Stories from Saturday, April 5, 2008

Gazette readers, both print and online, are understandably disturbed by recent news articles concerning an Indianola-area farmer/rancher who let his cattle starve. As one online comment put it, "Why would you even try and convey some understanding to this illegal act? How does anyone justify 111 deaths caused by neglect and cruelty (starvation)?"...

Nebraska State Patrol Investigator Paul Gaboury (left) and McCook Police Dept. patrol officer Randall Datus search the pickup owned by a McCook man who abandoned it in Barnett Park and ran on foot when a State Patrol officer tried to serve him with an arrest warrant out of Cheyenne County late Friday morning. ...

I noted in an Omaha paper that Don Butler, age 91 a civilian POW had died. "Civilian POW" caught my eye! Mr. Butler was unknown to me but I briefly met one of his compatriots in 1968. Flying across the Pacific on one of my several trips to the Vietnam war I was surprised to find a civilian passenger on my KC-135. We usually carried up to 70 military passengers on deployments but rarely civilians...