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THURSDAY DECEMBER 25, 2014 H B O C AG E • C O U N T RY C LU B • H I G H L A N D • J E F F E R S O N T E R R AC E • K E N I LW O R T H • P E R K I N S • U N I V E R S I T Y C LU B THEADVOCATE.COM
Darlene Denstorff ON THE SOUTHSIDE
DDENSTORFF@ THEADVOCATE.COM
Let’s see holiday snaps Taking an out-of-town trip during the holiday season? If so, send The Southside Advocate photographs of your vacation or holiday adventure. And, if old friends or relatives visit, send us photos of your local outings. See below for information on where to send photographs.
Candles line Daventry Drive during the annual Kenilworth Subdivision luminary candle lighting Sunday.
CHRISTMAS LUMINAIRES Lighting ceremony a fixture in Kenilworth traditions
Couple not far out their wheelhouse with CASA
BREC sets holiday hours
The East Baton Rouge Parish Recreation and Park Commission will close its administrative offices, 6201 Florida Blvd., on Thursday and Friday for the Christmas holiday. Normal operating hours will resume at all BREC facilities on Monday. All golf courses, Bluebonnet Swamp Nature Center, Cohn Arboretum and Magnolia Mound Plantation will close on Christmas Day. Farr Park Equestrian Center will close Thursday and Friday, and Highland Road Park Observatory will be closed Wednesday through Friday. BREC’s Baton Rouge Gallery will close at 3 p.m. on Christmas Eve and remain closed on Christmas Day, BREC’s Baton Rouge Zoo and Independence Park Theatre will be closed on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and all recreation centers will close at noon on Christmas Eve and will remain closed on Christmas Day. At BREC’s Perkins Road Extreme Park, the BMX track and Rock Climbing Wall will close Wednesday and Thursday, while the
Advocate staff photo by PATRICK DENNIS
Brian and Betsy Buchert, with their children, Jordan, 6, Benjamin, 5 and Jacob, 6, in front, and Samuel, 2, (held by Brian), are Court-Appointed Special Advocates who are trained to represent the best interest of children in the family court system.
BY C.J. FUTCH
cfutch@theadvocate.com
Advocate staff photos by PATRICK DENNIS
A family places bags out Sunday for Kenilworth’s luminary candle lighting. Raymond Matherne, dressed as Santa Claus, waves to motorists during the subdivision’s Sunday luminary event. Matherne, in his first year as Santa, said he is taking over the 20-year tradition from John Good.
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7-year-old finding change to help change the world BY C.J. FUTCH
parked, and then recounts the time Joey stuck his hand in a grate to get a dollar bill he saw. “And I got it, too,” Joey said. Joey Roth has always had a knack Sternberg shakes her head in for finding change, his mother, Deborah Sternberg, said as she watched disbelief, but her pride still shines Joey and his older brother Charlie through. At the tender age of 7, Joey has count piles of it on the floor of Sternstarted a charity, J.A.R. for Change berg’s bedroom. Charlie immediately tells her — his full name is Joey Aidan Roth about finding change under a — distributed J.A.R. for Change jars parked bus, which brings a look of to his school and several area restaurants and businesses and delivminor panic to his mother’s face. “Please tell me you didn’t go under ered a check for $5,000 to Woman’s a bus to pick up change,” she said, but Charlie smiles, tells her it was äSee CHANGE, page 4G cfutch@theadvocate.com
Advocate staff photo by PATRICK DENNIS
Joey Roth, left and brother Charlie weigh money donated to Joey’s philanthropy, Woman’s Hospital’s NICU department. The weight can be calculated using a computer program that is helpful when counting large amounts of change.
Brian and Betsy Buchert loved the idea of volunteering for Court-Appointed Special Advocates from the moment they learned about the program. “It sounded like a really useful way to help,” said Betsy Buchert, an obstetrician at Woman’s Hospital, as Brian, a civil engineer, wrangled their sons. “We care so much about children; it really fits with us.” They are one of the rare couple teams who have gone through CASA training, said Jennifer Mayer, recruitment coordinator for the Capital Area CASA Association, and work together on cases involving siblings. Children who are referred to CASA have come into some kind of contact with the system, either child protective services or juvenile justice, Mayer said, and have been placed in foster care. The Bucherts’ mission, as CASA volunteers, is to advocate for the child’s best interests, in whatever way that might mean, until the child is in a permanent, safe home. The Bucherts see it as a big responsibility, they said, but not too far out of their wheelhouse. They have four sons of their own, two biological and two adopted from Ethiopia. “We went to pick them (the twins) up when I was pregnant, so I went from having no children to having 3 boys very quickly,” she said. When it comes to wild behavior from young children, the Bucherts have a pretty good idea of what falls into the normal range, they said, as three of the four swirled around them, playing a game of catch mixed with tag mixed with increasing volume. “We pretty much live at this volume; we’re immune to it,” Betsy Buchert said, and her husband laughed, pausing to point their 5-year-old, Benjamin, away from the Christmas tree with the ball he’d just kicked underneath it. And they’re familiar with the ways children of that age express themselves, she said. “They can’t always just come right out and tell you what’s going on,” she said.
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