Editor, Times-Union: May 14, 2001, was the darkest day of my life. I was diagnosed with malignant, metastatic melanoma. I had skin cancer which had spread to my lymph nodes and, as I found out later, my brain. Thirty years of abusing my skin by chasing the dream of the darkest tan possible had caught up with me. My passion was sunbathing. I used to joke that my career goal was to be a professional sunbather! The suntanning beds were my springtime friend. I needed to get ready for my summer love of weekends on the deck with my book! Now, at 40, with a family I dearly loved, I was faced with the possibility of not seeing my two youngest children graduate from high school.
This letter is written for two purposes. The first is to take the time to try to reach all of the sun worshippers, especially the high school and college kids preparing for spring break. Please heed the warnings about the sun and tanning beds. Tanning beds are just as dangerous, maybe more so, than the sun. The same UV rays that cause skin cancer from the sun are in the tanning beds and they can cause deadly melanoma just as easily.
In addition, the rise in cases of melanoma in teenagers and early 20-year-olds is on the rise. If you are going to be in the sun, you must use a sunscreen of at least SPF 30.
I could quote statistics, but this letter is already going to be over the limit on the number of words. Please stop and think about what you are doing to your body, and parents, think about what your kids are doing to theirs, by baking them in the sun. Think about the very real threat of death from melanoma. The melanoma I suffer from has an 80 percent recurrence rate. Through God's grace and the care of a fantastic team of oncologist, radiation oncologist and neurosurgeon, I have been in remission since June 2002, but my doctors admit it is almost miraculous.
The second purpose of this letter is to thank all of our friends in this community. This is the only way I could think of to try to reach them all. The outpouring of good wishes, support, food, money and most of all, prayers, had been phenomenal. Thank you to all of the employees of DePuy and Zimmer, the members of Sacred Heart parish and the many other churches in Warsaw and all over the country who have had us on prayer chains. I have felt an immense peace and love that has made this adventure bearable. My love and the love of our family goes out to all of you.
Laura Parker Winona Lake via e-mail
School Thanks
Editor, Times-Union: We want to express our appreciation to Brenda Rigdon, Kosciusko Literary Services and The Palace of Sports for the Dr. Seuss reading incentive program at North Webster Elementary. Thank you to the community readers who took time to be with our students. Our students are so excited and are enjoying the books. Your efforts are helping to motivate our students to read.
North Webster Elementary Staff
via e-mail
Burket Elementary
Editor, Times-Union: The Committee for Alternative Education will soon submit its recommendations to the Valley School Board. One of the things they didn't count on was Burket Elementary parents outraged at the committee's waffling on almost every question put to them by the Burket parents. It's understandable that the committee could not come right out and say what their true intentions were, being that they are an extension of the board's agenda. Clarity went out the window.
This program seeks to reward failure to punish success. These teens have exhausted all other resources to stay in school. Alternative education seeks to promote these failing students as an obligation for all of us to deal with and be inconvenienced by, instead of forcing accountability back to the parents and the students, where it should have been in the first place. Forcing the students at Burket to give up their school over the bad behavior and actions of a few - alternative education rewards failure in this way.
Moving current Burket students to a different school much further away is risking the overall decline in the education they will receive due to a potential overcrowding and eventual integration to other teachers who aren't so well known and therefore may feel they need not be as accountable to parents. Alternative education will punish success this way.
The teachers at Burket have done the best job of any teachers yet that I have seen for getting information to me concerning my children's daily performance. These teachers have already proven to me that they are capable of focusing on the real goal of why we are all here, the education of the youth they teach. They open themselves to accountability and that shows decency, character, cooperation.
Parents and teachers and students of Burket Elementary are focused on the most important thing, but this out-of-control committee seeks to risk the education and safety of my child. They don't even have a busing plan yet.
When a school committee and a board of directors decide to put our children's best interest ahead of their liberal agenda, we won't be throwing money at failing schools and closing the achieving ones. We'll have real issues to discuss and see real gains in the education of our students. I"m talking about a no-brainer here, folks - it's really that simple.
One Warsaw Tiger deep in the Valley,
Dean Chaplin Burket
More Burket Elementary
Editor, Times-Union: Many people of the Valley school district are not aware of the proposal that is going to be proposed to the school board today at 7 p.m. at the Mentone Elementary. That proposal will be to close the Burket Elementary School and use it for an alternative education program for the middle school and high school students of TVHS. This means there will no longer be kindergarten through fifth-grade classes at Burket. The Burket students will be bused to Mentone Elementary.
Karen Boling said there's a possible 79 students who are candidates for this program. To close a school down on possible figures is ridiculous. It's possible I may win the lottery, so I'll sell my home and property and move to Florida today. In other words, I feel that's taking a big chance on possible figures that the school officials are taking. I had talked to Wawasee's and Warsaw's administration offices and their numbers compared to Valley's in the alternative ed. program do not justify the closing of Burket. Rather than close a school of 120-130 students, there are other options that could meet and fulfill these students' needs.
At the last meeting there was a teacher who spoke of the positive side of this program, and I don't dispute that, but I found it odd that none of the Burket teachers or staff spoke on this matter. I felt that they had been warned not to. If that's the case, in case you people have forgotten, this is America. Every single one of us, including our teachers and staff, have the right to voice their opinions. It's called freedom of speech. Other than parents who know our kids well, next are the teachers who teach them five days a week, seven hours a day. Please remember to attend the meeting today.
Ginger S. Moore Claypool
Government Blackmail
Editor, Times-Union: Mr. Bush says we won't be blackmailed. For a government that says it won't be blackmailed, it sure doesn't hesitate to blackmail its own citizens. Remember how we got the 55 mph speed limit? That's not the only law we have had shoved down our throats by being blackmailed with our own money. What kind of insanity does it take to send our young people to war against Iraq? Is this how you want billions of your tax dollars spent, not to mention the lives of many people? Imagine the good that could be done with that much money right here in our own hemisphere. I read recently that in Brazil homeless children are so plentiful the police shoot them indiscriminately in the streets. I'll support a war on that but not 1 cent to kill innocent Iraqi citizens. Let the Arabs settle their own problems.
