Higher education in Pinedale? Are U serious?
DAVID MIRHADI Star-Tribune staff writer | Posted: Sunday, February 26, 2006 12:00 am
A Pinedale man asked the local school board for $50,000 recently. His idea: a startup university in 6,000-person Sublette County.
Pinedale resident Rob Shaul told members of the Pinedale School Board that a tiny university can still be a successful one, the Feb. 16 edition of the Pinedale Roundup reported. With the natural gas rigs in the Jonah Field nearby and testing for brucellosis by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department in the area, Shaul told board members that the community is "a laboratory of teaching space in the West."
To prove that Sublette County might be able to sustain a real working institution of higher learning, Shaul pointed out the success of some of the nation's tiniest colleges - a school in Nevada with 302 students, one in a Kentucky town of 294 that has 596 students, and a college in Deep Springs, Calif., that offers a two-year degree to 27 students a year.
Shaul said he would like to raise $300,000 for an executive director to start.
"I think it's a daring, bold and grand idea," Shaul said in asking the board for money from this year's budget. "I think it's something big," the newspaper reported.
"If I had $10 million and a ranch, I wouldn't be talking to you guys," he said.
Hurricane hero
Basin resident Earl Kelsey is no stranger to Mother Nature's wrath. As a community relations volunteer for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Kelsey has been called upon many times in the past two years to help hurricane victims. In 2004, Kelsey was called three times to help people displaced by three different hurricanes.
This month, Kelsey returned to Basin and shared his tale of assisting Hurricane Katrina, Rita and Wilma victims find their footing with the Basin Republican Rustler, which profiled the man in its Feb. 23 edition.
Kelsey told the newspaper an especially poignant story of a man evacuated from Louisiana after Katrina who lost his wife in the hurricane that slammed the Gulf Coast in late August. Now, the man faced danger as Wilma barreled through Florida.
"He said to me, 'What do I do? How do I start over? I'm 68 years old. I lost my wife, I lost my house, I lost all of my possessions. I'm too old to be able to start over again.'"
Kelsey returned to Basin in January after spending four months assisting victims in 2005, the deadliest and longest U.S. hurricane season in decades.
Mysterious remains found
The Pine Bluffs Maintenance Department recently found a box of cremated remains placed at the town's cemetery, the Pine Bluffs Post reported Feb. 16.
Save for a name and a date posted on the box, folks in the southeastern Wyoming town have now idea when or how the box showed up, or where it was supposed to be taken.
An envelope on the box stated the remains belonged to a James William Hodge, who was born July 20, 1926, and died June 16, 1980.
The newspaper reported that the town of Pine Bluffs was trying to contact relatives for information on the deceased man or his wife, who apparently lived on Long Island, N.Y.
Citizen justice is served
A man who told Powell police officers that he "did not want to go back to prison" led police on a high-speed chase before he was tackled by a bystander who witnessed part of the chase.
The Powell Tribune reported in its Feb. 21 edition that Anthony Preston Pease, 19, was arrested Feb. 16 after he led police on a 14-minute chase through state highways, where the suspect evaded spike strips, and back into town, where the suspect ran off on foot after officers boxed in his vehicle.
He was tackled by a bystander who saw Pease running through town. The man's capture was also aided by a city truck that blocked off Pease's escape route as he ran through town, the paper reported.
The man who tackled Pease, Justin Gerads of Cody, said he decided to help out once he saw the police weren't going to catch Pease on their own.
"I just noticed the three cops weren't catching up," said Gerads, who said he decided to tie his shoes if he needed to run. Gerads jumped on Pease and took him to the ground, Gerads told the paper. "It was just more of spur of the moment adrenaline rush," said Gerads, who admitted to past run-ins with the Powell police himself. "It felt way cool to help out like that."
Pease was arrested on charges of delivery of methamphetamine, burglary and escaping by violence, the paper reported.
Rivalry boils over
Four Rock Springs students were fined earlier this month for defacing the sign welcoming students to Green River High School and for spray-painting the Green River Wolves statue with black and orange paint, the Rock Springs Daily Rocket-Miner reported in its Feb. 15 edition.
All four young men pleaded guilty to malicious mischief and were ordered to pay $510 to the court and $171.25 in restitution. The were also each given a two-day jail sentence and were each ordered to write an apology, which must be submitted by March 13.
Night editor David Mirhadi can be reached at 266-0616 or david.mirhadi@casperstartribune.net.