Stories from Wednesday, August 20, 2003

by David McNeal The Green Forest High School system is embarking on an adventure this year as they try to implement a new block schedule for their upper grades. It works fine for academics, but seems to be a disaster for the athletic program, especially basketball. Simply said, there just aren't enough coaches or facilities to allow the block schedule to work for all the sports programs the school offers...

Grab that scorecard and your souped up golf cart and get ready. The high school golf season in Arkansas begins this week! It will be a new beginning for many established programs, as the Arkansas Activities Association (AAA) has decreed that golf will move to the fall from its usual spring slot...

Week of Aug. 12 August 12 1:11 a.m. ---- Police were dispatched to a Tharpe Street home to investigate a possible domestic disturbance. It was verbal only. 7:20 a.m. ---- Police went to a Sixth Street home for follow-up. No contact was made. 6:30 p.m. ---- Police were dispatched to the intersection of Springfield and Sneed streets to investigate a kids in the highway complaint...

Week of Aug. 11 August 11 10:30 a.m. ---- Stolen bicycle report taken on Jefferson Street. 11:16 a.m. ---- Accident report taken on the square. 11:25 a.m. ---- Vandalism investigated at the school gym. 12:50 p.m. ---- Stolen bike recovered and returned to Jefferson Street owner...

Week of Aug. 11 August 11 12:22 p.m. -- Caller reported a white cargo van with no brake lights. 1:20 p.m. -- Officer assisted semi stuck at corner of Spring and Main. 1:45 p.m. -- Wanted person turned self in on outstanding warrant from Sebastian County. Subject was booked and bonded...

CHRIS BIOSSAT, Grassy Knob resident since 1980, died Sunday, Aug. 10, 2003, of heart failure in the Fayetteville nursing home, where she lived for 10 years. She would have been 84 on Aug. 22. Mrs. Biossat leaves behind her daughter, Christina (Sunny) of Springdale; her son, Bay, and his wife Carolyn of Grassy Knob, and their two sons, Adam and David. She was preceded in death by her husband, Bayard, in 1980, her mother and sister...

Sylvia Jewell Lemke, 82, of Rogers, Ark., died Saturday, Aug. 16, 2003, at St. Mary's Hospital. She was born Feb. 15, 1921, in Featherston, Okla., to the late George Washington McMillan and Sabrena Jewell Nichols McMillan. She was a homemaker and a veteran of the Women's Army Air Corps, First Division...

Carroll County is going to build a jail that, by most accounts, will be a source of pride for our community. It will meet federal standards; not the lesser standards of the state of Arkansas; it will house a modern, properly-equipped sheriff's office; and it will have been "over-built" so that future expansion will not create a need for total redesign or expensive modification...

The cost to build the new Carroll County jail, estimated at $7.5 million, appears to be significantly higher than similar facilities in neighboring counties, according to statistics released in an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette story and follow-up in a local paper...

BERRYVILLE ---- The quorum court will meet two hours earlier this Friday to assess what is now a crisis situation in the county's budget for this year and next. County Judge Ed Robertson told the budget committee of the quorum court that he would immediately ask all department heads for analyses by Thursday afternoon addressing where any cuts could come from...

Former Berryville resident Maj. Daniel J. Reber, an operations officer in Iraq, is doing well despite the danger and 130-degree temperatures in the war zone. Reber, a Marine commander in the 1st Division, is in a perilous position, as most of the soldiers in the unstable and volatile country are, but he reports to his father R.T. Reber in Berryville via e-mail as often as possible...