Amherst News-Times, 1999-05-26

              Annual bike rodeo planned — Page 5    I   Athletes make state runs — Pages 7-8
Amherst News-Time
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Vodnpsday.  May  26.   1999
Amhorst.  Ohio
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Jennifer Oargasz
Gargasz
won't let
CF stop
her plans
by PAUL MORTON
News-Times reporter
If there is a lemonade
stand at the Marion L. Steele
High School graduation ceremony on June 6, it could be
graduating senior Jennifer
Gargasz selling the lemonade
she made from the lemons
life has handed her.
Jennifer, who will graduate
with honors this year, has
cystic fibrosis, an hereditary
disease which usually claims
its victims in their late teens
or early 20s.
Because of her illness, Jennifer gets up every day at
4:45 a.m. and spends two
hours taking medication and
undergoing therapy to keep
her lungs clear of the heavy
mucus secretions which characterize CF.
She goes to school, but is
finished at 11 a.m., since she
has already completed her
graduation requirements. But
she doesn't go home when
her classes are done; she
works as an office aide until
noon.
Then she goes home and
takes another round of medications and therapy, according
to Jenny's mother, Donna
Ritzrow. She then gets
another round in the evening.
■ "I'll bet Jenny takes 40
pills a day," Ritzrow said.
"It's an all-day thing with her
i dedications. She takes pills to
enable her to breathe, she
I ikes inhalers. But she doesn't
I st it stop her."
j And therein lies the wonder
of Jennifer Gargasz. In spite
of a debilitating disease she
lias lived with her entire life,
Jenny has lived very close to
a normal life.
She marches with the high
school marching band as a
member of the flag corps and
works as an aide in the office. Academically, she was
inducted to the National
Honor Society as a junior,
and this year she will graduate with ho/iors.
She was awarded the
Casherine Murray Memorial
Scholarship in addition to a
$500 scholarship-from the
state Cor having passed all
five sections of the 12th
grade proficiency test She
passed the math section of
the teat with honors.
Jenny's high school gui-
laaa-rt'jjfiiirrrtrT Vicki
Yunker, said Jenny had never
gotten a grade lower than a
B, despite her iUnael because
she is a "go-geutjr.f
"Jenny's junior year, her
schedule was ftotafttly
She
ditsai
Jenny
cre-
wp her mind to
Hit list: annual street repairs to beg
The city will spend more than
$860,000 this summer to fix city
streets, hopefully without getting a
barrage of complaints about curb
lawn damage.
Ten streets will be fixed using
funds from the city's half percent
street and bridge repair income tax
levy.
The most extensive projects will
be pavement replacement work
along Brennan Drive between
Middle Ridge Road and Gordon Avenue, Terra Lane north of Sunrise
Drive, Tenney Avenue between
Spring and S. Main streets and
Forest Street between Park and
Cleveland avenues.
City council's finance committee
recommended spending more than
$713,000 on paving and $50,000 on
a regular crack and joint sealing
program at its May 17 meeting. Engineering and contingency amount
to $135,000.
It wasn't the amount of money
that concerned councilmember John
Mishak, rather the curb lawns that
may be dug up during work.
In the past, he and other council
members have received dozens of
complaints about failure to restore
curb   lawns   to   their   former
condition.
Mayor John Higgins estimated
that 75 percent of the complaints
have resulted from work done by
contractors who did little more than
toss seed and a little hay on the bare
ground.
This was eliminated last year after his administration, with council's
approval, eliminated curb lawn replacement from contractor's work
o
—
■a
'jO
and gave it to la
'They've done
The complaints at
90 percent," the
quality of work i
better."
One of the biggest remaining
problems is the failure of residents
to water and weed the re-seeded
CONTINUED on page 3
Road warriors: cops turn into bikers
Law breakers, traffic violators
and bad guys beware. Amherst police may be around and you won't
notice them unless you're looking
for cops on two wheels.
Starting Memorial Day, you may
see any one of five officers climb
out of their patrol cars and on to
mountain bicycles as they pedal in
pursuit of law and order.
The pedal patrol is being started
as part of an effort to bring police in
closer contact with the community
and its neighborhoods, according to
sergeant Dan Jasinski, officer in
charge of the program.
Jasinski, sergeant Dan Makruski
and patrolmen Gary Fernandez,
Keith Biczykowski and Les Carrender, the department's DARE officer,
will make up the special bike patrol.
All have undergone special training
to acquaint themselves with newly
acquired all-terrain mountain bikes.
Funded as part of Amherst's community policing program, money for
the patrol was accessed with the
help of the Lorain County Prosecutor's Office and chief assistant prosecutor Jonathan Rosenbaum.
"The idea is to get officers out of
their patrol cars more and bring
them closer to people," Jasinski
said. "When you patrol on bikes,
you can stop and talk to people.
There's more conversation and an
exchange of ideas. It's like the cop
on the beat in the old days."
The biking officers will be easy
to spot even when wet weather forces them back in their patrol cars.
Each will have a bike rack mounted
on the back of their squad car.
Members of the patrol will simply
park and lock their cars in a neighborhood and pedal off. Catching
speeders won't be part of the job because pedal power can't catch
horsepower. Nor are the bikes
equipped with radar to clock heavy
footed motorists.
But other traffic violators can and
will be stopped. The license plate
1
Patrolman Gary Fernandez (left) and Keith Biczykowski prepare for a practice patrol on their new mountain bikes.
numbers of those who don't can be
radioed to one of two patrol cars
that will be in service. The other alternative will be for officers to write
down the plate number and pay
them a visit later.
Given the fact the bikes can move
along at a pretty good clip, officers
can try to give chase and flag a motorist down. Studies have shown
that most do stop, Makruski said.
Amherst is among the last area
police departments to adopt the two-
wheel patrols. Oberlin, Grafton,
Wellington, Elyria and Lorain have
had bike patrols for a year or more.
The program has been well-
received by people in those communities, Jasinski said.
It will enable the five officers to
concentrate on one or more neigh
borhoods and then move on to
another. It also will let them remain
close enough to their patrol cars
should a sudden shower er thunderstorm pop up.
And then there are the uniforms.
The regular black uniforms will be
shed in favor of a back golf shirt
with an embossed police badge and
black shorts.
Dan George, owner of Dad's Sunoco, is paying for the uniforms.
The special bikes were purchased
through Dale's Bike Shop, which
will provide maintenance as well.
The patrols will have another
benefit — Jasinski, Makruski, Biczykowski, Fernandez and Carrender
will stay in excellent shape to chase
down criminals.
On a stage: kids compose own opera
-r
CONRNUtD on pege 2
•fr
Anthony Flock learned what a recitative and aria are while Chelsea
and Ben Cooksey now know what a
libretto is thanks to their roles in an
opera written and sung by them and
50 Harris Elementary School fourth
graders.
In a time when rock n' roll and
pop music dominants the music
scene, the Cleveland Opera is trying
to initiate interest in the classical art
form by getting children involved at
an early age. As a part of their education, children in schools participating in the program are asked to
write and sing their own mini opera.
With the help of the Cleveland
Opera's mentor Eileen Moore, the
54 kids spent 10 weeks learning about opera by writing, singing and
helping produce "The Long Road to
Freedom." a story about the Underground Railroad.
The story was the idea of the students, who were learning about the
Underground Railroad as part of
their social studies classes. At about
the same time, they were introduced
• to opera by Moore and Harris music
teacher Debbie LeSuer. After considering several ideas, they decided
to make escaped slaves and their
flight to freedom the subject of their
opera.
The Harris students chose to write
a libretto, or amy text, about a
group of escaped slaves and their
cruel slave catchers. The end result
debuted May 18 for their parents
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