Back to basics
Saving Sophie
By Roger Estlack, Clarendon Enterprise
Despair turned to joy last week when a local family’s pet was rescued from a well hole after 27 hours.
The 15-year-old Yorkie named Sophie began an ordinary day last Wednesday, July 30, with her owner Jim Whitlock, putting out feed on the old Reynolds place five miles south of Clarendon on the JA Ranch Road.
That was at 10 a.m.; and when Whitlock got ready to leave, Sophie was nowhere to be found.
“She was always with me and usually stuck close to me,” Whitlock said. “When I couldn’t find her, I thought she might have chased a rabbit.”
The search was on with Whitlock and his wife, Sue, joined by Troy Ritter and Tye and Cortney Jackson diligently looking for Sophie.
Finding her was imperative. This was more than a dog to the Whitlocks. This was their family.
“We lost a daughter in 1960 to a drunk driver,” Whitlock said. “So we don’t have any kids or grandkids. We just have our animals.”
And Sophie, along with her sister, had been Whitlock family members for eleven years.
As the search wore on more than half a mile away, Sue Whitlock convinced her husband that there was no way Sophie had wandered that far off.
“We went back to the windmill, and as I got to the other side of it, I saw that hole. A shiver went up my spine,” he said.
The hole was 15 feet deep, nine to 10 inches in diameter at the opening but narrowing to about four inches at the bottom.
“I thought ‘surely not,’ but I hollered her name, and she barked from the bottom of hole.”
As the Whitlocks’ hearts sank, they were joined by other friends and neighbors over the next several hours – R.J. Kemp, John Morrow, Tanner Morris, Kelly and Linda Hill, Kelly and Vicki Tunnell, and others – as numerous methods were tried to pull Sophie from the well.
Morrow put a camera down the hole that showed it was wallowed at the bottom, and that Sophie was off to one side.
“We were trying to get a noose on her,” Whitlock said. “We got her front legs in, but we couldn’t get her through the small part of the hole.”
Next, they devised a hook that successfully snared Sophie’s collar and brought her up in the hole. But about five feet up, the collar slipped off, and she fell back to the bottom.
The Whitlocks, joined by Mrs. Tunnell, turned to prayer to guide the rescuers.
“I prayed out loud, and she would come over and we would pray some more,” Whitlock said.
But at 2:30 Thursday morning, Whitlock decided it was time to stop for the night.
“I called it off,” he said. “Sophie was tired. We were all tired. We needed to rest.”
Sophie remained on everyone’s minds throughout the night, and Morrow had a realization that would prove the key to saving her life. Nooses and catches were too risky and might harm the dog, but Morrow knew what needed to be done.
“John called me the next morning and said we were going to save her just like that girl in the well,” Whitlock said.
In 1987, eighteen-month-old Jessica McClure fell down a 22-foot well near Midland. Rescuers ultimately saved her by digging a parallel hole to the well and then tunneling to her. Morrow felt the same method would work with Sophie, and he brought his backhoe to the site and began to dig.
Ten feet was the limit of his equipment, so Chris Schollenbarger joined the effort with a trackhoe that could continue to get the last five feet. Then the tunnel was dug to get to Sophie.
At first she would stick her head up but not come out. Then Kelly Hill was able to get her out and relief flooded their emotions.
“I bawled like a baby,” Whitlock said. “I just love her.”
The Whitlocks are forever grateful to the people who rescued their loved one. For her part, Sophie is safe, healthy, and happy. But now she stays not more than about three feet from her owner’s side.
“We got her back through a bunch of great people and prayer. A lot of good people showed up and no money was exchanged,” Whitlock said. “We owe a big thanks to everyone who helped.”
Morrow urges everyone remember the need and responsibility to plug, cap, or seal, abandoned well holes to prevent tragedies.
Regents consider FY ’15 budget
Clarendon College Regents began work on a $9.1 million projected budget for fiscal year 2015 during a called meeting last Thursday, July 31.
The budget is forecast to be less than the current expenses, and CC President Robert Riza said the administration’s numbers are based on statewide projections of no growth in college enrollments.
“The new norm is zero and down for enrollment,” Dr. Riza said, noting that the plentiful availability of jobs in the economy makes it hard to recruit students for college.
College officials plan to adopt an ad valorem rate in the Clarendon College District, which covers all of Donley County, set at $0.220802 per $100 valuation, which is lower than the current tax rate of $0.222732. However, due to higher property values, the lower rate will actually bring in about $31,000 in increased revenue.
The proposed rate is eight percent higher than the effective rate of $0.204447, the rate which would bring in the exact same revenue as last year.
Regent Tex Selvidge spoke in favor of adopting the proposed rate, noting that it was better to raise taxes a little when times are good than to get behind and have to raise them a lot. Other board members also agreed with Selvidge.
CC won’t be looking at any tuition increases, and Riza said state appropriations will remain unchanged. The college is expecting to receive about $100,000 more from the five-cent tax in Gray County due to higher values there.
The 2015 budget will be condensed compared to the current budget, Riza said, and it will be easier to track expenses and related programs.
Thursday’s workshop did not include any information about the college’s auxiliary budget, which covers expenses for athletics, the bookstore, and cafeteria operations. Regents will hold a public hearing and continue budget talks on August 14 and are set to adopt a tax rate that day as well.
In other college business, Riza gave Regents their first look at the administration’s strategic plan being developed for 2014-2017, labeled “One College…One Vision.”
When finished, the plan will take the college through its upcoming reaccreditation process and also has goals to redesign and increase student services, implement a district-wide master plan, strengthen college-community relations, and identify programs for expansion.
Regents also met in closed session to discuss personnel, but no action was taken following the closed session.
We have the Congress we deserve
The US House of Representatives last week voted to sue President Barack Obama, claiming the chief executive has overstepped the limits of his powers.
The Republican-led House doesn’t like the way Mr. Obama enforces some laws and not others, and they specifically don’t like the way his administration has chosen to enforce parts of the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare) but not enforce other parts of the same law.
They have a point, and this column largely believes the GOP is right to be upset with the president on this. However, a lawsuit doesn’t seem like a very good way to handle things. The House’s most effective tool remains its control of the purse strings, and they should pull those strings tight every chance they get, effectively strangling any Obama program they don’t like. Congress putting on the breaks is probably the only way we’ll ever get the shackles back on our government.
Expectations of Congress doing anything right isn’t too high right now. In fact, CNN posted an online story Tuesday with the results of an informal poll. They asked their followers on Facebook and Twitter to describe Congress using only one word. More than 5,000 people responded, and “useless” was the number one response, followed by “worthless” and “joke.”
And it didn’t get any better after that. The next seven most popular responses were “corrupt,” “incompetent,” “lazy,” inept,” “idiots,” “selfish,” and “dysfunctional.”
A word cloud – a graphic representation of the most popular words – showed virtually no positive responses to the question. And some words made the top ten look like compliments. Consider these responses: “criminals,” “traitors,” “crooks,” “losers,” and “crap.”
The article quotes a NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist College poll this week that reports only three percent of voters as considering Congress “productive,” and another poll showing Congress with a 15 percent job approval.
Who are these 15 percent that are pleased with Congress? They need to have their heads examined and their voter registration cards taken away.
Typically, individual Congressmen and Senators get high marks from their constituents. The old “I hate Congress but love my Congressman” phenomenon has been prevalent for years in politics. However, CNN says the Washington Post reported that 51 percent of people now disapprove of their own representative’s job performance.
Results for individual members of Congress weren’t available, but I suspect that our own Mac Thornberry still enjoys a pretty high approval rating by Texans in the 13th District. He shares our values and votes the way most of us probably want him to. Your editor disagrees with Mac occasionally, but largely thinks he’s doing the best he can in a corrupt and broken system.
As a body, Congress is out of touch with the people it represents, has no qualms about ignoring the Constitution unless they want to beat the president over the head with it, and mostly serves to spend money we don’t have to fund a government that generally only makes life more difficult and more expensive.
You can blame it on gridlock if you like. You can point to the fact that Republicans don’t like Democrats and vice versa or that things are more polarized that ever in Washington. But the fact of the matter is things don’t seem to get better whether we have united government or divided government. The government itself is the problem.
Obama had his time with his party in control of both houses of Congress, and yet nothing much was accomplished other than a poorly written health care law that causes more problems than it solves. George W. Bush had his time with his party in power, and yet there were no great strides in rolling back government. The last Bush administration was a study in lost opportunities and, unfortunately, lost freedoms.
Some say that term limits are the answer to this vexing problem. A House full of inexperienced Congressmen, however, would put all the power in the hands of entrenched Congressional aides. The same thing has happened with the executive branch where bureaucrats are running the show largely without the president’s knowledge or permission.
The quality of our Congress and our White House won’t get any better until the people demand it. But the people, for all their supposed frustration, are largely indifferent to Washington. And that is the biggest problem.
Willie Jo Seitz
Willie Jo Seitz, 91, died July 27, 2014, in Canyon. Private family services were held. Arrangements were under the direction of Brooks Funeral Directors
Willie Jo Seitz was born February 14, 1923, in Eldorado, Oklahoma to John Gossett and Euna Denton. She graduated from Eldorado High School and attended Altus Community College. She married Elbert L. Seitz in Lovington, New Mexico on February 5, 1949. They have been married 65 years.
Willie Jo worked for the Texas Department of Health and Human Services for 22 years. She was a loving companion and will be fondly remembered as ‘Grandma’ by her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She loved ice cream, cookies, and puppies. Willie Jo took pride in her grandchildren and did everything she could to ensure that they received a college education. She will be greatly missed.
She was preceded in death by her mother; a brother, Garland Gossett; and a sister, Bobby Miller.
She is survived by her husband, Elbert L. Seitz, of Canyon; daughter, Jo Jan Nunley, of Canyon; three grandchildren, Scarlet Estlack and husband, Russell, of Clarendon, Patrick Nunley, of Canyon, Spencer Nunley and wife, Cathy, of Canyon; three great-grandchildren, Maggie Nunley, of Canyon, Nathan and Daniel Estlack, of Clarendon; and a special cousin, Tommy Kirk, of New York.
City moves to regulate gaming businesses
By Roger Estlack, Clarendon Enterprise
The City of Clarendon moved to regulate gaming businesses last Tuesday, although none are currently operating locally.
Discussions about regulating eight-liner games started months ago, and the only known gaming establishment in town has since closed.
Ordinance 435 as approved July 22 will require gaming businesses to have a permit, and eight-liner machines would also be subject to initial and annual fees.
Aldermen debated the justification for regulating the gaming machines, including whether taking money from a gaming business was right or not.
Alderman Doug Kidd sought assurance that the ordinance as presented would not prevent anyone from operating an arcade for teenagers; and he also suggested that if the city was going to make money on gaming devices, it should be directed toward worthy causes in town and not just the city’s general fund.
The board agreed on a $100 permit application fee for gaming businesses plus initial fees of $100 per machine and annual renewal fees of $50 per machine.
The city’s code enforcement officer would also inspect such businesses to determine their compliance with local regulations.
This ordinance becomes effective September 1, 2014.
Also at last week’s meeting, Britton Hall presented information in public comment about a grant program available through PetSmart that pays to spay, neuter, and release feral cats. Hall asked the city to look into the program, which slows the growth of feral cat populations while allowing the sterilized cats to continue to control rodents.
Aldermen approved amending the current budget by $21,699 to purchase new Dumpsters and authorized up to $600 for new storage cabinets for City Hall.
Mayor Larry Hicks reported the street project was going well and is slightly ahead of schedule. He also reported that the Texas Department of Transportation may soon start charging the city for cleanup TxDOT has been having to do on Koogle Street as a result of rains washing dirt and rocks off Third Street during the project.
The board also worked on the 2014-2015 city budget and discussed the benefits of hiring a part time person to care for and clean the park during the summer months.
One dies in wreck Monday
By Roger Estlack, Clarendon Enterprise
A Kansas man lost his life Monday, July 28, while traveling through Donley County on Interstate 40.
Department of Public Safety Trooper Kelly Hill said 75-year-old Robert Jackson was pronounced dead at the scene by Donley County Justice of the Peace Connie Havens.
Jackson, a resident of Yates Center, Kan., was driving a 2008 Chevy Impala about 10:40 a.m. and traveling with his wife and daughter during heavy rainfall. The car was traveling eastbound about one-quarter mile west of the Safety Rest Area when the accident occurred.
An unidentified truck driver told Hill that Jackson was in the outside lane and appeared to be moving to the inside lane to presumably avoid standing water on the road. The truck driver said Jackson lost control of the vehicle at that point. The car went into the south ditch and the driver’s side door slammed into a light pole.
All occupants of the car were wearing seatbelts. Jackson’s wife was uninjured, and his daughter received only minor injuries, Hill said.
Thornberry’s Red River bill draws supporters
By Gilad Edelman, The Texas Tribune
Lawmakers at a U.S. House Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation meeting on Tuesday said they support legislation that aims to resolve a land dispute between the federal government and Texas landowners.
The Red River Private Property Protection Act, introduced by U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Clarendon) would affect a 116-mile stretch of land along the Red River that forms part of the border between Texas and Oklahoma. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management, citing court rulings, says the area belongs to the federal government. But Texans have used and lived on the land for years, holding deeds to it and paying taxes on it.
The bill would require the BLM, which has said it won’t decide what to do with the land until at least 2018, to transfer property within the disputed territory to landowners who can prove they hold a title through Texas county or state records.
“The status today is that private landowners cannot borrow money on their land, because the title is clouded,” Thornberry said. “They cannot make improvements on the land, they cannot sell the land, because there is all this concern that the federal government is going to come in and make a claim on portions of these acres.”
Pat Canan, a Wichita Falls game warden, told lawmakers that BLM officials placed boundary markers on his land in 2008, laying claim to 1.7 miles between his house and the river that he considered his property.
Steve Ellis, deputy director of operations for the BLM, said the agency opposes the bill because it could force the federal government to transfer mineral rights without compensating U.S. taxpayers.
Ellis suggested that the BLM could deal with some of the land by selling it at fair market value. Lawmakers bristled at the idea.
“That’s why there’s such fear of a federal land grab,” said Thornberry.
Subcommittee Chairman U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, said that the suggestion “sent a chill up my spine.”
“Let’s hope we can solve this problem for you very quickly,” Bishop told Canan.
This past April, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott sent a letter to the BLM accusing the agency of “threatening [Texans’] private property rights by claiming ownership over this territory” and urging it to disclose its plans for the land.
The dispute has a complicated history. In 1923, a fight between Texas and Oklahoma over oil and gas rights forced the U.S. Supreme Court to determine the boundary between the states. The court held that under an 1819 treaty between the U.S. and Spain, everything north of the middle of the river belonged to Oklahoma and everything below the south bank belonged to Texas. That left a strip of land between the south bank and the middle of the river that belonged to the federal government.
In the decades following that decision, the river shifted north, and new parcels of land on the south side were sold as parts of Texas. But in 1983, the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that because the shifting was the result of sudden, rather than gradual, changes, the Texas border remained where it had been fixed in 1923. That meant the new land between the Texas border and the river belonged to the federal government, and not to the people who considered it their property.
The BLM has not fully surveyed the area, so it is not clear how many acres the locals have claimed and how many are untouched.
“This hearing is one more step forward, and a very important one, in our efforts to assure landowners that their private property will be protected,” Thornberry said in a written statement.
CC success camps help fall students
Clarendon College is hosting its second Student Success Camp next week.
The College will offer courses August 4-6 at its locations in Clarendon, Pampa, and Childress to students looking to get ahead for the fall semester.
Courses will be offered in math, reading and writing and are designed to prepare students to take the TSI exam – a requirement to take college courses.
These camps are free and Clarendon College will cover all testing costs.
The first ever Student Success Camp held in June had positive results with 79 percent of stu-dents who participated scoring well enough on the TSI exam that they will not need any reme-diation this fall and are ready to take college coursework.
Interested students can get more information or RSVP by calling the Student Services office at 806-874-4820.
Editorial: School days are ahead… unfortunately
School starts in just more than three weeks, and I’m not ready any more than my kids are.
We’ve had a great summer, you see. A 1970s type of summer filled with carefree times for the kids, riding bikes in the neighborhood and going on adventures with the neighborhood kids… which happens to include their cousins.
This was amplified by God gifting us with weather the way I remember it growing up – not as hot and with periodic thunderstorms. This 1970s climate was evidenced by the presence of neighborhood wildlife that has been scarce in recent years. We’ve had lots of fat hop toads, horny toads, and at least one green lizard running about. One local resident even reported on Facebook that he had seen fireflies near his front porch several days ago!
For summer vacation, we went hiking and fishing, and the kids got to capture tadpoles at their aunt’s place in Colorado. But most importantly, they spent most of their time letting their imaginations run wild and just being kids.
That is unfortunately all about to change as we get sucked back into the meat grinder that is modern public education where we get back on “schedules” and spend months doing pointless worksheets, trudging through AR books, and signing off on daily discipline logs… like parents need more paperwork.
I recently read a well-written blog in which a father penned an open letter to their child’s Kindergarten teacher. The author set the groundwork for the school year, said just what he thought of modern education, and longed for his child’s creativity to simply be unleashed. To which I say, “Ditto.”
To say I don’t like the modern school system would be to put it mildly. Don’t get me wrong. There are lots of fine people at our schools, and they all have the best intentions. In fact, I’m intentionally writing this now, before we even know who our kids’ teachers are this year, so that hopefully no one takes anything personally. I don’t really hold any teacher at fault for the situation anyway. I just think, for the most part, it was better when I was in school. I also want to say that I have a good working relationship with the school administration, but our education system is, unfortunately, corrupted by government standards, statistics, and nonsense.
As an entering second grader, Ben has already read more books than I read between Kindergarten and my senior year. I don’t know that we’ve accomplished anything, other than spur a deep dislike in our household for the stupid Accelerated Reader program. (My kids tell me “stupid” is a bad word, but sometimes it fits.) I learned to love to read without having a book a day shoved down my throat.
I could go on all day about the AR program. I think it ultimately drives a lot of kids away from reading, and, as you can imagine given my profession, I believe that isn’t a desirable outcome.
Let’s turn our attention to school supplies. Why do I have to send $1.50 for an AR folder that costs 50¢ at the store? Why doesn’t the school just budget a couple of hundred dollars and buy the stupid folders? (Sorry, there’s that word again.) Use my tax dollars wisely, please. Maybe we could skip the year-end trip to Wonderland and spring for some of these “essential” supplies. Indeed, maybe we could just skip the entire last week of school. We’re not learning anything that week anyway.
Why does a Kindergartener need ten glue sticks? When I was in Kindergarten we made one jar of Elmer’s paste last nine months.
And why do I need to put my kid’s name on the school supplies? Modern education just puts all the supplies in community buckets where we put them in our own individual boxes and had to keep up with them. Last year, my son complained that one of his classmates had bitten all the erasers off all the pencils. I’m not sure what was more disconcerting… the possibility that this other child had eaten a lot of rubber or the idea that my child was using a pencil that someone else’s little darling had been slobbering on. Either way, I wasn’t happy.
Then there’s the time issue. It’s a big ordeal if I don’t get my children to school by 8 o’clock on the dot. And that’s as it should be. We need to be punctual. But the school also needs to be appreciative of my time and not waste it unnecessarily. Specifically, if I have to take off work to go get my kids, I would appreciate it if you had them ready to go promptly at 3:30. I shouldn’t have to wait 20 minutes for the pep rally to end when I need to get to back to work. Think about the schedules of working parents when you plan things.
Our school system, unfortunately, spends a lot of time doing what parents should be doing. I blame welfare, the disintegration of families, and a lack of church-going for a bunch of that. Kids should be ready to learn and ready to interact with other children and with adults and know how to behave.
This summer was a reminder of how things should be… simpler and better. We need a quality of education and not just a quanity of eduction. We need a school that produces better than average students, better than average citizens, and not just better quantitative data and test scores.
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