Tag: Illinois

1,000 Miles (Texas to Illinois) May 13-May15, 2025

On May 20, 2025

In Editorial, Local, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Texas, travel

Leaving blue skies for Tornado Alley. (Tuesday, 5/13)

We departed Austin, Texas, and headed for the Midwest on Tuesday. It was tough to leave the beautiful blue skies of Austin. It was warm. Very warm. It was unseasonably warm in the 90s all the way to Joplin, Missouri, where we ended up Night One after driving for 10 hours.

Our choices for lodging were either Muskogee, Oklahoma or drive further and make it to the larger Joplin. When we reached Joplin and pulled into a Best Western Inn to secure lodging about 8 p.m., there was only one room left. And it was on the second floor. And the elevator was broken.

We have so many bags. Not having a working elevator was not working for me. Plus there is the wonky left knee that I injured while bicycling on vacation in Green Lake, Wisconsin, in 1997. That left knee blew out on 9/15/2022 and put me in a wheelchair and hobbling with a cane until March of 2023.

We drove to the nearby motel. It did not look promising.

Their elevator, too, was broken. What is the problem in Joplin, Missouri, that when an elevator breaks, nobody fixes it? (The desk clerk made the remark that it had been broken for weeks.)

We kept driving up the street. The next motel was a LaQuinta. It had a working elevator. We stayed there. There is no carpeting on the floor(s) of the rooms; I forgot to pack slippers. There were photos outside the LaQuinta of many pools that looked very nice, both indoor and outdoor pools. I also forgot to pack a swimsuit. Too tired to think about swimming, anyway.

ST. LOUIS, HERE WE COME

Interior of car while driving

The next day (Wednesday), we drove to my brother-in-law’s house in Maryland Heights, a suburb of St. Louis. We were making good time, driving from the bottom left corner of the state to the top right corner of the state. Still hot everywhere. I think our one tank of gas when we filled up was $21. I could be wrong about this, but, thanks to the new car, purchased after we were hit by a young driver in Okmulgee, Oklahoma on the way down to Texas during a tornado, we were getting great mileage.

We had a big delay when I-44 was totally shut down for miles. Two huge trucks crashed, one running into the other and causing a chain reaction and a fire. It’s not a good sign when your GPS suddenly changes the ETA from 1 and 1/2 hours to 3 hours. Also not a good sign when a huge crane, a fire truck, an ambulance, and a hearse go by, while you sit, motionless, for a long time, waiting to be routed around the crash.

As we sat there, the huge trucks on this Interstate were like a stock exchange list of big companies, with Amazon, Home Depot, FedEx and every other major chain under the sun with trucks all sitting, motionless, waiting for the opportunity to circumvent the site of the crash. It was featured on the nightly news, but we never heard whether anyone was killed. For sure the fire trucks were dousing what looked like 2 blackened huge boxes, which once were trucks, I’m thinking, when we drove by.

Horizon

I was serving as a talking book, reading aloud the book “Careless People,” which I finished while in Cancun. It was a good enough nonfiction treat to share. It is a truly entertaining and informative read about Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, from a woman who worked there for 7 years. I hope every member of Congress quizzing Zuckerberg reads it before asking him questions about his offers to the CCP. (Chinese Communist Party). Any book that opens with a shark attack on the 13-year-old author has me right there. Try it; you’ll like it. And, more importantly, you’ll learn a lot about the back story behind Facebook and what really goes on and has gone one since its inception. (Now, it’s Meta.)

MARYLAND HEIGHTS

When we reached Maryland Heights, we went out to eat tacos with Niece Megan and husband Aaron, and their little people, Winnie and Wesley. (And Mark, of course). Mark now has 4 grandchildren under the age of 4, one (Mickey) a new-born. Mark was our babysitter when he was 12 and son Scott was born. Scott was born in 1968. Mark was born in 1957. He is twelve years younger than his older brother, my husband. Now Mark is babysitting A LOT for Ruthie Kay, Wesley, Winnie, and Mickey. [Good thing we taught him all the tips of the babysitting trade.]

Megan, baby Wesley, Aaron Eddy, Mark with Winnie, Connie & Craig

Dinner at a local taco restaurant

We left the next day on our way to the Quad Cities (4 hours). There were tornado warnings and severe storm warnings with 70 mph winds out even then. Fortunately, the 1 to 8 p.m. warning period saw us arrive safely in the Quad Cities. An EF3 tornado traveled 8 miles through St. Louis not long after we departed and did extensive damage. It was off to the right of Maryland Heights on the radar map.

We’re here, but will be returning to the Texas heat for the annual Family Fest. We hope our newly planted trees and bushes are surviving and thriving.

Here, in East Moline (IL), a week since we departed the Lone Star state, it is in the fifties and sixties. There is hope that we will reach 70 degrees on Friday or Saturday. My clothing from Texas is totally wrong for Illinois. In fact, we had to turn our heat on here. In Texas we were running our A/C.

Rooftop view of Austin, Tx

But we’re home from the land of BBQ and Tex-Mex Food and views like this one:

We learned that two restaurants have closed here, one of them (the former Captain’s Table) the restaurant just down the hill from us in East Moline. The other restaurant closing is Thunder Bay. I haven’t been back to Thunder Bay since Fred Thompson held an event there while running for the Republican Presidential nomination, so I am not as upset about the loss of that restaurant as I am about the Captain’s Table, which burned down once, was rebuilt and opened up as Catfish Charlie’s. The quality of the food and service as part of that chain declined, although the view of the Mississippi River and the outside dining made it a worthwhile stop despite the downgrade.

I also learned that my favorite Hallmark Store in East Moline is closing. I am really sad to see it go. It is a wonderful store. I will miss it a great deal. I wish someone would buy it and continue to run it, but I can understand how difficult it must be to plan for orders in a world where tariffs are arbitrarily imposed on the source nations and then lifted and then put on again, ad infinitum. I can’t imagine trying to deal with the impact of this administration on small businesses, which I was one of for 20 years.

Last year, the Maid Rite and the dry cleaners closed during our absence from town. I found out that the dry cleaners had moved when I entered with some slacks that needed shortening. It had become a nail shop. I went into the next-door Maid Rite, hoping to surprise the spouse with Maid Rites (a Midwestern delicacy). It had become a Soul Food restaurant. I almost had to go outside and look at the signage above the door to make sure I hadn’t taken a wrong turn.

I miss the dry cleaners so much that, today, I spent literally hours shortening my own track suit pants, which had been in my Austin closet, unworn, because they are 3 inches too long. I did my usual inept job, but I did shorten them. I will wear them to Iowa City to make a routine stop at University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics on Friday, with Memorial Day weekend plans for attending a graduation party in Cedar Rapids on Sunday (nephew Chris Castelein’s daughter Sophia).

So, in our trip to Texas: major league tornadoes in Oklahoma and a ruined car (totaled).

The ruined Prius Firebird, the 20th Anniversary Edition after Nov. 3, 2024.

The Firebird Prius after the 11/3/2024 crash

We twist tied my red Prius (the Firebird) together and drove 6 hours after the accident. It was an interesting drive, with the headlights smashed out but the tail lights working. The car had 28,000 miles on it, as it was the 20th Anniversary Edition of the Prius, named the Firebird. The new car is Steely Dan.

My Prius adventures (after 4 Cadillacs in a row) began in 2002 with the WaterBug, which cost $20,050, 0% interest, 0% financing, and a $500 rebate from the government for trying the new hybrid technology. Next was the Firefly (red) in 2004. When daughter Stacey went to college in Nashville (Belmont), she got the Firefly and I bought the Grasshopper, a 2008 Seafoam Green version. That 2008 model was my favorite layout, so when we needed a car to leave in Texas, we sought out another 2008 used Prius, the Silver Fish, which was really sort of a metallic silvery tan color. My 2013 Blue Bird also went to Stacey when the Firefly got old and she expressed the feeling that she had been driving it to so many places that she might be developing a psychological bond with the little red Prius. It did a good job of getting her to and from Tennessee and Colorado and she sold it to a Mexican buyer who paid cash. I drove the Blue Bird the longest—from 2013 until the 20th Anniversary Edition was announced in 2020. Depressed during the pandemic, I decided to buy one of the Anniversary Edition cars, sight unseen.

Steely Dan, the new Prius., purchased on 12/3/2024.

Our dealership was getting only 2 of the cars, a white one and a red one. When the white one showed up with a luggage rack on top, I, once again, took the red one and named it the Firebird. It was a good car and it didn’t deserve the end it had. Neither did the Blue Bird, which was smashed into by some drunk teenagers driving a stolen car who abandoned the vehicle and sped off, leaving it totaled in Madison, Tennessee, a Nashville suburb. The November 3rd accident in Okmulgee led to us buying a silver Prius in Cedar City, Texas, which is one of the largest dealerships in the nation and the largest in Texas. They had 9 new Priuses on the lot and we bought it exactly one month to the day after the death of the Firebird. Steely Dan is doing well and was a very economical vehicle on our marathon trip home. I need a lesson on how to use all of it. It seems much lower than our previous cars and the dashboard is very modernistic but the sleek look with the hidden handle on the back door is very attractive. We also like the little lights that signal drivers nearing you. What I don’t like, so far, is that you cannot open the right side passenger door and it doesn’t open as you approach it with the “automatic” key. I assume that is a safety change, so that, upon approaching your car, some stranger doesn’t let himself into your vehicle, but it is a serious disadvantage when you approach the car loaded with packages and you have to dig around for your key in order to open it. Maybe I’m missing out on some of the manual’s directions, but, so far, it seems this is the way it is going to be for the duration.

I would really like leaders who do something to try to head off the horrible weather that global warming is producing.

Minnesota is on fire.

Places that have never had fires or floods are having fires and floods.

Chicago just had a dust storm reminiscent of the Dust Bowl days.

Mother’s Day, 2025 with daughter Stacey. Welcome Home, me.

One of my most fervent wishes is that whoever is leading the country does something to try to save the planet and save all of us experiencing 25 times the weather anomalies that we experienced in my youth. Sure, we had tornadoes. (One hit my hometown of Independence, Iowa, and dropped part of the roof of St. John’s Church in my back yard when I was about two. My dad built me a playhouse out of the rubble.)

I read somewhere that, in a four month period, we used to have 4 such horrific weather-related events, and now, in the same time frame, we have something like 167. Don’t quote me on that, as I don’t claim that is exact, but I think we can all agree that the weather is getting to be a real problem. Not regulating emissions and eliminating watchdog agencies like the EPA is definitely not the answer to the problem.

But, welcome home, me. It is thundering outside right now. Good luck to us all with the current lack of any plan on the part of those in power to even admit that global warming is occurring.

Donald J. Trump, a loser

God save us from the weather and from DJT.

Bob Seger: Still Rocking (in Moline, IL) at 72

By Connie Wilson

On August 28, 2017

In Local, Music, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Pop Culture

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDfGc2dWTaIhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIocthkeiBM&feature=youtu.be

Rock musician Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band took the stage at the Civic Center in Moline, Illinois on Saturday night, August 26th, 2017, for the second show on his just-launched tour (Tulsa was first).

The clip above shows off more of the band, in general, but the entire show was jam-packed with hits, from “Against the Wind,” “Rock & Roll Music,” “Like A Rock,” “Why Don’t You Stay?” to “Hollywood Nights.”

It was a predominantly middle-aged crowd that turned out to see and hear the rocker from Detroit and the place was as crowded as I’ve ever seen it. The downtown parking ramps were all full and we had to walk about a mile to even find a place to park.

It was a great show and very poignant when Seger sang the lyrics, “I’m older now, but still running against the wind.”

On the Road

By Connie Wilson

On September 2, 2010

In travel

We’re on the road again. This time, we’re driving to Nashville for the Labor Day holiday.

The husband has purchased a brand-new Hyundai Tucson. He seems quite taken with it. I would have kept the Cadillac. I have found one nice thing to say about it: the color he selected looks nicer than it did online where it looked horrible.

We drove for 4 hours and are in Effingham, Illiinois.

You have to wonder, if “Effing” a euphemism, as when ex-governor Rod Blagojevich uses it? If so, how do the city fathers feel about the co=opting of their name by Hot Rod?

We watched “Get Him to the Greek” on the in-room movies. Rather crass, but not much else worth watching, unless we wanted to venture into the documentary about Joan Rivers’ life or “Life in Wartime.” It was a compromise pick.

Tomorrow, on to Nashville, TN.

Gas Prices in the Quad Cities on April 19, 2010

By Connie Wilson

On April 19, 2010

In Local

Gas Prices for April 19, 2010

Lowest Regular Gas prices for 61244

2.88⁹

Jewel Express
107 Ave of the Cities
East Moline, IL

Sat
6:59 AM

Search for gas prices near you

* Prices as of Monday, April 19, 2010 at 12:49 PM

Current Quad Cities Average
2.684

Current Iowa Average
2.800

Current National Average
2.868

Henry County, Illinois, Leads the State in Drug Arrests on I-80

By Connie Wilson

On May 18, 2008

In Local, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest

Henry County, Illinois holds a distinction that it probably wishes it didn’t hold. To wit, in 2006, Illinois State Patrol officers confiscated 3,300 pounds of illegal drugs in Henry County, 1, 497,297 grams, which makes it the county in Illinois with the most drug busts. There were 46 drug-related arrests in Henry County in 2007, leaving LaSalle County (Illinois) in the dust with only 35 arrests for second place. There is a new K9 officer (pictured), Bobby, a German Shepherd that works with Geneseo Police Officer Jamison Weisser and joins three other K9 dogs that help sniff out drugs stashed in cars traveling Interstate 80.

In 2006, the second closest county to Henry County was Will County, nearer to Chicago, in which 70,856 grams or 156 pounds of illegal substances were seized.

Right now, said Henry County Sheriff Gib Cady—who has been Sheriff for 30 years and with the department since 1970—there are prisoners from about six different countries in the Henry County Jail awaiting further legal action on drug charges.

The reason that Henry County is such a hot spot for drug busts of all description is that the I-80 corridor is the main thoroughfare that reaches from coast-to-coast. Drugs are either coming out of Chicago and heading west, or heading to Chicago from the west.

For instance, last fall, when Illinois State Police pulled over a vehicle in Henry County and searched it, they found over 900 grams of cocaine. Rodolfo G. Jimenez, 1, of Los Angeles, and his son Rodolfo G. Jimenez, age 21, are both still in the Henry County Jail awaiting trial.

The War Business is Good in the Quad Cities

By Connie Wilson

On May 6, 2008

In Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest

Where Does the Money Go, When It Comes In?

The Quad Cities of Iowa/Illinois has an entire island devoted to munitions manufacturing, Arsenal Island. In fiscal year 2006, according to the Consolidated Funds Report for 2006, the most recent year for which reports are available, nearly $166 million in defense contracting dollars flowed into Scott and Rock Island counties, up from $95 million in 2002. Contracts made up 7.7 cents of every dollar coming into the area.

The report, released in April, tracked 3,000 counties across the United States and $2.45 trillion dollars in domestic spending.

Salaries for federal employees account for almost 13 cents of every dollar coming in to the Quad Cities. More than 9 cents of that total of $198 million went to Defense Department workers at the Rock Island Arsenal, mentioned above, which even has a cemetery in which Confederate prisoners of war from the Civil War are buried.

Our of every incoming dollar, 98 cents—almost one full buck—goes to Retired Military personnel. Another $1.16 goes to defense contracts for munitions and equipment such as those machines I snapped while touring on the island recently. Salaries for inactive military account for 67 cents of every dollar. Defense contracts pull in $7.76. Payments to disabled veterans or the families of soldiers killed in battle account for $22.5 million dollars, or 1% of the total. $133,199,438 thousand went to Defense Contracts in fiscal year 2006, after the Iraq War started by George W. Bush reached full flower, for Rock Island County, where Arsenal Island is located, and $33,148,093 went to Scott Country in Iowa (which has no comparable military base presence), for a total of $166,347,531 or 7.76%.

By far the biggest federal domestic payouts, though, …$20.56% amounting to $440,541,900 in the Quad Cities, …was paid out for Social Security. The next biggest % on the Quad City Times chart (taken from the Consolidated Funds Report for 2006)…and a drop of nearly half, was 9.27% for the salaries for Defense Department civilians: a whopping $198,612,000. I know that, in my years in business, the three biggest employers in the Quad Cities’ area were John Deere (Moline is their international headquarters), Alcoa Aluminum (Bettendorf/Pleasant Valley) and Arsenal Island. Naturally, during a time of war, the take is better for a high security facility that houses what was the second-largest official residence for a government official after the White House, Quarters One, for the Commandant of the Arsenal, which is now being mothballed because it is too expensive to maintain and too antiquated to bring up to code.

I went on a tour of Quarters One during a recent Ladies Auxiliary function, and was amazed at the size of the place and the outdatedness of all the military residences on the island. There was only one “house” that looked modern and livable by modern-day standards.

You first pass a series of what appear to be low-income housing…squat buildings that do not look the least bit inviting. After that, you get to the different houses that are home to the families of the brass. While they are definitely bigger, better does not seem to be the right term. Almost all seem to date from the late 1800’s and the screened-in porch just isn’t the draw it used to be before air conditioning. The problem is that the kitchens and bathrooms of nearly every facility I saw (save one) looked like they had not been updated since the seventies. When I asked why that was, it was explained to me by a resident officer that each family gets an ‘allowance” for repairs and modernization and updates to their temporary assigned residence. What happens, however, if the roof gives out during your tour of duty? Then you are on the pan to fix it, and your budgeted amount may not be sufficient. Therefore, knowing that their lives are always in transit, most residents do not see the wisdom in sinking much into the improvement(s) of their quarters, let alone into upgrading and updating them.

Here are pictured some weapons seen alongside the roads of Arsenal Island, and one of the cemeteries, honoring soldiers killed in battle. Sometimes, you can hear the Army “testing” large cannons or guns over the river…or at least you could back in the day. One never knows what is being manufactured “over there” and guards will check you as you drive on and off the island,. But one thing is for sure: business is good, right now, with a huge hawk in the White House, and, if the nominee of his party, John McCain, prevails in November, the war business could be good for another hundred years.

NIU Victims Are Buried; Wounded Recover

By Connie Wilson

On February 19, 2008

In News

As you approach the makeshift Memorial on campus in DeKalb, Illinois at Northern Illinois University on this bitterly-cold evening, you are struck by the steady stream of students coming and going to pay tribute to the victims of the shooting that took place on Valentine’s Day on campus.

Students trudge up a slight hill crusted with frozen snow and ice to the crosses. They lay fresh flowers at the base of the Memorial. Some linger a moment, silently feeling the immense weight of the sadness. One boy blessed himself as he left, making the traditional Catholic Sign of the Cross.

As you leave your floral or written tribute, as I did, —-hundreds of pounds of fresh roses and other fragrant flowers, dying quickly in the frigid air, despite efforts to cover and protect them with a plastic tarpaulin— you feel like crying on this hushed frigid night. The emotional impact is overwhelming. You think of the students, themselves, almost as fragile flowers. The plastic tarp that won’t protect against the cold that kills is much like our parental concern, that can’t protect against a gunman gone mad.

When I asked how I might walk to Cole Hall, the UNI student I spoke with said, “Oh, the cops won’t let you get within a block of Cole Hall.” Cole Hall will not be used for classes for the rest of this school year. It is cordoned off.

Tomorrow, here in Milan, Illinois, one of the Quad Cities that I call home, one of the shooting victims, 20-year-old Daniel L. Parmenter of Taylor Ridge, Illinois, will be laid to rest in Milan at Chapel Grove Cemetery. Daniel’s first funeral was held at 2 p.m. today (Tuesday, February 19) at Christ Church in Oak Brook, Illinois. His second funeral will be held Wednesday at Taylor Ridge Methodist Church with burial at Chapel Grove Cemetery immediately afterwards.

Daniel’s older sister, Kristen, graduated from Augustana College in Rock Island, another of the Quad Cities. The funeral home director at Hursen Funeral Home in Hillside, Illinois, handling Daniel’s funeral arrangements, Anthony Rainiero said, “We’ve had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people in line since 2:30 this afternoon (at the funeral home).” He described the profound sadness in the eyes of the hundreds of people who attended Daniel’s visitation as “amazing”, something unparalleled for him in his more than 20 years in the funeral business.

Meanwhile, Lauren DeBrauwere, Daniel’s girlfriend, who was sitting right next to him in one of the front rows in Cole Hall the day of the shooting, struggles to recover from both her physical and psychological wounds. She remembers everything.

Although groggy from stomach surgery, with a tube still lodged in her throat, Lauren remembers how gunman Steven Kazmierczak walked onto the stage literally minutes before the geology class was to end. Lauren assumed the black-clad person was there to make an announcement. Then, he tried to shoot the instructor, who ducked behind his podium. (The instructor was shot in the arm, but is expected to fully recover.)

Next, Kazmierczak pointed the shotgun at the students in front of him in the large lecture hall and pulled the trigger. Lauren was near the front of the class and saw the gunman use a handgun to shoot and kill her boyfriend, Dan Parmenter, before he shot her in the abdomen and hip. Steve Kazmierczak proceeded to shoot the girl sitting next to Lauren, as well. Mark Debrauwere, Lauren’s father said, “It was almost like he went down a line.”

Lauren didn’t know the shooter and she never had a chance to run. She lay crumpled on the ground, talking to the fatally wounded Parmenter before losing consciousness. When rushed to Kishwaukee Community Hospital, doctors discovered that one bullet had exited her buttocks; the other bullet had traveled up her body and lodged above her left breast, narrowly missing her heart.

Lauren was conscious when she was transferred to the hospital. She kept saying, “My stomach hurts. Please make it stop.” Then she would ask about Daniel. Doctors and family lied to her about Daniel, for a while. “She knew what had happened. She kept asking us about Dan, and we lied to her for a while, but she knew (he’d been killed). She saw it. She definitely had seen what happened,” said Lauren’s father Dan.

Lauren was airlifted to Northwestern Memorial Hospital. In time, she is expected to make a full physical recovery. The psychological effects will be harder to assess. She won’t be able to be present at Dan Parmenter’s funeral today, to see the Pi Kappa Alpha floral tribute near his coffin, with a tag reading, “We will all remember your son Dan as a wonderful person.” The photos of Parmenter as a child, Boy Scout and young man, skiing and playing volleyball, sit near his coffin, but Lauren won’t be able to be there to view them for herself, to seek closure on the tragedy of her near-death experience and the loss of the boy she cared for deeply.

Mourners snaked around the side of the Hursen funeral home in Hillsen on Monday afternoon, dozens and dozens of sad people, waiting in near-zero temperatures, some clutching flowers and cards, all waiting to pay their respects. Family friend George Sefer of Elmhurst (IL) said, “Dan was a quiet young man. Very nice and very determined.”

Meanwhile, in Cicero, Catalina Garcia was mourned by a huge crowd at her funeral at Our Lady of the Mount Catholic Church as “a daughter of Cicero” by attending city officials, while her grieving family buried her. The youngest of four children in a family that migrated to the United States from Guadalajara, Mexico, Catalina was studying to become a teacher.

A mariachi band played hymns during the Spanish mass. Photographs around her coffin spelled out her nickname, “Cati.” The photos flanked Catalina’s body, dressed in a pink ballgown-style dress and wearing a jeweled tiara, lying inside a pale pink casket. Mourners wore pink ribbons and ties and hair bands in honor of Catarina. Pink was Cati’s favorite color.

Those shot but still hospitalized, like Lauren DeBrauwere, try to recover from the devastating psychological effect of routinely going off to the geology class lecture hall with 120 other students (160 were enrolled in the geology lecture class, but only 120 were present) on a normal class day, but emerging from that class on a stretcher, boyfriends and classmates killed in front of their eyes. One female member from the Quad Cities described her panic as she ran for her life, thinking, “I’m dead! I’m dead! I’m dead! Now, if I run, he’s going to shoot me. I’m dead! I’m dead!” To run or to play dead was not an option if you were wounded as quickly and as badly as Lauren DeBrauwere. And, too, she was concerned for her boyfriend, Dan, who lay next to her, fatally wounded.

In DeKalb, Samantha Dehner, a DeKalb native who was shot twice during the attack, was released from Kishwaukee Community Hospital. Dehner, 20, had a 2-hour surgery on Friday to repair a shattered bone in her arm. She was too overcome with emotion to speak at a Monday news conference with her doctors. Samantha began to cry, and was removed from the room. Doctors are unsure whether Dehner will ever regain the full use of her right arm and elbow. Samantha Dehner had been friends since fourth grade with Gayle Dubowski, who was also killed in the attack, and she was close friends with another of the wounded students.

Her father, Robert Dehner, said, “She’s a tough kid. She’ll make it. She said to me, ‘You know, Dad. I was shot. I think I deserve a car.'” Then he choked up, detailing what will happen next. In the fall, Dehner will return to campus and move into her sorority house, Sigma Kappa. Her father was visibly upset when he added, “We do consider ourselves lucky that we’re able to take our daughter home.”

Northern Illinois Students Describe the Horror of Shootings on Campus

By Connie Wilson

On February 17, 2008

In News

NIU Northern Illinois Students Detail Horror of Shootings on Campus

I was online with my young friend Phil, the person helping me to learn the ins-and-outs of making a blog, when he instant messaged me that his friend from East Moline, Illinois (our mutual home town) had just bolted from a classroom in Cole Hall on campus at Northern Illinois University, running for his life.

DeKalb, Illinois, where Northern Illinois University is located, is about an hour and a half drive to the east on Interstate 80. Many students from the Quad Cities attend NIU. I have taken workshops at WIU and my husband graduated from Northern Illinois University, a campus of about 25,000 students, many of them commuters from the Chicago area or nearby towns.

The friend told Phil that his girlfriend was still inside the lecture hall at Cole Hall, in a geology class. She had been sitting right next to a student who was shot in the neck by the black-clad gunman, who entered Cole Hall at approximately 3 p.m. (CDT) in this DeKalb, Illinois college town. The gunman was armed with a shotgun and 2 pistols and, within 2 minutes or so, used that shotgun and those 2 pistols to shoot 22 students, five, including himself for a total of 6, fatally.

Said students Desiree Smith and Geoff Alberti, “I saw four people down on the ground. We were all crawling toward the exits in the back of the room on our stomachs.” Desiree added that she saw the gunman shoot their instructor onstage “in the arm.” (The instructor was expected to recover, as 6 remain hospitalized four days later.)

Jim Donohue, who sustained about 20 buckshot wounds to his shoulder and the back of his head in the attack, said, “The gunman came out of the emergency exit on the right-hand side of the stage. My girl and I ran outside together. I consider myself fortunate. I feel horrible for others who weren’t so fortunate. My dad and I had actually talked about what to do if something like this happened, after there were threats I December (2007), and my dad said, “Don’t think. Just run.”

Another eyewitness in the room, George Gaynor, who said he was 30 rows back, taking notes in the geology class when the gunman opened fire on the front rows, said that the gunman was very thin, white and was wearing blue jeans, a gray sweatshirt and a white knit cap, which differed from the versions of most others, who described the gunman as “black clad.” Gaynor added, “There was a lot of screaming and confusion. The gunman didn’t say a word. He just pointed his gun and opened fire. He seemed very intent. As we ran, we were all saying, “Is this for real?’ It was surreal. He looked like a typical college student. He could have been anybody.”

Northern Illinois University President John Peters announced later in the day that six people were dead, 4 females and 2 males, including the gunman, who killed himself at the scene. Hospitals treating the wounded announced on the 6:00 p.m. news (CDT) that another 6 students were in critical condition, many with head wounds. One female student had a bullet lodged near her heart. It was reported that the gunman had been a Sociology graduate student at NIU in the spring of last year, but was not currently enrolled, and had no history of being in trouble at the university. Don Grady, the DeKalb Police Chief, reported that the entire shooting was over in minutes.

Local residents Brett Nowack of East Moline and a Moline girl named Armenid described a scrawled message found on a restroom wall in December, threatening an attack like that at Virginia Tech would take place at NIU. After that threatening message was reported to authorities in December of 2007, some adjustments in security were made on campus. Still, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to stop a psychotic gunman from carrying out a lethal attack of this sort, as we know all too well after Virginia Tech.

Phil’s friend on the scene said that the gunman was not wearing a mask, although the student had heard reports saying that he was.

Later follow-ups on the gunman’s identity report that the shooter, Steven Kazmierczak, stayed at a Travelodge near campus in Room 105 for three days prior to the rampage, and numerous empty drinks, and consumed bottles of cold medicine were discovered there. He had purchased all 4 guns legally, near Champaign where he was a graduate student at the University of Illinois, but, more tellingly, he had been an outpatient in a mental health facility in Chicago 8 years ago. He was discharged from the Army 9 years ago and was, in all likelihood (judging from symptoms described by his former nurse) bi-polar, but not taking his medication. The woman, “Louise,” who worked at the outpatient resident treatment facility when Steven was a patient there said that Steven had a history of cutting himself. ‘There were only problems when he didn’t take his medication. He didn’t want to be classified as someone with a mental health issue, so he would sometimes not take his medication.”

As of Sunday, February 17, six NIU victims remain hospitalized. Maria Ruiz Santana remained in serious condition at Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove. Sherman Yau, 20, was listed in fair condition with a gunshot wound to the chest at the same hospital. Two other victims were listed in serious condition at hospitals in Rockford and Chicago: a 20-year-old woman who underwent surgery on her armn Friday at Kishwaukee Community Hospital in DeKalb, remained in fair condition on Sunday, February 17^th. A 19-year-old woman was in fair condition at the University of Illinois-Chicago Medical Center after being transferred from Good Samaritan on Saturday morning.

Hordes of angry parents, including John Roszkowski and Jennifer Bishop were featured on the Channel 2 news in Chicago sayingm, “This is craziness. We, as parents, have to take action.” They were pushing for more stringent amendments to and enforcement of what is known as the Brady Bill, an anti-gun bill that came into effect after the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan. Also, an e-mail threat of similar violence against the University of Chicago campus, made by a 24-year-old, had that campus worried and anxious in the wake of the tragedy in DeKalb, Illinois. Said freshman student Drew Stephenson at the University of Chicago, “I did feel a bit apprehensive, coming on the heels of the Northern Illinois University shooting.”