The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: http://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1291324
NEWS TIPS Phone: ���������������������812-354-8500 Email ����� editor@pressdispatch�net INSIDE Local ���������������� A1-12 East Gibson ��������� A4 Obituaries ���������������A6 History ������������������� A7 Opinion ������������� A8-9 Classifieds ������� A10-11 Legal Notices ��� A10-11 Sports �����������������B1-5 School ��������������������B6 Church �������������� B7-9 Home Life �������� B10-12 USPS 604-34012 Wednesday, september 23, 2020 PIKE PUBLISHING VOLUme 150, nUmber 39 $1.00 24 paGes tWO seCtIOns FOUr Inserts petersbUrG, In 47567-0068 By Andy Heuring Pike County Schools will return to their in-person classes beginning on Monday, September 28, with the same schedule they were on at the be- ginning of the school year, according to Superintendent of Schools Dr. Su- zanne Blake. Following the Labor Day weekend, Pike County Schools switched to a hybrid schedule, where kids attend- ed two days a week and did virtual learning two days a week. A professional day was planned for Friday. Then on Monday, students will return to in-class learning. "Our primary reason for moving to the hybrid model was a high number of individuals were quarantined," said Dr. Blake. She said in a recent board meeting they didn't have enough sub- stitutes to fill in for all the teachers and aids who had been quarantined. "Things are looking good right now. We feel we can move back to normal. I think there are a lot of families, stu- dents and staff looking forward to it. "I know the teachers miss the regu- lar routine as well," said Blake. Pike County School received a grant from T-Mobile and COVID re- lief funds that were used to purchase 150 mobile hotspots. Blake said they distributed all those devices to fami- lies who had issues with their internet service in the county. She said the hotspots have taken care of all but a few of the problems families had been having with inter- net accessibility. "We are coming up on the end of the first nine weeks on Oct. 9. We will send a message to families that they have a timeline if they want to return to in-person," said Blake. She said there will be a deadline for families to make that decision so the school can prepare for students to return to the classroom. She said prior to the school system going to the hybrid plan, they started getting some requests for students to be moved to the virtual classes. But then once they went to the hybrid schedule, about half of those making the requests decided to stay with the hybrid and in-class learning program. Students to return to school on Monday By Andy Heuring Pike County Commissioners voted to sign a contract to use the Moose Lodge for a COVID-19 testing site and opened a bid to put sneeze screens throughout the courthouse. The contract calls for Pike Coun- ty to have exclusive use of one room, known as the West Side dining room, of the Moose Lodge and non-exclusive use of the parking lot on the south and west side of the building for the drive- up clinic. They will have exclusive rights to the room from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Mon- day, 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and 9 a.m. to noon on Thursdays and Saturdays. Pike County Health Nurse Amy Gladish said people being tested will stay outside in their cars and the staff will go outside and test them. Pike County will have the right to change the hours to meet community needs. Rent is set at $1,000 a month, plus utilities used. Gladish told the commissioners they hoped to have it up and running in early October. She added there would be no out- of-pocket costs to those being tested. The commissioners also opened bids to have permanent sneeze screens installed throughout the courthouse. The one bid the county received was from Striecher, of Huntingburg. It was for $59,778. "Did you reach out to several plac- es? " asked Commissioner President Mark Flint. "We reached out to five or six," said Commissioner Assistant Kristi Dischinger. She said several of those couldn't get it done on the timeline the county needs. The commissioners also voted to request two transfers in the Highway Department funds. The first was to transfer $24,000 from blacktop main- tenance fund to the equipment repair fund. Highway Superintendent Rog- er Ham said it is needed to pay for re- pairs to their excavator. The second was a $40,000 transfer from the rock fund to pay the county's 25 percent match for the Community Crossroads paving grant. Commissioner Ryan Coleman asked about the status of the coun- ty's Community Crossroads paving grant. "Are we about halfway? " said Coleman. Assistant Highway Superintendent Josh Byrd said they were more than halfway. "When we finish the road we are on now, we will only have two more to do," said Byrd. Pike County received a grant of $778,366 from Community Cross- roads. The county's match of 25 per- cent is $259,455. The following roads are being paved with the grant funds: Commissioners sign contract for COVID-19 test site See COCHRENS on page 2 See COMMISSIONERS on page 2 Editor's note: When someone 'hits the nail on the head squarely' it needs special attention. Ford Bond's column this week does just that. He writes about Alexander Solzhenit- syn. If you don't know about him, you need to. Solzhenitsyn was a Rus- sian dissident and a Nobel Laureat, who in the early 1980s adopted the United States as his home country. He wrote and spoke about the Russian Revolution that led to the USSR, and the trends he was see- ing in the US that paralleled Rus- sia. We feel this column sheds light on the current state of afairs in our country. We also are publishing a copy of the address Solzhenitsyn gave in 1983. It is a prophetically accurate portrayal of things happening now in America. You can read the ad- dress on Page A-8. Our nation is facing an existen- tial crisis that is threatening to re- duce us into geographic and ethnic factions. We hear the anarchists and Bolsheviks crying "America is not redeemable and must be torn down or burnt to the ground." How sad and troublesome. What is offered by the revolutionaries that will replace our "imperfect" governmental and social struc- ture? Surely not the religion of so- cialistic communism; that system is bankrupt and has consumed over one hundred million souls over the last century, with noth- ing but darkness and destruction to show for its efforts. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the refugee from the former Soviet Union, who was banished to the "free" west because he wrote of the crimes and evil of the commu- nist system, warned in 1983, "As a survivor of the Communist Ho- locaust, I am horrified to witness how my beloved America, my ad- opted country, is gradually being transformed into a secularist and atheistic utopia, where commu- nist ideals are glorified and pro- moted, while Judeo-Christian val- ues and morality are ridiculed and increasingly eradicated from the public and social consciousness of our nation." That was 37 years ago. For what- ever the reasons, the collective leadership of our nation failed to heed his warning, a clarion call from a man who knew the evil depths of a totalitarianism system and knew it was an enemy of God. He would boldly assert that the reason the Bolshevik revolution succeeded was "men had forgotten God." He wrote "By the time of the Revolution, faith had virtually dis- appeared in Russian educated cir- cles; and amongst the uneducated, its health was threatened." Consider what Solzhenitsyn said, "Within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin, and at the heart of their psychology, ha- tred of God is the principal driv- ing force, more fundamental than all their political and economic pre- tensions. Militant atheism is not merely incidental or marginal to Communist policy; it is not a side effect, but the central pivot." America, we are told, is irre- deemable; I disagree. No na- tion among mankind is perfect, and there is no hope for any na- tion whose leadership hates God. However, America, as a collective whole, is not an enemy of God. The natural world around us sings of redeemability and regen- eration. A woodland fire is per- ceived by humans as bad, but nat- uralists have pointed out the dead and decaying floor of a forest is burnt off by nature every 25 to 100 years. Then the forest regenerates new plants, while the trees that re- main are strengthened. I saw this firsthand a few weeks ago in a trip to the Great Smoky Mountains. The flora is returning in lush colors and few signs remain of the fire of several years ago. The forest is now healthier. You can use a forest fire as a met- aphor for conflict and all conflict isn't bad. Conflict allows intellec- tually and spiritually honest people to see the societal problems that need addressed and search for a workable solution. America is redeemable and can regenerate because it has a peo- ple who still love God that goes be- yond lip service. The foundation re- mains as the fire simmers above it. Those who call for anarchy on the streets provide no solution to our perceived ills except godless socialism, which is a spiritually bankrupt philosophy that rapes its citizenry of decency and hope for the sake of the deified "state." Solzhenitsyn was a sage for our time. He experienced the "utopia" of communism and lived to tell about it. He was a child of the rev- olution, but he could not ignore the blatant disregard it had for the op- pressed and marginalized. What he saw was starvation, misery and death, and he could not close his eyes, heart and mind to it. Through time, he saw the Church that the communists despised as a deposi- tary of hope. The life of a Christian is a life of hope. Life has dreariness and anx- iety, but the promises of Christ are comfort and life everlasting. Many in a time of crisis and despair have taken refuge in the Apostle Paul's admonition to the Church at Rome where he writes, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword... For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor prin- cipalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Solzhenitsyn saw hope for he wrote, "…for no matter how for- midably Communism bristles with tanks and rockets, no matter what successes it attains in seizing the planet, it is doomed never to van- quish Christianity." Pray for our nation and resist de- spair. Think about it. There is hope for regeneration by Ford Bond Opinion By Grace Miller On Friday, father-son duo Dave and Travis Cochren went on a 15K fundraising run for Chemo Bud- dies. Chemo Buddies is a non-profit organization, founded in and based out of Evansville, that puts volun- teers into local treatment rooms to be there for patients. "The goal and the mission of Chemo Bud- dies is that no one has to fight can- cer alone," said Travis, who is on the Chemo Buddies Board of Di- rectors. The Cochrens first met the Che- mo Buddies when Travis, who is now three years cancer free, went to his first treatment for returning kidney cancer. He went into the treatment room with his parents to find that the Chemo Buddies volunteer that day was a longtime family friend of theirs. Travis said, "It's one thing to have that one per- son that's just there to help you, but the fact that we knew them made things a little lighter." A fter meeting the organization and seeing what they did, Travis was eager to help. He first became involved by working on the market- ing and events leadership commit- tee around two years ago. He was approached in Janu- ary and asked to be on the board as well. "So I, of course, jumped at that opportunity. So I serve on their board of directors and on sev- eral committees now… We all help out where we can," he said. Last year, the Chemo Buddies put on their first Hopefest, a festi- val that acted as a fundraiser and a celebration for survivors. Tra- vis explained that Chemo Bud- dies considers anyone who has or has had cancer, whether they have beaten it or are still fighting, to be a survivor. The first Hopefest consisted of a 5K fundraiser for the competi- tive participants, a one-mile route for the less competitive and a cel- ebratory walking parade for sur- vivors. It was predicted that the event would have a couple hun- dred people register. "I think we had a few thousand people in the park that day," Travis said. "So it was crazy how big we blew up for our first year event." Due to COVID-19, the organiza- tion had to push back this year's Hopefest from April to September and figure out how to reorganize the events. Instead of a walking parade, Chemo Buddies had a car parade that drove through Freed- man Park in Warrick County on Saturday. The survivors stayed in the cars, and volunteers lined the streets to cheer them on and hand out goody bags. The run was held virtually this year. Those who registered and wanted to run the 5K could send in photos or videos to show who they were supporting or remem- bering, along with their running times. Most of these photos and videos were posted on the Chemo Buddies Facebook page. Dave Cochren, Travis' father, was eager to run for the cause. He decided to go the extra mile, or extra 6.2 miles. Instead of run- ning the 5K, the Cochrens tackled a 15K. "I'm a runner," Dave said, ex- plaining why he tripled the run- ning distance. Knowing that he could do the 9.3 miles, he decid- Cochrens run for Chemo Buddies Fall Clean-Up cancelled Pike County Solid Waste District said recently the Fall Clean-up Day, normally in conjunction with Ad- vanced Disposal, has been cancelled. COVID social distancing require- ments have caused the event to be cancelled. Cinda Abbott-Knight said they hope to have the Spring Clean- up next year. Dave and Travis Cochren run along Cart Road on Friday night as they participated in a 15K Chemo Buddy run. The father-son duo were raising money for Chemo Buddies, whose mission is to see that no one has to fight cancer alone. Travis is a cancer survivor.