Better Newspaper Contest

Page 59 Division 6 Headline Writing/Category 7 First Daniel Riordan The Times (Munster) Road projects will have NWI drivers seeing orange Smoke shops worry tax may be a drag on profits Closure a sour note for orchestra These headlines are clever without being forced. The reader can still tell what the story will be about. Second Jeanette Lach The Times (Munster) Snow joke, no winter? No place like dome to attract sports tourism School no virtual difference Third Dave Benson The Journal Gazette (Fort Wayne) Goodbye to hue Good times roll To crafters Best Short Feature Story/ Category 8 First Jessie Higgins Evansville Courier & Press Life in an Enclosed Monastery Both reporting and writing are solid. Extra credit for getting inside and giving readers a rare glimpse. Second Maureen Gilmer The Indianapolis Star Dolly & Demetrius Third Virginia Black South Bend Tribune Sign him up, we'll take care of him' Best Profile Feature/Category 9 First Robert King The Indianapolis Star Kor's candles still glowing Eva Mozes Kor has an incredible story and the reporter told it well. Her story of forgiveness is powerful and her insight on Congress was interesting. I enjoyed the line about Nazi doctor thank you notes. Second Mike Vorel South Bend Tribune Chris Zorich finds a new calling This was a beautiful and touching story. I loved the use of lines from "The Giving Tree" throughout. It is an emotional piece and you conveyed it beautifully. Third Shari Rudavsky The Indianapolis Star Riley doctor shines light on suicide This is an important story and very well told. I would have liked to see you include a suicide hotline number or a resource for anyone struggling with depression or suicide. Road projects will have NWI drivers seeing orange Smoke shops worry tax may be a drag on profits Closure a sour note for orchestra Daniel Riordan The Times (Munster) Kor's candles still glowing Jessie Higgins Evansville Courier & Press Sister Jane Marie walked slowly into the dimly lit chapel. The other nuns followed behind her. One by one, they found their pews and bowed their heads. Apart from the rustle of prayer books, and the occasional squeak of a walker, the Monastery of St. Clare's chapel was silent. Sister Jane Marie's voice broke the stillness. "We adore thee," she said. And the sisters launched into their prayers. The women spoke in unison, their words timed perfectly from decades of praying together. "A lot of people just don't understand what this life is about," said Sister Jane Marie. "They often say, 'What a waste, what a waste of time,' because they just don't understand." The sister cupped her hands in her lap and smiled. Nestled in the woods on Evansville's far West Side, she and her sisters are cut off from the world. They are enclosed within their monastery and spend most of their lives in silent prayer. When Sister Jane Marie came to this monastery 25 years ago, it was a lively place. Twenty-one sisters lived within its walls. Some tended gardens while others cooked, played music, or wove on a loom. Together they baked the communion bread for Catholic churches around the city. Their prayers and hymns were full of strong, synchronized voices. But Sister Jane Marie was the last new nun to join the cloister. And as the years passed, the sisters grew old. "We have become less and less as life goes on," Sister Jane Marie said. "The sisters grow old and die." Their way of life is dying with them. Only seven sisters now remain. With that in mind, the sisters of the Monastery of St. Clare allowed the Courier & Press to peek inside their enclosed lives. And, though she is a deeply private person, Sister Jane Marie agreed to share a bit of her story. "People call this a higher calling," Sister Jane Marie said, as she sat in the monastery's guest parlor in early January. "But I don't see it that way. It is just a different calling. It is my calling." On the parlor wall above an antique, lace-covered dining room table hung a picture of Jesus. Out the window, she could see a line of bare trees. Beyond that, a lifeless cornfield stretched into a wooded valley. "Coming here was like coming home," she said, softly. It took her a long time to get here, she said. Sister Jane Marie was born in Michigan to a Methodist family. As a child, she knew nothing of the Catholic faith. Though, looking back, she says she felt a longing to be closer to God from an early age. "I can remember walking to school and talking to him," the sister said. "I wanted to be close to him, but I didn't know what that meant. At 10, Sister Jane Marie's mother died. Two years later, her father remarried a Catholic woman who Sister Jane Marie grew to dearly love. At 14, her step mother took Jane Marie to her first Catholic mass. The moment the priest held up the Eucharist, Sister Jane Marie was forever changed. "I thought, 'There He is,'" she whispered. "The consecrated bread. And I thought, 'I want that.'" The sister paused. "He works in different ways with all of us," she said. "How it happened to me is very individual. No one would relate to it." For the complete story, visit hspa.com. Robert King The Indianapolis Star At age 83, Auschwitz survivor Eva Mozes Kor — who today will receive Indiana's highest award — is the subject of two new documentary films, one produced by a Scottish pop singer for the BBC and one by Indianapolis filmmakers. She is an in-demand public speaker, just returning from an engagement in Miami where she was the guest of a Cuban- American billionaire who heard about her from Shimon Peres, the former prime minister of Israel. She's leading two tours this summer of Auschwitz. And she will undoubtedly document it for the 13,000 followers of the Twitter account she operates herself. She's even become a talking, question-answering hologram at a Holocaust archive founded by Steven Spielberg. But the grandest ambition of this woman from Terre Haute is to storm the halls of Congress, rhetorically grab the bickering partisans by their red and blue neckties and smack them around a bit. "I would like to beat some sense into their heads," said Kor, whose English — heavily accented with a mix of Hungarian, Romanian, Russian, German, French and Hebrew — is a perfect instrument for uttering disgust. New honor:Eva Kor named grand marshal of 500 Festival parade Building bridges:In Martinsville, a black Indy pastor, white deputy bridge racial divide "Everyone's Mom":Carmel's Dorothy Mengering delighted viewers of son David Letterman's TV show Kor stands maybe 4 feet, 9 inches tall. She has two artificial hips and a lung ailment that, when it flares up, necessitates a steroid injection to keep her from choking to death — likely a remnant of the experiments performed on her at age 10 by Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi "Angel of Death." Despite it all, she makes you think she could work Congress over. At least you hope so. Her club of choice is her answer to any of the world's intractable problems — her story; the pivotal moment at the selection platform at Auschwitz; the devastation to her family and her people; and how she somehow found a way to forgive the Nazis. "I would bring them (Congress) to Auschwitz and have their meeting on the selection platform and say if you don't straighten out, this is what is waiting on the world," she said, pointing to the prospects of another Holocaust. "Are you willing to do that? This is not child's games." On the day she expressed her disgust, Senate Republicans had used the "nuclear" option to end a Democratic filibuster over the confirmation of now-Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. "I don't care if you are on the left, on the right, in the middle — whatever direction your political affiliation is — you are sent to Congress to help run this country and help the American people," she said. "If all Americans cannot get along, who on Earth is going to do all the healing in the world? We should serve as an example. We are not an example. We are backstabbing." The power of forgiveness Kor knows better than just about anyone living what hyperpartisanship can do; she saw the work of the Nazi Party up close. For the complete story, visit hspa.com. Life in an Enclosed Monastery

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