Serving the Mt. Morris area since 1967
MT.Times MORRIS March 3, 2016 Volume 49, Number 1 - $1.00
State Champs!
Coloring Time!
Hawks Fall
Byron’s Lady Tigers win the Class 2A state championship in Normal. B1
Kids can color an Easter basket in our 2016 Coloring Contest. A8
The Hawks basketball ends its season with a loss to Newman in the regional title game. B1
The Mat officially is open
4-Hers learn creative skills Craft workshops held at Day of Dabbling
By Vinde Wells vwells@oglecountynews.com
By Chris Johnson cxjohnson@oglecountynews.com
After a two-year dry spell, Mt. Morris residents once again have a laundromat in town. The Mat, owned by Matt and Noel Dusing, Mt. Morris, opened for business on Ill. 64 in midJanuary and has received a warm welcome from residents. “We’ve had lots of positive comments,” Matt Dusing said. “It’s been very encouraging.” The opening became official last Thursday when village president Dan Elsasser and members of the Mt. Morris Economic Development Group welcomed Dusing in a brief ceremony in front of his new business. Inside the laundromat, it was business as usual as village resident Christina McBride lugged in three large baskets full of laundry and started up a line of machines. “It’s nice to have this back in town,” McBride said. “I was going to either Byron or Oregon, and this is a lot more convenient.” The business, previously owned by Steve Untz, Oregon, closed it doors about two years ago, leaving village residents without a laundromat. Dusing approached the village board last September to let members know he had bought the business, planned to make improvements, and have it up and running around the first of this year. True to his word, Dusing spent the last several months cleaning, — “lots of cleaning,” he said with a laugh — repairing machines, and redoing the walls and floor. The Mat, which is open 24
Christina McBride, Mt. Morris, prepares to do her laundry Feb. 25 at The Mat, Mt. Morris’ new laundromat. Photo by Vinde Wells
hours a day, boasts 13 top loading washers, two large front loading washers, and 13 dryers. “We’ll have at least three more large front loaders in the near future,” Dusing said. Owning and operating the laundromat was not exactly what Dusing had in mind a year ago when he quit his job at E.D. Etnyre, Oregon, where he had worked for nine years. “I was going to flip houses, but that kind of fell flat,” he said. “I was looking for another opportunity. I had seen the sign at the laundromat, and then my pastor at the Evan Free Church said ‘why don’t you look at the laundromat?’ That kind of sparked my interest.” The new operation has been going well. “It’s been good so far,” Dusing said. “We’ve had a few little things but we’ve taken care of them.”
Mt. Morris Village officials congratulate new laundromat owner Matt Dusing Feb. 25. Village president Dan Elsasser shakes hands with Dusing, who opened The Mat in January. Also pictured left to right are: Mt. Morris Economic Development Group members Rob Urish, John Finfrock, Doug Aken, and Howie Herman. Photo by Vinde Wells
Unique crafts were created with only minor setbacks Saturday morning. The Ogle County 4-H members were participating in the Day of Dabbling at the Oregon Church of God. This is an event where the older 4-H members create projects that can be taught and completed in less than an hour. One of these projects was being co-run by Jacob Ebens, Oregon. “I learned a lot about organization today,” he said. “I also learned how to run an event.” At his station, 4-H members were creating a stained glass design using melted crayon shavings and a stencil. “The iron station slowed the project down,” said Ebens. “One iron stopped working.” Fortunately for Ebens the 4-H members were patient and everyone was able to complete most of the project. “Some stencils still needed to be glued and cut,” said Ebens. Another project involving crayons also had a meltdown during the event. “One of our heat guns failed,” said Natalie Carlson, Byron. “It made it hard to get everything done.” Her workshop was melted crayon art. Crayons are placed around a blank canvas and melted by a heat source, like a hair dryer or heat gun. “4-H teaches you how to go with the flow and adapt so we adapted,” she said. Originally there were four people per station and this station, but because of the broken heat gun, six had to share the remaining two hair dryers. “It worked out in the end,” said Carlson. The idea for this project was from a Pinterest post Carlson viewed. Turn to A3
Polo 5th grader earns second trip to national bee By Chris Heimerman Sauk Valley Media cheimerman@saukvalley. com For nearly three hours and 37 rounds, Rebekah Zeigler did all she could to keep the blood from rushing to her head. When Tom Wadsworth, emcee of the first combined Lee-Ogle-Whiteside Regional Spelling Bee, turned and announced to the Centennial Elementary School fifth-grader, “You’re going to Washington!”, she put her hands on her cheeks and dragged her fingers down to reveal bright red streaks – streaks of relief, no doubt. In spelling scullion correctly Feb. 25, the defending Lee-Ogle champ from Polo again punched her ticket to the Scripps National Spelling Bee, which will be held May 22 to 27 in National Harbor, Maryland. She also survived a showdown with three other spellers – eventual runnerup Mariam Elahmady of River Bend Middle School
in Fulton, Aaliyah Gaffey of Challand Middle School in Sterling, and Rebekah Starwalt of Byron Middle School – that began in Round 14 and lasted the subsequent 13 rounds. Typically, Wadsworth waits for the final three spellers to bring them to the front of the stage, but after the quartet, along with Taylor Miller, Forreston, duked it out for five rounds, until Miller bowed out on the word quisling – she went with the double-z – he brought the foursome to the front after Round 15. He obviously knew the talent that was on hand. So did the defending champion. “They were really, really good spellers,” she said. “I started sweating and got really nervous that I would spend one wrong.” But she relied on two tried-and-true techniques to prevail. First, she clasped her hands together and told herself she was “cool, calm, and in control,” a trick she learned at Gymnastics Divine in Dixon.
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“Only I couldn’t bite my nails this time, because I painted them,” she said. Understandable, given the packed auditorium at Dixon High. Second, every time she stoically approached the microphone and heard her word, she “wrote” the word on the back of her number card as she spelled it. Gaffey, an eighth-grader, used a similar technique, only she “scribbled” on her hand. At one point, she showed incredible resolve by getting halfway through phenomenon, getting stuck, then starting over. Spellers can do that, as long as they don’t change the letters they’ve already spoken. But she spelled her 26th word of the day, vivaci, with an “e” on the end. “You did extremely well today,” Wadsworth said. Two rounds later, fatigue set in for the sixth-grader from Byron. Starwalt, smooth until that point, swapped the “i” and the “u” in prosciutto.
Business Briefs, A4 Church News, A5 Classifieds, B5-B10 Entertainment, A6
“I don’t know how to spell it, either,” Wadsworth said as he comforted her. When he later presented her with her prizes – a $50 Amazon gift card and a Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary – he joked, “as if she’ll ever need it.” When Elahmady rattled off nenuphar, and Zeigler followed by nailing bobbejaan in the next round, Wadsworth wiped his forehead, looked over and smiled with disbelief. Dr. Ahmed Elahmady wasn’t surprised. His daughter spends two hours a day studying her words, and even has her words on her phone, so she can study on the go. “She’s a very smart kid,” he said. “She takes after her mother.” But having gone through all the words Wadsworth could have imagined the students would need, he was forced to move on to a list they hadn’t been privy to. They’re given a list of about 1,500 words to agonize over in advance, and he had
Marriage Licenses, A4 Public Voice, A7 Property Transfers, B4 Sheriff’s Arrests, B3
Rebekah Zeigler of Centennial Elementary School in Polo reacts Feb. 25 to winning the Lee-Ogle-Whiteside Regional Spelling Bee in Dixon. Photo by Alex T. Paschal
to go off that list. “I’m not exaggerating when I say the words were harder this year, and the students were better this year, than I’ve seen in 34 years,” he said. “This bee had better spellers who advanced farther than anyone had ever
Social News, A4 Sports, B1, B2 State’s Attorney, B3 Weather Forecast, A3
done in this contest. There was a percentage of kids who were more prepared than we’d ever seen.” “I would’ve been lost after Round 1,” Regional Superintendent Bob Turn to A2
Deaths, B4 Jacqualin F. Bowers
Published every Thursday by Ogle County Newspapers, a division of Shaw Media • www.oglecountynews.com