Amherst News-Times, 1998-04-08

              Fans bid farewell to coach — Page 2        Plaza gets new tenants — Page 3
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Vmherst News-Times
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April 8, 1998
Amherst, Ohio
50 cents
j      faces hard
I     >s without
L.-.e business
locating here
by GLEN MILLER
News-Times reporter
The city may face some asconomic
tough times within the next five to
10 years unless it can attract industry and business to help pay for the
increasing cost of providing
services.
Without more industry, mayor
John Higgins said the cost of providing services through residential
property tax will hit the "break even
point," not long after the
millennium.
'That will make it hard to get any
capital improvement projects done,"
jhe added.
The mayor said he expects to discuss his concerns with council in the
coming weeks as p^t of an effort to
boost economic development and
rcvitali/ation in the city.
His fears have been spurred by
the city's unprecedented residential
growth over the last six or seven
years without aexompanying indust
rial or business development.
Industry rather than residential
development, provides the bulk of
the taxable income needed to pay
for the continued upkeep of the city.
It is corporate and income tax from
il that generates the kind of income
needed to maintain and expand services, he explained.
Based on what other cities have
experienced, residential growth usually costs more in services than it
produces in taxable income.
Cities such as Avon, Grafton and
Avon Lake that have experienced
the same growth have more industry
than does Amherst, Higgins said.
Despite its growth, the Nordson
Corporation remains the city's main
industry even though motorcycle
manufacturer KTM has started to
build a new corporate headquarters
on Milan Avenue.
The mayor said he can't predict
how much longer the city's residential growth will continue, although
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New MLS
associate
principal
is hired
by APRIL MILLER
Topsy turvy
Zack Jenkins, 13, enjoys turning his world upside down and backward and forward as he
jumps on a larqe trampoline outside his North
Ridge Road home. He said last week's unseasonably warm summer-like weather was reason
enough to jump up and down.
News-Times reporter
A new face will be joining the
school administration next year.
Thomas Lehman, assistant principal at Vermilion High School, will
replace Richard Roth as associate
principal at Marion L. Steele High
School. Lehman's three-year contract becomes effective July 1.
"The reputation and stability both
with personnel and finances made
me interested in the Amherst district," Lehman said.
For the past six years, Lehman
has been the assistant principal in
Vermilion. Before joining Vermilion, he was a teacher for 10 years,
working in Margaretta, Portage
County and Summit County. He has
also worked as a basketball coach.
Lehman, his wife Janis and their
two children, Elizabeth, 12, and Casey, 8, reside in Vermilion. He said
he has no plans to move to Amherst
His daughter, who will enter high
school in a few years, doesn't want
to change schools.
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Lions, Leos prepare for hunt — Easter style
Dozens of children 10 and under
will swarm into Maude Nciding
Park along with their parents on Saturday, April 11 in search of small
treasures that will probably be
gobbled up within minutes.
It will be Amherst's annual Easter
egg hunt, an activity that often turns
into a mini foray once volunteers
from the Lions and Leo clubs turn
lots of wide-eyed kids loose at 11
a.m.
Members of the Leo Club, the junior version of the Lion's Club, will
start concealing plastic eggs filled
with goodies early in the morning.
Hopefully, the foraging will take
a while, although the pains the Leos
take in hiding the eggs probably will
be for naught.
Leo Club members will spend
several hours stuffing chocolates
and other goodies into the plastic
eggs on Good Friday only to have
their work consumed in a much
shorter time.
"They'll (the eggs) probably will
be gone in three or four minutes.
The kids just kind of sense them,"
event   director   and   Lion's   Club
member David Rice said.
No one is sure when the hunt
started, bul il was at least 25 years
ago.
"It's more like a charge of children," he added. "It's hard to imagine
until you've seen it."
The annual hunt originally was
the work of the former Amhersi Jay-
cees, a group that became PACE
(People of Amhersi for Community
Enrichment), according to former
organizer Charlene Godfrey.
But things have changed. The
eggs are no longer real. The Lion
and Leo clubs purchased 8,000 reusable plastic eggs two years ago
when they took over the annual
event from the now defunct Amherst Chamber of Commerce.
"Nobody wanted to sit around
trying to color that many eggs just
io have them eaten or get broken,"
Rice said. "Besides, it prevents kids
from the possibility of getting a bad
The egg hunt costs about $600 to
sponsor and is basically a joint operation between the adult and junior
Lions' groups. It takes about five or
six hours to stuff the eggs with the
candy goodies and another two to
place them throughout the park.
It takes a lot less time to find
them because the majority are
placed in easily seen places and are
gathered up by three waves of excited children.
"It's done that way bwause otherwise you'd have big kids stepping
over the smaller ones who might get
trampled on and not get anything,"
he explained.
About 2,000 eggs are the easiest
to find. They are for kids four and
under while another 3,000 are for
five- to seven-year-olds. Aboul
3,000 arc for eight, nine and 10
year-olds and usually are the most
carefully hidden but quickly found.
A few eggs arc put aside for safe
keeping to make sure stragglers and
children who don't find any get a
few.
"Otherwise, we'd have some tears
and frowns. That's something we
try to avoid because this is supposed
to be a fun lime lor everyone," Rice
said. "It's work for us but fun for
them and that's what it's all about."
Community Good
Friday service
will be held at
historic chapel
The Amherst Historical Society is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a year-long slate of activities.
Coinciding with the actual date that the society was organized was the 100th anniversary that the village of Amherst
was incorporated as North Amherst
Since that date falls on Good Friday, members of the society feel it is fitting that the date be commemorated by having the community-wide Good Friday service in St. George
Chapel on the site of the Amhersi Sandstone Center on Milan Avenue.
This service will be conducted — at 7 p.m. — by the
Ministerial Association of Amherst churches.
Rev. Noah Oxley, president of the association, is in charge.
The public is welcome; however, seating in the chapel is
limited.
Other activities coming up during the year will include an
historic tour of Amherst homes in June, the annual Jamboree
in July, a community picnic in August, and an Antiques and
Collectibles show/sale in September.
The regular meetings of the society are held on the fourth
Wa^dnesday of each month and will have special features
throughout the year.
In April, the attendees are encouraged to bring artifacts to
display and explain; in May, the program will be Unmentionables 1850-1950; the September meeting will feature a nationally recognized speaker on Teddy Bears; another nationally
recognized speaker, Pat Leimbach, will entertain at the October meeting; in December an ethnic Christmas will be
featured.
The final event of tLe anniversary year will be a Christmas
gala honoring volunteers. All events tire open to the public.
He saved pilot from cloudy demise
by GLEN MILLER
News-Times reporter
Dick Goddard and Don Webster
may have been weather forecasters
longer than John Kowalcski, but
they haven't helped save a life or
been presented a bronze award for
heroic service by the U.S.
government
Kowalcski, a meteorologist working at the Cleveland Air Traffic
Control Center in Oberlin, helped
save the life of a small plane pilot
by guiding him to the ground during
heavy cloud cover in early November 1996.
An employee of the National
Weather Service (NWS), Kowaleski
was on duty at the center when a
Cessna pilot became trapped in
heavy cloud cover while flying over
Wheeling, W.Va at about 10,000
feet.
He had no instruments and was
surrounded by clouds so thick he
couldn't see where he was going. To
make matters worse, the distressed
pilot was running perilously low on
fuel as the sun was beginning to
sink into the horizon.
The pilot adled the air traffic
controllers for help. They immediately called on Kowaleski's
expertise.
Studying weather satellite imagery, the Amhersi man detected a
small break in the clouds over Mor-
gantown, W.Va., several miles
south of where the plane was flying.
Working with air traffic controllers, Kowaleski guided the frightened pilot by turning him around so
John Kowaleski takes a moment from his work
at the FAA center to talk to the media about the
award he received lor saving a pilot's life, using
his weather forecasting capabilities.
lhal he could find the small break in
the clouds. When he did, the pilot
descended until he reached a lower
altitude, where visibility markedly
improved.
He was then able to find his way
to Wheeling, where he safely landed
for the night
Kowaleski provides the FAA facility with aviation weather reports
in the several hundreds of miles of
airspace for which it is responsible.
"I'm here for safety purposes and
to try to stay ahead of the weather,"
he explained. "Il can keep you on
your toes. Obviously, the safety part
paid off in this case."
For his quick thinking and meteorological skill, the U.S. Commerce Department — the weather
service's parent agency — awarded
Kowaleski a bronze medal, one of
the NWS's highest honors.
Kowaleski was proud bul sur
prise by the honor bestowed on
him last December, especially since
it had been more than a year since
the incident occurred.
"It wasn't just me, there were
other people (air traffic controllers)
involved, loo. They are the ones
who helped him keep his head and
were in contact with him," he said.
And he's also performed similar
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