Williston Observer

Football has arrived at the home of the Redhawks

Sept. 24, 2009

By Mal Boright

Champlain Valley Union High is now a football school.

Whoa, Hoss! A few things to remember before you leave the barn:

· CVU remains a top-notch soccer school.

· And yes, cross country is also a major fall sport.

· Field hockey is up and coming — witness last season’s Vermont Division 1 crown and the great start this year.

But it is fair to say that football is no longer a fledgling sport and here in its fifth season as a varsity offering, is taking its rightful place alongside the school’s autumn athletic endeavors.

Before the season began, there was trepidation about the Vermont Principals’ Association-directed move up from Division 3 to Division 2. After two eye-popping wins against Division 2 foes and last Saturday’s solid triumph over Division 3 Bellows Free Academy of Fairfax, the Redhawks are indeed competitive in the division.

Yes, there are challenges to come, starting Saturday at home against traditional power Middlebury Union High. But the program has shown it belongs where it has been placed, in a division with some of the longtime football titans in the state.

It is well to remember vital contributors and enabling circumstances of these past few years:

· A tip of the chapeau to Jay Michaud, who brought the program from club status to varsity level and, along with able assistants, coached those first two direction-setting seasons.

· The strong support of former CVU principal Val Gardner, who noted during the School Board meeting at which football was approved at the varsity level that the sport would be important for some students as an additional incentive to stay in school and achieve better grades.

· Continued support from the administration that rightly puts the word student ahead of athlete.

· A strong and vibrant booster organization that has created a positive atmosphere around the program.

· The excellent feeder system that brings youngsters into football at an early age and results in the numbers of more than 85 playing for three successful teams at the high school level.

· Stability in coaching. As the third head coach in the first four years, Jim Provost is in his second season and has shown the results that come from continuity and a steady hand at the helm.

There will certainly in this season and campaigns ahead be the usual ups and downs that any athletic team must go through. But here in year five, CVU football has proven it has risen to the competitive level that was one of the goals of the founders.

An early booster of CVU football was the late Gov. Dick Snelling. Campaigning in Rutland, that high school football mecca, during his first (unsuccessful) gubernatorial campaign in 1966, Snelling was repeatedly asked about football at CVU, where he had been a board member.

Snelling had been a football advocate but could not get enough support to bring a program to fruition.

The governor has to be smiling now.

Williston resident Mal Boright has been an editor, columnist and reporter for several Vermont newspapers. He covers local sports as a correspondent for The Charlotte Citizen and the Williston Observer.

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Chasing dinosaurs

Sept. 24, 2009

By Katherine Bielawa Stamper

There’s a dinosaur in my mailbox. It’s not a tyrannosaurus rex or a brontosaurus. My dinosaur has grown lighter, smaller over time with less “meat” clinging to its fossilizing bones. Blemishes appear with increasing frequency on its remaining bits of skin. I consider myself a paleontologist among a dying breed. My dinosaur is a printed daily newspaper.

I grew up in a house with limited newsprint. My sisters and I read cereal boxes at the breakfast table. I devoured the scant text, including ingredients, on Cap’n Crunch and Cheerios boxes, scrounging for words long before my bowl emptied. Books were discouraged at the breakfast table.

My dad sometimes bought a Boston Herald at Chet’s Corner Store after church on Sundays. I inhaled the comics — Peanuts was my favorite — along with fresh bulky rolls slathered in butter while “Litwin’s Polka Hour” blared on the AM radio.

In high school, my Contemporary Affairs teacher, Mr. Oleks, collected enormous stacks of tattered Boston Globe newspapers. Each day, upon arriving to class, we received one to read for homework before passing it on to a classmate the next day. “Current news” morphed into “recent history” depending on the age of the copy unearthed from the pile. It didn’t matter. Mr. Oleks simply wanted to get us in the habit of reading a daily newspaper.

I’d skim and zero in on two sections: obituaries and a column penned by Mike Barnicle. Reading obituaries proved a logical extension of my interest in history and biography. Lessons can be culled from other people’s lives. Obituaries offer a snapshot of a life lived — with gentle quietness or extravagance — instructive to readers.

Mike Barnicle drew me in with stories of Bostonians’ struggles to make ends meet. I vividly remember one on the plight of seniors living in a high rise with a broken elevator. Images of elders lugging grocery bags up multiple flights of stairs made a strong impression on me. I felt betrayed when, years later, Barnicle resigned amid charges of plagiarism. My challenge, in writing this column, is to offer words reflecting my honest perception without compromising truth.

By college, newspapers accompanied me on early morning jaunts to the cafeteria. I’d set the morning news aside when later-sleeping dorm mates surfaced for their share of corn flakes and toast. Later, in graduate school, the professor I worked for kept referencing New York Times articles, assuming I read them. I remember thinking, “I guess I should be reading that newspaper.” And so, I did.

My family receives several newspapers, including this one. Breakfast finds us sleepily hunched over weather and world events. Sundays we gather up our stash to linger over in a Burlington coffeehouse after church. I leave out articles or tear out photos that may be of particular interest to my daughter. I remember a story of a young girl in Afghanistan during Taliban rule who dressed as a boy when girls were forbidden to attend school. I want my daughter to learn of such stories.

Early morning, while still in bed, I sometimes listen for the “stop go, stop go” rhythm of our delivery person’s car or the reassuring tap of a Boston Globe landing on my front porch. I creep downstairs and scoop up the tangible time capsule. I like the smell of paper, the newsprint that clings to my fingers. I’m a visual, tactile learner. Interacting with the newspaper and tearing out articles helps me remember. Each edition is like a box of chocolates, each page revealing a new story.

Newspapers are experiencing a major paradigm shift. Some are successfully riding the Internet wave, enhancing online presence as they reach for younger audiences where print newspaper readership has fallen. Others, squeezed by declining advertising revenue, produce smaller, slimmer copy while operating with skeletal staffs.

Ernest Hemingway and Nellie Bly were supported by their editors to engage in time-intensive, costly investigative journalism that revealed deeper truths. Hemingway went to war. Bly checked into an insane asylum, exposing inhumane treatment of the mentally ill that led to reforms. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein broke Watergate. Will we see less of that over time? I wonder. It’s cheaper to pick up homogenized news from wire services.

As daily newspapers change, enhance online presence and, in some cases, disappear, I fear I’ll be the dinosaur at the breakfast table, reading by the blue glow of my laptop, longing for the spirits of newspapers past.

Katherine Bielawa Stamper lives in Williston. Reader comments are welcome at [email protected] or [email protected]

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Expediting the Circ

I would like to suggest changing the name of the Circ Highway to Leahy/Sanders Highway. This might speed up the build process.

Rod Hood, Williston

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Recognizing a health care victory

Sept. 24, 2009

By Judy Bevans

It has been a tough summer for reasoned debate, the democratic process and health care. Many of us are worried that the president will not be able to keep one of his major promises: affordable health care accessible to all. We worry that conservatives will demand more and more compromises on major elements of the health care package.

For most of us, this fight is not so much about policy or politics — it’s personal. And if we’re disappointed on health care this fall, that disappointment will be personal, too.

It’s personal for the 72 percent of Americans who understand that the patchwork of profit centers posing as a health care “system” isn’t working for anyone except the insurance companies. It’s even personal for the protestors screaming at legislators in Town Hall meetings: They’re afraid they’ll lose the little they’ve got.

We ask each other, “How can Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress fail us on health care? How can there not be universal access, single payer, a public option, tighter regulation to prevent insurance company abuses?” We are looking in the wrong direction in assigning responsibility for obstruction and being too shortsighted to recognize a victory when it is within our grasp.

As Samuel Adams said, “It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brushfires in people’s minds.” The sickness profiteers have been setting those brushfires so they can continue to make obscene incomes from denying health care to people who have paid their premiums in good faith. They are responsible for whatever degree the health care bill does not measure up to our highest hopes for real change.

But we must look beyond assigning responsibility for obstructionism to the Republicans and their corporate allies.

First, we ourselves need to do everything we can do to show our support for health insurance reform and for President Barack Obama, who put it on the national agenda. We need to mobilize so that the 72 percent of us who want reform are not out-shouted by the 28 percent frightened by it. We are the only cure for Congressional “spine flu.” We need to participate in meetings, e-mail our senators and congressman and talk to our neighbors armed with real information to counter the myths propagated by reform opponents.

Second, we must remember that the democratic process always produces compromises. When Social Security finally passed in 1935, it didn’t cover many teachers, nurses, hospital workers, librarians and social workers, among others. It wasn’t implemented for two years. And by the way, the first recipient of monthly Social Security benefits (in 1940) was Vermonter Ida May Fuller of Ludlow.

The Social Security Act of 1935 was the beginning of a program now seen as essential to any civilized society caring for its elders. It has been modified almost 50 times since then, including the addition of Medicare in 1965, 30 years later.

Whatever health care reform bill passes Congress this year, even when it falls short of our most serious needs and strongest ideals, is a victory — and we Democrats need to claim it as a victory. That bill will be the foundation that will allow us to build something better as time goes on. By shepherding an insurance reform bill through Congress this year, President Obama will have achieved something that eluded Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

And that, friends, is a victory.

President Obama has stood up for the America we want to live in, and now we need to do the same. We won’t give up on getting the best bill possible, we’ll work without ceasing, and we’ll recognize and claim victory when it comes.

And later on, we’ll make the Health Insurance Reform Act of 2009 a program that comes closer and closer to meeting America’s real health care needs.

Judy Bevans is the chairwoman of the Vermont Democratic Party.

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Williston Police, Williston Fire and rescue personnel responded to Oak Hill Road Tuesday morning after a pickup truck left the road and crashed into nearby trees.

The Chevrolet Silverado’s driver, Jake Sessions, 20, of Essex, sustained multiple injuries from the accident and was transported to Fletcher Allen Health Care by St. Michael’s College Rescue, according to reports from the police and fire departments.

Fire Chief Ken Morton said it appeared Sessions became nauseous while driving north on Oak Hill Road and lost control of the vehicle. After crashing into numerous shrubs and trees, the truck sustained heavy front-end and back-end damage.

“The truck was absolutely trashed,” Morton said.

Fire crews and emergency responders extracted Sessions from the vehicle by removing the driver-side and passenger-side doors.

Twelve firefighters responded to the call, which came in at 7:47 a.m. In a press release, Williston Police said the accident remains under investigation. Police do not believe alcohol was a factor.

— Tim Simard, Observer staff

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