By CRISTINA TRAPANI-SCOTT

CLINTON — Clinton High School graduates Elspeth and Kylista Geiger gave a final plea to Clinton Board of Education members to change the school’s mascot during the public comment portion of the regular meeting held Monday. “I want to focus specifically on how it creates disrespect for the people it’s supposed to be honoring,” Elspeth told the board as she read to them of how the origin of the adoption of Native American names as mascots was not done to honor Native Americans, but came as a result of stereotypical images propagated from movies and stories of non-native origin. Kylista followed her sister in making a final argument, saying the use of the mascot is discriminatory and over-simplifies the meaning behind the names.

Both women, who are of Native-American descent, began a petition drive in early October in hopes of getting the mascot issue before the board. Supt. David Pray gave the Geiger sisters the petition stipulating that 40 percent of the signatures needed to be in favor of changing the mascot name in order for it to be placed on the board agenda at the November regular meeting. The petition signatures, tallied earlier this month, showed more than 90 percent in favor of keeping Redskin as Clinton Community Schools mascot.

by DEB WUETHRICH

When you ask a veteran what it was like to have served in Vietnam, you have to be prepared for a response of the senses — what they saw, how it smelled, and the sounds they heard. They saw what might have been a pretty, mountainous country were it not for the danger lurking everywhere. Rain and clouds were heavy companions at times.

“I had to know when I left my hootch how many steps it was to where I worked because it was raining so hard, I couldn’t see,” said Kent Naugle, who was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1966 between his junior and senior year of college.

Joe Caterina, who joined the Marines in 1967, clearly recalls an experience of the senses when he got off the plane in DaNang the following July.

“It felt like walking into a furnace that smelled like manure,” he said.
Both men remember sounds such as the screaming of rockets overhead or an artillery barrage during a raid.

“You definitely wanted to know where the bunker was,” said Kent. He was there during the 1968 Tet offensive. Though their experiences are different with Kent serving with the 108th Artillery Group stationed mainly at a Firebase in Dong Ha, and Joe conducting search and destroy missions with the 2nd Batallion 9th Marines near the DMZ, the veterans share some common bonds, including one notable one — they are hesitant even today to talk of their experiences.

“It’s a lot different than people who haven’t been there perceive it,” said Kent. “It’s hard to describe that feeling; you don’t know if you’re going to be alive the next minute or not. An artillery round could come in. It’s a whole feeling nobody could understand without having been there.”

By DEB WUETHRICH

 The Tecumseh School Board accepted a proposal from Foresite Design, Inc. on Monday night, authorizing the development of a contractual agreement for professional design and construction management services for an athletic complex to be located at Tecumseh High School. Board member Jason Sines opposed the resolution.

 “I just think that there are options still on the table,” Sines said following the meeting. “I’m just concerned that [with this vote] we are going in one direction.”

During a presentation outlining the proposal Wright pointed out that Bruce Lemons the owner of Foresite Design, is a landscape architect from Hudson and his niche is designing playgrounds and athletic fields. The proposal covered design and construction management for the proposed athletic complex to be located at the high school with the scope of the work to include the development of a new stadium, an eight-lane track, a synthetic turf field to accommodate football, soccer and lacrosse and grandstands with press box, sports/field lighting, fencing, walkways and an entry plaza. The total cost for the proposal is not expected to exceed $2,100,000, with funding for the project to come from the district capital projects fund, an installment purchase agreement, and from potential competitive grants and fundraising efforts.

Phase 1 would be for soil borings, a topographic survey and preliminary design drawings. Phase 2 would include construction documents and bidding. Phase 3 would be for construction administration, and Phase 4 for actual construction management. The district may have to adjust its plans not to provide a restroom until later. Due to Michigan codes requiring the restrooms with certain types of projects, Wright said specs were being developed. An actual contract with Foresite is yet to be approved by the school board.

Author and former Tecumseh resident Pam McCombs is living the experiences she writes about in her book, A Walk with Boppa — A Portrait of Early Stage Alzheimer’s. When her father was diagnosed with the disease in 2004, McCombs and her family experienced a host of emotions and challenges. Her philosophy in writing the book, she says, was to juxtapose light humor against the stark realism of factual information and the honesty of personal journal entries, while also utilizing her love for photography to juxtapose the beauty of nature and her father’s love of birds against the distortion of Alzheimer’s that she saw taking place in her dad.

McCombs presented details from the book at a special gathering Tuesday evening at the Tecumseh Community Center. Tecumseh Place provided refreshments for the event. She said her own journey — and that of her sisters, and brother — involved learning as much as possible about the disease while taking steps that had to be taken to help her father, whose condition was clearly deteriorating, especially after the family discovered his erratic behavior in entering a number of sweepstakes and actually sending money to claim prizes he supposedly had won. Those steps involved getting a medical evaluation,    
bringing him north from Florida, and settling him into an independent living community.

General Election results

Following what seemed like one of the longest campaign seasons ever, Democrat Barack Obama will be heading to the White House. In what several have termed a “gracious” concession speech at approximately 11:30 Tuesday evening, Republican John McCain offered his support to his president and asked others to do the same.

Results provided by the Tecumseh City Clerk’s office show that Obama also won Tecumseh, with 2,571 votes for him and Vice-Presidential candidate Joseph Biden, and 2,001 votes for McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin. Obama also won Lenawee County with 24,638 votes vs. McCain/Palin’s 22,223 votes.

By DEB WUETHRICH

Parents and guardians of students in the Tecumseh Public Schools soon may be able to receive automatic alerts through a new program recently approved by the Tecumseh School Board. Honeywell Instant Alert™for Schools, a web based communication service designed to provide schools with a way to rapidly, effectively and accurately reach families of students in an emergency, is scheduled to be activated by December. The cost is based on the number of students enrolled, with an estimated $5,833 per year to be expended over the three-year contract.

Parents/guardians would provide E-mail, phone or text-message information to the district and receive an automatic alert for emergencies such as bomb threats, power failures, and snow days. They may also sign up to receive additional notices such as early dismissal announcements, late buses, parent teacher conference reminders, and other notifications.