THURSDAY August 22, 2013
A New Flock Page A6 Pastor takes helm at Waterloo church
Baseball Page B1 Ichiro gets 4,000th hit
Weather Chance of rain today. High 85. Low 60. Partly cloudy skies Friday. High 80. Low 57. Page A7
GOOD MORNING Hamilton festival to close S.R. 427 HAMILTON — A portion of S.R. 427 in Hamilton, also known as South Wayne Street, is scheduled to close Friday at 1 p.m. for the town’s Summer Fest celebration, the Indiana Department of Transportation said. The closure will stretch from Beecher Street to S.R. 1 (Bellefountaine Road). The detour will follow C.R. 800S (West Railroad Street) to Homestead Drive to East Bellefountaine Road. S.R. 427 is scheduled to reopen at 1 a.m. Sunday.
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Teachers call for unified building Board weighs options for McKenney-Harrison school BY KATHRYN BASSETT kbassett@kpcmedia.com
WATERLOO — McKenney-Harrison Elementary School teachers Tuesday told the DeKalb Central school board they favor a renovation plan that would involve demolishing the Harrison building and using new construction to consolidate school areas.
The board appears to have narrowed its options for the McKenney-Harrison renovation project to two plans. The one favored by the teachers who spoke Tuesday would save the newer, existing McKenney structure. It carries a price tag of $16.8 million. The other plan under consideration involves saving the
Harrison building, as well as using new construction to create a closed loop of classrooms on the McKenney site, while removing much of the 1950s portion of the McKenney building. That option has an estimated price of $20.5 million. First-grade teacher Deanna Richardson said she favors Plan C,
Auburn Cord Duesenberg Festival
One Direction member engaged LONDON (AP) — One Direction has one less eligible bachelor. Band member Zayn Malik is engaged to Perrie Edwards of the group Little Mix. They’re both Malik 20. Edwards was spotted wearing a diamond ring Tuesday at One Direction film premiere “This Is Us” in London. Edwards’ mother, Debbie, confirmed Wednesday that her daughter and Malik were engaged. She told Real Radio: “It’s true. They got engaged on Sunday and it’s absolutely lovely.” Columbia Records confirmed in a statement that “Zayn and Perrie are engaged, but any further detail regarding their relationship is private.”
Info • The Star 118 W. Ninth St. Auburn, IN 46706 Auburn: (260) 925-2611 Fax: (260) 925-2625
Index
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Classifieds.................................B6-B8 Life..................................................... A6 Obituaries......................................... A4 Opinion ............................................. A5 Sports.........................................B1-B3 Weather............................................ A7 TV/Comics .......................................B5 Vol. 101 No. 231
DAVE KURTZ
Don Monesmith is restoring this 1924 Meteor school bus in his garage north of Avilla. He will welcome visitors for the annual Garage Cruise
from noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. Behind him is his 1946 Ford Deluxe sedan.
Garage Cruise making five stops BY DAVE KURTZ dkurtz@kpcmedia.com
AVILLA — As a big fan of the annual Garage Cruise, Don Monesmith is backing up his words. “I think this garage tour is just an incredibly great idea,” Monesmith said this week. Sunday, he’ll open his own garage as one of five stops on this year’s route. Others are in Kendallville, Auburn and Fort Wayne. The five stops will be open Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. as an early event of the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Festival. Admission costs $10 for all stops or $5 for only one. Monesmith said he’s impressed by the work of other local vehicle restoration hobbyists. “To actually see them in the process is, to me, a lot of fun,” he said. The current work in progress at Monesmith’s garage north of Avilla is a 1924 Meteor school bus with a wooden body, produced in Piqua, Ohio. “It’s the last one known to exist, and I’m the only one goofy enough to tackle it,” Monesmith said about the bus. When Monesmith found the Meteor last fall in Plymouth, it had just enough of its framework left to use as patterns for rebuilding it. Monesmith started work in March and has nearly completed the body with its curving wood surfaces. “It’s been a fun project,” he said. Monesmith enjoys woodworking, mechanical work and restoration. “This one kind of
DAVE KURTZ
This 1969 Hemi ’Cuda dragster by Sox & Martin will be on display at the National Auto & Truck Museum in Auburn during Sunday’s annual Garage Cruise. The car has been appraised twice at $1 million or more.
pulls it all together,” he said of the bus project. When he finishes the bus, he said, “It’ll be fully driveable. We’ll take it to cruise-ins and shows.” That’s what he’s been doing all summer with his previous project — a restored 1936 Ford Coca-Cola delivery truck, carrying 160 wooden cases he made by hand. Sunday’s visitors will see the Coke truck and Monesmith’s 1946 Ford Deluxe sedan with suicide doors and a fuel-injected Ford flathead V-8 engine. At 67 years old, “It’s just rock-solid,” he said. Monesmith serves as a SEE GARAGE, PAGE A7
SEE TEACHERS, PAGE A7
Syria attack likely gas
Blood drive planned for Aug. 29 in Garrett GARRETT — An American Red Cross blood drive will be held Thursday, Aug. 29, from 1-6 p.m. at the Judy A. Morrill Center, 1200 E. Houston St. All donors between Aug. 26 and Sept. 9 will have a chance to win one of five $1,000 American Express gift cards being given by Red Cross. People who are at least 17 years of age (16 with parental permission in Indiana and Ohio), meet weight and height requirements (110 pounds or more, depending on height) and are in generally good health may be eligible to donate blood. Donors should bring a Red Cross blood donor card or other form of positive identification. To schedule an appointment to donate, call 800-RED CROSS or visit redcrossblood.org.
which would save the McKenney structure, because it unifies the school building. “Plan C has everything that we currently don’t have,” Richardson said. “It makes a unified school, and we don’t have that now.” She said the plan addresses school safety concerns, and students would enter and leave through one main door. Visitors meeting students for lunch also
Garage Cruise stops • Butch Lash, Shell garage, 998 Sawyer Road, Kendallville • Don Monesmith, “Coca-Cola” garage, 805 Miner Road, C.R. 1000E, Avilla • National Auto & Truck Museum, 1000 Gordon M. Buehrig Place, Auburn • Auburn Cord Duesenberg Automobile Museum, Collection Conservation Center, 1600 Wayne St., Auburn • Rick Walters, Wayne Asphalt Collection, 6600 Ardmore Ave., Fort Wayne Sunday, noon to 4 p.m. Admission: $10 for all garages, $5 for one garage
Regime denies using chemical weapons in Damascus suburb BEIRUT (AP) — The images showed lifeless children — wrapped in simple white cloths, their pale faces unmarked by any wound — lined up shoulder to shoulder in a vivid demonstration of an attack Wednesday in which activists say the Syrian regime killed at least 130 people with toxic gas. The Syrian government adamantly denied using chemical weapons in an artillery barrage targeting suburbs east of Damascus, calling the allegations “absolutely baseless.” The U.S., Britain and France demanded that a team of U.N. experts already in the country be granted immediate access to investigate the claims. Videos and photographs showed row upon row of bodies wrapped in white shrouds lying on a tile floor, including more than a dozen children. There was little evidence of blood or conventional injuries and most appeared to have suffocated. Survivors of the purported attack, some twitching uncontrollably, lay on gurneys with oxygen masks covering their faces. Activists and the opposition leadership gave widely varying death tolls, ranging from as low as 136 to as high as 1,300. But even the most conservative tally would make it the deadliest alleged chemical attack in Syria’s civil war. For months now, the rebels, along with the United States, Britain and France, have accused the Syrian government of using chemical weapons in its campaign to try to snuff out the rebellion against President Bashar Assad that began in March 2011. The SEE SYRIA, PAGE A7
911 call discusses school gunman’s mental health LITHONIA, Ga. (AP) — A woman whose family once took in the suspect in an Atlanta-area school shooting said Wednesday that he was mentally ill but never violent in the past. Natasha Knotts told The Associated Press that Michael Brandon Hill lived with her and her husband for several months in his late teens. She says she served as a mother figure for Hill in after he started coming to the small church where she and her husband are pastors. Also on Wednesday, police
gave more details about the previous day’s ordeal and what led up to it. Before going to the school, investigators say that Hill took a photo of himself with an AK 47-style rifle and packed up nearly 500 rounds of ammunition — enough to shoot more than half the school’s students. Police said Hill, 20, got the gun from an acquaintance, but it’s not clear if he stole it or had permission to take it. No one was injured, but the suspect exchanged gunfire with SEE GUNMAN, PAGE A7
AP
Nicole Webb cries as she talks on a phone in the parking lot of a store after a school shooting in Decatur, Ga., on Tuesday.