WEDNESDAY August 14, 2013
Football Page B1 Irish focus on present after tough start
Butler Days Page A2 Weekend full of events planned
Weather Sunny today. High 72. Low 48. Sunshine likely Thursday. High 73. Low 53. Page A6
GOOD MORNING Chamber hires new executive director AUBURN — The DeKalb County Chamber Partnership has a hired a new executive director, Shannon Carpenter, who started her duties Aug. 5. Carpenter holds a bachelor’s degree in business management from Trine University and has several years of experience in the Carpenter nonprofit industry. She served as marketing and communications intern for the Steuben County Community Foundation and chaired the Relay For Life of Steuben County from 2010-2013. She has done freelance web and graphic design and social media consulting for nonprofit organizations. “We are excited to have her on board,” said Terry Rayle, who had served as the chamber’s interim director since the fall of 2012. “She has the skill set to bring us up to date and reconnect with our members.” Carpenter is married to Nicholas Carpenter, who works for RISE Inc. in Angola. They reside in Hamilton with their daughter, Annabelle, 2 months old. “It’s a great time to join the chamber!” Shannon Carpenter said in a news release. “We are rebuilding from the ground up, really trying to create a culture of commerce and community. I look forward to meeting our each of our members. There are many changes to come in the upcoming year, each of which will help us provide great value to our members and to the community.”
West Nile now in 35 Hoosier counties INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — State health officials say mosquitoes analyzed from around the state have tested positive for the West Nile virus in more than a third of Indiana’s counties. The state Department of Health says the agency collected and tested nearly 120,000 mosquitoes from all 92 Indiana counties. The West Nile virus was found in samples from 35 counties. Indiana has had one human case of West Nile virus so far this year, in southeastern Indiana’s Ripley County. The West Nile virus can cause a mild fever that includes headache, body aches, swollen lymph glands or a rash. But some people can develop a more severe, potentially fatal form.
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Index
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Classifieds.................................B7-B8 Life..................................................... A5 Obituaries......................................... A4 Opinion .............................................B4 Sports.........................................B1-B3 Weather............................................ A6 TV/Comics .......................................B6 Vol. 101 No. 223
The Auburn, Indiana
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Eastside hires new band director BY JEFF JONES jjones@kpcmedia.com
BUTLER — The DeKalb Eastern school district has hired Damon Newell as the new band director for Eastside High School. Monday was Newell’s first day at Eastside. He replaces James Graham, who last week left to become DeKalb Middle School’s band director. Newell brings 10 years of experience in directing marching bands.
“He just has a dynamite personality,” Eastside Principal Larry Yoder said of Newell, who is a Kansas native. Graham participated in the process to pick his replacement. Yoder said what impressed him and Graham about Newell was his recruitment and retention efforts. “He took a program with about 11 students to nearly 70 in about three or four years,” Yoder said. Newell’s wife is originally
from Ohio, and she recently was named band director at a nearby high school in northwest Ohio, Yoder said. Graham described his departure from Eastside as “the hardest decision of my career.” In six years, Graham built Eastside’s marching band and instrumental music programs into highly respected units. In November, under Graham’s direction, the Eastside Marching
Teen rescues boy, 5, from fire
Free before talks
BY DENNIS NARTKER dnartker@kpcmedia.com
KENDALLVILLE — A 15-year-old boy is credited with saving the life of a child trapped in a bedroom fire in a mobile home Monday night. Kevin Williams broke a window with his bare hands to rescue his 5-year-old neighbor and ‘buddy,” Damion Shepherd. “We hear a lot about the bad things teens do, and we don’t hear enough about the good things. He saved the boy’s life,” said Kendallville Fire Chief Mike Riehm. Firefighters were dispatched at 9:58 p.m. to 1818 Oak Tree Road in the Maple Grove Mobile Home Park, on the city’s south side. Kendallville police had received a 911 call reporting a mobile home fire with a person trapped inside. Firefighters arrived on the scene at 10:02 p.m. to find smoke coming from a bedroom window in the singlewide mobile home, Riehm said . The home’s occupants, Lisa Shepherd, 27, and Damion, her son, were outside unharmed. Firefighters entered the bedroom by forcing open the door and quickly extinguished the fire in a trash container just inside the room. Firefighters had the fire under control at 10:08 p.m. The mobile home sustained smoke damage and minor fire damage. The incident happened during a thunderstorm with heavy rain and lightning. Shepherd said Tuesday she and her son were in her bedroom. When she left the room, the young boy apparently
Blazer Pride band made its first-ever appearance at the Indiana State School Music Association state finals. Three times in the previous four years, the Blazers advanced to the semi-state level, one step short of the state finals. “I love this band and the kids who helped us build this program,” Graham said. “We have spent six years building a program that the kids and the community can be proud of.”
Israel releases 26 Palestinian inmates ahead of meetings
“He was crying. I called to him, ‘Here, buddy,’ and pulled and lifted him out,” Williams said. Riehm said the teen saved the boy without regard to his own safety. “This could have been bad. There were aerosol cans in the trash that went off, spreading shrapnel. The fire had started to move up a wall. He had the child out before we got there,” Riehm said. Williams saved her son’s life, said Shepherd. “The things that were burned can be replaced. My son cannot,” she said. The teen suffered a sprain and cuts to his hands and was taken by a private vehicle to Parkview Noble Hospital for treatment. “Kevin wasn’t worried about himself. He was worried about saving Damion,” said Sandy Shepherd, Lisa Shepherd’s mother.
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel released 26 Palestinian inmates, including many convicted in grisly killings, on the eve of long-stalled Mideast peace talks, angering families of those slain by the prisoners, who were welcomed as heroes in the West Bank and Gaza. Buses carrying the inmates departed the Ayalon prison in central Israel late Tuesday, a nighttime release that was aimed at preventing the spectacle of prisoners flashing victory signs as has happened in the past. Relatives of the victims, many with their hands painted red to symbolize what they say is the blood on the hands of the inmates, held protests throughout the day, and some protesters tried briefly to block the buses from leaving. The decision to release the men stirred anguish in Israel, where many Israelis view them as terrorists. Most of the prisoners were convicted of killings, including Israeli civilians, soldiers and suspected Palestinian collaborators, while others were involved in attempted murder or kidnapping. Celebrations erupted in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where thousands of Palestinian well-wishers awaited the buses’ arrival. Palestinians generally view the prisoners as heroes regardless of their acts, arguing they made
SEE RESCUE, PAGE A6
SEE TALKS, PAGE A6
DENNIS NARTKER
Kevin Williams, 15, of Kendallville, saved his “buddy,” Damion Shepherd, 5, of Kendallville, from a fire in the boy’s mobile home in Kendallville Monday night. Williams wears a bandage on the hand he used to break two windows in the rescue effort.
locked the door. “I was gone only a split second, and then I smelled smoke,” she said. She looked through a crack between the door and wall and saw smoke and flames. “I panicked and screamed. I couldn’t get in because the door was locked,” she said. Shepherd went for help at her neighbors’ mobile home at 1816 Oak Tree Road where Williams lived. “Before I could finish explaining what was happening, Kevin ran out,” she said. Williams said he used his clenched right hand to punch and break the glass window to Damion’s bedroom on the north side of the mobile home. Shepherd told Williams her son was in her bedroom. He ran to the east end of the mobile home, broke a second window with his right fist and pulled the 70-pound Damion from the room that quickly was filling with smoke.
Pianos on the Square features music, drama BY KATHRYN BASSETT kbassett@kpcmedia.com
AUBURN — Music and drama will be on hand this weekend as events continue during Auburn Arts Commission Inc.’s Pianos on the Square. Pianist Marilyn Minard will play at the Eckhart Public Library Park Friday at 4 p.m. Minard first began playing piano at age 7. Her mother played by ear, and Minard would pick out some of her mother’s tunes. Minard began piano lessons at age 9 and continued with classes until she finished high school Over the years, she has provided music at churches and Sunday school events, social functions, weddings and funerals. Minard and her husband, Elmer “Sonny” Minard, played and called at square dances for many years. They began performing as The Sunny Tones in 1968 and continued to play at dance clubs and venues all over northeast Indiana until the year before his death in 2001. Minard continues to share her gift of music and has played in the mezzanine at The Embassy Theater in Fort Wayne preceding shows and at many retirement
communities, nursing homes and other social gatherings. More music will be offered Saturday when the DeKalb High School Jazz Combo performs at the library park from 1-2:30 p.m. The same afternoon, beginning at 2:30 p.m., a staged reading of the play “Papillons,” by Ruth Tyndall Baker will take place at the Auburn Presbyterian Church. In the play, composer and pianist Clara Schumann struggles to keep her own creative spirit alive under the shadow of the great Robert Schumann as he faces angels and demons. With Brahms’ help and adoration, she transforms into a papillon, or butterfly, playing her own compositions. The cast of readers is made up of Kate Black as Clara Schumann, Bob Haluska as Robert Schumann and Brad Beauchamp as Brahms. The play has received numerous honors including ‘The Best Indiana Drama” from the Indiana Theater Association. Baker, of Fort Wayne, has written more than 30 plays and PHOTO CONTRIBUTED has been produced in seven states. She received a grant from the Kate Black, Bob Haluska and Brad Beauchamp rehearse a scene Lilly Foundation to go to Israel in from the play, “Papillons,” by Ruth Tyndall Baker. They will present search of a play, which resulted a reading of the play Saturday at 2:30 p.m. at the Auburn PresbyteSEE PIANOS, PAGE A6
rian Church. The reading is a Pianos on the Square event.