UL coverage of the 197th FIB, March 2011

Trinity: Division I champs

School budget

Hanover defeated for state title | Page D1

Meeting tonight | Page B1 “There is nothing so powerful as truth”

MANCHESTER EDITION 8

DANIEL WEBSTER

UnionLeader.com

Monday, March 14, 2011

Vol. 148, No. 298 • 40 Pages • 50 Cents

It’s not the presents, but the prayers

1st Lt. Emily Paige Riordan of Derry is the officer in charge of contracting and project management at the LSA in Kuwait.

From the folks back home: Soldiers say they’re grateful to be so wellprovided for, and ask for our prayers.

.

Cpl. Christopher Ross, 21, of Gilmanton Iron Works, is taking online classes through Lakes Region Community College.

NEW HAMPSHIRE

By SHAWNE K. WICKHAM

support they’re getting during their deployment.

And they want folks to IN know they have everything LSA, KUWAIT — Hey New they need, even out here Hampshire: They feel your in the desert: There’s Inlove. ternet and cable TV, a gym Members of the New Hampshire Army National Guard’s 3643rd to work out in, a PX to buy whatever they Brigade Support Battalion stationed in KuVSee Kuwait, Page A8 wait say they’ve been overwhelmed by the

GUARD

New Hampshire Sunday News

SHAWNE WICKHAM PHOTO

SHAWNE WICKHAM PHOTO

Crisis called Japan’s worst since WW II

RAISING FINANCIAL LITERACY

Nuclear nightmare:

.

Explosion reported at Unit 3 of threatened complex on eastern coast.

By TAIGA URANAKA and KI JOON KWON Reuters

The stakes are high Students need skills to navigate a more complex society than their parents faced Part 1 in a series.

By DENIS PAISTE New Hampshire Union Leader

MANCHESTER

H

IGH UNEMPLOYMENT rates and a record-breaking round of bankruptcies and foreclosures present today’s high school students with a world very different from the one in which their parents grew up.

And that makes financial literacy education more pressing than ever, according to Daniel N. Hebert, regional director of the all-volunteer New Hampshire JumpStart Coalition.

Changes in how we save for retirement, pay for health care and finance our homes have made the world of money more complex

Abby...............................B7 Business..................... C1-4 Classified ................. B9-12 Comics .........................D10 Crosswords ................... D9 Editorials........................A6

Entertainment ........... D11 Lifestyles .......................B7 Notices .B5, B8, C5-7, D8-9 Obituaries ......................B4 Sports ........................ D1-7 Television.....................D11

A Small Prayer

Today’s Chuckle

One step toward You, Lord, is one step closer to Heaven. Amen

If the economy doesn’t get better soon, bank presidents are going to have to start curtailing their Wednesday golf games.

New Hampshire Union Leader ©2011 Union Leader Corp., Manchester, N.H.

" 6OJPO -FBEFS 4FSJFT VInside: Sophomores in Kara Bernard’s

economics class at Central High School already feel the need for financial literacy skills. Read how her students grapple with savings, investments, and how to shop wisely. — Page C1 VNext week: Part 2 in the series looks

at social media, and how those in business and financial education are using it to reach today’s youths. — Next Monday

VSee Literacy, Page A8

VSee Japan, Page A2

Who will shed a tear for old city incinerator?

It’s scheduled THERE ARE to be taken down TIMES when the next month — the demolition of a soaring, 135-foot city landmark red-brick chimcan make folks John Clayton ney included get understand— and for those ably misty — I’m poor souls who thinking here of once worked landmarks like the Notre Dame Bridge or Our Lady there, it will be an act akin to the of Perpetual Help church — but I dismantling of Dante’s Inferno.

The incinerator seemed like a doubt anyone is going to shed a tear over the razing of the city incineraVSee Clayton, Page A2 tor.

Today IN NEW HAMPSHIRE’S NEWSPAPER BUSINESS

The new YouTube Once derided as Google’s money-losing folly, YouTube is emerging as a model for a more nimble, faster-paced Google. VPage C1

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Hooksett disks close beaches As Massachusetts closes several beaches, Hooksett officials are estimating that hundreds of thousands of disks were discharged from their wastewater treatment plant. VPage A5

Mom, 3 children sought An Arizona woman who made national headlines

last year for her part in a scandal involving the thenmajority leader of the Utah House of Representatives is wanted by authorities after failing to return her three children to their father in Derry after a weekend visit. VPage B1

NATION/WORLD

Wisconsin battle spreads The passage of a law stripping away collective bargaining rights for public-sector workers has touched off a much larger political battle. VPage B3

Pain pill abuse plagues state Kentucky’s drug woes persist; the state is ranked at or near the top in its level of prescription pain pill abuse. VPage B9

In the City

NCHEST A

ER

REGULAR FEATURES

> V > Ê ÌiÀ>VÞ

for individuals over the past two decades, said Hebert, 55, a former banker.

For example, saving for retirement in your own 401(k) plan requires a lot more personal management than leaving the worry about your retirement to fund managers under a traditional retirement, or defined benefit, plan.

“Now, it’s all about you,” said Hebert. “You have to take care of your own investments. You have to know who’s got your mortgage.”

“You have to take more control, and how are you going to do that if you don’t have the education, the knowledge, behind you? It’s a much more financially complex world today than it was when we were teenagers, and we’ve got to know,” he said.

REUTERS

An injured child sleeps at a Japanese Red Cross hospital Sunday after being evacuated from the area hit by a tsunami in Ishinomaki. Millions of people are without water, electricity or heat.

M

THOMAS ROY/UNION LEADER

Kara Bernard, economics teacher at Central High School in Manchester, conducts a money game for her sophomore students. Bernard said, “I found, teaching this, the parents get involved with their children much more often ... parents go online with them ... they point out things on the news. I get e-mails from parents.”

FUKUSHIMA, Japan — A hydrogen explosion reportedly ripped through another reactor Sunday night at the Japanese nuclear plant where a reactor exploded Saturday, deepening a crisis government officials are calling the worst the nation has faced since World War II. TV Asahi reported that the explosion at Unit 3 of the Fukushima Daiichi Plant, which officials had warned could happen after Unit 1 exploded on Saturday.

The news came as Japanese

NH

03108

U S A

Today’s Letters: Page A7

MORE HOCKEY

Division III: Somersworth Somersworth players celebrate Sunday after defeating Kennett for the state championship.

VPage D7

Page A8 • NEW HAMPSHIRE UNION LEADER • Monday, March 14, 2011

“Virtual Quest” Offers 10 iPads

Kuwait Continued From Page A1 need, a brand new mess hall and “Fat Alley” with familiar American fast-food if they get a craving.

“The only thing you’re missing from home is home,” said Sgt. Jason Burpee of Hooksett.

“There’s food to get fat off, extracurricular activities at night, concerts ... If you’re bored here, it’s your own fault.”

“I’m spoiled rotten,” said 1st Sgt. Jason Augustus of Milton. “I feel like it’s my birthday every week with the packages I get.”

He just got a $50 award from a New Hampshire chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. He’s going to spend the money to buy flags to fl y over the camp and send them to the battalion’s supporters back home.

Flexible fighting force About 40 members of the 3643rd, part of the 197th Fires Brigade, are here running a base called the Life Support Area, about an hour west of Kuwait City.

It’s adjacent to the Ali Al Salem Air Force Base where all the troops going in and out of the military theater are funneled. As many as 8,000 people move through the base in the course of a week.

Augustus, 40, is the noncommissioned officer in charge of billeting, providing housing both for the troops stationed here permanently and those staying here temporarily as they head in and out of the region. It’s his second deployment; Augustus went with Charlie Co., Mountain Infantry Division, to Balad, Iraq, in 2004-05.

He noted New Hampshire’s Army National Guard is just the kind of flexible fighting force the Army needs today. “We embody all this experience and knowledge, and we are a force to be reckoned with,” he said.

With the drawdown of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, Augustus said the 197th Fires Brigade is doing a critical mission.

“Since we came over as a brigade, I think because of our size and numbers we’re able to take on basically anything that needs to be done in this part of the world,” he said.

Burpee, 35, is an intelligence analyst who works full-time for the Guard back home; he’s in charge of base security here.

“For good or for bad, the climate over here could change over the next couple of years,” he said. So maintaining a secure camp like this one is critical, he said.

Life is precious Staff Sgt. John Stockton is responsible for the generators that keep the base running. At home, he’s a field technician at Flow Assessment Services in Bedford.

He’s married and has three kids.

This is his second deployment; he went to Iraq with the Guard in 2004-05 and patrolled the streets of Mosul. He saw heavy combat and “a lot of bad times,” Stockton said, but he wouldn’t trade the experience for the world. ”When you’ve seen that kind of stuff, it really develops you as a person,” he said. “It makes you think about life and how short and precious it is.”

One of the youngest members of the battalion, 21-year-old Spc. Benjamin Saylor of Merrimack, works in the emergency operations center. He comes from a military family and said he enjoys the camaraderie he’s found in the Army Guard. “I just like the whole mindset of being part of a team. Doing something that 90 percent of the people I know ... don’t get a chance to do,” he said.

What they miss So what do they miss, our

From Page One

8

Guardsmen?

“Trees,” said 1st Lt. Emily Paige Riordan of Derry. A 2007 graduate of the University of New Hampshire, she’s the officer in charge of contracting and project management. “I miss the smell of green things growing, things that are living,” she said.

Her friends in the Guard back home sent her a packet of sweet pea flower seeds; the fi rst tiny tendrils are sprouting in a pot on her desk.

Riordan also misses her husband, Matthew Tattersall. They were married last August, just a month before she deployed. “He hates having me away from home, but understands it’s an important part of my life,” she said.

She volunteered for this assignment.

“It’s a good opportunity for me to help out the state and get a new experience.”

Burpee said he doesn’t miss winter or snow, but he does feel bad that his wife, Catherine, has had to deal with the tough weather back home. He’s counting on his three sons to help her: Tyler, 15, Nicholas, 13, and Joshua, 11.

The deployment has been hardest on his youngest, Burpee said.

Stockton said his 14-yearold son, Eric, is taking his deployment pretty hard too.

He worries about the dangers his father faces. Eric’s school, Profi le High, allows him to talk to his dad during school hours. Otherwise, it can be tough to fi nd a time during the week when parents can talk to their kids because of the eight-hour time difference (seven now that daylight-saving time is in effect).

Some other things they’re missing while they’re over here: kids’ birthdays, their band concerts, sports games. Burpee’s three sons are involved in many activities and not being there is tough, he said.

“It’s a dad thing,” he said.

“My wife can drive them and pick them up. She can’t teach them how to shoot free throws.”

Heads held high Lt. Jim Challender of Bow is the commander of the LSA. He said he couldn’t be prouder of his soldiers. “I’ve got the best team in theater,” he said. “We set high standards and we achieve all the high standards we set.

“We’re going to keep plugging away the next five months ... and get out of here successfully with our heads held high,” Challender said.

In the end, Augustus did think of one thing the folks back home could do for their soldiers: “Continue to pray,” he said. “‘Cause it’s working.

We’re all over here safe.

“Somebody’s watching over us.” .

The “NH Guard in Kuwait” Union Leader and UnionLeader.com series is made possible in part with the assistance of Next Step Orthotics and Prosthetics and of DEKA Research.

The New Hampshire JumpStart Coalition, a statewide nonprofit organization dedicated to youth financial literacy, has launched the 2011 version of its online scavenger hunt for Granite State teenagers, with an iPad available to 10 winners.

“Get 10 Virtual Quest” tests students’ consumer savvy by researching and answering 10 financial questions.

But it’s less than daunting for a student who pays attention.

“We’re making this contest easy ... because it’s essentially open book,” says Daniel Hebert, state president of NH JumpStart. “We encourage them to read the questions, go research the answers, and visit again to complete the quiz.

We even give them clues to help them answer the questions, courtesy of our sponsors.”

Each student who answers all 10 questions correctly will be entered into a drawing to win one of 10 Apple iPads.

The contest runs through April 15. The drawing for the iPads will take place in April as part of the coalition’s commemoration Youth Financial Literacy Month.

For more information about Get 10 Virtual Quest, visit www.nhjumpstart. org.

Literacy Continued From Page A1 Complementing the JumpStart financial literacy program is the LifeSmarts competition, which brings together high school teams to show their consumer and financial savvy. Last year, 483 teens participated in LifeSmarts. At last week’s statewide competition, Inter-Lakes High Regional High School won the state championship for the third year in a row.

A popular game In Manchester, personal financial literacy is taught at both the middle and high school levels, and economics is required for graduation.

Central economics teacher Kara Bernard incorporates lessons on financial institutions and how to be an educated consumer.

“I do an investing unit, stocks, bonds and mutual funds,” said Bernard, who holds a master’s degree in economics from the University of New Hampshire.

The unit includes an online investing game that Bernard introduced to Manchester high schools five years ago.

The Stock Market Game (www.stockmarketgame.org), a program of the Foundation for Investor Education, is popular with both students and parents, she said.

“I found teaching this, the parents get involved with their children much more often than with other chapters that we go through,” Bernard said.

“The parents go online with them, or they watch the news; they point out things on the news. I get e-mails from parents,” she said.

Students like the prizes. “I had a student who came in second three years ago, and we actually got to go down to Nashua to the conference, and he gave a speech, and he got a gift card, so that was great for him,” Bernard said.

With only nine weeks to follow their virtual portfolio, Bernard said, “part of it is you want to be risky because you only have nine weeks, so we talk about risk and stuff like that.”

Central will be the last of the high schools to move economics, which includes a financial literacy component, from the sophomore to senior year next fall.

“The reason for moving the economics to senior year was basically to have it become a more mature course; you need to think of economics in terms of world economics to kind of integrate what they’ve learned in other courses,” Kathy Mirabile, chairman of social studies at Central, said.

“The personal financial literacy is a kind of concrete element that would be part of that mix,” she said.

Personal finance Winnacunnet High School business teacher and LifeSmarts coach Janice Arsenault said high school students are facing a tougher financial landscape from the get-go.

“What kids are finding now is, they used to be able to go out and get a summer job with no problem at all, but now some of those summer jobs are being held by people who have lost their jobs, and they need the jobs, so they are taking jobs that normally a kid would have gone in and been able to get.

“The financial world is hitting kids a lot quicker now because they are not able to get that summer job, not able to save for college or to buy a car or to put gas in the car that they may have,” Arsenault said.

“All of that is making kids much more accepting and wanting a class like personal finance,” she said.

“Kids see the foreclosures, too, or they see a parent out of work, and that obviously affects their lives,” she said.

BOB LaPREE/UNION LEADER

“

Now, it’s all about you. You have to take care of your own investments. You have to know who’s got your mortgage.

You have to take more control, and how are you going to do that if you don’t have the education, the knowledge, behind you?”

DANIEL N. HEBERT Regional director, New Hampshire JumpStart Coalition

Quinney, of Center Harbor, said.

“I am very diligent about not accumulating credit card debt,” he said. “That is going to affect my credit score, which is going to affect my ability down the road to get a car or (buy) a house,” Quinney said.

“The goal is to prevent youths from making the mistakes that they might otherwise learn the hard way down the road,” he said.

Life lessons

The LifeSmarts program has been a “fabulous experience,” said Newfound Regional UNH Whittemore School High School personal literacy of Business and Economics teacher and LifeSmarts coach freshman Tim Quinney was Sheila Miller. a four-year LifeSmarts player “For the most part, teens at Inter-Lakes High School in Meredith and served this year as have quite a bit of disposable income, and they don’t realize assistant coach. that all the things their parAt only 19, Quinney knows ents provide for them are as the value of learning to balance expensive as they actually are,” a checkbook, understanding Miller said. credit and debt, and having “They get what they want, knowledge of other consumer and that becomes an issue for issues that make up part of the them when they go out on their core of JumpStart and other financial literacy programs. own,” she said. “They’re used “It’s a broader understanding to getting what they want and of the world we live in,” Quinney probably can no longer afford said. it, so they have a difficult time “More so than history or gebalancing needs and wants.” ography, this is very practical,” After advocating for financial

Money smarts

”More so than history or geography, this is very practical ... I am very diligent about not accumulating credit card debt.”

TIM QUINNEY, 19 UNH freshman, former LifeSmarts participant at Inter-Lakes High School in Meredith

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literacy programs for a decade, Hebert, who directs the annual LifeSmarts competition, has seen progress.

At least 30,000 New Hampshire high school students have taken the National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE) High School Financial Planning Program.

“That sounds great, but it still falls short of the total number of kids that have gone through the school system in the last seven years,” Hebert said.

As an umbrella organization, Jumpstart doesn’t prescribe curriculum, but rather offers schools and teachers access to a menu of teaching materials.

“We, in essence, advocate all of the products and services of all our partners that belong to the coalition,” Hebert said.

The Jumpstart clearinghouse contains more than 700 types of teaching materials, curriculum, tools, activities and games for kindergarten through grade 12.

About 40 percent are free; the rest can be purchased. .

On the Net:

nhjumpstart.org jumpstart.org (National site) .

Write to dpaiste@unionleader.com

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HAVE A HAPPY (NOT “SLAPHAPPY”) ST. PATRICK’S DAY! St. Patrick has been called the “Patron Saint of Ireland.”

Some believe, incorrectly, that he is famous for driving the snakes from the Emerald Isle. Wrong. Actually, St. Patrick was the son of a wealthy British family. In the early 4th century, he was a Christian missionary to the mostly pagan Irish. Little else is known of him, except the date of his death, March 17th, which is celebrated almost everywhere. But, until the mid-1970s, in Ireland, in respect for St. Patrick, all drinking establishments were closed on March 17th! Now, however, it is a holiday of “Irish Pride.” Parades and dancing (“The Irish Jig”) mark the day. The first "St. Patrick’s Day Parade" was held in New York City, in 1762, by Irish Soldiers serving in the British Army. Since then, New York’s Parade has become the largest in the United States. President Harry S. (“The Buck Stops Here”) Truman marched in the 1948 New

York Parade (he was an Army Artillery Captain in World War I); and St. Patrick’s Day Parades have since become a part of modern political life, as well as a tribute to Irish Americans, who had to overcome the bigotry of NINA (“No Irish Need Apply”). So today, St. Patrick’s Day is a day of celebration, and rightly so. However, some consider they have the “right” to celebrate and drink too much.

But, rightful pride in one’s heritage has nothing to do with dangerously excessive drinking. All holidays should be celebrated responsibly, and not with “binge drinking,” especially when binge drinking is followed by bad driving.

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