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Remember When? 7-25-2018

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25 Years Ago This Week

Sullivan resident Wilbur Donnell matched five of six numbers in the Illinois Lottery’s $24 million Lotto drawing and won $2,411. Donnell said he purchased five quick pick tickets at Kerr McGee gas station at the coaxing of friend Jibby Florini. He had a cool response when learning of his fortune and said had it been the $24 million, it would have been a different story.
At least three Moultrie County National Guardsman who serve with Company A out of Mattoon are helping with the Mississippi River flood relief, while the 634th Forward Support Batallion from Sullivan just received requests for volunteers from its unit. Neil Elder, Scott Reed and Maxey Cole all of Sullivan are working in Kinderbrook. They have been sandbagging the levy and residing at a local high school. Read More

Five Decades is Quite a Start for Jud Cameron and Family

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Photo by Mike Brothers
Camerons
Track and Field is a family affair for the Cameron family Jacob, Laine, Kurt and Jud. This was Laine’s last year to participate at Sullivan High School.

•July 25, 2018•

By Jason Brown
NP Sports Editor

For five decades, one staple of Sullivan track and field meets has been Jud Cameron.
Jud has been a high school track and field official for 36 years and had been a volunteer at Sullivan home meets for almost 15 years before that.
When Jud started teaching at Sullivan, he was asked to help out at the track meets as a volunteer.
“I enjoy doing it,” said Jud. “So it just grew and grew from there.”
Jud, who retired from teaching social studies at SHS in 1994, did not stop officiating track and field meets.
“Back then I just did Sullivan’s track,” Jud said. “Now, I do a lot of other schools.”
He has been a starter who shoots the gun, a referee who helps with logistics and an official at the State Track and Field meet at Eastern Illinois University’s O’Brien Field in Charleston.
For this season and previous seasons, Jud has not been the only Cameron at the meet. Read More

Don’t Desert the Flock to Chase Stray Sheep

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•July 25, 2018•

Editor’s Note: The logo for this column started with Bob Best’s column and continued with Marion’s version. BB’s reflected the hopes and ambitions of Moultrie County as we hope to continue.

I was sitting in a meeting last week where some concerned business owners were wondering what it would take to get more people to shop in Sullivan.
The Moultrie County News Progress has been in business in Sullivan for the past 160 years and in the process has been a part of every Chamber that has been organized and every group that wanted to improve things so it is an item of interest.
This newspaper has covered the community from life to death since its doors opened. We are there to tell your neighbors about the birth of your child and that child’s growth in the community—everything from participating in preschool activities to sports accomplishments, scholastic achievements, engagements marriages, anniversaries and the last word in life, your obituary. Read More

Illinois Amish Heritage Center Hosts Annual Steam Threshing Show

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Photo courtesy Roberta Porter Brennan
The Amish Heritage Center’s Threshing event west of Chesterville is August 3-4. Above Glendon Herschberger shocks oats for drying prior to threshing.

•July 25, 2018•

The second annual Steam Threshing Show will be held August 3-4 at the new Illinois Amish Heritage Center three miles east of Arthur. Times will be 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. on Friday and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday.
The 2018 show will be centered around harvesting and threshing oats rather than wheat. The oats will be cut and bound into sheaves by a horse-drawn mechanical binder two weeks before the event after which the sheaves will be stacked into shocks for drying in the field. On the day of the event, they will be loaded onto horse-drawn wagons and transported to the threshing machine which will separate the grain from the chaff and straw. The grain will be directed to a bin, and the straw will form a hay stack that will continually grow with each new round of threshing.
The threshing process will be done using antique farming equipment including a 1924 steam tractor and threshing machine made by the Keck-Gonnerman Company of Mt. Vernon, Indiana. Other antique and vintage agricultural equipment will also be on display, including a 1954 Massey Harris model 44 tractor owned by Sam Miller, a 1931 John Deere D owned by George Kauffman, and many other antique tractors. Farm equipment demonstrations will feature a John Deere stationary hay baler, old engines and steam engines, a grist mill, field demonstrations of plowing and disking, with Belgian horses and the old methods of threshing grain by hand with flails and a fanning mill. Blacksmithing will also be demonstrated as well as goat milking and butter churning. All demonstrations will be “learn abouts” as they will be accompanied by explanations of the processes. Read More

First Mid Receives SBA Recognition

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•July 25, 2018•

First Mid Bank & Trust was named 2017 Central/Southern Illinois Community Bank of the Year Award by the U.S. Small Business Administration. This award is presented to the community bank with the best overall performance record for lending to small businesses in Illinois. The Small Business Administration (SBA) is a United States government agency that provides support to entrepreneurs and small businesses. Read More

New Athletic Facility for Okaw Valley Schools

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•July 25, 2018•

The Okaw Valley CUSD #302 announced the approval of a $1.5 million athletic facility to be built at Okaw Valley High School in Bethany and unveiled its new school logos.
The OV School Board approved the use of existing district fund balance July 19 to construct the facility.
This construction is scheduled to start in the coming weeks and is scheduled to be finished for the 2019 spring sports season.
Included in the new facilities will be an eight-lane synthetic all-weather track, a new softball field for middle school and high school teams and a new baseball field with a synthetic turf infield.
“It is important to note that the synthetic baseball field will have the ability to host high school and middle school softball games in addition to middle school baseball,” said Okaw Valley athletic director Brooks Inman. “This new facility will be the first of its kind in the surrounding area and one of the first for a district our size in the state.”
Saturday, July 21, Okaw Valley unveiled its new logos on Twitter.
Jason Brown

Obituarie 7-25-2018: Lena Gillenwater

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Lena Gillenwater

Lena Ann (Botts) Gillenwater, 96, formerly of Lovington, passed away in Imboden Creek Nursing Home in Decatur Tuesday, July 17, 2018 at 6:27 p.m. with family at bedside.
Funeral services were conducted at 11 a.m. Friday, July 20 at Strode Funeral Home in Tompkinsville, Kentucky with the burial following in Harlan Crossroads Cemetery.
She was born May 26, 1922 in Monroe County, Ky. to the late William Earlie and Pearliza Smith Botts. Read More

Leasehold Exemption Form Updated

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•July 25, 2018•

Property tax exemptions are a good way for taxpayers to save, but they also cost the county revenue, and that is why the rules that guide them should be fair for everyone.
Moultrie County supervisor of assessments Lori Barringer announced that is why a new application for leasehold exemptions begins with tax year 2019.
“We discovered the past applications failed to have copies of the leases attached along with other incorrect information,” Barringer said, noting the new exemption form includes a March 29 application deadline for each year.
There are approximately 300 properties in Moultrie County affected by the changed application process.
The property tax code also notes if the leasee receives the property tax bill and pays it they are entitled to a rent reduction.
The supervisor of assessments emphasized this is only a procedure change on how leasehold exemptions forms are completed on the Application for General Homestead Exemption (for single-family dwellings subject to a lease).
Leases can be effective for an indefinite period, but an application must be completed yearly with the supervisor of assessments to be able to keep exemptions.
Further questions may be directed to 217-728-4951.

Letter to the Editor1: 7-25-2018

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Dear Editor,

The July 11 issue contained a letter from Ms. Ellen Dick-Ferrera who seemed to want to reduce the issue of abortion, the deliberate terminating of the life of an unborn child, to what she calls a “choice”. Throughout her remarks she champions what she calls “choice”.
While knowing, as she writes, that she is not fond of crotchety and those she considers to be ignorant old men, as a former unborn child who is well on my way to becoming, if not ignorant, a crotchety old man, what I know for sure is that if my mother had chosen to end my life in the womb I would have had absolutely had no choice in the matter at all. As President Reagan once pointed out: “I’ve noticed everyone in favor of abortion has already been born.” Read More

Cahokia Mounds in Collinsville: ‘America’s First City

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•July 25, 2018•

By Mike Koziatek
Of the Belleville News-Democrat

A gaggle of rambunctious fifth-graders scrambled to the top of the 100-foot-high Monks Mound to get a great view of the Gateway Arch in downtown St. Louis and burn off energy at the end of their class field trip to the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site.
Before climbing Monks Mound, the Gardner Elementary students from Waterloo, Illinois, toured the historic site’s spacious interpretive center in Collinsville, Illinois, and learned how Native Americans based at the mounds conducted trade with people in other regions, including the Great Lakes for copper and the Gulf of Mexico for seashells.
“People from around the world come here to see the Cahokia Mounds, and it’s right in our backyard,” said Amy Wagenknecht, one of the students’ teachers.
The students were among the estimated 300,000 people who visit the state historic site each year.
Monks Mound was built by Native Americans, who are now known as members of the Mississippian culture. It is the largest pre-Columbian, earthen structure in all of North and South America, said Bill Iseminger, the assistant site manager who has worked at the Cahokia Mounds site since 1971. Read More