‘Billy’s Law’ can give peace to the missing
Every year in this country, more than 4,000 unidentified remains are discovered. They are the bodies of mostly missing persons, whose families live in agony each day because they cannot find their loved ones. Many times, people listed as “missing” are actually found and their remains are in a county morgue or cemetery somewhere, preventing the family from having any type of closure.
After one year, approximately 1,000 of these remains are still unidentified. NamUs, the National Missing Persons and Unidentified Persons System, was developed in 2009 in an effort to help coordinate law enforcement officials across the U.S. Agencies can input information into this nation-wide database, making it easier for anyone, including individuals, to help give these people a name, and hopefully bring them home. In just a little over a year, NamUs has proved essential in solving dozens of Missing Persons cases.
But more funding is needed. As a state advocate for missing persons, I urge everyone to contact members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and ask them to please pass S3019, known as Billy’s Law. Senators’ names can be found at: judiciary.senate.gov/about/members.cfm, or you can visit the Peace 4 the Missing website at peace4missing.ning.com.
And I write this letter in honor of Gordon Page, Jr., an autistic young man who has been missing since 1991.
—Patti Garner
Baton Rouge, La.
Kindness greatly appreciated
My husband and I are retired, and he has been a Hospice patient for a year and a half. He has been disabled for some time, and therefore, has been unable to do tasks around the house as he used to do. Hospice has been a tremendous blessing to us in many ways. The nurses and CNAs that have worked with my husband are caring, and many go above and beyond their regular duties.
Hospice arranged for a group of young men from Triangle fraternity to come to our home and do some chores. On July 9, 10 men from that fraternity, and two women who were facilitators, came out in the heat and humidity to stain the wheelchair deck, trim trees and shrubs, wash the front siding and scrape paint from the front porch ceiling in preparation for painting it. These Triangle members were from other parts of the U.S., and were in town for a conference. On July 17, four young men from the Rose-Hulman chapter of Pi Kappa Alpha came to finish painting the front porch ceiling. Alex, Chad, Larry, and Luke painted the ceiling so neatly, and were a pleasure to meet.
It’s a shame that sometimes our youth are mentioned in the news only because of negative behavior. The young men who represented Triangle fraternity and Pi Kappa Alpha were all pleasant, friendly, neat and efficient workers. They demonstrated valuable leadership skills that will be beneficial to themselves and their future employers. They deserve to be commended for giving of themselves and their time to help total strangers.
Many thanks to Hospice of the Wabash Valley, Triangle fraternity and facilitators, and to the men of Pi Kappa Alpha. May your kindness be returned to you again and again. God bless you.
— Mrs. Ellen Cross
Terre Haute
Dumping and driving is cruel to canine friends
Oh boy I get to go on a car ride. I love to go with the people I love, who feed me, protect me and give me shelter. Oh, we’re stopping out here in the country, on a secluded road. They get me out and lead me away from the car. They tell me to stay and I sit and wait. They run to the car and I watch them pull away. I run after them and they go faster and then out of sight. I can’t run anymore. I stop and am scared. Where am I? Where are the people who love me? I go back and forth on the side of the road and lay down. It starts raining and I wait. Cars go by and they don’t stop. Please somebody take me home. Finally one car gets too close and I can’t get out of the way.
Don’t worry anymore — because I’m in Doggie Heaven and there are people to love me.
Please don’t dump and drive away!
— Darlene R. Collins
Terre Haute
City planners making wild stabs at what’s needed
Reading the letters from Bill McKnight in the paper, I was so in agreement with him. This town never finishes anything it starts.
It’s never cleared up that mess on 19th and Margaret, where the railroad has screwed up everyone’s lives. Where’s that famous over-pass we were promised? Now they will screw up the rest of Margaret Avenue.
I’ve lived in my house for 30 years on Margaret, and I’m certain the city will make a holy horror of that renovation. Yes we need a new road out there, but not that much road! Thirteenth Street was treated the same way. Did anyone ever count the traffic on that road? It didn’t warrant that big of a road. Do the city planners ever come down here and take a look at the area; or do they just make a wild stab at it?
And where’s the mayor in all of this. Why doesn’t he help. But what am I thinking? He’s too busy out gland-handing the public, and riding motorcycles.
Call me Mr. Mayor. We’re due for a long talk.
— Rita Wallace
Terre Haute
Nothing funny about comic distortion
With newspapers’ shrinking circulations around the country, it is baffling to me why they continually make an assault on their most appealing attractions! A case in point: The comic section of the Tribune-Star.
The comic strips are vertically distorted to “postage stamp” size, leaving a huge space at the bottom of the page of extraneous items and possibly to run future ads. The comics will soon be unreadable!
— Jerry Doolittle
Terre Haute
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