Roswell Daily Record THE VOICE OF THE PECOS VALLEY
Vol. 120, No. 116 50¢ Daily / $1 Sunday
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ENMU-R graduates 400 at Wool Bowl
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Rep. Ron Paul announced Friday that he will run for the GOP nomination for president in 2012, the third attempt for the man known on Capitol Hill as “Dr. No” for his enthusiasm for bashing runaway spending and government overreach. “Time has come around to the point where the people are agreeing with much ... - PAGE A7
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EMILY RUSSO MILLER RECORD STAFF WRITER
PAUL TOSSES HAT IN RING
May 14, 2011
Mark Wilson Photo
ENMU-R graduates Dara Sanders and Sam Chaves shield their eyes from the late evening sun at the Wool Bowl, Friday.
It was nothing but pomp and circumstance for the 400-plus students graduating at the Easter n New Mexico University-Roswell 55th Commencement Convocation, Friday evening at the Wool Bowl. Under blue skies between the 30-yard lines, some 300 ENMU-R students moved the tassels on their graduation caps from the right to the left side, as is tradition, to symbolize the transition from candidate
to graduate. Also participating in the ceremony were 13 students from ENMU in Portales, who received bachelor’s degrees and nine who received master’s degrees; 35 students from New Mexico Highlands University, who earned master’s degrees in social work; and about 16 cadets from the New Mexico Youth ChalleNGe Academy, who received certificates of employability. “We’re here to celebrate you, our students, soon to be our graduates,” Dr. Martyn Clay, provost for aca-
demic and student affairs at ENMU-R, told the sea of silver gowns in his opening remarks. “This graduation ceremony is a major milestone in your lives, and you’ll soon move on to the next steps in your continuing education or your chosen career.” Before the presentation of diplomas and conferring of degrees, student speaker Irma L. Acosta congratulated her fellow graduates for completing such an arduous task.
22 NMMI cadets receive gold bars, Friday
See ENMU-R, Page A3
MATTHEW ARCO RECORD STAFF WRITER
Two years of hard work, a sense of duty and commitment culminated with a single salute for 22 New Mexico Military Institute cadets, Friday. The group of young men and women received their first salutes as second lieutenants during the Institute’s Ar my ROTC Commission Ceremony. “After all that work, it was relieving,” said 2nd Lt. John Warren, referring to the moment of being commissioned. “We’re really proud of each other,” he said, adding that the years leading up to the moment were met with hard work and dedication. “(It’s been) a lot of MRE’s and sleepless nights.” Warren was joined by his fellow former cadets,
Mark Wilson Photo
New Mexico Military Institute cadets take their commissioning oaths during the Army ROTC Commissioning Ceremony held Friday morning at the campus chapel.
You’re getting a US visa! Not! Economy shortens trust funds’ lives See NMMI, Page A3
PANTHERS SEND GHS HOME
ALBUQUERQUE — The Goddard baseball team’s run through the NMAA Class 4A State Championship came to an abrupt end in the state semifinals on Friday at the hands of the second-seeded Piedra Vista Panthers. The Panthers pounded out 21 runs off of a combination of four Rocket pitchers and handed the sixth-seeded Rockets a 21-10 setback in five innings at Lobo Field on the campus of the University of New Mexico. - PAGE B1
WASHINGTON (AP) — Jackpot! Not so fast. For a few joyful days, more than 20,000 people around the world thought they literally had hit the lottery and won a chance to come and live legally in the United States. Oops, the State Department said Friday, we had computer problems and have to run the annual visa lottery again. The decision reopens
competition for 50,000 wild-card visas for people who otherwise would have little hope of qualifying. About 15 million had applied, so it’s good news for many people who thought they had lost. But the glitch, which the State Department blamed on an in-house programming error, dashes the hopes of people like Max, a 28-year-old German man. He had recently checked a
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The bad economy has shortened the life of the trust funds that support Social Security and Medicare, the nation’s two biggest benefit programs, the government reported Friday. The annual checkup
said that the Medicare hospital insurance fund will now be exhausted in 2024, five years earlier than last year’s estimate. The new report says that the Social Security trust fund will be exhausted in
Spillway to open to save Baton Rouge, The Big Easy
TODAY’S • William S. (Bill) Coffey • Drusilla Macias • Jess Thompson - PAGE A7
department website and found what he’d hoped for: Out of a random drawing with overwhelmingly long odds, he was one of the lucky few who might get one of the visas. “It’s like you won $100,000, and then they just take it away from you and it’s gone,” said Max, who would give only his first name for fear that full
AP Photo
A secondary levee protecting 10,000 acres of farmland at Bunches Bend in East Carroll Parish, La., failed Friday.
See VISA, Page A3
LAKE PROVIDENCE, La. (AP) — In an agonizing trade-off, Army engineers said they will open a key spillway along the bulging Mississippi River as early as today and inundate thousands of homes and farms in parts of Louisiana’s Cajun country to avert a potentially bigger disaster in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. About 25,000 people and 11,000 structures could be in har m’s way when the gates on the Morganza
spillway are unlocked for the first time in 38 years. “Protecting lives is the No. 1 priority,” Army Corps of Engineers Maj. Gen. Michael Walsh said aboard a boat from the river at Vicksburg, Miss., hours before the decision was made to open the spillway. The opening will release a torrent that could submerge about 3,000 square miles under as much as 25 feet of water in some areas but take the pressure off the downstream levees pro-
See ECONOMY, Page A3
tecting New Orleans, Baton Rouge and the numerous oil refineries and chemical plants along the lower reaches of the Mississippi. Engineers feared that weeks of pressure on the levees could cause them to fail, swamping New Orleans under as much as 20 feet of water in a disaster that would have been much worse than Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Instead, the water will
Trey Nesselrodt: Father, community leader, pioneer, visionary
See FLOOD, Page A3
JONATHAN ENTZMINGER RECORD STAFF WRITER
Jonathan Entzminger Photo
Trey Nesselrodt
The Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620. About 200 years later, the Nesselrodt family set down roots in Roswell, where it remains to this day. “I was born in Virginia, and our family has been a pioneering family here (in Roswell) since the late 1800s,” Trey Nesselrodt, director of operations at Nesselrodt Heating and Cooling, said. “This is my town. I have a long-term commitment to it. This is where we’re from.” Nesselrodt, in the spirit of his family and tradition, is a craftsman
who spends his days making analytical decisions about business, heating and cooling, landscaping and anything that he can put his mind to. But most important, he is a father, husband and man of the community. However, the Trey Nesselrodt of today is a man who has lived through many different experiences. He’s a father of four children
ages 4 through 12. He called parenting “not easy,” but also not difficult, if one maintains a stronghold as a committed father. “I learn a lot from my kids. I learn the innocence of learning,” he said. “There’s nothing easy about it. There’s joy. The joy comes easy and See SPOTLIGHT, Page A3