Banner Graphic, Volume 12, Number 41, Greencastle, Putnam County, 24 October 1981 — Page 1

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Indiana State Highway officials and crew members were kept pn their toes Friday morning as representatives from the Crawfordsville headquarters inspected operations as a prelude to winter. The annual inspection puts drivers like Don Beaman (right photo, at left) through their paces, making certain every piece of machinery is in top condition. (Banner-Graphic photos by Becky Igo).

'Redbird' Ward found not guilty in Morgan County

By BECKY IGO Banner-Graphic Area News Editor Former Roachdale resident Orville “Redbird” Ward, now serving a prison sentence at the Indiana State Prison at Michigan City, recently faced theft and burglary charges for his alleged involvement in a break-in at the Douglas Gerber home, Route 1, Paragon. According to Morgan County clerk records, Ward was tried by a Morgan

Killer frost Mostly sunny, breezy and cold. High in the mid to upper 40s. Clear with near record cold and killing frosts overnight. Low in the mid to upper 20s. Sunny and a little warmer Saturday. High in the upper 40s to low 50s. Indiana Extended Forecast Sunday fair and cool. Monday and Tuesday chance of showers and a bit warmer by Tuesday. Highs Sunday near 50 north and near 60 south and becoming by Tuesday north low to mid 50s and south low to mid 60s. Lows Sunday low to mid 30s. Abby A 4 Calendar A 4 Classifieds AIO.AII Comics A 6 Crossword AlO Editorials A 7 Heloise A 4 Horoscope All Obituaries Al 2 People A 6 Sports AB.A9 TV B section Theaters Al 2

Banner Graphic Putnam County, Saturday, October 24,1981, Vol. 12 No. 41 ★ 20 Cents

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County Superior Court jury. AFTER THE THREE-DAY trial, Ward was found not guilty of burglary and not guilty of theft. He was then returned to the Indiana State Prison. Ward’s involvement in several burglaries in Putnam County led to his confinement at the Michigan City institution. A Putnam County Circuit Court jury convicted Ward on April 14 of two felony

In search of Ronald Byrd, Timothy Wells, etal...

By ERIC BERNSEE Banner-Graphic Managing Editor I guess I can forget about a career as a private investigator. The task assigned by the Internal Revenue Service seemed easy enough. All we had to do was find three Putnam County area people who have tax refunds due and we’d surely light up their lives. Not to mention making the IRS look like good guys. AFTER ALL, ACCORDING TO the IRS, unclaimed IRS checks returned as undeliverable range from $1 to $9,765. Of 742 individuals and 149 businesses who are due refunds and apparently don’t know it, the IRS was able to list one with a Greencastle address, one with a Coatesville home and another in the 461-zip code area of rural Clayton. The easiest name provided by Harriet Archer, acting public affairs director of the IRS office at Indianapolis seemed that of Ronald Byrd of Greencastle. The name sounded familiar. A quick check of all the telephone directories of this area, however, proved fruitless. Greencastle phones are listed for Chloe Byrd, E.M. Byrd and John Byrd. The Byrds we talked to apparently don’t flock together, they’d never heard of Ronald. THE NAME HAD A SOUTH Putnam ring to it, so we asked one of its distinguished graduates. There was a Ronald Byrd at South in recent years, she said, but the last she heard he was living in a mobile home somewhere. His parents supposedly moved to Crawfordsville.

charges. Ward was found guilty of burglary and theft concerning a March 2, 1980 break-in at the Charles and Rosemary Brozenski residence near the Roekhill Stone Quarry near Cloverdale. VARIOUS ITEMS WERE reported as stolen from the Brozenski residence, in addition to SI,OOO in cash. Ward’s alleged accomplices, Mike and Tina Owens, were also convicted in the theft. Mrs. Owens pleaded guilty to a

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So much for Ronald Byrd. If you see him, tell him the IRS has a refund for him. They won’t say how large or how small. The computer printout, Mrs. Archer explained, gives only the name and zip code. No street address, rank or serial number. THIS IS THE POINT where an old laundry receipt always solves the riddle for Columbo, Rockford, or McCloud (isn’t it funny how those guys’ names all sound like cities in Illinois?). I checked my pockets. No laundry slip. We tried Timothy D. and Tammy A. Wells of Coatesville. Timothy Wells sounds like a “Who’s News” name of the past. Army, wasn’t it? Or was he the one who dated Donna Fargo? Dead ends. No phone, no pool, no pets. The only Wells we know never heard of these two. Then again she doesn’t know anybody important. By the time we started pursuing the whereabouts of

Greencastle cumulative building fund rejected

By LARRY GIBBS Banner-Graphic Publisher and DAVID BARR Civic Affiars Editor Immediate remodeling of Greencastle Community School Corp. buildings has been dealt a major setback by the Indiana School Property Tax Control Board. Meeting in Indianapolis this week, the state-level panel rejected Greencastle’s request for an annual 80-cent cumulative building (CB) fund tax rate for five years. Instead, the local school corporation was given permission to implement a 50-cent rate for only one year. SUPT. JAMES PECK disclosed the state’s action in response to a question Thursday during his “state of the schools’’ address to the Greencastle Kiwanis Club. He elaborated on the ruling and its effects in a follow-up interview with the BannerGraphic. “We were shocked, to say the least,” Peck admitted. “What the state told us, in effect, was ‘We really don’t want you to expand, add on, build or renovate unless you absolutely have to.’ “For the present at least, they’ve effectively tied our hands by cutting what we thought would be our financial ability to deal with remodeling or - at some future date - possible new construction. Instead of an 80-cent cumulative building fund rate that would have produced $368,000 next year, we will have a 50-cent rate that will yield only $250,000. And the authorization for the rate is for only one year, not five.” AN APPARENT CASUALTY of the state’s cumulative building fund action is remodeling work at Jones Elementary, where the local school board already has acknowledged the need for a library, cafeteria and other physical improvements. “The reduction in our cumulative building fund request means that we’re going to have to wait until they (the state) change their position or until the economy changes and we can raise funds through a bond issue,” Peck said of the needed remodeling at Jones. “Bonds aren’t selling now and the state knows that, but they cut our CB rate anyway. They’ve put us between the proverbial rock and hard place.” In an interview after he assumed the superintendent’s position two months ago, Peck acknowledged a $1 million balance in Greencastle’s cumulative building fund, but he said that money will be needed to ieplace roofs on existing buildings, including McAnally Center, over the next five or six years. Funds from the CB account also are used for maintenance and repair of buildings.

reduced charge of theft, while her husband pleaded guilty to burglary. In turn, both testified against Ward. Tina Owens received a two-year suspended sentence. Her husband served one year of a two-year sentence. FOR HIS PAST conviction record and the Brozenski theft, Ward was named a habitual offender, an offense which netted him an additional 30 years in prison, in addition to the theft and burglary sentence.

Daze Work

Fillmore man fatally injured at Louisville

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - A painter was killed Thursday in a fall at General Electric’s Appliance Park that may have resulted from a malfunction in a “cherry picker” hoist, authorities said. Michael Reynolds, 24, Fillmore, Ind., died at 11:05 p. m. at Suburban Hospital of internal injuries, said Jefferson County Deputy Coroner Robert Carter. Carter said Reynolds was standing in the elevated bucket of the

THE CUMULATIVE BUILDING fund reduction also raises questions about the corporation’s fiscal ability to consider eventual replacement of the old junior high building, now functioning as the middle school. Peck said that issue too will be affected by the state’s future financial policy or the economy’s ability to facilitate bond sales. During his address to the Kiwanis, Peck said the school corporation remains financially sound, but he warned that inflationary pressures will continue. Greencastle schools avoided going into debt, he said, by the closing of Miller Elementary, a decision based on declining enrollment and rising costs of operation. Peck had estimated earlier that the cost of utilities alone at the Miller building, which exceeded $35,000 last year, would have been approximately $50,000 during 1981-82. MILLER’S CLOSING RESULTED in elimination of the equivalent of 11 fulltime teaching positions. Savings also have been realized by the reduction of two administrative posts. Miller students were reassigned to Ridpath, Jones and Northeast schools, while all sixth-graders were transferred to the middle school as part of the new alignment of grades six, seven and eight. “The reorganization from four elementaries to three and creation of the middle school was completed smoothly,” Peck said. “We were very pleased that students, parents, teachers and administrators did such a good job in the transition. They all deserve to be congratulated.” WHILE THE MILLER CLOSING and related reduction in force allowed the corporation to escape red ink, finances remain tight. For example, the 1981-82 budget does not provide for purchase of any new equipment. And Peck does not see

Last May, following the Circuit Court jury’s verdict, Judge William C. Vaughn sentenced Ward to 10 years imprisonment on the burglary charge and two years on the theft charge. Both sentences are being served concurrently, but with an additional 30 years added for the habitual designation. THE INDIANA DEPT. OF Corrections made the determination that Ward’s sentence be served at Michigan City.

Robert H. and Barbara Pitt of the rural Clayton area, we were wondering why the IRS didn’t hire somebody to do its own legwork. “LACK OF STAFFING doesn’t permit us to individually track down 891 people. Thus, we depend on news stories to alert them that they have checks waiting, but which we can’t deliver. The list totals 58 pages, so this is impractical for us,” Mrs. Archer added. Impractical, too, is the total dollar value of undeliverable Indiana checks - $319,021, the IRS said. Try multiplying that by 50 before you make out your next tax return. There are those, of course, who probably don’t want to be found by the IRS or anybody else. And then there are those who are wary of the IRS and its methods. “AS SOON AS I TAKE IT, they’ll say we owe five times as much," one Indianapolis woman said this week, adding that she’s not convinced she and her husband will take the money due to them. Also listed among those persons and businesses the IRS couldn’t locate was the Indianapolis Association of Insurance Underwriters. "You’re kidding,” was the response of an official there, “Well I’ll be switched.” Of course, if these same people owed the IRS, I’m sure they could be found somehow. SO MAYBE RONALD BYRD. Timothy and Tammy Wells and Robert and Barbara Pitt know something we don’t know. And if you see them, find out what it is, okay?

hoist working on the outside of the building about 5 p.m. when the bucket fell about 35 feet to the ground. An autopsy was to be performed Friday at University Hospital. Reynolds was employed by the Liberty Insulation Co., Cloverdale Services for Mr. Reynolds are pending at the Hopkins-Rector Funeral Home, Greencastle. Among the survivors is the wife, Kristie Gorham Reynolds.

any immediate relief on the horizon. “I don’t anticipate any real easing of the situation when the legislature convenes in January,” he said. “It appears that, if anything, the state is leaning toward a local option income tax that could be levied by each school corporation, rather than a general statewide tax increase in support of education. Whereas the legislature seems to want 305 individual school corporations to wrestle with the funding problem, it is my feeling the issue of adequate funding should be addressed at the state level. “I might feel differently if the financial problems facing schools varied significantly from corporation to corporation. But the fact is inflation, declining enrollments and related problems are being experienced by all schools. Relief, I believe, should come from the state level.” IN A NON-ECONOMIC VEIN, Peck called the Kiwanians’ attention to the local schools’ current program to meet the challenges of drug and alcohol abuse. A public meeting has been scheduled for 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 17 at McAnally Center to initiate community involvement in combating the problem. That session, which will feature a panel of law enforcement and counseling professionals, will be followed by a series of parent-participation meetings at each school in December and January. Programs will be geared to the student levels at each building. “SCHOOLS REFLECT SOCIETY, so it follows that there can be problems within the student population of the school system,” Peck said. “We want to meet that problem directly with a coordinated program that invites parents and the public in general to join us in partnership.”

Damage $65,000 in area fire By BECKY IGO Banner-Graphic Area News Editor CLOVERDALE-A Cloverdale couple’s home was extensively damaged by a house fire reported at 7:03 a m. Thursday according to Cloverdale Volunteer Fire Chief Byron Snyder. THE FIRE OCCURRED at the home of Robert Finchum, Route 1, Cloverdale. The home is located just north of the Cataract Yacht Club on State Road 243. Although the Finchums were home when the fire began, it is unknown what caused the blaze, Snyder said. “We know it started in the garage and it is believed to have been an accidental fire. “AT THIS TIME, WE can’t determine where the specific area of the fire started,” the fire chief said. “Usually you can tell right away, but in this case we could not." Damage to the dwelling was estimated at $40,000, while the contents was listed at $25,000 damage. “There was extensive smoke damage,” Snyder added. “The fire destroyed the garage and the family room.” No injuries were reported. SNYDER SAID THE Cloverdale unit was called to assist the Poland Fire Dept, who technically has jurisdiction over that area. Greencastle’s fire department went to the Cloverdale station to cover the base.