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Reaching out to Ranken family Father of son killed in crash hopes to build bench with funds raised by community By STEPHANIE HICKMAN shickman@shawmedia.com
Matthew Ranken
SYCAMORE – Larry Ranken and his family want to build a bench next to the pond near their home where his sons, Matthew and Aaron, used to fish. Ranken, father of 11-year-old Matthew Ranken, hopes to build this bench with the various donations his family has received
since the Feb. 27 crash that killed Matthew and injured 18-yearold passenger, Teale Noble. The community support has overwhelmed the family. “It’s the reason we would never leave Sycamore,” Ranken said. The most significant amount of donations came from a benefit held at Culver’s of Sycamore last week.
From the time the restaurant opened its doors at 10:30 a.m. to the last customer’s departure at 10 p.m., the Ranken family greeted more than 3,000 friends, family and community members. The restaurant processed 1,402 transactions that day, producing more than $19,000 in sales – half of which went directly to the Ranken family. Jennifer Crouch, one of Mat-
thew’s cousins, worked with Becky Rust and Karlee Rogers to coordinate the Culver’s fundraiser, which had some customers waiting almost two hours for food. “It was pretty amazing,” Crouch said. “I’d never really experienced something like that before.” When Crouch approached Culver’s of Sycamore owner,
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Amanda Corona, through a mutual friend, she said Corona was more than happy to help out. Matthew’s brother, Nick Weber, 21, who also was in the crash and suffered minor injuries, is a former employee of Culver’s of Sycamore, which is one of the reasons Crouch said Corona wanted to get involved.
See RANKEN, page A6
First lady wades into debate over gun violence By DON BABWIN and NEDRA PICKLER The Associated Press
Rob Winner – rwinner@shawmedia.com
John Rey (second from right) watches election results come in Tuesday with members of his family including his wife, Marjorie (right), and son, Dan (second from left), and daughter-in-law, Eva, at Eduardo’s Mexican Restaurant in DeKalb.
DeKalb City Council members working on new terms By DAVID THOMAS
More inside
dthomas@shawmedia.com DeKALB – DeKalb City Council members have quite the to-do list after the local election: the Irongate subdivision proposal, the budget and the search for the next city managers, to name a few items. The new local leaders – Mayor John Rey, alderman Bill Finucane of the 2nd Ward, and alderman Robert Snow of the 4th Ward – will be sworn in at a special meeting May 6, said City Manager Mark Biernacki. Their first business meeting will occur May 13. “We have a lot of things going on in DeKalb,” Biernacki said. “Fortunately, every candidate or person has been closely following city council proceedings for the past several months. They won’t be coming into the council cold.” Alderman Dave Baker of the 6th Ward also won re-election Tuesday night, and defeated mayoral candidate David Jacobson still is on the
For a list of Tuesday’s election unofficial results, check out PAGE A4.
Rob Winner – rwinner@shawmedia.com
Christine Kyler, general manager at The Lincoln Inn Restaurant in DeKalb, shares a laugh with newly elected DeKalb mayor John Rey on Wednesday while congratulating him in downtown DeKalb. council as 1st Ward alderman. They will join Kristen Lash of the 3rd Ward, Ron Naylor of the 5th Ward,
and Monica O’Leary of the 7th Ward. The new aldermen agreed that a primary issue will be finding a new
city manager. Biernacki said the council could choose to hire an executive search firm, or have the internal staff conduct the search. Biernacki will retire June 14 but estimated the search for his replacement could take three to five months. Rey hopes the new council can quickly reach an agreement on the process. “What I don’t want to have happen is to have a search so narrow, that we aren’t confident with the candidate that comes forward,” Rey said. “In my view, I want to give fair opportunity to internal candidates to that position. ... An external search firm could bring independents to that process.
See COUNCIL, page A6
CHICAGO – First lady Michelle Obama made a deeply personal entrance into the gun debate Wednesday, the eve of a showdown in Congress, by comparing herself to the honor student from her hometown shot to death a week after performing as a majorette in the presidential inaugural parade. Mrs. Obama told a conference on youth violence that the new gun regulations her husband proposed in response to Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting deserve a vote in Congress. But she says reducing daily gun deaths in places such as Chicago, with its 500 homicides last year, also will require an intensive effort by community leaders. As part of a rare foray into a policy debate, Mrs. Obama highlighted the case of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, shot in the back Jan. 29 while hanging out with friends at a park, about a mile from the Obamas’ South Side home. Mrs. Obama attended Pendleton’s funeral and said she was struck by how familiar the Pendleton family seemed to her own. “Hadiya Pendleton was me and I was her,” she said. “But I got to grow up and go to Princeton and Harvard Law School and have a career and a family and the most blessed life I could ever imagine.” Mrs. Obama said the only difference between herself and the young people killed on the Chicago streets is that she had a few more advantages – involved adults, good schools, a supportive community and a safe neighborhood. “That was the difference between growing up and becoming a lawyer, a mother and first lady of the United States and being shot dead at the age of 15,” Mrs. Obama said, her voice gripped with emotion. The speech was the first lady’s first public remarks on gun violence since the Sandy Hook shooting in December took the lives of 20 students and six faculty and reignited a national debate over gun control. With the fate of the administration’s efforts still uncertain, the White House was mounting an allhands-on-deck push this week to keep the public engaged. The president delivered a speech Monday in Connecticut, and 12 family members of Sandy Hook victims joined him on the return flight to Washington and have since been lobbying members of Congress.
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