• Food pantries always need help, not just at the holidays

• Last F-16 leaves Springfield airport

• Day after the CWLP plant explosion

• An inside look at Dallman 4 construction

• Ursuline Academy named an endangered property

• Anti-war protest in downtown Springfield

• Family loses two children in camping accident

• CWLP plant explosion

• Mystery snake invades Lake Springfield

• Like father, like daughter

• City police lose their ‘matriarch’ with a heart of gold

• Fleet weak - SPD mechanics on the job

• Black and blue: The history of black Springfield police officers

• City refuses to disclose hiring data

• Mayor Tim Davlin reflects on first year in office

Last fall I started hearing rumblings about food pantries in Springfield running low on food long before Thanksgiving hit. In October I began chatting with some of the local pantries, and sure enough, supplies were running low, even as the need was going up as people struggled with the realities of a recession. The result was this story and a lesson learned — food pantries can use our help all year long, not just during the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons. In addition to the story, I compiled a list of all the food pantries in Springfield and the surrounding counties so readers could at a glance find a pantry to help. I also included tips for organizing a food drive.

Supplies tight at local food pantries

Oct. 26, 2009

On Friday, some shelves at Kumler Outreach Ministries’ food pantry on Springfield’s north end were empty.

There was no canned fruit, spaghetti noodles, chili, or pork and beans. There were four jars of peanut butter, some jelly, several bags of corn flakes and Ramen noodles, loaves of bread and a few heads of cabbage, as well as some other supplies. The freezer was stocked with bags of frozen corn, individually wrapped tilapia filets and other foods.

Tight food supplies have become the rule, not the exception, all around central Illinois. Food-pantry coordinators say they are seeing more new faces in a tough economy and are concerned about their ability to help.

Some report donations are down, while others [...] Read the rest of this entry »

The last F-16 assigned to Springfield’s 183rd Tactical Fighter Wing thundered into the air Sept. 23, 2008, and then circled back over the base to make a final pass. With the plane’s departure at 9:36 a.m., the unit’s 60-year tradition of flying fighters out of Springfield ended.

Springfield Mayor Tim Davlin and City Water, Light and Power general manager Todd Renfrow talk about the power plant explosion the day after it happened. The explosion was Nov. 10, 2007; this news conference was convened Nov. 11, 2007.

A group of men and women protest on the five-year anniversary of the war in Iraq.

The camping accident that killed two young Springfield children in July 2008 is by far the most tragic, emotion-filled story I’ve ever covered. It took all I had to report on this accident, primarily because my two boys were the same ages as the Stuebs children.

I wrote a series of stories about what happened — straight-line winds knocked over a tree onto the Stuebs family’s camping tents, killing two of their children — and cried my way through all of them. As a result of the news coverage, people from all over began donating money and having fund-raisers to help the family with medical bills. The response was overwhelming.

I think everyone was shocked by what happened to the family and realized the same thing could happen to any of us and our loved ones at any time. There wasn’t much else people could do to help in this terribly helpless situation, so they prayed and donated whatever they could, hoping it might help ease the parents’ pain.

Family in shock waits to see if daughter will live / Funeral plans for son on hold while parents try to cope
July 23, 2008

Four-year-old Dustin Stuebs loved his new Spiderman shoes, riding his bicycle and going to school on the bus. He had reached the age where his personality was taking shape, family members said Tuesday.

The Springfield preschooler’s life [...] Read the rest of this entry »

I will never let my good friend and colleague Amanda Reavy forget how I filled in for her the night of Nov. 10, 2007.

It started out as a routine night in the newsroom. Mike Kienzler, who was the dayside Metro editor, was filling in for someone as well.

The first sign something was up: the lights flickered. Then came the 911 dispatcher’s voice over the police scanner — there’d been reports of an explosion at the City Water, Light and Power plant. I packed up my stuff and sped over to Stevenson Drive, calling my husband at home to tell him what was being reported and urging him to get out candles and matches just in case.

The first thing I saw near the power plant was lots of flashing emergency vehicle lights. But the thing I’ll always remember most vividly was what I heard. It sounded like a huge, loud jet engine was whining over the plant.

No one was injured in the explosion, thank goodness.

Explosion at CWLP / No injuries reported, but damage appears severe
Nov. 11, 2007

City Water, Light and Power’s main power plant was severely damaged Saturday night by a series of explosions and a spectacular fire.

The blast - one large explosion followed by about a dozen smaller ones - occurred about 6:50 p.m. No one was injured, and the oil- and wind-fed fire was extinguished by 10 p.m.

“There is a lot of [...] Read the rest of this entry »

The things I learned about snakes living on the shores of Lake Springfield while reporting on this story make me want to, well, stay away from Lake Springfield.

This was a fun distraction from crime reporting. They never did find the monster snake.

Snake in the lake / Unusual sighting intrigues officials, experts
June 25, 2007

Rumor has it, there’s sssomething suspicious ssswimming in Lake Ssspringfield.

But experts don’t believe there’s any reason to be alarmed.

In April, a woman who lives near Lake Springfield snapped a very Loch Ness-quality photo of what appears to be a large, yellow-colored snake in the water near the rocky shoreline.

The photo shows the snake’s head sticking out of the water and its body beneath.

Rumors have been swirling about the photo and exactly what kind of serpent is pictured. Some have speculated it is a python, but most seem to believe it is some kind of water snake that lives in the lake.

No one else has seen the snake, or at least had the presence of mind to take a photo if they did. As a result, City Water, Light and Power officials have no way of determining if the snake is something one would expect to find in Lake Springfield, or if it is something that doesn’t belong there.

Even snake experts are puzzled, mainly because there are only two photographs and the quality of them is too poor to make a positive identification.

“It’s tough. I really can’t tell what it is,” said Chris Phillips, a snake expert with [...] Read the rest of this entry »

In June 2006 I was able to profile Gerry Castles and his daughter Rikki Castles-Zajicek, the Springfield Police Department’s first father-daughter cops. My favorite quote is when Gerry told me about seeing his daughter in her uniform for the first time and he flashed back to when she used to dress up in his uniform as a child.

The photo, taken by former SJ-R intern Dave Albers, is a favorite of mine, too. I love how Gerry is all buttoned up and seasoned-looking, and Rikki is young and fresh-faced.

Like father, like daughter / Two Springfield police officers form first pairing of its kind
June 18, 2006

Springfield police officer Gerry Castles was taken aback the first time he saw his daughter, Rikki, in a police uniform.

“It was as if, ‘Why are you playing dress-up in my uniform again?’” he recalled thinking when he saw her standing with other cadets at graduation from the police training academy. “There’s just an overwhelming sense of pride. It’s really crazy. It’s strange, and I like it.”

Gerry Castles and his 25-year-old daughter, Rikki Castles-Zajicek, have the distinction of being the first father-daughter officers with the Springfield Police Department. There have been numerous fathers, sons and brothers on the force at the same time, but this is the first time the department has had a father and daughter, according to police officials.

Police work runs in the Castles family - Rikki married Springfield police officer Tim Zajicek on [...] Read the rest of this entry »

It gave me great joy to be able to write a touching and well-received farewell piece about Springfield police officer Brenda Thompson, who died unexpectedly in April 2006.

City police lose one of their best-known / Death ends Brenda Thompson’s long career
April 6, 2006

Springfield police officer Brenda Thompson, a highly regarded member of the force for 27 years, died late Tuesday at St. John’s Hospital after a series of medical complications, friends and family members said.

Thompson, who turned 50 last month, had the highest seniority of any officer in the Springfield Police Department, based on the number of years she worked there.

She joined the force in February 1979 and worked as: a patrol officer; a Drug Awareness and Resistance Education, or DARE officer; Crime Stoppers coordinator from 1994 to 1999; crime prevention officer; and organizer of the department’s Neighborhood Watch and Beat Cop programs. She also worked in the narcotics section, was a field training officer and was a member of the department’s honor guard.

“She was kind of the matriarch of our department. What a wonderful woman,” said Sgt. Pat Ross, who knew Thompson for years.

“You can’t explain or put into words how much an individual like Brenda is going to be missed. I was asked how do you replace a Brenda Thompson. Well, you don’t. She was probably the most widely liked person down here. She just had a heart of gold. She was an outstanding officer and had inside [...] Read the rest of this entry »

One behind-the-scenes aspects of the Springfield Police Department is its mechanics. A police official back in 2005 suggested I do a story on the state of the department’s patrol cars. Floors were rusting out, engines had a huge number of miles on them and interiors were falling apart.

In tough economic times, replacing police patrol cars is nearly impossible for local governments. Springfield was supposed to have a five-year plan for rotating cars in and out, but it had not adhered to the plan. At the time of this story, the department had not gotten new patrol cars in five years.

I spent an afternoon at the department’s garage and was struck by how hard the mechanics work and how creative they could be with replacing parts and making do with what was on hand.

Fleet weak / Police mechanics forced to improvise to keep aging cars on road
Oct. 3, 2005

If you can imagine a flock of buzzards picking at a pile of bones, then it’s not much of a stretch to visualize what the Springfield Police Department’s mechanics do every day.

A row of seven retired Chevrolet Caprices and Ford Crown Victorias are lined up in a corner of the garage property on Singer Avenue. They’re squad cars that, just since June, have been deemed no longer safe for officers to drive, primarily because of rust problems.

They will be joined by five more by March, mechanics estimate.

The cars are dead in [...] Read the rest of this entry »

My editor in 2005 asked me to research and write about the history of black officers in the Springfield Police Department. The assignment stemmed from ongoing claims of racial discrimination and bias within the department and the civil lawsuits stemming from those allegations.

I spent no less than six months researching the topic. I pored through reels of microfilm of old city newspapers, picked up books on the history of the city, spent hours at the Sangamon Valley Collection and interviewed several retired and current black officers.

Black and Blue / African-American officers struggling with racial divisions in the Springfield Police Department is nothing new.
Sept. 4, 2005

Ask Harry Draper about his 25 years with the Springfield Police Department, and he’ll regale you for hours with tales of solved murder cases, department politics and officer shenanigans.

He’ll reach into his front pants pocket and show you the badge he still carries around, even though he’s been retired since 1981.

His eyes get a little misty when he recalls the day in 1963 when he was the only black officer chosen to guard Martin Luther King Jr., who spoke at an AFL-CIO convention at the Illinois State Armory.

But not all of Draper’s memories are fond ones. When he joined the police force, even though the modern civil rights movement was gaining momentum, racism was overt and accepted among Springfield officers. Many black officers agree that the discrimination they experienced was far worse among their [...] Read the rest of this entry »

In 2004, the city of Springfield claimed to be making strides in hiring more minority employees; however, it refused to provide the documentation to back up the claim, even though it was submitted to a governmental agency.

When the city did finally release the reports, they were heavily redacted — in spite of a state attorney general’s directive that the reports are considered public record. I wrote a series of stories about the issue and attempts to obtain the documents through FOIA.

City declines to reveal gender, racial data / County judge to decide if reasoning is right
Sept. 3, 2004

The city of Springfield has declined to make public data it compiles every other year for the federal government about the gender and racial makeup of the city workforce, saying it amounts to confidential personnel information.

It will be up to a Sangamon County judge to decide if that reasoning is right.

City attorney Jenifer Johnson and Mayor Tim Davlin refused to disclose the data, which was requested Aug. 23 by the legal assistant to Benton attorney Courtney Cox, who represents black police officers suing the city for racial discrimination.

The assistant, Judy Carson, filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking “copies of all documents in the possession of the City of Springfield which reflect the race, gender and/or national origin of current and/or past employees … including all EEO reports, Labor Force Analysis and EEO Utilization Analysis for each period for which such records have been kept.”

The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission oversees [...] Read the rest of this entry »

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 [...] Read the rest of this entry »