We welcome letters. Please include your full name,
address, and telephone number. We edit all letters. Send them to Letters, Illinois Times, P.O. Box 5256,
Springfield, IL 62705; fax 217-753-3958; e-mail editor@illinoistimes.com.
PORA PLEASED
Thank you for the wonderful and thorough article by
Amanda Robert that
featured PORA [See “Mean Streets of
Springfield”, IT, Oct. 23].
Although PORA has been serving our community since
1992, those who serve
PORA meet people all the time who say they have never
heard of it. Our
staff and volunteers work very hard each day making a
positive contribution
to the issues of sexual exploitation, addiction and
recovery, hunger, homelessness and HIV/STD prevention. We, like all
nonprofit organizations, appreciate and need the support of others to
continue our work. Our hope is that Ms. Robert’s article will inspire
readers to support
their favorite social service with their time and
money during these difficult times.
Thank you very much for supporting the efforts of
PORA.
Toni Winchester
Board president
PORA (Positive Options, Referrals and Alternatives)
Springfield
NAMES OMISSION
Thanks for your column on Illinois place names and the
new University of Illinois Press book about them [See “From Bug
Tussle to Henpeck, it’s a trip”, IT, Oct. 23]. The book is a delight, but it is also a source
of irritation for genealogists and historians.
The author, Edward Callary, makes little or no
reference to the Illinois State Historical Society’s seminal work of
a similar name, Illinois Place Names, which was published in 1989, and is a comprehensive list
of Illinois’ known towns and lost communities. The Society’s
book is a reference text without the narrative focus of Callary’s,
which is what makes the latter work so engaging. However, Callary’s
work neither cites this earlier work nor credits its compiler and editor
— James N. Adams and William E. Keller — to whom Illinois
researchers and scholars owe a great deal of credit.
Nor is Callary’s work comprehensive. In
Adams’ book, he identifies at least six communities that were at one
time or still are called “Columbus.” Two of the towns are still
extant (one in Adams County, the other in Pope), but neither appears on
current state maps. Callary’s book lists no town anywhere called
Columbus, but he does note that Sparta was once called Columbus.
This is just one example of Callary’s omissions,
the greatest of which is his blatant disregard for Adams’ earlier
work, which Lowell M. Volkel, former senior archivist at the Illinois State
Archives called “one of the most important research tools in our work
at the Illinois State Archives.”
William Furry
Executive director
Illinois State Historical Society
Springfield
REBUILD SMART
The school district facilities committee recommended
replacing Springfield High School with a new school off Koke Mill Lane and
building a new Lanphier High building. That does not include infrastructure
costs at either site or demolition of Lanphier and Memorial Stadium.
Thankfully, Dr. Walter Milton and the school board are taking a second
look.
In 2003, an earlier Citizen’s Advisory Committee
for Building Projects recommended changes to the school board. All were
already completed before the new committee began its work. The current
facilities committee wants to spend well over $300 million with
infrastructure, demolition and a new stadium. Can we improve schools more
cost effectively? Yes.
The composition of the earlier committee included
three representatives from each of the school sub-districts. Unfortunately
we’ve discovered the present facilities committee has no geographical
balance; no one is representing the central city.
The 2003 building committee’s guidelines stated,
“Any considerations for school closures and expansions will be such
that the minimum of students are impacted by such action.” The
current facilities committee should have kept the same guidelines in making
its recommendation.
If the school board wants to win over taxpayer support
for a referendum, let me offer the following course of action. The board
should immediately sell any unused property at Koke Mill site, gain a
working cash flow and place valuable land back onto the tax rolls for
private development. It should then prioritize cost-saving improvement
projects like moving and consolidating administrative offices into the
third and fourth floors of Springfield High. It should sell vacated school
administrative offices, returning even more non-taxable property onto the
tax rolls. Finally, the board should purchase blighted land surrounding the
current Springfield High School site, enlarge the track and field into a
stadium and provide adequate parking for students and teachers.
Do not demolish or relocate schools. Let’s
“rebuild smart” by developing a cost-sensible approach to
remodel current school facilities. If an expansion plan is adopted, the
school district will get a stronger tax base by causing a central city
rebirth. A nationally recognized architecture firm, one of the managing
architects to remodel Chicago Public Schools, agrees and is ready to do a
peer evaluation if the school board hires a “made to order”
cost appraiser to justify the facility committee’s costly
recommendations.
Tony Leone
Springfield
KIDNEY LEGACY
I feel compelled to write to you and share my thoughts
on your wonderful
article, “Kidney failure” [Dusty Rhodes, IT, Oct. 9]. My father is Dr.
Alan G. Birtch, who helped establish the kidney transplant program at
Memorial Medical Center. I couldn’t help but reflect on how my life
has been affected by this legacy in Springfield.
In April of 1972, I was a very unhappy eight-year-old
boy moving far away from my friends to a place I had never heard of before.
At first I was misinformed and thought that I was moving only a few miles
down the road to Springfield, Mass. My life was over when I was shown where
to find Springfield, Ill. I didn’t understand why we were moving.
Thankfully, I quickly adapted to my new surroundings.
More importantly, I
began to understand why we had moved. My father wanted
to make a difference.
He saw an opportunity to bring his expertise into a
community that would
appreciate his talents and at the same time provide
him with facilities where
he could do what he loved most. He and his colleagues
created a wonderful
legacy of caring, compassionate and expert surgical
care in Springfield. He
poured the next 24 years of his life into this
endeavor.
Your quote from Dr. O’Connor about leaving his
family on the beach brought a smile to my face. Proudly, I remember many
times seeing my father drop
everything at a moment’s notice to perform his
miracle of transplant. Never once did I hear him say no. Never once did he
stop. Seven days a week, 24 hours a day, he was available to give back to
those who needed help by using the gift that God had given him.
Your article also brought tears to my eyes when I read
about the demise of Memorial’s transplant operations. How could
something so important and beneficial come crashing down so quickly? My
thoughts as I read about the problems, conflicts and failures at Memorial
kept bringing me back to how smoothly and peacefully
the relationships had been during my father’s time. Saving the lives
of people like Roy Maxfield should be an
honor for those who have been given the gift of being
a transplant surgeon. I
know that is how my father feels, and I hope
Springfield can find doctors who
still feel this way.
Eric A. Birtch
Burr Ridge, Ill.
CORRECTION
Last week’s cover story, “Mean Streets of
Springfield,” inaccurately identified PORA staff member Bernie Carver
as the organization’s executive director. His title recently changed
to outreach coordinator. Illinois Times regrets the error.
This article appears in Oct 23-29, 2008.
