say what the companies supply.

“A lot of our sponsors are national ones who are staying with us wherever we go,” she said.

Tim Farley, executive director of the Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the Springfield Hotel Motel Association is eager to help land the Prairie State Games. Part of its commitment is to host the opening ceremonies, but Farley declined to elaborate.

“That’s the first time ever that we’ve gotten a commitment. That’s why this is unique,” he said.

“Anytime we have anything this big, we would have to go to them. We have to make sure the rooms are available. The weekend (the Prairie State Games) are coming on was a very flat weekend, meaning we didn’t have a lot of business. That makes this even more valuable.”

Farley said tourism officials have confirmed with Lincoln Land Community College, the University of Illinois at Springfield and District 186 that their facilities would be available.

He also said Springfield’s bid will include some additional incentives but declined to say what those were so as to not tip the city’s hand to its competitors.

“There’s been so much community support and interest in this. It’s not just about the convention and visitors bureau. When the hotel community comes and backs you up and says this is something we need to go for. …” he said. “If they’d said they weren’t interested, we probably wouldn’t have pursued this.”

Organizers criticized over the years
May 14, 2004

Organizers of the Prairie State Games have faced criticism through the years – from funding and paperwork disputes to allegations the events are poorly run. But supporters say longevity is proof that something is being done right.

“You’re always going to have some problems with an event of this size. You’re going to have people who aren’t happy with the situation, but I’ll bet if you canvassed the majority of the people, they would say it’s a good, fair competition,” said Charlie Merker of Freeburg, who has volunteered with the Prairie State Games since its early years in Champaign.

His daughter competed in volleyball at the festival and went on to land a college scholarship.

“It’s just a great melting pot of kids getting to meet each other and playing in a real fair, honest, level field,” he said, adding that he intends to continue volunteering regardless of where the games move to in 2005.

The Prairie State Games, touted as the state’s largest amateur sporting festival, is composed of 28 events: archery, baseball, basketball, baton twirling, bowling, diving, figure skating, golf, gymnastics, hockey, a hoops fest, horseshoes, judo, karate, paintball, power lifting, shooting, soccer, swimming, tennis, track and field, a volley fest, weightlifting, wrestling, 5K run, badminton, tae kwon do and water polo.

It is open to all Illinoisans. According to the festival’s Web site, more than 7,000 amateur athletes competed in 2003, and 13,000 people served as coaches, officials, volunteers and spectators.

More than 40 states have their own versions, including the Show-Me State Games in Missouri and the Sunflower State Games in Kansas. Winners in each state can go on to compete in the State Games of America.

The Prairie State Games are operated by the nonprofit Illinois Health and Sports Foundation, which also oversees the Southwestern Illinois Senior Olympic Games, the Midwest Salute to the Masters Fine Arts Festival and a new health program called Lighten Up Illinois.

The Prairie State Games started in 1984 under Gov. Jim Thompson and the Governor’s Council on Health and Physical Fitness. It was subsidized by the state until the early 1990s, when Gov. Jim Edgar eliminated the council and funding, according to Maureen Moore, president of the Prairie State Games. She has been with the organization since 1987.

A 1992 state audit alleged mismanagement of funds, but Moore on Thursday disputed there was any wrongdoing and described the audit as a “political witch hunt.”

“There are a lot of people whose reputations were damaged by it,” she said.

Since then, the games have been financed by civic, corporate and private sponsorships as well as athletic fees.

The festival took place in Champaign-Urbana, primarily on the University of Illinois campus, between 1984 and 1993.

It moved to Peoria in 1994 for a three-year stint, but the contract ended after only one year. The games failed to pay some of its bills to the Peoria Civic Center and other businesses, and there were charges of disorganization. City leaders balked at coming up with additional funding.

Moore said there were numerous problems in Peoria, such as charges for air conditioning at the civic center and the city’s sports commission not providing the backing it had promised.

“We couldn’t pay our bills because we hadn’t gotten the money from the city,” she said. “It just did not work. A lot of it, I think, is that they were too new in the sports business and it was easier to make us the scapegoat. … I think they learned a lot from it. I know we did.”

In 1999, the Prairie State Games’ accounts were frozen because organizers failed to file required financial records for 1996, 1997 and 1998. The problem had to do with delays in records being transferred to the Illinois Health and Sports Foundation from the Illinois Health and Physical Fitness Foundation, which previously had overseen the games, Moore said.

The Prairie State Games moved to Fairview Heights in 1995, where it has been ever since.

City officials there, many of whom said they have no problem with the games themselves, earlier this year refused to invest more than $20,000 annually, even though festival organizers were seeking $290,000 over the next four years.

Although Fairview Heights has contributed more than $500,000 to the games since 1995, one alderman described the city’s return in hotel and restaurant receipts as “nominal.”

Tim Farley, executive director of the Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau, said he had the reports of the past problems but feels it is a sound organization.

“We’ve looked at the numbers, we’ve talked to people who’ve worked with the games, and they feel it’s a well-run organization. There must be something to the games or there wouldn’t be (several) cities vying for them,” he said.

“We’re very positive about this, but we know it’s going to be a large undertaking. This is really not comparable to anything else we’ve done.”

The bureau is exploring the possibility of establishing a sports commission that would be charged with managing the Prairie State Games, should the festival move to Springfield, as well as attracting future sporting events. Anyone interested in volunteering can call the bureau at 789-2360 and ask for Jeff Berg.

Moore said she believes the Prairie State Games is a good, family-oriented event that has a positive influence on youth.

“We’ve been here 10 years, and we have been successful for 10 years,” she said of the event’s time in Fairview Heights. “We’d hold firm another 10 years except for the city being in bad shape. It’s just a tough time in Fairview Heights right now.”

Aldermen told four cities want Prairie State Games / Public Affairs panel sends issue to full city council without recommendation
May 18, 2004

The director of the Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau assured aldermen Monday that four other communities are vying for hosting rights to the Prairie State Games, based on information he had received from organizers of the amateur sporting festival.

A State Journal-Register survey of tourism officials in the cities rumored to be bidding on the games indicated last week that two – Rockford and Bloomington-Normal – had submitted letters of intent and were considering a bid, while four others – the Quad Cities, Carbondale, Champaign and Peoria – had no interest.

Maureen Moore, president of the Prairie State Games, has declined to confirm which cities are in the running.

Convention and visitors bureau director Tim Farley fielded questions about the games and the bidding process from aldermen for nearly 20 minutes at the Springfield City Council’s public affairs committee meeting Monday.

An ordinance authorizing the convention bureau to pay $215,000 in “host city fees” for a three-years period, 2005-07, is making its way through the council. The ordinance indicates “five other cities” are competing against Springfield.

The public affairs committee voted to forward the matter to the full council without a recommendation. Aldermen asked Farley to provide additional statistics and other festival information for them before tonight’s meeting.

Springfield has submitted a letter of intent and a refundable fee of $5,000 to organizers. Communities vying for the games sweeten their bids by offering additional incentives.

“Keep in mind that, first of all, if someone called me from Rockford and asked me if we were bidding on the Prairie State Games, I would probably say, ‘Well, we’re looking at it, but I’m not interested,’ because this is a competitive-bid situation,” Farley told aldermen.

“For a fact, there are four other cities that have paid their $5,000 as we did – three additional ones plus us – that have paid their $5,000 to bid on this, and one that we talked to today that still is just kind of on the fence.”

When an alderman asked Farley which cities have bid, he said he didn’t know.

“They won’t tell me that. That’s part of the competitive side of it. (Moore) doesn’t want everybody to know who’s bidding, either, because she doesn’t want everybody to start calling one another. That’s just their rules,” he said.

The Prairie State Games, hosted by Fairview Heights since 1995, is touted as the state’s largest amateur sporting event, featuring 28 Olympic-style competitions.

According to its Web site, it attracted 7,000 amateur athletes in 2003, along with 13,000 coaches, officials, volunteers and spectators. Tourism officials in southwestern Illinois estimate the 2003 festival had an economic impact of $4.17 million on the region. Prairie State Games organizers estimate it will have a similar effect on Springfield.

Organizers sought $290,000 and a four-year commitment from Fairview Heights earlier this year, but aldermen there instead offered $20,000 a year. Organizers declined and put the games out for bid.

The games took place in Peoria in 1994, and prior to that had been in Champaign since 1985, their first year.

Some Springfield aldermen were skeptical about the merits of spending $215,000 in tight budget times to bring the festival to Springfield. They also expressed concerns that the city could be on the hook for additional money down the road.

Ward 4 Ald. Chuck Redpath said he believes the games would be a positive event for Springfield, but he wants more information before voting.

“The bottom line is, yes, this absolutely is a good thing for the city of Springfield if we can put the package together, and in my opinion, it wasn’t together tonight. I honestly think the support is here for that, but we don’t want to get burned,” he said. “If they don’t provide us with some statistics and numbers and some hard facts, then it’s going to have a hard time making it (tonight).”

Ward 2 Ald. Frank McNeil said he would prefer to see the $215,000 scaled back to a more “reasonable” amount, with the option of re-examining the city’s investment in the future.

Ward 5 Ald. Joe Bartolomucci said Springfield has seen sporting events come and go, and they “just doesn’t seem to find a niche here.” He said he would prefer to see the city invest in events that already are established, such as the Route 66 Mother Road Festival, Taste of Downtown, the farmers’ market and the Old State Capitol art fair.

Ward 1 Ald. Frank Edwards said he intends to vote against the $215,000 bid regardless of what kind of statistics tourism officials provide.

“I think this … is not a time to just willy-nilly spend $215,000 of the taxpayers’ money,” he said, describing the games’ moving from city to city “akin to extortion.”

“Anytime you say, ‘Hey, you’re not going to give us anymore money, we’re going to take our baseball bats and go play somewhere else,’ what do you call it?” he asked.

Also at tonight’s meeting, aldermen are expected to discuss a proposed citizens police review commission that has been in the works for many months. A report outlining progress on the matter will be given to aldermen, according to Redpath.

Games won’t come here / Mayor withdraws ordinance
May 19, 2004

An ordinance directing the city to put up $215,000 to bring an amateur sports festival to Springfield for three years didn’t even make it out of the starting blocks Tuesday.

Mayor Tim Davlin, citing a lack of support from aldermen and unfavorable media coverage of the Prairie State Games, withdrew the ordinance.

“I think there just was a lot of negative publicity; I think it got to all the aldermen,” Davlin said after Tuesday night’s Springfield City Council meeting.

“The aldermen, the ones that I had really polled, said they weren’t in favor of it, there were too many bad things about it. I don’t think we really got a chance to make our presentation, and by the time we did, they pretty much had made up their minds. You have to know when to pick and choose your battles, and folks weren’t there.”

Davlin said he had informed Tim Farley, director of the Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau, ahead of time that he planned to pull the ordinance. The mayor said he supported making the financial commitment to bring the Prairie State Games to Springfield.

Aldermen, in a voice vote, approved tabling the matter. Ward 4 Ald. Chuck Redpath, another who had expressed support for the games, voted “present.”

Bids to claim hosting rights to the Prairie State Games are due June 1. The convention and visitors bureau, which had obtained support for the event from local hotels and businesses, had already submitted a letter of intent to bid on the games, as well as a refundable $5,000 fee.

City officials are expected to proceed with plans to establish a commission aimed at bringing other athletic and sports-related events to Springfield. Several individuals and business representatives have indicated they are interested, Farley said last week.

Davlin said he, too, supports the idea of a city sports commission.

“We have a commission on every other thing … and quite frankly, I’m surprised we don’t have a sports commission. It’s not the kind of thing that just a convention and visitors bureau can do; I see this sports commission as something that can help do a lot of things to bring a lot of different venues to the city of Springfield,” he said.

“I think if we’d had this sports commission already on line two years ago, and we had the opportunity to come up today (with the sports festival bid), I think we would have had a much better chance of doing it.”

The Prairie State Games, Illinois’ largest amateur sports festival, has made its home in Fairview Heights in the Metro East since 1995. It was in Peoria in 1994 and in Champaign on the University of Illinois campus between 1985 and 1993.

Fairview Heights officials cut the festival loose in April – although it will still host the event this summer – citing a weak return on its investment.

Aldermen at Monday’s public affairs committee meeting said they were concerned the city could be on the hook for additional money in the future and had asked Farley to bring them more facts and figures about the festival and the city’s commitment.

“It would have had my full energy to make sure we didn’t do something that failed, and unfortunately it wasn’t meant to be,” Davlin said.

Jena Schuch: ‘She always had a smile’

Posted on by

Jena Schuch’s death at first was though to be an accident. That’s what her boyfriend told police. He claimed she mishandled a .12-gauge shotgun and killed herself. After a two-month investigation, Springfield police arrested Schuch’s boyfriend for murder.

Schuch, a 28-year-old mother of two, had only been living in Springfield for six months. I talked to her mom and friends to find out more about her and what her life in Springfield and back home in Michigan had been like.

‘She always had a smile’ / Boyfriend charged with Springfield woman’s murder
Nov. 9, 2003

Jena Schuch came to Springfield in March hoping for a fresh start.

Eight months later, family and friends are mourning her death, shocked that her boyfriend, Phillip Peterson, is in Sangamon County jail charged with murdering the 28-year-old woman on Sept. 13.

Peterson has maintained Schuch’s death was an accident caused when she mishandled a shotgun inside the garage apartment they shared in the 1800 block of South Wirt Street. However, those who knew her said Schuch was a skilled hunter who learned how to handle a gun properly when she was 12 years old.

“I would really like to see him face to face and say, ‘Look me in the eye and tell me what happened.’ There’s just a part of me that wants to do that so bad,” said Schuch’s mother Sue Gustafson. “I have a lot of questions the more I stop and think about things. My mind keeps saying why would you do that? There is no reason. I can’t think of a single reason.”

Jeny Shanoski, one of Schuch’s friends from Florence, Wis., described Schuch as a resilient woman and a good mother who’d experienced her share of bad luck.

“She was the kind of person if I hadn’t seen her for years, if she walked through the door it would be just like I’d seen her yesterday. She always had a smile on her face. You couldn’t keep her down for long,” said Shanoski, who lives in Bloomington.

“She always seemed to bounce back. She was always OK, and this time she wasn’t. I think that was hard for people to deal with.”

Schuch grew up in Florence, a rural community of 2,300 in northeastern Wisconsin on the Michigan border, an area known for its hunting, fishing and other outdoor attractions.

A high school graduate who worked a series of waitressing jobs, Schuch had been through a difficult divorce, according to friends and family. She and her ex-husband shared custody of their sons, 8-year-old Jeremy and 5-year-old Joseph, but the boys had been living recently with him. She’d been in a car accident and at one point had no job, no car and few prospects.

“It just seemed like it was one thing after another for her,” Shanoski said. “She wasn’t blessed with money, so she always struggled with that. Not having gone to school or anything, her only option basically was waitressing. There’s not much up there, so if you get stuck up there, unless you work at one of the mills, there’s not a lot of work.”

Schuch’s brother, Jerod, was living in Springfield last spring when she made the nine-hour drive from Florence for a visit. She liked what she saw of the city and thought it might be a good place to put some distance between herself and Florence, with plans of eventually moving back to Wisconsin to be near her boys. She’d developed an interest in auto-body work, something she considered as a possible career.

She landed a job waitressing at Smokey Bones restaurant and began dating Peterson, a 22-year-old U-Haul employee she met through her brother.

The two eventually began living together in a garage apartment behind Peterson’s great-grandmother’s house. They had no telephone in the apartment, which made it difficult for family and friends to reach Schuch. They usually left messages with the grandmother, and Schuch eventually would call them back.

Schuch called both Gustafson and Shanoski the afternoon she died. She had been planning to visit her mother that weekend, but Peterson’s truck needed repairs and she had to postpone the trip. She was in a good mood and doing laundry. She told Gustafson she and Peterson had been working hard, so they were going to rent a movie that night.

“I was very happy to talk to her. I was missing her because I hadn’t talked to her in a couple weeks. I told her I miss you and love you. I was so looking forward to seeing her,” Gustafson said.

Shanoski said the afternoon of Schuch’s death was the first time they had talked in several weeks. Schuch called her about 3:30 p.m. and they spoke for 30 minutes.

“She sounded really good. She said she was doing real well. Things had started to straighten out for her. She had some really good friends at Smokey Bones,” Shanoski said. “She got my number, and we were going to get together on Wednesday because I was coming to town.”

What happened after that is unclear. According to Springfield police, Schuch was shot about 6 p.m. with a 12-gauge shotgun. She was rushed to Memorial Medical Center, where she died at 8:42 p.m. while undergoing surgery for a bullet wound to her shoulder.

Peterson gave police an account of what happened, but authorities said there are inconsistencies. He told investigators he was moving the shotgun and Schuch asked him for it. She handed it back to him, allegedly with the barrel pointed toward her, and the gun went off, according to his account.

“I called him and asked what happened,” Gustafson said. “He said he tried to save her and he couldn’t. He was crying pretty hysterically.”

Police arrested Peterson on Oct. 22. He is charged with three counts of first-degree murder and is jailed on $1 million bond. Peterson apparently tried to kill himself at least once, and a judge has ordered him to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. He is scheduled to appear in court again in mid-December.

Gustafson said Schuch’s boys are coping with their mother’s death, and added it is painful to know Schuch will never again help them with homework, carve Halloween pumpkins with them or teach them about fishing. She said the boys have been asking questions about heaven and how to get there.

Shanoski said she has difficulty talking about Schuch’s death.

“I wish to God I’d just said to her, ‘Come and stay with me.’ And I wish I’d tried harder to find her. I called her work, I called his grandma, but I always thought I’ll be there next week. It makes me wish I’d found out where that restaurant was and gone and told her I’m going home this weekend, do you want to go,” she said.

To help her cope with her friend’s death, Shanoski has written down some memories, recalling a prom they both went to, skiing escapades that included a piggy-back stunt, riding all-terrain vehicles and spending their summers together on Fisher Lake.

“She was fun. She just had a way about her to make people laugh. She came over here one night, and we sat in the basement and laughed for hours about the stupid things that we used to do. We got in a lot of trouble together. We always said to each other, ‘Let’s go do something so we have something to tell our grandchildren about,’” Shanoski said.

“It’s just a lot easier to believe it was an accident. I never imagined it would hurt so bad. I never imagined anything like this could happen.”

$10,000 engagement ring left in cab

Posted on by

engagementring2

Eric Culbertson and Krista Saputo were nice enough to tell me the story of how they went to Chicago for a romantic weekend, during which Culbertson was to pop the question to Krista. Trouble was, he accidentally lost the engagement ring — the $10,000 engagement ring — in a taxi.

Word of the fumbled proposal spread around the Windy City and eventually got back to Springfield. The Chicago Tribune and the Sharon Osbourne Show also found out about it. My editor asked me to find the couple and see if they would tell me their story.

‘I fumbled’ – fiance / $10,000 engagement ring is left in cab
Sept. 16, 2003

Suite at the Chicago Hilton and Towers, complete with a view of Lake Michigan: $300.

Romantic dinner for two at the Bandera Restaurant, perfect for popping the question: $150.

Losing the $10,000 engagement ring in a taxi on the way: priceless.

Chicago seemed like the ideal backdrop for Eric Culbertson to ask Krista Saputo to marry him this past weekend.

Instead, their unforgettable evening turned into a nightmare when Culbertson discovered the engagement ring he’d purchased two weeks earlier apparently had fallen out of his wallet when he paid the cabbie who drove the couple to a restaurant 10 minutes from their hotel.

“I fumbled. I was on the one-yard line, and I fumbled,” Culbertson said Monday. “I couldn’t begin to explain all the emotions I had.”

Culbertson, 28, and Saputo, 29, ran into each other about a year and a half ago at a party when they lived in Chicago. Though they had lived two doors down from each other at Eastern Illinois University, they didn’t become romantically involved until they were reunited in Chicago.

The couple moved to Springfield, Saputo’s hometown, in May 2002. Culbertson, who works for Vancil Contracting, started doing side jobs to earn money to buy the perfect diamond engagement ring for Saputo.

The two did their research and finally found the ring they wanted in Indianapolis. They paid $7,000 for the platinum ring mounted with a 1.01-carat round-cut diamond. It appraised for more than $10,000.

The ring was shipped to their home two weeks ago, and Culbertson tucked it away until he could pop the question properly. The perfect time, he decided, would be during a side trip to Chicago Friday on their way to his grandmother’s 87th birthday party in Wisconsin.

He planned every detail of the evening, including a special hotel room and dinner at a restaurant about 12 blocks away on South Michigan Avenue.

As they got ready for their night out, Culbertson decided to tuck the ring into the center compartment of his black tri-fold wallet so it wouldn’t get lost.

“I’m thinking to myself if I put the ring in my pocket loose, there’s more of a chance of it falling out than if I put it in my wallet,” he recalled. “I could feel it in my wallet.”

The couple caught a cab to the restaurant. The fare was $5.36. Culbertson pulled out $7 to give the driver, but Saputo persuaded him to give the driver $10 instead. He put the five and two ones back in the wallet, pulled out a ten and handed it to the driver.

The taxi pulled away and disappeared into a sea of other cabs on Michigan Avenue.

That, Culbertson said, is when he realized the ring was no longer in his wallet.

“He told me he didn’t have it. I said, ‘Yes you do,’ thinking he was trying to play a trick on me,” Saputo said. “Then I saw his hand was shaking, and I realized he was serious.”

The couple didn’t know the company of the cab they’d been in. They didn’t know the driver’s name or what the cab looked like. They called the hotel to see if someone could check the building’s security video, hoping it might show them getting into the cab. They called the Chicago Police Department. They started calling cab companies. They called the Chicago Tribune, hoping a story might prompt someone to return the ring.

It never turned up.

Culbertson and Saputo went to Wisconsin anyway. Culbertson had his uncle drive him to a nearby Target store so he could buy some kind of ring for Saputo. He wound up paying $40 for a cubic Zirconia ring and presented it to Saputo.

“The rings in there were basically costume jewelry. I said give me the biggest, gaudiest ring you have because I just lost the real one,” he said.

The real ring had been insured a week earlier and will be replaced within the next few weeks.

The faux pas, which was reported in Sunday’s Chicago Tribune, has gained national attention. Culbertson and Saputo spent much of Monday doing telephone interviews with a variety of media outlets, including WLS radio, WGN, a radio syndicate out of Dallas and ABC radio in New York.

They also have accepted an offer from a producer for “The Sharon Osbourne Show” to fly to Los Angeles Monday night for an interview today.

Saputo, who works for the Illinois Department of Human Services, is taking the situation in stride.

Oh, and she said yes to Culbertson’s proposal. They’re planning an autumn 2004 wedding.

“It’s a ring. It can be replaced. Our love is forever,” she said.

Prostitution in the capital city

Posted on by

This piece is based on my first police ride-along on a prostitution detail. What an eye-opener it was.

Police use new approach to root out prostitution / Often-ignored problem fought with stings, outreach
June 15, 2003

He had a proposition for the pony-tailed woman in jean shorts and a T-shirt who’d been standing on the corner of Eighth and Enterprise streets Tuesday night.

He could drum up work for her if she agreed to give him $10 from every trick.

“What if I only make $10?” she asked, making eye contact with men who drove slowly past, several of whom circled back.

He’d let her keep it, he said, boasting that he’s good to all his girls.

A customer pulled up to the corner then, and she jumped in his car, promising she’d return in 30 minutes with $10 for him.

The alleged pimp – a 24-year-old man wearing a hockey-style jersey – strolled to a picnic table in the park nearby, lit a cigarette and waited.

Little did he know, the woman wasn’t a hooker at all. She was a decoy working undercover on a prostitution sting with a team of Springfield police officers. Her “customer” actually was another undercover officer.

Police, armed with two-way radios and binoculars, had watched the conversation take place. While the decoy and her “customer” waited a few blocks away, officers broke out law books to look up definitions for pimping and pandering. Pimping arrests are rare, they said, and they wanted to make sure this one held up.

Thirty minutes later, the woman returned and handed the man a $10 bill. In seconds, five marked Springfield police cars swooped in and surrounded him.

Robert D. Brown of the 1500 block of East Brown Street was taken to jail. Police said they also found drug paraphernalia in his possession.

“You’ve really got to be an actor to do this,” police Sgt. Bill Neale noted after congratulating the decoy and other officers on a job well-done. He oversees many of the highly organized, and potentially dangerous, prostitution stings, which rely on officers to volunteer as decoys.

“It takes a special kind of person to get out there and do this. We want to have fun, but you have to stay sharp. You have to keep your wits about you,” Neale said.

Prostitution, primarily a drug-driven crime, is a nuisance that has ripple effects throughout the community, according to local police and social workers.

But it’s a problem that largely is “ignored and forgotten,” according to Jody Clark, an outreach coordinator with PORA (Positive Options, Referrals and Alternatives), which helps women who have a history of prostitution and exploitation by providing a safe residence for them, treatment programs, counseling, outreach, education and referrals.

“Not only do we see their lifestyles, we see the addictions that pull them into the lifestyles,” Clark said. “I’d say almost 100 percent of our women and men who are prostitutes are addicted to drugs, and most of the time it’s crack. Addiction is very powerful.”

Springfield police have adopted a new approach to combating the prostitution problem. It includes a combination of stings, which tend to have a highly visible yet temporary effect; neighborhood involvement; cooperation with PORA; and police interviews with arrested hookers to glean such information as where they live and work, where they turn tricks, why they prostitute, whether they’ve been arrested before and who they associate with.

“With prostitutes, you arrest them tonight and they’re back on the streets tomorrow. They’re not doing it for fun; they’re doing it out of necessity,” said assistant police chief Bill Pittman.

“We’re trying to deal with the whole problem instead of just the symptoms. We’re looking at these women and saying, ‘Why are they doing this here?’ In Springfield, it’s most likely because it’s easy to get the money – and significant amounts of money in some cases – to support a pretty serious drug problem.”

Police have scheduled 10 stings from May through August. Two already have taken place, including the one Tuesday night that netted five arrests. The other, May 29, resulted in four arrests. Charges typically range from prostitution and soliciting a sex act to pimping and drug offenses.

Pittman said the department has a list of about 40 known prostitutes, a quarter of whom are working at any given time.

Neighborhoods in which prostitutes are most active, according to police, are those along the North and South Grand avenue corridors; the area around Iles Park, which is not far from South Grand; Enterprise Street around Eighth and Ninth streets; and parts of an area known as Old Aristocracy Hill, a neighborhood bounded by Second and Ninth streets and Capitol and South Grand avenues.

“We see the worst of the worst,” said one resident of the southern part of Old Aristocracy Hill. The woman asked that her name not be used for fear of retribution by several pimps who live and work nearby. The pimps regularly try to intimidate and threaten residents by following them, banging on their doors and invading their homes, she said.

“We’re very, very frightened of them. They know who you are, what you drive and when you leave. They’re very terrifying,” she said.

“The danger with prostitution really is the pimps and the drugs. We get used condoms and used needles on our properties. It’s not nice when you try to come home in the evening and the only entrance to your driveway is blocked because a trick is being turned,” she said.

Prostitutes often walk the streets in the broad daylight, sometimes starting about 2 or 3 in the afternoon and continuing through the night, she said, though the activity tapers off in the winter.

“There have been times when we’ve had to call police up to 20 times a night. One night I saw seven girls out working. Isn’t that amazing? They know how to walk down the street and not look like they’re prostitutes, and they know who to look for, and they have hiding spots where they go when the police arrive.”

The woman added that people cruising for prostitutes are a nuisance, too.

“A huge problem is that these girls are very popular. They’re off the street as much as they’re on the street. They come and go and come and go. When you come through here and don’t see one, it’s probably because they’re working. Wait 15 minutes and they’ll be back,” she said.

Crack cocaine overwhelmingly is the drug of choice of prostitutes. Officials told of a woman who lives 30 miles away, drives to Springfield once a week and turns enough tricks to afford a week’s supply of crack.

Police said highly addictive methamphetamine also is showing up more in the city now, and some prostitutes are beginning to use it.

Referrals to PORA, which can help prostitutes get drug treatment and other assistance, is a key to the police department’s approach.

“We know these gals aren’t going to go away forever. We don’t care about what PORA has on these girls. But we want to make sure they have what we have,” Pittman said, noting that PORA is better equipped than the police to deal with prostitutes’ addictions, depression or other issues that can cause an arrest to become a crisis situation.

Clark of PORA agreed. She spends most of her time distributing condoms to prostitutes, teaching them about HIV and talking to them at shelters, in bars, on the streets and in jail.

She said most prostitutes have problems besides addiction – grief and childhood issues, sexual abuse, homelessness, the loss of children due to their lifestyles, legal problems and mental illness.

All those issues make prostitution a problem that affects the entire community, she said.

“People have to know this is taking place. … We know we have a homeless problem, we have people who are starving, we have a drug problem, and we do have a prostitution problem. We see it every single day,” she said.

Penalties for prostitution vary, according to Mark Silberman with the Sangamon County state’s attorney’s office. It is a misdemeanor, but multiple prior charges can cause it to be upgraded to a felony.

The misdemeanor is punishable by up to a day less than a year in jail.

The law requires that people arrested for prostitution be tested for sexually transmitted diseases. The state’s attorney’s office also requires they go through a drug and alcohol evaluation.

The penalty for the felony charge is one to three years in prison, with the possibility of probation or conditional discharge. Silberman said the state’s attorney’s office actively seeks to prosecute people arrested for prostitution, but other officials said they believe it’s rare to find anyone serving time for the offense.

For now, residents such as the one on Old Aristocracy Hill say they’ll continue to call police whenever they see prostitution activity in their neighborhoods.

But, the woman said, are the laws strong enough to have any effect?

“I think (the police details) are great, and they work that night, but the girls come right back the next night. And there is very little the police can do because of the way the laws are written,” she said.

“Proving prostitution is darned near impossible, and proving pimping and solicitation is darned near impossible. There’s not a lot of point in it. I think the police department does what it can, but it has to be terribly frustrating to do a job where you’re basically set up to fail by virtue of the way the laws are written.”

Springfield Cobras: Off-the-street fighters

Posted on by

cobrasboxing2

I met some great kids in 2003 when photographer T.J. Salsman and I documented the Springfield Housing Authority’s Cobras boxing team, an after-school boxing program for youths looking for something productive to do or a safe, suitable outlet for their aggression.

The resulting story appeared in the Feb. 28, 2003, issue of Heartland Magazine in The State Journal-Register.

Off the street fighters / The Springfield Cobras boxing team offers structure and discipline to young people at risk
Feb. 28, 2003

Nine-year-old Keith Treadwell knows what it takes to become a good boxer.

“Practice,” said the Butler Elementary student, who is a member of the Springfield Cobras youth boxing team. “I practice here. I practice at my house. Sometimes I’ll be in bed at night and I practice.”

Any secret moves up his sleeve?

“There’s no secret to boxing!” he said, incredulous that someone would ask such a silly question. “You just have to have good punches and upper cuts and hooks.”

And with that, the boy with the sweet face who prefers to sit alone quietly if he loses a match smacked his gloved fists together and headed for the boxing ring, where his sparring partner waited.

Treadwell is one of about 23 kids who box for the Cobras, a team sponsored by the Springfield Housing Authority. The youngest boxer is 6 and the oldest is 23.

With a shoestring budget, a few dedicated volunteers and a lot of spirit, the team is taking impressionable youths off the street and away from their video games and giving them something to do after school.

Cordale Johnson, a 10-year-old student at Owen Marsh Elementary School, rested on a metal chair after a few practice rounds in the ring.

He’s been boxing with the Cobras a few months and already has garnered a trophy and a medal, which he proudly displays on top of a console television in his bedroom at home.

He has aspirations of maybe becoming a boxing coach when he grows up. That or a gymnast, he said.

“It’s not like beating people up,” Cordale said of his sport of choice. “I just have fun doing it. We get to spar and do the bag. Then we run laps sometimes outside and jump rope. Sometimes, when we do good, Coach’ll take us to get something to eat.”

The Cobras are coached by John Luther Howell, a successful amateur boxer during the 1950s who has led the program since its inception, seeing it through numerous sponsors and hundreds of kids looking for an outlet for pent-up energy, a place to spend time after school or an opportunity to learn a new sport.

Howell’s work with the boxing team started in the mid 1970s when he took Mike Townsend’s Street Work with Adolescents class at Sangamon State University. The Rev. Ken McNeil of Grace United Methodist Church had started a boxing team in Springfield. When McNeil was transferred to Wisconsin, Howell took over the team as his class project.

Through the years, the Cobras have been sponsored by a variety of organizations, but the housing authority took over the team in 1980 and relies heavily on grants and donations from the community for financial support.

Cordale became interested in the team during the summer when he stopped in at Howell’s house one day.

“I saw all his trophies and asked him where he got them. He said from boxing,” Cordale recalled. He and several of his cousins decided to join the team.

“We signed up. Now that we’re on the team, we go over to his house sometimes and watch his boxing videos.”

Practices are on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at the housing authority’s maintenance facility on Truman Road. The boxing ring used to be at the National Guard Armory, but it had to be moved after security was tightened following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Howell drives a van to pick up most of the children, who mainly live on Springfield’s east side.

“Before these kids leave, I tell them to take the garbage out and help their mothers out,” Howell said. “I don’t just want to get them in the ring and get them beat up. They’ve got to learn some manners and some discipline, too.”

Warm-up exercises are the first order of business once the boxers arrive at the training facility. Pushups, arm exercises, running and jumping rope are standard fare. Even if the kids don’t get in the boxing ring, they have to exercise.

“They have to get into shape,” Howell said. “They’re being hit all the time, so they’ve got to have that. A lot of them can move one way or the other, keeping their balance and stuff together pretty good. But a lot of them don’t like to do those pushups.”

After warming up, the kids don their boxing gloves and other gear and head for the ring or to either of the two punching bags that hang nearby.

Occasionally, young boxers from Beardstown will come to Springfield to spar with the Cobras, and the Cobras sometimes go to Beardstown. There also is a youth boxing team in Decatur that has an outdoor ring the Cobras go to from time to time when the weather is nice.

***

For the most part, the kids who want to box for the Cobras are respectful of Howell and the other boxers.

“If they want to box, then I’ll deal with them. But if they want to be problem makers, I let them stay, but I break them down,” Howell said.

“I either put them in the ring with somebody or if they get to the point that they’re unruly, I talk to them. And if that doesn’t work, I put them out. I tell them to go home, because they won’t last long in the street anyway.”

“The street” is what many of the youngsters are trying to avoid and others are trying to confront. Most of them face the same kinds of street violence and distractions that youngsters faced 20 years ago. The boxing program allows them at least to learn to defend themselves properly if the need arises.

“It never did stop. They’re still coming in for the same reasons. On the streets, they still want to grab a pair of tennis shoes from a kid. They still just want to buffalo these kids,” Howell said. “But these kids get with the team here, and we break up a lot of that stuff. It’s been working.”

As Howell put it, “It keeps them out of jail and in school.”

The change in many of the youngsters is evident both at home and at school, he added. They start dressing up, they become more polite and are more conscientious of their studies.

Boxing also builds their self-confidence.

“A lot of kids have been labeled as being chickens and won’t fight. Then they get into boxing and find out they’re better than they thought they were. It makes a good fighter and a good student,” Howell said.

“All the parents kind of want the kids into something other than running the streets and getting expelled from school. A lot of them love boxing so much that even their teachers say they’re doing better.

“Boxing, to me, is just an umbrella. We don’t teach them to go out and tear up the streets or anything like that. To me, it’s education and discipline. The kids have to show that before they can be part of boxing, or the officials, they’ll put them out.”

***

Darius Greyer, 11 and a student at Harvard Park Elementary School, has been boxing with the Cobras since he was 8. He still remembers how he got involved.

“(Someone) asked if we would like to box. She said get permission from your mom, and my mom said OK. So they started picking me up at my house,” he said.

“I’m one of the best boxers here,” he added, noting that he received a $30 prize when he won a match at an out-of-town tournament in December. He spent the money, he said with a grin, but can’t remember on what.

Howell said Greyer, as well as others on the team, show a great deal of promise.

“There’s always one who comes around like Greyer who wants to really box and wants to be great,” Howell said. “I just don’t want to put too much pressure on them. He’s got a lot of confidence. He wants me to give him a nickname. I always give kids nicknames when they’re doing good.”

Ukayla Thomas, 11, is Keith Treadwell’s big sister. She joined the Cobras after two of her male friends encouraged her to. But there aren’t many other girls on the team, so most of the time she has no one with whom she can spar in the ring.

But because she enjoys being around the boxing ring, she finds other ways to occupy her time. She assists Howell with activities such as getting attendance lists together. She exercises with the group, passes out beverages and otherwise keeps an eye on things. Sometimes, she will do her homework.

“At first I wanted to box. Sometimes I do the punching bags, but mostly I go and help my coach,” she said.

Jermain Jefferson, at 6 years old, is the youngest boxer on the Cobras team. The others call him “Little Man,” a nickname given to him by his family. He and his brother, Cornelius Johnson, 9, joined the Cobras last summer. Jermain wants to be a boxer when he grows up, and he talks about boxing all the time.

“I like to box people, and I like to win,” he said.

Robert McDaniel, 14 and an eighth grader at Washington Middle School, has practiced with the team every week for the last five months.

“My dad started me liking boxing, and he looked around and found a place for me to box,” McDaniel said. He wants to play football in high school, and the exercise and training involved with boxing will help him toward that end.

“The physical exercise – that’s the part I really like. The workouts, the sparring, the fighting,” he said. “I’ve always liked boxing and football. They’re my favorite sports.”

During a practice session in December, McDaniel sparred in the ring with another Cobra boxer who proved to be a formidable opponent. McDaniel kept breaking into a grin during the bout.

During a short break, McDaniel stood in one of the ring’s corners and got advice from Cobra assistant coach Robert Meek – or “Coach Bob,” as the kids call him.

“When you get hit, your hands drop lower and lower and lower until you’re down here,” Meek advised, lowering his clenched fists to waist level. “You got to keep your hands up.

“And quit smiling so much!” he added and laughed.

McDaniel said it’s just not his nature to get angry during sparring matches, even if he’s losing.

“If they’re not hurting me, it kind of makes me laugh instead of getting mad,” he said.

“I usually only get mad when someone hits me in the nose. They say you’re not supposed to lose your temper because then you lose control.”

***

In October, the Cobras received a $10,000 grant from the city of Springfield’s Office of Planning and Economic Development. The grant is allowing the group to buy needed equipment and travel to matches and tournaments in cities such as St. Louis, Galesburg and LaSalle.

Sometimes the team has to stay overnight for tournaments. In December the team had to reserve four motel rooms to accommodate all the boxers during a tournament in LaSalle.

“I can’t go too far with the kids because there’s just not enough money to go around,” Howell said.

The team owns eight pairs of boxing gloves that are shared among the youngsters. It has a few pieces of headgear. Mouthpieces are on order, as are team T-shirts, thanks to the grant funding.

Weight-lifting equipment would be a welcome addition to the team’s training facility, but there’s no money for such an extravagance.

SHA authorities say they are trying to incorporate the boxing program as a nonprofit organization, which would allow for tax-deductible donations.

Several of the Cobras’ boxers have gone on to win Golden Gloves championships, as well as other competitions. Occasionally, a former boxer will stop in and visit with Howell and the others.

In fact, one of Howell’s former boxers, who now is a student at Notre Dame University, visited him during Christmas break and worked out with the other boxers.

“That really means something when they come back and see you,” he said. “A lot of kids write and tell me how they’ve been away for a while and how boxing really helped them.

“Me and the kids have good times,” he added. “There are a lot of social times; it’s not just boxing. It’s keeping me young. I’ve got many miles to go before I rest.”

Snow rollers appear in rural Springfield

Posted on by

snowrollers2

I was working the night shift in February 2003 when the newsroom phones started ringing. Readers wanted to know if we knew anything about the odd-looking snow balls dotting the landscape in the rural areas around Springfield. Photographer T.J. Salsman and I set out to see for ourselves what people were talking about. Turns out they are a weather phenomenon known as “snow rollers.”

Wind causes snow ‘rollers’
Feb. 12, 2003

“Creepy” and “weird” were how some people described a Tuesday night weather phenomenon in which large snowballs formed in fields, yards and parking lots without human help.

More than one motorist paused to look at clusters of the snowballs – known in the eastern United States as “rollers” – that formed as strong gusts of wind from the west blew across snow that was already on the ground.

“It looks like a Mars landscape at night,” said Stacy Bowman, who noticed the unusual snowballs about 8 p.m. in fields west of Bradforton Road as she drove home from Springfield.

“At first I thought they were just clumps of sod being turned over in the field,” she said. “Then I thought maybe some kids were out, but I didn’t see any footprints around.”

The “rollers,” which were more log-shaped than round, left yards of trails behind them where newly fallen snow had rolled and picked up the snow on the ground.

Melissa Byrd, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Lincoln, said the agency received numerous reports of “rollers,” including in Logan, Macon and Menard counties.

Byrd said she has been with the NWS in Lincoln for 13 years and has never seen them before or heard of anyone reporting them.

In fact, she said she didn’t know they had a name until a colleague in Kansas told her they are called rollers out East.

A wind gust of 58 mph was recorded in Lincoln and 45 mph in Springfield. The gusts were followed by a strong cold front that moved through the area about 7 p.m. Low temperatures in the single digits were expected Tuesday night and into this morning.

Winds were expected to diminish after midnight.

In addition to the rollers, meteorologists were tracking another unusual phenomenon, “thunder snow,” that blew through Peoria before 7 p.m. and produced lightning, heavy snow and strong wind gusts. Several utility poles and power lines were toppled, Byrd said.

Cabdriver’s throat slashed

Posted on by

cartwright2

Richard Cartwright was tougher than I would have been in the same situation. Of course, I’ve discovered over the years that most cabdrivers are, indeed, a tough breed. A robber slashed Cartwright’s throat with a serrated steak knife during a struggle, leaving a large scar.

I was able to track down and speak with Cartwright after the incident. The result was this piece:

Cabdriver recovering from stab wounds / Throat slashed during struggle with robber
Thursday, March 28, 2002

Driving a cab can be dangerous, and Richard Cartwright has the wounds to prove it.

Cartwright, 40, was robbed and slashed across the throat with a serrated steak knife about 4:30 a.m. last Thursday.

The veteran cabdriver now has numerous stitches on the left side of his neck and on his right hand. Though he has returned to work, he finds himself coping with a new wariness of the people to whom he gives rides each night.

“It’s scary. I get real edgy,” said Cartwright, who works for Lincoln Yellow Cab, often pulling a 12-hour shift from 7 p.m. until 7 a.m. “I’m just real shook up. It’s going to take a while to get over it.”

The ordeal began when Cartwright was dispatched to Denny’s, 2599 Wabash Ave., to pick up a man who allegedly could not speak English. A woman who works at the restaurant called the cab company on the man’s behalf, saying he needed to go to Glenwood and South Grand avenues.

The man got into Cartwright’s cab and directed him to various destinations. Cartwright said the man couldn’t seem to make up his mind and eventually had Cartwright drive him to the 3000 block of South State Street.

There, the man reached up around Cartwright and cut his throat with the steak knife. Authorities said the man probably got the knife at Denny’s. The cut went from Cartwright’s left ear to beneath his jaw, narrowly missing his jugular vein.

Cartwright struggled with the assailant and somehow wound up being pulled into the backseat, he said. He grabbed for the knife and was cut on the right hand.

The man reached into Cartwright’s jacket pocket and stole his money, as well as the keys from the ignition.

The robbery didn’t bother Cartwright so much as the coldness of the attacker, who wouldn’t even leave the cab keys behind so the bleeding man could drive himself to the hospital.

“He got out and just stood there for some reason. I don’t know if he was trying to terrify me or what,” Cartwright said. “I begged him for the keys. He just casually walked away.”

The whole thing took less than three minutes. After the attacker left, Cartwright was able to contact the cab dispatcher, who then called 911.

The cut on his neck is about six inches long, and the stitches already have been removed. His right hand has several wounds, including a gash that runs approximately across the middle knuckle of all four of his fingers and a deep cut on his palm.

“I was afraid he was going to cut my throat. That’s why I grabbed the knife,” he said. “I knew it was a robbery, but he couldn’t speak English. He couldn’t even say give me your money. He was pretty strong, but somehow I got away from him.”

There is a chance that damage was done to the nerves in Cartwright’s hand and neck. If that is the case, he will require further surgery. Cartwright, who is divorced and has five children under the age of 14, does not have health insurance.

Sangamon County chief deputy Tony Sacco said the department’s investigation of the incident continues. The suspect was described as Hispanic, about 5 feet 10 inches tall, 145 to 150 pounds, with short black hair. He was wearing jeans and a short-sleeve blue shirt.

The attack has angered other local cabdrivers, who refer to Cartwright as family, and the owner of Lincoln Yellow Cab is trying to come up with new ways to protect them, particularly since the robber apparently rode in two other cabs that night prior to the attack.

“Anything I can do to protect the drivers, I’m going to do it,” said Vick Antonacci, who’s been in the cab business for 45 years. “It worries me very much. I’m very concerned about the drivers’ welfare out there.”

Antonacci said he is working to design a wire mesh cage that would fit around the driver’s seat in cabs and protect them from knife attacks. Most of the Lincoln Yellow cabs have been fitted with bullet-proof, Plexiglass shields that separate the front and back seats.

A few of the cabs do not have the shield, Antonacci said, because they prevent the driver’s seat from being reclined or pushed back, causing discomfort for larger drivers.

The cab Cartwright was driving the night of the attack was a van and it did not have a shield.

Ugly fabric contest

Posted on by

How does one begin to write about an ugly fabric contest? That was my challenge for a March 2002 assignment.

Photographer T.J. Salsman and I headed to the contest site, unsure what we’d find. The result was a light feature for the next day’s newspaper.

Sew what? / Guild challenge makes fashion sense of ugly fabric
Thursday, March 28, 2002

It comes with the territory.

People who love to sew eventually find themselves with yards and yards of ugly fabric – cuts of material that seemed like a good idea at the time but lost their luster through the years. (Some might consider paisley a good example.)

When those unsightly textiles pile up, an “ugly fabric contest” can be a seamstress’ best friend.

Twenty-two women from the Lincolnland chapter of the American Sewing Guild rose to the challenge of turning a scrap of ugly fabric into something wearable or usable. Their creations were modeled at the chapter’s annual meeting and style show Wednesday night.

“We all have stashes, and we all have fabric in our stashes that we think, ‘Why did we buy that? ‘” said Nancy Ward.

The contest started in December, when members of the chapter were asked to bring a piece of what they considered ugly fabric that was at least one yard and seal it in a brown paper bag. The members selected a bag and were challenged to create something from the surprise fabric inside.

Frances Metcalf, who taught home economics in Riverton for 10 years, was surprised when she opened her paper bag and found 51/2 yards of a blue polyknit fabric bearing a tropical print. She gleefully decided to share it with unsuspecting friend and seamstress Bev Clark of Sherman.

Because of the fabric’s lightweight nature, Metcalf lined the back with a fleece fabric and turned it into a lap robe, which she likely will donate to a nursing home.

“I won’t repeat the suggestion my sons, both engineers, had to say about it,” she joked.

Clark had a different vision for the fabric. With a few snips and the addition of some pretty ruffles, she turned it into a swimsuit cover-up.

“I looked at it and thought, ‘Oh dear. What am I going to do with this? ‘” she said. “I thought a swimsuit cover-up was something that would be easy to dry and would pack easily.”

And did Clark think hers was the ugliest fabric in the contest?

“I would have to say, I think it is,” she said and laughed.

Other clever ugly fabric creations included book bags, children’s clothes, stuffed animals, pajamas, table cloths, a clothing dust cover, a laundry bag and a smock-and-bonnet outfit for a concrete goose.

The Lincolnland chapter is looking for new members, and it is open to anyone who likes to sew. The chapter has several groups that meet at various times during the month. For more information, call chapter president Sarah Brogdon at 675-2060.

Carl Madison makes no apologies

Posted on by

carlmadison2

In April 2002 I was asked to write a profile of Carl Madison, the well-known and sometimes controversial leader of the Springfield chapter of the NAACP. Carl has since moved to Ohio, but he still keeps up on race issues in Abraham Lincoln’s hometown.

No apologies / Criticism part of local NAACP head Madison’s job
Sunday, April 14, 2002

Civil rights activist Dick Gregory once said that when black people need help, they call on two things – Jesus Christ and the NAACP.

In Springfield, when people call on the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, they get Carl Madison.

For the last five years, Madison, 37, has led the local chapter and brought attention to a variety of issues, including alleged gender bias in the fire department, alleged racial discrimination in the police department, alternative education for expelled students and recruitment of more minority teachers for Springfield schools.

It’s a job that has brought both challenges and criticism, enough so that Madison jokes that’s the reason he went out and bought a golden retriever puppy, to make sure he had a friend.

“It’s had its ups and downs. Everybody says being branch president is a tough job,” Madison says, sliding open his patio door to let 8-month-old Max into the yard for an afternoon romp.

When he began as NAACP president, Madison received two or three calls a day from people seeking help. He estimates he now receives about 25.

Some are from victims of discrimination. Others have been taken advantage of. Some want help keeping their kids in school. A few don’t know where else to turn.

Among them was Shirley Jones-Gooden, who rang Madison’s doorbell at home to see if he could find out why her son, Bennie Lee Jones, died after falling and apparently hitting his head at the Sangamon County Jail on Feb. 14.

“Carl was home and I went in and explained the situation,” she recalls.

“He was with me every step of the way, all the way through it. I don’t think the family could have endured this alone,” she says. “He was very supportive. He would visit at the hospital with me. He shed tears. He was emotional, just like it touched him as much as it did the family. He went the whole nine yards.”

While Madison has won many supporters with his efforts, he has also been a lightning rod for criticism at times, as reflected in letters to the editor of The State Journal-Register over the last year:

“In regards to Carl Madison’s statement that the NAACP would ‘roll its sleeves up and address the issue of a retest’ on the Springfield Fire Department’s agility test: Please keep rolling until they cover your mouth, Carl. We’re sick of listening to you whine.”

“It was no surprise to see Carl Madison on the front page asking for yet another handout.”

“I see Carl Madison is at it again. Wake up, Carl!”

Such criticism is part of the job, Madison says, making no apologies for who he is or what he does.

“A lot of times what people do is take it personally. It’s never personal. It’s just business. I mean, what’s the expectation? I don’t know what citizens expect. I’m the NAACP president,” he says.

“They should know when I address issues they’re going to be about civil rights, they’re going to be about equality and fairness, they’re going to be about discrimination. … If I’m addressing those, I’m doing my job.”

Rudy Davenport, a longtime member of the NAACP, says Madison’s greatest strength is that he knows the issues – often before they become issues.

“There is some cost to acting upon these things. They take their toll. There is criticism and a lot of other things. One thing about being in front like him, you sort of live in a fishbowl. You’re always visible – your good and your bad. I don’t know if many of us could take that.”

Growing up on the east side 30 years ago was the best time of his life, Madison says. His father, McClinton Madison, was a World War II veteran who worked as a welder at Fiatallis for 34 years before passing away on Thanksgiving Day in 1993.

McClinton built a house on 18th Street for his wife, Barbara, and his five children. He also built a hairdresser shop inside the home, allowing Barbara to work and be at home for Carl and his brothers and sisters.

Looking back, Madison says, there was less crime in his neighborhood when he was growing up. He also cannot recollect ever experiencing racial discrimination when he was a youngster.

“It’s after you become an adult and live here. It’s completely different from growing up here,” he said.

He attended Griffin High School for two years, then transferred to Calvary Academy, graduating in 1982 with the school’s first graduating class. He was a high school athlete, which is how he met his wife, Mia.

“She’s my high school sweetheart,” Madison says. “She went to Lanphier, and she was a pompom girl. I played basketball for Calvary.”

The two have been married 17 years, with 14-year-old twins, Carl Jr. and Chelsea, born while Madison was serving a six-year stint overseas in the Air Force. Madison also has a 7-year-old daughter from another relationship.

Family time, he says, usually consists of gathering in their home on Capitol Avenue for nights of pizza and videos. They also enjoy weekend trips to Chicago, where one of Madison’s brothers lives.

While his father had a great influence on him, he says his life has been most influenced by the man who baptized him – the Rev. Rudolph Schoultz, pastor at Union Baptist Church, where the Madison family attends services. Schoultz, who died in 2000, was known throughout Springfield for his political activism.

“We were very close, and we became even closer after my father passed,” Madison says.

“If you see me out here addressing the hard issues, you can probably either thank or fault Rev. Schoultz because he was that type of person. He addressed the hard issues and so I’m kind of, when it comes to addressing issues, I feel I’m probably an extension of what he would want to see me doing.”

Charlie Houghland, owner of Family Video, also had an influence on Madison, he says, by giving him his first job selling coffee in downtown Chicago after he got out of the Air Force.

“For the most part, I was in a suit jacket every day and meeting with people in Chicago, making coffee sales in the entire Amoco building and things of that nature,” he says. “Those are huge accounts, so you have to have a certain business savvy about yourself.”

The pressures of city life took their toll, however, and Madison moved back to Springfield. He began a series of factory jobs, working at A.E. Staley Manufacturing in Decatur, then for Cargill in Springfield. He eventually became a corporate supervisor for Bridgestone/Firestone in Decatur – a job that ended earlier this year when the plant closed.

Madison has traded his employee handbook for college textbooks.

When the plant closed, he decided to go back to school, enrolling at Illinois State University. Though he already has a two-year degree in business administration, he decided to pursue a bachelor’s in political science.

His studies could come in handy soon, as Madison admits he is giving serious consideration to a run for local office and may make an official announcement of his intentions by the end of the year. He declined to reveal his political party.

“I’m considering making a bid. I won’t say what for, but I’m considering getting into local politics this year,” he says. “It’s one thing to be on the sidelines and saying when things are wrong. I believe those who are on the sidelines should become a part of the process and make the changes they feel necessary.”

Word of Madison’s possible run for office has not been embraced by everyone. T.C. Christian, publisher of Pure-News USA, a local publication that targets primarily African-American readers, has said publicly that he believes Madison is using his role as NAACP president as a springboard into politics.

In a March editorial, Christian wrote the NAACP “needs a designated driver,” a reference to Madison’s January 2001 drunken driving arrest, to which he pleaded no contest.

In addition, the Black Guardians Association, which represents black Springfield police officers, has stated in a letter to Madison that his assistance to them has been “counterproductive, highly suspect and apparently self-serving.”

Madison denies the accusations, maintaining that he and the NAACP have honorable intentions and that his role with the NAACP will not conflict with a political career because he would have to give up one to pursue the other.

“If I decide to choose to run for a political office, I know clearly that I can’t hold a political office and be branch president at the same time. The bylaws won’t allow that,” Madison says.

Davenport says it is not unheard of for NAACP members to pursue careers in politics.

“I think if that’s what his inclination is, God bless him and power to him. We don’t have enough young people with Carl’s knowledge and his savvy to go into politics,” he says.

Brian McFadden, chief of staff for Mayor Karen Hasara, says it is common for people with political aspirations to have worked with community organizations first.

“If you look around the faces on the city council, there’s a lot of them that came out of community involvement, whether it’s neighborhood organizations, civic groups or athletics,” he says. “I don’t think it’s fair to criticize someone for that.”

In the meantime, Madison says he will continue to focus on issues facing the NAACP, including firefighter testing, conflicts within the police department, the organization’s alternative school for students who have been expelled and the creation of a legal defense corporation for Springfield area residents who need legal representation.

Madison says that before he joined the military, he never would have guessed he’d one day be back in Springfield, aggressively leading a civil rights organization.

It was a chance visit to a concentration camp in Germany, where he was stationed, that made him think seriously about addressing inequalities among people.

“When I saw that, it had an impact on me. I just realized how hate impacted the lives of the Jewish community,” he says. “I was only 19 years old. At that point, I knew I wanted to address some inequalities at some point in my life.”

It was during that time, too, that Madison learned about the Springfield race riots of 1908. The two days of riots left two whites and four blacks dead as well as 40 black-owned homes and 15 black-owned businesses destroyed. Outrage over the incident led to formation of the NAACP.

When Madison returned to Springfield, he got involved with an organization called Monument 1908, which successfully saw to it that a memorial was erected to the victims of the riots.

Madison eventually was approached by members of the Springfield NAACP chapter’s nominating committee.

“He wanted to be in a leadership position for the right reasons. It wasn’t for any self-promotion. He just had a willingness and an eagerness to do some community work,” Davenport says. “He was working in a factory in Decatur at the time. I thought that was something very unusual and a good quality. He really impressed me as someone who knew how to do the hard work and get their fingernails dirty, yet still knew what the problems of the working community were.”

Madison became president of the local chapter in December 1996. In 1997, at 32, he was honored as the youngest NAACP branch president in the Midwest.

His first order of business as president was to set a course for the organization to become more aggressive and visible. While specific membership numbers are not made public, the local chapter has hundreds of members, according to Mary Daniels, the membership chairwoman. That’s up 20 percent in the last year, Madison said.

While some of the issues, such as minority hiring in the police department, go back many years, “we’ve really gone in a different direction,” he said.

Madison is pleased the people who call him for help come from diverse backgrounds, both racially and economically.

“The NAACP must now stand in this century for people of all colors. That’s what we have to stand for because people of all colors get discriminated against,” he says. “I don’t know if the citizens of Springfield are realizing what we’re doing, but we crossed that racial line many times in my leadership.

“Look at it this way, I’m a person who likes to get things done, and I think the weakness that I have is the inability to make change happen faster. I’m not afraid to pull the trigger when I need to, and that trigger is litigation. .. .There’s only so much talking, only so much negotiation that you can do before you get into meetings on the meetings, agendas on the agendas and that sort of thing.

“I don’t mind talking, but I like to talk and I like to see action after.”

McFadden, the mayor’s top aide, attended Griffin High School with Madison for a while. The two find themselves talking at least weekly about issues that often are controversial.

“It’s a little different because it seems like it wasn’t that long ago that you were in gym class and working on chemistry experiments, and now you’re dealing with much more serious issues,” McFadden says.

“The relationship’s professional and the meetings are always good meetings in the sense that they never get out of hand. .. . Carl usually makes his point, and we make our point.”

If Madison has a weakness, McFadden says, it’s that he takes on too many problems instead of being more selective or delegating them to other people.

“The key to jobs like these are you can’t fight everybody. You’ve got to prioritize things. Sometimes it looks like he’s all over the board and sometimes picks the wrong fight,” McFadden says. “I think sometimes that hurts the organization in the sense that some people may wonder what’s really going on.”

Davenport says Madison has a natural interest in helping everyone on his own, which sometimes can work against him.

“I think that if I could give him some friendly advice, that’s what I would advise him to do – use more of the organization to do things for him. I’ve seen him just exhausted by trying to do everything,” he says. “To me, I see it as a weakness because in the long run he’s going to be run down, I think, before his time. He has to learn how to take it easy and how to delegate.”

For all the local chapter’s hard work and dedication, Madison speculates there likely will never be a day when the Springfield NAACP can conclude that its work is done here.

“Currently, the branch is so strong that we can take on any issue in the city of Springfield. With all the issues in the city, you’ve got to have a strong organization. You have other organizations, but the pure and simple fact is we’re the biggest and baddest on the block when it comes to dealing with civil rights issues and inequalities,” he says.

“But if we take a look at the societal aspect of our city, we’re light years from where we ought to be. I’d like to see, in my vision, where I’d be able to put the NAACP out of vision. I think that is the ultimate vision.”

Double-murder/suicide in Carlinville

Posted on by

setzekorn2

This is one of the first major crime stories I wrote. I will never forget seeing from Interstate 55 the black smoke curling into the sky from the home George Setzekorn set on fire 10 minutes after the school bus dropped off his 14-year-old daughter there.

3 die in Carlinville / Double murder, suicide suspected; house set afire
Wednesday, April 24, 2002

CARLINVILLE – George Setzekorn wanted his ex-wife back and resented her parents for allowing her to live with them, authorities said, speculating that is what prompted the man to set the couple’s house on fire, shoot and kill his ex-sister-in-law and then kill himself with the same gun Tuesday afternoon.

Dead are Setzekorn, 53, of Centralia, who also goes by the name George Young; his former sister-in-law, Janie Goesmann, 45; and a third person found in the basement of the burning home of Neal and Margaret House. That body was believed to be that of Setzekorn’s 14-year-old daughter, Skylar Young.

Skylar was seen getting off the school bus at the House residence about 10 minutes before the fire was reported.

Setzekorn’s ex-wife, Patricia Young, was not injured. The parents of Goesmann and Young, Neal, 78, and Margaret, 74, House were treated for smoke inhalation and released.

The Houses were taken to Carlinville Area Hospital, where they were treated for smoke inhalation. Stone said Goesmann’s husband and three children were not home at the time of the shooting.

The ordeal began at 3:38 p.m., when authorities received a report of a fire at the House residence, which is on Illinois 108 just east of Carlinville.

According to Carlinville Police Chief Steven Stone, an ambulance responding to the fire was waiting to make a turn near Boente’s Shell at Center and South streets when rescue personnel heard gun shots.

They searched the area and found Goesmann lying in the back yard of a house at 115 S. Center St. She had been shot in the head.

About that time, Setzekorn was seen running toward his car, which was parked near the Shell station. He got into it, pointed a gun at his head and shot himself, Stone said.

Goesmann and Setzekorn were taken to Carlinville Area Hospital about 4 p.m., where they died in the emergency room, a hospital official said.

Stone said evidence led authorities to believe Setzekorn set the House residence on fire. Patricia Young was living with her parents and was unharmed Tuesday. Stone was unsure how many children she had had with Setzekorn, but a family portrait showed them with two children.

“We have reason to believe this shooter had set the fire because he’d made threats before to cause trouble for Janie’s folks,” he said, adding that an order of protection had been filed to keep Setzekorn from his former family.

Setzekorn had a prior criminal record: Stone said he shot and killed another ex-wife, in northern Illinois about 15 years ago.

“It makes me wonder why he was out walking around,” Stone said.

Stone was unsure how long Setzekorn and Young had been divorced.

“I know it was since at least ’97 because that’s when it first came to our attention that he was a problem,” he said. “From what I understand, he wanted her back, and the family was helping her out, and he didn’t like that. He wanted her to be desperate and come back to him.”

Despite the order of protection being in place, Stone said the police had no record of Setzekorn causing trouble – beyond threats – prior to Tuesday.

“He never had a violation that we could hang our hat on,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I’ve never seen the man. I’ve only seen his picture.”

Goesmann was a registered nurse at Carlinville Area Hospital, where she worked primarily in the emergency room, said Art Knippel, the hospital’s director of administrative services.

Knippel was not sure what year Goesmann started working at the hospital but said she’d worked there for several years and had many friends.

It was the same emergency room where Goesmann was pronounced dead Tuesday.

Mayor Brad Demuzio, 37, cannot remember a murder happening in Carlinville since he was a child. The community was celebrated as a great place to live in the 1993 book “The 100 Best Small Towns in America” by Norm Crampton.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Demuzio said after hearing the news of the shootings.

A clerk who was working Tuesday night in Boente’s Shell station across the street from Janie Goesmann’s house said customers were coming in and talking about the shootings.

The clerk, who started work at 4 p.m., said he did not witness the shootings but had heard a passerby’s report of a man with a gunshot wound being pulled from a car. The car was on the street between the house and the Shell station on the corner of Center and South streets.

A patron of Rookie’s Tavern on the square, who asked to not be identified, said, “It’s a shock.”

“We’re a very small community. Everybody here is considered very close,” he said. “It touches everybody when this kind of thing happens. Everybody feels sorrow for the family. We wish them all well.”

Body found in refrigerator

Posted on by

The story of Paulleen Godoy, a homeless prostitute with no family locally, will always stick with me.

Paulleen was murdered and her body stashed in a nonfunctioning refrigerator on the city’s near west side in August 2002. It took local authorities weeks to track down her next of kin, a grandmother who lived in Washington state and could not come to Springfield to retrieve Godoy’s ashes or pay for a funeral.

Through Paulleen’s story I met a local woman named Margaret Best, a somewhat eccentric person who often took pity on those who live on the fringe of society. Margie quietly offered to pay for the funeral expenses to give Paulleen a proper funeral and burial. I went to the funeral, where several of Paulleen’s friends and acquaintances — prostitutes, homeless people and social service workers — showed up to pay their respects. There were flowers, a minister and a burial services for Paulleen’s ashes, thanks to Margie.

Margie lived alone, never married and had no children. She stepped forward an untold number of times with similar offers of money to pay for a funeral or at least make sure a lonely person had flowers at their funeral.

Margie died on Jan. 22, 2009. There were more people at Paulleen’s funeral than there were at Margie’s. I think she would have wanted it that way.

These are the stories I wrote about Paulleen’s murder:

Body found in refrigerator / Call brings police to garage on West Washington Street
Monday, Aug. 19, 2002

A badly decomposed body was found early Sunday inside a refrigerator in a West Washington Street garage, and authorities said the person might have been dead a month or more.

Authorities said the gender, race and approximate age of the person could not be determined because of the advanced decomposition. It also could not be determined whether there were wounds to the body.

Sangamon County Sheriff Neil Williamson said deputies received a call that there was a dead body in a refrigerator in a garage behind an apartment house at 814 W. Washington St. Deputies who went to the address at approximately 6 a.m. found the remains and alerted the Springfield Police Department.

Williamson said the two agencies are conducting a joint investigation of the death. Sangamon County Coroner Susan Boone said an autopsy was scheduled for today.

Williamson said the person apparently had been dead for some time.

“It appeared the body may have been there perhaps a month or so. It’s hard to say,” he said. “We have a lot more questions than we have answers right now. We’re moving backward in the investigation to try to backtrack to the people we need to talk to.”

It was not clear whether the body had been in the refrigerator much of the time or was placed there recently. Detectives were searching Sunday afternoon for a woman who was wanted for questioning in connection with the investigation.

The garage in which the body was found is on the east side of an alley that runs between Glenwood and State streets. Deputies taped off an area of driveway and overgrown yard behind the multi-unit apartment house.

There is another house just south of the apartment complex that has a front entry on the alley. The property where the body was found also is behind several homes on Glenwood Street.

A large, blue trash receptacle was inside the taped-off area. On Sunday, a parked patrol officer was guarding the crime scene.

A man who lives in an apartment building west of where the body was found said he first noticed police in the neighborhood around 7 a.m. when he was getting ready for church, but he said had no idea why they were there.

“I’ve been smelling something for a while, but I thought it was garbage. Obviously, I was wrong,” the neighbor said, adding that he did not know who owns the property where the body was found or who lives there.

“It’s a pretty good neighborhood,” the man said. “At least, that’s what I thought.”

No one answered the door at any of the apartments at 814 W. Washington St.

Another resident who lives nearby on Glenwood Street said several homes in the area have been converted into apartments, causing the neighborhood to become more transient.

He said people often use the alley where the body was found to get through the neighborhood.

The man also said the residents of a house at the corner of Washington and Glenwood were evicted recently. A wet mattress and other belongings were heaped in a pile near the sidewalk in front of the house Sunday.

Families await word from missing relatives / Body found in refrigerator raised fears
Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2002

When Linda Persinger read in the news two weeks ago that a badly decomposed body had been found inside a refrigerator on West Washington Street, she immediately feared it was that of her nephew, Duane Grant.

Grant turned 28 on Aug. 25. His family has not seen or heard from him since late November. Though he has an alcohol problem, according to his family, they say he has never wandered off for months at a time.

While the body in the refrigerator was not Grant’s, that has done little to allay his family’s worst fears.

“I thought, ‘That’s going to be my nephew. That’s going to be my nephew they pull out of that refrigerator,’” Persinger said, bursting into tears. “When you put something like that in the paper about somebody being found in a refrigerator, you don’t know what I went through. It was a relief when I found out it wasn’t Duane. I prayed to God that wasn’t my nephew.”

Persinger was not the only person who had fears about the body in the refrigerator, which turned out to be that of a Springfield woman named Paulleen Godoy. Authorities received numerous calls from people wondering if the body could have been that of a missing loved one.

As of last week, the Springfield Police Department had between 30 and 40 people on its missing persons list.

Missing persons remain on the list indefinitely until they are found or until someone calls police to say they’ve returned home.

“The number fluctuates daily as those who are missing come home and others are reported missing,” said police department spokesman Sgt. Kevin Keen.

The problem with reporting adults as missing, Keen said, is that adults are free to come and go as they please.

“We still treat every missing report as a valid and legitimate missing person. We actively pursue them,” he said. “We don’t list an adult as missing unless foul play is suspected or they have a diminished mental capacity.”

Police place more emphasis on looking for people who are considered “missing critical,” which includes children who have disappeared, people who might have met with foul play and those who are suicidal or who suffer from diminished mental capacity.

If police need to, they might ask television and radio stations to broadcast a description of the person. The police department also can make use of its “City Watch” system, which is a computer program that allows officers to call everyone in the area where the person was last seen.

For Persinger, the hope that police will find her nephew fades a little each day. She filed a missing persons report with police in February, but she hasn’t heard anything from authorities since then.

Police say there at least two outstanding warrants for Grant’s arrest, which could account for his disappearance. But Persinger said Grant never could stay away from his family for long and often came around for money.

“We still have his tax forms that he’s not come around to fill out. He would have gotten back a thousand bucks,” Persinger said.

In the meantime, she’s been checking homeless shelters and talking to people Grant knows. Most have been little help. In fact, she said, one person told her Grant is dead.

Grant is 5 feet 9 inches, 160 pounds, with blue eyes and brown hair. His last known address was the 200 block of Sangamon Avenue.

His family said they last saw him Nov. 30 at Big R, 2804 N. Dirksen Parkway. His sister gave him a ride to a cafe on North Grand Avenue, where he was supposed to have a job interview that day.

Funeral fund set up for victim / Body found in refrigerator one month ago
Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2002

A fund has been set up for donations to pay for a funeral service, burial site and headstone for a Springfield woman whose remains were found in a refrigerator one month ago.

No family members have come forth to claim the now-cremated remains of Paulleen Godoy, a 31-year-old prostitute who police believe was murdered. Authorities have had difficulty locating Godoy’s grandmother, who was last known to live in Eugene, Ore., or her ex-husband and daughter, who are believed to live somewhere in the Southwest.

Donations can be made to the Paulleen Godoy Memorial Fund at any branch of Marine Bank.

“Really, the purpose is to get her in the ground and get her a headstone,” said Paul Carlson, a retired counselor who knew Godoy because she and other street people used to stop in at his former office on South Eighth Street seeking food, money and other types of assistance.

Services will be announced but tentatively are set for later this month. Kirlin-Egan and Butler Funeral Home will handle the arrangements, Carlson said.

“She thought she was such an insignificant person. She really believed that. It wasn’t part of her game,” Carlson said. “She just really thought of herself as a nonentity in this world.”

Authorities had to use an enhanced fingerprinting process to positively identify Godoy, whose badly decomposed body was found early Aug. 18 stuffed into a refrigerator in a garage behind an apartment house in the 800 block of West Washington Street.

Authorities have refused to say how she was killed.

Robert Reynolds, 35, of the 900 block of North Eighth Street remains jailed on $50,000 bond for allegedly failing to register as a sex offender. Police have not called Reynolds a suspect in the Godoy murder, but they have said they wanted to talk to him as part of their investigation.

Reynolds reportedly lived in the house in front of the litter-strewn garage where Godoy’s body was found.

Springfield police said Tuesday they have no developments to report regarding their investigation of the murder.

Carlson said that Godoy, whose street name was “Spooky” and was called Paula by those who knew her, arrived in Springfield in either 1995 or 1996 on a bus from Florida after she had gotten into some kind of trouble there. He first met her in 1997 when he found her sleeping in the back of a van that was parked behind his office on Eighth Street.

Carlson said prostitutes, who have been known to frequent that area, often stopped in at his office seeking food or other types of help.

“I always told them if it’s cold outside, you can come in and have a cup of coffee as long as you don’t disrupt anything going on inside,” he said, adding that Godoy, who was homeless, made his office into her base of operation as far as getting phone messages from family members and leaving important documents there for safekeeping.

He said Godoy sometimes talked about her personal life with his office workers, and she once mentioned that her mother died of a heroin overdose when Godoy was 13. She went to live with her grandmother, eventually took up with a man named Fernando Godoy and gave birth to a daughter named Monica. Godoy apparently had no contact with her biological father, though she did attempt to contact him once while she was living in Springfield, Carlson said.

Godoy’s daughter was believed to be about 13 in 1998 and lived with her father, who may be American Indian and living on a reservation. Carlson said a girl named Monica called his office once looking for Godoy and left a phone number with a 602 area code but couldn’t be reached after that.

Godoy’s drug of choice was cocaine, though she was known to use many types of illegal substances, Carlson said.

“In her heart, I think she really wanted out of where she was at. But the demon that is cocaine had her,” he said. “She was like a sweet 13-year-old kid. She was very needy. There were moments when you got to see through the veil and see the real person.”

Carlson said he last saw Godoy in August 2001, but she called him on the telephone about once a month after that. Then the phone calls stopped.

“Paula was always scamming somebody. ‘Can I borrow 10 bucks? I’ll pay you back tonight.’ Writing bad checks. That’s how she lived her life, literally day to day,” he said. “And she had an interesting sense of humor. When she was straight, she was very funny.”

Carlson said he believes Godoy deserves a proper burial.

“My wish for Paula is that she is at peace now because she was always struggling to survive,” he said.

Van’s IGA destroyed by fire

Posted on by

vansigaforweb

I was working the night shift Aug. 23, 2001, and was on my way to a meeting in Enos Park when I heard some police scanner traffic about a fire on South Grand. Something about the tone of the dispatcher’s voice prompted me to head to South Grand to see what was going on.

As I got closer to South Grand, I began to see black smoke in the sky. By the time I parked and walked toward the Van’s IGA, a longtime neighborhood grocery store, large flames were shooting from the windows and firefighters were everywhere.

Photographer Kristen Schmid-Schurter and I stayed at the scene several hours and documented what was happening as firefighters battled the blaze. Store employees and neighbors could not believe what they were seeing.

Van’s IGA destroyed by fire / East side loses neighborhood grocery store
Friday, Aug. 24, 2001

Hundreds of Springfield residents watched in disbelief Thursday evening as a treasured neighborhood grocery store went up in flames.

Van’s IGA at 1230 South Grand Ave. E. was destroyed in the blaze, which began about 6:15 p.m. while eight to 10 employees and customers were inside.

All who were inside made it out of the building unhurt, but one Springfield firefighter was taken to St. John’s Hospital with minor injuries he suffered while battling the fire.

The fire apparently started in the back part of the roughly 20,000-square-foot building, according to Springfield Fire Department spokesman Greg Bestudik. Investigators were at the scene late Thursday, trying to determine the exact cause of the fire.

Anthony Milford, 15, a stock clerk who worked at the store about two months, was in the building when the fire began. He said he had swept to the back of one aisle and was shaking out his dust mop when he saw smoke coming through some vents above the meat counter.

“I dropped the mop and told Jean (Milford’s boss),” he said. “She threw me the keys and said, ‘Lock the front door.’ Then we all just ran out.”

A customer who was in the store when the fire began, who asked that his name not be used, said his aunt had sent him to Van’s shortly after 6 p.m. for soda, Kool Aid and some other items. He said he didn’t notice smoke in the building while he shopped for about 10 minutes.

“I was in there paying for the stuff,” the customer said. “Then a checker told me to get out of the store. I saw a fire. I dropped everything and took off. I even left my $20 bill on the counter.”

The store’s owner, Gary G. Van Hise of Riverton, was not at the scene when the fire began, but he arrived soon after. He watched helplessly from the southeast side of the property as firefighters tried to bring the blaze under control.

Van Hise, who has owned the store for seven years, said he was relieved everybody got out safely.

“It’s just an old building,” he said, declining to speculate on what may have started the fire.

When firefighters first arrived, smoke was billowing out the rear of the building. Battalion Chief Tom Faulkner said the first firefighters to arrive tried to battle the fire from inside the building for about 20 minutes.

“It erupted into a big ball of flames,” he said. Because of the heat and the threat of the roof falling in, firefighters worked from the outside.

Bestudik, who also was fighting the fire, said large ventilation fans on the roof fanned the flames.

“We tried to make entry. It was just way too hot,” he said. “This fire had a way far advanced head start on us.”

Adding to the challenge was a lack of water pressure coming from nearby hydrants. City Water Light and Power workers were able to boost the pressure in the area for firefighters, which Bestudik said helped a lot.

“That’s just the way it is with older mains,” he said. “We can only get so much water out of the pipe.”

The fire burned strong for three hours. It took firefighters about an hour and a half to get the blaze under control.

Large flames shot through the roof, and a series of explosions caused many bystanders to gasp and take several steps back from where they had been standing.

Two aerial trucks were at the scene, as well as six engines and other vehicles. Firefighters poured water into the building through the roof and in through a rear door.

The front of the building was built of brick. Two additions appear to have been built onto the structure, one of which was made of cinderblock and the other of wood. All the windows of the structure were broken out. Several plastic signs on the front of the building were damaged from the heat.

An orange glow inside the structure could be seen through the smoke that billowed out from the roof and exterior doors, windows and vents of the building.

About 30 firefighters were on the scene, and Bestudik said many would stay until this morning to keep an eye on the fire, which gutted the building and destroyed on all its contents.

Two firefighters had minor injuries, Faulkner said. Jay Lovelace, 44, was one of the first on the scene, and he injured his leg while laying a hose line out. He was taken to St. John’s Hospital and was treated and released. He later returned to the scene of the fire and was walking on crutches.

Bill Kruger, 41, pulled a muscle while he was inside the building fighting the fire. He did not immediately seek medical attention, Faulkner said.

Because of the intensity and duration of the fire, a five-person team from the American Red Cross arrived at the scene about 9 p.m. to provide water and snacks for firefighters. The workers also helped evacuate families from three houses in the 1400 block of Loveland Avenue whose houses either abutted or were very close to Van’s.

Clarence Moore, who lives in one of the evacuated houses, said his mother called him from work to tell him the store was on fire and that he should get his belongings out of the house.

The rear of Moore’s house shares a wall with the grocery building. He ran inside to bring out a suitcase full of clothing and a bag of golf clubs. He said he was not sure if the wall his house shares with the store is a firewall.

“My cousin, who’s a firefighter, told me it wasn’t hot,” he said. “There was a lot of smoke inside when I went in. By the third trip in, there really was not that much smoke. The firefighters were concerned about our house catching on fire. They turned their water hoses and concentrated on the back of our house.”

Moore’s grandmother, Blanche Taborn, lives next door and also was evacuated.

Mary Ogle with the Red Cross said Taborn was with her relatives nearby.

“We worked with her to make sure she had her medication with her, and she did,” Ogle said. “We’re working with the other two families that are still there. Right now we’re taking care of their emergency needs – making sure they have shelter, food vouchers for tomorrow and toiletries to get them through the night.”

None of the nearby structures was damaged, firefighters said.

Traffic was blocked much of Thursday night on South Grand from 11th Street to 15th Street. Police also blocked off parts of Brown and Pine streets and Loveland Avenue.

Bystanders said they could not believe the store, which had stood since about 1915 and been operated as Castor’s Supermarket, Kent’s IGA and Mr. B’s IGA, was destroyed.

“I was headed over here to get something to eat for supper,” a woman said. “I said, ‘Oh man! Mr. B’s is on fire!’ I just can’t believe it.”

Blaze guts Springfield grocery / Neighbors lose more than just a food store: ‘They were family’

Some loyal customers of Van’s IGA on South Grand Avenue cried as they watched a fire roll through the grocery store Thursday night.

Some approached store owner Gary Van Hise to offer words of support.

Others simply stared in disbelief as firefighters struggled to bring the blaze under control.

Rebecca Houston and her 9-year-old daughter, Steffany, watched from behind a line of police tape as thick, black smoke billowed hundreds of feet into the air.

“I’ve been coming here for 30 years. I’ve lived in this neighborhood since the store was Castor’s,” she said. “Anytime you needed anything, you could go to the IGA.”

Van’s IGA was one of Springfield’s few remaining neighborhood grocery stores. The building was gutted in the fire, and VanHise said he was unsure whether he would rebuild.

The building has a long history in Springfield and changed ownership numerous times.

The store originally opened May 15, 1915, as Castor’s Grocery Store. Owned by William F. Castor, the store was operated by three generations of the Castor family until it was sold in 1972 to Bob Kent. The store became Kent’s IGA.

From 1977 until 1994, the store was owned by Art Bennett, who changed the name to Mr. B’s. Van Hise then bought the business and changed the name to Van’s IGA.

With Van’s IGA gone, many residents of this east-central part of Springfield find themselves without convenient access to a grocery store. Many of Van’s customers do not have vehicles, and others who are older do not like to fight the crowds and traffic at Springfield’s larger grocery stores.

Besides selling affordable produce, meat, penny candy and other merchandise, the store also cashed payroll checks, took utility payments and made grocery deliveries to Springfield residents.

The store employed as many as 20 to 25 people.

Houston said the fire left a void that will be felt throughout the community.

“It’s going to mean a lot of people are going to Shop ‘n Save or Save-A-Lot, which is a great distance from here,” Houston said. “A lot of people will have to get cabs to get to the store. It’s a shame. This is widespread devastation here, especially for this neighborhood.”

Marqueta Stewart lives in the Van’s neighborhood also. Her sister works at the store and was inside working when the fire started. She and the other employees and customers got out of the store uninjured.

Stewart said she was at home and realized something was wrong when she heard fire truck sirens. She looked out her back door, saw the lights and went to see what was wrong.

Stewart said she often stopped in at the store in the morning on her way to work. “I always grab chips or a snack and say hi to everybody. They were like a family.”

Wiping tears from her eyes, Stewart said people kept asking her why she was crying.

“I just can’t believe it’s gone,” she said. “Tomorrow I’ll probably get up and say, ‘I gotta run over to the IGA’ without even thinking.”

The fight for Enos Park

Posted on by

historicenospark2

In 2001, about two months after I started working at The State Journal-Register, my editor asked me and a few other reporters to work on a package of stories about the struggling, historic Enos Park neighborhood just north of downtown Springfield.

I was the lead reporter and worked for about six months with photographer Kristen Schmid-Schurter documenting the neighborhood, its people, its challenges and its future.

We talked to a lot of residents, determined to preserve their neighborhood from criminals and absentee landlords and make it a safe, attractive place for people to raise families and grow old. We also investigated the number of boarded-up homes in the neighborhood, the police department’s attention to the area, the neighborhood association’s no-holds-barred approach and the history of Enos Park.

The result was a week-long series (Dec. 16-23, 2001) called “The Fight for Enos Park.”

Life in Enos Park / Putting the neighborhood back together

Buddy and Dawn Smith always thought their ideal neighborhood would be a small, modern, middle-class subdivision. Instead, they found their dream home in the heart of Springfield’s Enos Park neighborhood.

“I look over there (at the subdivision) now and I don’t even feel the same way,” Dawn said as she relaxed in her spacious two-story Victorian home in the 1100 block of North Fourth Street. “I look over at those houses and I think, ‘Those aren’t even in the same league as my house.’ ”

Just two blocks from the Smiths, another young Enos Park resident recalls having the same sense of pride in the neighborhood when his family moved into a similar home in 1998.

After three years, though, Dale Logerquist’s enthusiasm ran its course. Tired of fighting off drug dealers and worried about his family’s safety, the Logerquists sold their home in September.

“Raising a kid around here, that is not right,” he said. “If anything happens to my girl, there’s only one person to blame, and that’s me because I stayed in the neighborhood.”

There is a revolution going on in Enos Park, but the battle is not for everyone. Smith and Logerquist are just two of the faces: One has chosen to take on the neighborhood’s enemies; the other has decided enough is enough. There are many others similar to both of them.
Continue reading →