The Newsmeister

Quick Thinking Saves Teacher's Life

Connie and Rich Root celebrate Connie's return home after her brush with death

SYLVANIA, Ohio – Sometimes, the difference between living and dying can be measured in seconds.
 
Such was the case the morning of Nov. 9 at McCord Junior High School. Connie Root, a 6th grade science teacher, had just told the 23 students in her fifth-period class she wasn’t feeling well and would be taking the following day off to visit her doctor.

The students began working on an assignment. Connie returned to her desk. There, she began writing a reminder to her substitute. It was approaching noon. Connie got part of one word down and, suddenly, pitched forward, sprawling across her desk.

Father Shot While Saving Daughter Facing Long Road Back to Health

Photo by wePhoto

Samantha and John VanBuskirk hope for better days after their numbing ordeal

TOLEDO, Ohio - Thinking back, John VanBuskirk remembers little about the day he should have died.

Except when he’s asked to recount the moment he decided to step in front of a shotgun-wielding robber aiming his weapon at VanBuskirk’s 20-year-old daughter.

Then, his memory is clear as glass.

Carry-On Only: Packing Light Makes Overseas Travel a Breeze

FLORENCE,  Italy - We were standing in front of a car rental agency in central Florence on a lovely fall morning. There were four of us – two couples.  We were beginning a three-week visit to Europe that included a third couple. The six of us spent 10 days in Tuscany and then scattered. One couple headed to the Amalfi Coast. Another went to Lake Como and Paris.  My wife and I took in Athens and Santorini, the most beautiful of the Greek islands.

 

As we waited for our car, a taxi carrying five middle-aged Americans – two men and three women – arrived.  Among them, they carried maybe 10 suitcases. Half of them were of the extra large variety - the type you'd see on an around-the-world cruise on the Queen Mary 2.

 

We watched the men stuff the suitcases into a large SUV rental. The effort took a considerable amount of time. There wasn’t enough room. Two of the suitcases settled into the back seat, leaving little space for the women. One of them sat on the other’s lap, and the third squeezed in next to the other two.

 

The scene was so comical, one of the men asked us to take a picture with his camera before they sped off on

 a trip not nearly as long as ours.

 

Had they taken a picture of us, they would have captured four people gloating.  Our luggage – all of it - was sitting on the sidewalk in a small pile. There were four suitcases not much larger than the ones you see pilots and flight attendants carting through airports. There were a couple of small daypacks and a pair of even smaller bags.  Nothing more.

 

"Operation Carry-On Only" was looking good.

 

Letter From Greece: Tourism is Thriving Amid a Struggling Economy, but the Work is Tiring

 

Despina Savvidou amid a crush of tourists and locals at the Acropolis of Athens.

 

ATHENS - It's been a long morning, and Despina Savvidou is dreaming about an afternoon nap.

 

That’s not surprising. She’s nearing the end of a three-hour stint guiding a group of five tourists around central Athens and has arrived at the city’s Acropolis, an arduous 150-foot climb. The place is packed to the point where there’s little room to maneuver on the rocky steps leading to the ruins of the marble edifice where Athenians have been gathering since 500 BC.

 

Cruise ship passengers, Greeks out for a Sunday stroll and taking advantage of rare free admission, and sunny, pleasant weather are responsible for the unusually large crowd.

 

Savvidou, 58, a straight-talking woman who mixes insightful historical observations with biting social commentary, is annoyed.

 

“I hate the cruise ships,” she says with a look of great disdain on her otherwise friendly face.

 

The irony, of course, is that the ships bring tourists and tourism is her livelihood. Not that type of tourist, Savvidou is quick to point out.

A Different Kind of War: The Day Dalal Mughrabi and Gail Rubin Died

The first hours of March 11, 1978 were unusually stormy off the South Lebanon coast. Into the teeth of the foul weather, 13 Palestinians launched a small vessel in the dark waters near Sidon.  Several miles from shore, they transferred to a pair of rubber dinghies and headed south toward the Israel coast.  Along the way, one of the crafts sunk, drowning two of its occupants.

Undeterred, the survivors squeezed into the remaining dinghy and continued, finally landing in a mid-afternoon drizzle at a nature preserve near Kibbutz Ma'agan Michael, about 35 miles north of Tel Aviv.

The Palestinians moved inland from the beach.  They had planned on landing closer to Tel Aviv and had not a clue where they were.  But good fortune lay just ahead. For also at Ma'agan Michael that afternoon was Gail Rubin, a New York City-born nature photographer.  She was stalking rare birds at one of her favorite haunts.

The Palestinians approached her.  The lone woman among them, Beirut social worker Dalal Mughrabi, asked the way to the capital.

A reporter later wrote of Rubin: "It was probably the New Yorker in her that provided them with thorough directions."

Route in hand, the Palestinians were prepared to hike up to the Haifa-Tel Aviv road. First, Dalal Mughrabi had some unfinished business.  She raised an AK-47 assault rifle and pointed it at Gail Rubin.

Dead Man Walking

 

Ron and Beth Skulas have a lot to smile about after Ron's improbable journey back from a horrific injury.

SYLVANIA, Ohio - As Myron "Ron" Skulas prepared to scale the old TV antenna adjacent to his Sylvania Township home, he gave little thought to any potential danger. After all, he'd climbed the tower a hundred times or more, he figured, without incident.

This day, Nov. 17, 2007, a Thursday, was different. As he worked his way toward the roof, where leaf-clogged gutters awaited, the tower, rusted at its base, snapped, sending the 285-pound Skulas crashing to the ground, beneath the fallen antenna.   

Skulas, retired Army with a wry wit, remembers his first words: "I'm not dead. That's good. Where's my glasses?"

The glasses were within an arm's reach. Skulas fetched them, wriggled out from under the antenna and crawled into the house, where he dialed 911. At Toledo Hospital, doctors diagnosed a lumbar fracture - painful and problematic, but not life-threatening.  Skulas was admitted but expected to be released shortly.

Two days later, while his family watched the Ohio State-Michigan football game in his hospital room, Skulas - without warning - stopped breathing. He was rushed to the Intensive Care Unit and intubated. Tests revealed that a large clot, known as a saddle embolism, had lodged in the area above his lungs, and that other, smaller clots had formed nearby. His condition quickly turned grave.

As Skulas later recalled: "That's when things went from bad to really bad."

Edward E. Tanber, Jr. 1930-2009

TOLEDO, Ohio - Edward E. Tanber, Jr. died July 7 at Heartland of Holly Glen where he lived two weeks.  He was 78.

Ed’s heart had been failing for several years, but somehow he managed to overcome one setback after another to continue his mission at the Step One Club on West Sylvania Avenue, where for more than three decades he helped thousands of club members and others control their addictions – along with his own - one day at a time.

Cancer Victim Leaves Longshot Surprise to Thankful Widow

SWANTON, Ohio - The lottery ticket was stashed among the documents, bills, receipts, medical records and other papers atop the bedroom dresser that served as her husband's desk during the last months of his life.

When lung cancer claimed Mike Bernath in October, 2006, Mary Ann Bernath gave the ticket little heed. She had a husband to bury. Children and grandchildren to console.  And, she needed time to grieve.

Some weeks later, while sorting through Mike's stuff, Mary Ann stumbled upon the ticket.  She briefly considered where to keep it safe, as Mike had told her to do, and finally settled on what in her mind was the most logical place - the Bible she kept on the nightstand next to her bed.

There it remained for 2 1/2 years.

Biker Allegedly Shot in Back by Ottawa Hills Cop Paralyzed and Burned; Files Law Suit

TOLEDO, Ohio - A unarmed motorcyclist allegedly shot in the back by an Ottawa Hills police officer and paralyzed and severely burned during a traffic stop, filed a civil suit yesterday in U.S. District Court against the officer and the village where the incident took place on May 23.

Officer Thomas White, the Village of Ottawa Hills and Officer John Doe are the defendants named in the complaint. The complaint, filed on behalf of Mike McCloskey, 24, of Maumee, by Geoffrey Fieger of Southfield, Mich., a nationally-known attorney, argues that McCloskey's civil rights were violated by Officer White, the village and Officer Doe.

The complaint asks for a jury trial and, as required in such cases, a minimum of $75,000 in punitive and other damages.  That figure could go considerably higher, according to an attorney familiar with the case.

Ottawa Hills police and officials with the state's Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation, which is investigating the case, have declined to comment or release any documents related to the shooting. But in another incident report, released by Ottawa Hill police and related to the arrest of a second motorcyclist traveling with McCloskey, a different account than is detailed in the complaint of some of the events of that night is given.

Burnt Bridges: How The Blade Tried to Smoke Toledo's Pro-Public Smoking Group

On April 1, The [Toledo] Blade asked the four candidates in the city's mayor's race to sign a clean campaign pledge produced by the Institute for Global Ethics in Rockland, Maine. Yet the newspaper itself frequently has violated fundamental ethics rules established by the Society of Professional Journalists. This is the first in a series of articles detailing the more serious infractions.

"Having been the ombudsman for this paper for almost a decade...I have never seen anyone trying to distort the news at all." Jack Lessenberry, The Blade, Jan. 27, 2008

TOLEDO, Ohio -  During the week before the November, 2004 election, editors at The Blade met for their daily news meeting in the third-floor conference room at the newspaper's North Superior Street offices.

When the discussion turned to a ballot initiative hopeful of diluting the city's recently-passed smoking ban - a ban The Blade championed - an editor had a question for Kurt Franck, the paper's managing editor.

When was the paper going to publish the results of a poll revealing voter opinion on the anti-smoking ban issue? 

The editor, who has requested anonymity for fear of being fired, said the question was asked because The Blade had been running daily polls on nearly every key race and issue - polls the paper had commissioned and paid for - yet nothing on the much-anticipated anti-smoking ban initiative poll.   

Franck had some startling news: The Blade would not run the poll story.  No explanation was given.  End of subject, Franck told the editor.

The implication of Franck's news, however, was clear to everyone aware of the poll: The Blade's side on the issue was losing.