Stories from Wednesday, May 13, 2009

The smoke-filled rooms where political deals used to be made have been replaced by computer displays and exchanges of e-mails. That's at the heart of a ruling that has state attorneys general scrambling to protect open meeting laws that are at the heart of our system of government...

Despite a shaky economy this winter, spring is in the air and we asked parents at Barnett Park recently if they planned to go on vacation this year. Their responses indicated that a vacation was still in the picture, although nothing extravagant was planned:...

YANKTON, S.D. -- Kelsee Meissner, a McCook High School alum and a freshman who attends Doane College in Crete, competed this weekend in the Great Plains Athletic Conference Outdoor Track and Field Championships at Mount Marty College in Yankton, S.D...

YORK -- The York College volleyball team announced the signing of Southwest High School and McCook Community College standout Chelsey Quigley. She is one of 10 players that the Panthers have recently signed. Quigley is a 5-foot-7 outside hitter from Indianola and will join the Panthers for the fall season...

Jeff Ellis is the new girls basketball coach and physical education instructor at McCook High School. Elllis will succeed Barry Schaeffer as the Bison girls basketball coach. Ellis is a 1998 graduate of Gothenburg High School and a 2003 graduate of the University of Nebraska- Kearney...

Nebraska National Guard Captain Eric Baptiste told his soldiers of Detachment 2, 1195th Transportation Co. that their deployment to Iraq is the outcome of all their training. Baptiste said, before soldiers, family and friends at a send-off ceremony Tuesday afternoon in McCook, "This is why we train for war. Someone has to do it, and it is our privilege to answer that call."...

Brett Scollard has always been active in church. Throughout his adult life, however, work kept getting in the way of what he really wanted to do with his life. "My heart is with people and their needs," he explained, "When I was younger, I tried to figure (spiritual) things out for myself, and it was slow going...

July 7, 1959 - May 11, 2009 Stacie Elizabeth (DeCrane) Shaddock died Monday, May 11, 2009, at her home in McCook. She was 49 years old. Stacie was born July 7, 1959, in Houston, Texas to Alfred and Joan (Hoffman) DeCrane. She graduated from Bronxville High School, Bronxville, N.Y., in 1977. She continued her education at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colo., with a Bachelors Degree in Agronomy and later a Masters Degree in Horticulture...

"Dawn Carlson is most likely to..." I'm supposing, if you asked my eighth grade teachers to fill in that blank for the yearbook, the majority would have used words like "fail," or "end up in jail." Fortunately, there were no yearbooks for the eighth grade. ...