This Week

Donley County Junior Livestock Show and Auction will be held Saturday, January 11, at the Clarendon Community Center located behind Suna AutoMall.

More than seventy young people will be exhibiting their beef, sheep, and swine projects at 9:00 a.m. The day’s activities will conclude with an auction at 6:00 p.m.

During the year, these participants spend many hours feeding and caring for their animals, and the auction gives them an opportunity to be rewarded for their hard work.

Many participants will take their livestock on to major shows in Ft. Worth, San Antonio, and Houston.

If you would like to support the Junior Livestock Show and sale or need more information, contact Lon Adams at (806) 856-5323.

By John Taylor, CISD Counselor

Students in Clarendon Schools and across the state will face a new assessment this spring. The Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, or TAKS test replaces the decade old TAAS test.

The new TAKS test, (pronounced ‘tax’) is more rigorous due to increased depth and complexity of the questions.

Teachers prepare students for the TAKS by teaching the state curriculum, the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills or TEKS.

One of the biggest changes brought about by the new assessment program is the Student Success Initiative. Under this program, 3rd graders must pass the TAKS Reading test in order to be promoted to the 4th grade. They will have three opportunities to meet expectations. Additional instruction will be provided for all students who do not pass. A parent can request a GPC or Grade Placement Committee be formed that will ultimately decide if the student will be retained should the student not meet requirements on the third test. In 2005, all 5th graders will have to pass both the TAKS Reading and Math tests to be promoted to the 6th grade. In 2008, 8th graders will have to pass these tests to be promoted to the 9th grade.

Another change TAKS brings is a shift in the Exit Level test (the test that high school students must pass to graduate) from the 10th to the 11th grade. The Exit Level TAKS will consist of an English Language Arts test, a science test, a math test, and a social studies test- all of which must be passed before the student can graduate.

Clarendon High School has made several changes the past few years to address the TAKS requirements. An alternating block schedule has been in place for 2½ years. Longer blocked classes allow the teachers enough flexibility during each class to teach the TEKS and address the critical thinking required by TEKS. Several master schedule changes have been made, and all student graduation plans are devised with TAKS preparation in mind. Also, all juniors are now required to be enrolled in both a science and math class.

Since this year’s juniors took the Exit Level TAAS last year, the new TAKS Exit Level requirement will go into effect in the spring of 2004 for the senior class of 2005. All current CHS students have met Exit Level requirements.

The new TAKS test brings a more complicated testing schedule. Writing at grades 4 and 7, Reading at grade 9, and English Language Arts at grades 10 and 11 will be given on February 25. The third graders’ first opportunity to pass the Reading test will be on March 4 (any student not passing will retest on April 30 and if necessary, again on July 8). Reading at grades 4-8 will be on April 30. TAKS Math will be as follows: grades 3-8 and 11 on April 29, grade 10 on April 30, and grade 9 on May 1. Social Studies will be given on May 1 in grades 8, 10, and 11. Science will be assessed on May 1 for grade 5 and May 2 for grades 10 and 11.

TAAS has not gone away completely. It is still the graduation requirement for any current junior, senior, or out of school examinee who did not pass while in school. While no CHS students will need to retake the TAAS, it will be offered to out of school examinees this spring to those who register by January 24, 2003. Anyone interested in testing should contact the Clarendon counselor’s office at 874-3241.

Four area men are starting the New Year in the custody of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice following their December 30, 2002, sentencings by 100th District Court Judge David McCoy.

According to information from the district attorney’s office, Dustin Dean Dann and Bobby Carol Atkinson, both of Childress, came to plea agreements with the State through District Attorney Stuart Messer. They were represented by attorney Earl Griffin.

Dann received 2½ years in prison for the third degree felony of Unlawful Possession of a Firearm. Atkinson was sentenced to three years in prison for the third degree felony of Driving While Intoxicated.

Carson County inmate Terry Wayne Gollihugh and Donley County inmate Preston Wayne Havens came before the court on motions filed by Messer to revoke probation.

Gollihugh was placed on felony probation on January 4, 1999, for Driving While Intoxicated. He received three years in a TDCJ Institutional Division for his probation violation. Gollihugh was represented by attorney Steve Cross.

Havens was placed on probation for the second degree felony of Indecency with a Child and the first degree felony of Aggravated Sexual Assault on May 23, 2002. He was sentenced to 15 years in a TDCJ Institutional Division for violating probation, and he was represented by Earl Griffin.

The district attorney complimented the Probation Department on these cases.

“I want to commend the work of the Probation Department for keeping tabs on these men and letting us know when they violate their probation requirements so we can work to keep our cities and counties safe for all of us,” Messer said.

Renowned painter Olive Freda Vandruff Bugbee of Clarendon died here on Saturday, January 4, 2003, at the age of 94.

Memorial services will be held at 2 p.m. January 15 in the Hazlewood Lecture Hall at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon

Born at Martin’s Ferry, Ohio, on April 17, 1908, to Ross and Mame Buskirk Vandruff, she spent much of her childhood traveling in the Southwestern United States with her geologist father and her mother. In Chicago, she studied with painter Edmund Giesbert at the University of Chicago.  She also studied with Chicago sculptors Elisabeth H. Hibbard and Frederick C. Hibbard in the mid 1940s, eventually becoming an assistant to them. Vandruff moved to San Antonio in 1931, where she became an assistant to sculptor Pompeo Coppini.

About 1937, she married the engraver Charles F. Anderson.  In 1950 she operated a sheep ranch near Kerrville. While in the Hill Country, she became a renowned painter of animals and birds and was often commissioned to paint pet and horse portraits. She met Western artist H.D. Bugbee of Clarendon in 1960, marrying him the following year and relocating to Clarendon. 

Upon Bugbee’s death in 1963, Vandruff succeeded him as curator of art at the Panhandle-Pains Historical Museum until her retirement in 1982. After retiring, she still volunteered at the Museum, driving the 150 mile round trip from Clarendon nearly every day until November 2002.

Vandruff worked in several media, including pastel, watercolor, casein, and oil.  She was a member of the Coppini Academy of Fine Arts in San Antonio and began exhibiting there in the early 1930s.  By the early 1960s, she had had numerous solo exhibitions.  Vandruff’s paintings are found in private collections across the United States.

Among her patrons were former President Lyndon B. Johnson and Texas Governor Dolph Briscoe.  Her public commissions consist of murals in Texas and Oklahoma, including a mural of Palo Duro Canyon for the First National Bank of Amarillo, now Bank of America. In 1976, she was included in the landmark exhibition, “The Women Artist, in the American West, 1860-1960,” in Fullerton, California.  Recently, she was included in the Dictionary of Texas Artists, 1800-1945.

A memorial exhibition of Vandruff’s paintings will be presented in the Bugbee Gallery at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon.  The exhibition will include works of art from her personal collection as well as from the Museum’s.

Her body will be cremated.  Arrangements were under the direction of Robertson Funeral Directors, Inc., of Clarendon.

Local gun enthusiasts will have to find a new place for target practice after the Clarendon Board of Aldermen closed a local shooting range Monday night.

The action followed complaints by county resident Laban Tubbs, who told the board in December that he had recently found two bullet holes on his property – one in the roof of his house and the other in the side of his barn about four feet from the ground.

“If the shot that hit the roof had been any lower or to the left, it probably would have gone through one living room window and out the other side,” Tubbs told the Enterprise last month.

He also said that he and his nine-year-old daughter had been outside when they heard bullets whizzing overhead and gunshots coming from the range adjacent to the municipal airport. Tubbs’ house is approximately three-quarters of a mile from the range.

“If anyone shoots above the berm, they are directly in line with my house,” Tubbs had said.

During Monday’s called meeting, Mayor Tex Selvidge said the area had never officially been opened as a public shooting range but had been used for several years without incident.

“We never had a problem before,” he said, “but now it’s obvious that there is a problem.”

Selvidge agreed with earlier comments by Tubbs and Sheriff Butch Blackburn that only a few shooters were to blame for the irresponsible behavior which led to the property damage.

“We had a ‘Rules of Shooting’ sign posted out there,” the mayor said, “but they shot holes in that and knocked it over.”

The board voted to cable off the entrance to the range, to post “No Shooting” signs, and to level an earthen berm at the site.

“We’ve already have an ordinance against shooting inside the city limits and on city property,” Selvidge said. “The sheriff assures me that it will be enforced.”

The aldermen agreed that anyone caught shooting at the airport should face the maximum fines allowed by law.

In other city business, Brent Wheeler of GreenLight Gas presented a proposed rate increase for Clarendon natural gas customers. The utility is currently seeking a rate increase for all of its customers through the Texas Railroad Commission, but Clarendon and Hedley have not ceded their local control to the state in this matter.

Wheeler told the board his company’s goal is to have one gas rate for their entire service area rather than different rates in each city.

“We are the first [gas] utility to ask for a regional rate,” he said.

The proposed regional rate is being reviewed by the railroad commission, and Wheeler recommended the city not take any action until the state makes its ruling.

The board agreed and voted to suspend GreenLight Gas’ notice of rate increase, which gives the city a total of 125 days to review the request. If approved, the average residential customer would pay an additional $4.86 per month, and the average commercial customer would pay an additional $15.83 per month.

The city also discussed and approved a lease purchase agreement for the new trash truck at 4.36 percent for five years. And the board authorized the city clerk to co-sign on the city’s general fund in the absence of the mayor or the mayor pro-tem.