The Mail-Journal, Volume 28, Number 41, Milford, Kosciusko County, 22 November 1989 — Page 17

It happened ... in Syracuse

10 YEARS AGO, NOV. 21, 1989 Paul Isbell, Syracuse Town Board president, called a special town board on Tuesday, Nov. 27, during last night's meeting of the board. Umbaugh and Associates, Plymouth, will review with the board their findings in the water rates. New board members are also asked to be present. The Syracuse-Wawasee Retail Merchants’ Association is firming up plans for the 1980 Winter Carnival which is to be held on Jan. 12. Mrs. Almeda Berkey of Syracuse and Hazel Kline of Milford entertained the members of the Bethany Homemakers Club at Sunny Side Park, New Paris, on Nov. 8. Louise and Jim Purvis are now settled in Crystal River, Fla., according to a letter received last week from Louise, former reporter for The South Bend .Tribune and The Mail-Journal. Louise and Jim sold their home of old SR 13 south of Syracuse and ,now make their home in Florida. The Syracuse Business and Professional Women met Nov. 13 at the Syracuse Case. The 22 members present listened to guest Mrs. Chris Jenson’s program on India. The presentation .was highlighted with slides on the country. Handsome Tim Schwalm, a junior and an architectural student at Ball State University, Muncie, and son of Mr. and Mrs. Dean Schwalm of 68 North Shore

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Drive and of Goshen, is planning to join a group of other students for a five-week trip to mainland China. 20 YEARS AGO, NOV. 19. 1969 Members of the Syracuse Town Board voted Tuesday night to buy an American Motors' Ambassador automobile for the police department. Mr. and Mrs. Jay Busscher, r 4, Syracuse, spent the weekend in Michigan. Mrs. Pearl Tucker of Denver, Colo., is visiting her sister, Mrs. Ida Hibschman at Syracuse this week and part of next week. She is also visiting old school friends. Mr. and Mrs. Clark Conley of Larwill called on Mrs. Estelle Swartz at Syracuse on Sunday. Larry Weaver and Earl Cooper, Syracuse, returned home Thursday from a Western mountain hunting trip, where they bagged a deer. Mr. and Mrs. ,W.K. Pfingst, who had spent the past week with their parents, Mr. and Mrs. Arnold A. Pfingst at Syracuse and Mr. and Mrs. Guy Fisher of Milford, left Tuesday morning by plane for their home near Sacramento, Calif. Mr. and Mrs. Larry Scheuer. Bret and Bianco of Syracuse, spent Sunday afternoon at Plymouth in the home of Mr. Scheuer's parents. Mr. and Mrs. James Scheuer. The Wednesday Afternoon Club of Syracuse met in the home of

Mrs. Nelson Miles Nov. 12. The president, Mrs. Ray D. Jones, i conducted the business meeting. 30 YEARS AGO, NOV. 19. 1959 Mr. and Mrs. Oscar Benson i recently returned from a month < vacation and hunting trip at their cottage on Lake Matinenda in On- , tario, Canada. Mrs. S.J. Smeeton returned Saturday from three weeks in Downers Grove, 111., with her son. Dr. J.C. Smeeton and family. Miss Glenda Biller was an overnight guest of Nancy Kinder on Saturday. Mr. and Mrs. Milo Snyder of Cromwell, and Mr. and Mrs I"* Howard Beard and daughter. Renee, of Angola, were Sunday afternoon visitors of Mr. and Mrs. C.E. Beck. Mrs. Snyder is a daughter of the Becks and Mrs. Beard, a granddaughter. Mr. and Mrs. Sherman Deaton entertained as their dinner guests Saturday evening, Mr. and Mrs. Cecil Conklin of Fort Wayne. Mr. and Mrs. Glen Popenfoose

Skeletons suggest greater role for women

By MERCER CROSS National Geographic I News Service She was a rare woman indeed, to be buried in such a fancy tomb. In the world of the ancient Maya, such places of honor were usually reserved formen - •, - Nobody will ever know her name. She was in her 40s, small, and had bad teeth. She had probably been pregnant at least once. She died perhaps 1,500 years ago in a place called Rio Azul, a once grand city nowovergrown by the thick jungle of northeastern Guatemala Nothing at all would be known about her if it weren’t for the experienced eyes of forensic anthropologists Frank Saul and his wife, Julie Mather Saul, who examined her crumbling remains earlier this year. . All they had to work with were a few bone fragments and teeth. Traces of red ochre found in other royal tombs on pieces of cranium were a tipoff to the woman's nobility. Tiny remnants of pelvic bone were the clues to her sex. Finding a ruling-caste female Maya skeleton is what excited the Sauls It is the first one identified from Rio Azul and the most ancient of only five reported female remains unearthed in royal tombs of the male-dominated civilization. Such burials ’’provide important new information on the status of Maya women and the nature of the ruling class” in the places where they were found, the Sauls wrote in a recent report. They are associated with the Medical College of Ohio in Toledo and with the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, DC. Their research was partly supported by the National Geographic Society. "She must have been extraordinarily important,” says Richard E.W. Adams of the Maya woman, "because she was put into the heart of this mausoleum building and given several important offerings. No question about it. they thought very highly of her.” Adams, an anthropologist at

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visited Mr. and Mrs. Ivan Snooks, of Goshen, Saturday night. Mrs. Jackson Ridings has accepted a position with the Public Library as substitute librarian to take the place of Mrs. Max Carlson, who resigned recently. Mr. and Mrs. Richard Heyde entertained at dinner Sunday for their uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Clem Elword of Kansas City, Kan.; Mrs. C.R. Traxer of South Bend; Mrs. Oscar Van Duran, Mr. and Mrs. William Heyde, Mr. and Mrs. Noble Heyde and sons, Paul, Rick, Mark and Bill, all of Bremen. 50 YEARS AGO, NOV. 24, 1939 Mr. and Mrs. Wade Zerbe spent Sunday in South Bend with Mr. and Mrs. Dial Rogers. , Mr. and Mrs. Wilmot Jones Jr., have purchased the Wynans property on Harrison Street. Mr. and Mrs. E.E. Holloway spent the weekend in South Bend at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Dial Rogers. Mrs. Angeline Edmonds is enclosing her front porch and

the University of Texas at San Antonio and director of the excavations at Rio Azul, notes that while most occupants of Maya tombs are men, even in this patrilineal society women are sometimes depicted in Maya monuments and tombs. From this he concludes that Maya women might have had more to do with running things than has generally been thought. Some of them, he thinks, served as regents for underage male rulers. "Somehow or other, they have been ruling,” he says. The best-known artistocratic Maya woman was discovered in 1961 at Altar de Sacrificios, Guatemala. Buried with her was a younger woman who sacrificed herself. All this is known because of an exquisite vase found in the tomb. Its glyphs date the burial year at 754, depict the bloody sacrifice, and identify the important male rulers from all over the Maya empire who participated in the funeral rites. Adams and the Sauls analyzed the Altar tomb and its wellpreserved bones and artifacts. The woman at Rio Azul lacked the status of the older woman at Altar.J’This wpman is important as a member of the family, rather than in her own right,” Adams says. The presence of a woman in a royal Maya tomb was in itself a mark of her status. Ordinary Maya women were buried under their houses, sometimes with their children, but not with their husbands. In 1986 another archaeological team, Diane and Arlen Chase of the University of Central Florida, unearthed another Tuling-class Maya woman. She was buried in 634 at Caracol, Belize. The Chases and the Sauls acknowledge that over the years other female Maya skeletons might have gone unnoticed because nobody was looking for them, assuming that only men occupied royal tombs. "To a degree, that represents a bias on the part of researchers,” says Diane Chase. "I don’t think you can assume that anymore.” The fifth and latest female Maya skeleton was found in a tomb at Uaxactun, Guatemala, by a Guatemalan physical anthropologist, Nora Maria Lopez Oliveres. Again pelvic fragments, analyzed by the Sauls in July, told the story. At Tikal, a major Maya city in Guatemala, the wife of a deposed ruler was buried near her husband’s tomb. But she wasn’t in the same league with some of the others, because her tomb jvas relegated to an outlying section, says William A. Haviland, a University of Vermont anthropologist. By throwing out bones, tomb-

also having some work done on the trees in front of her home. Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Disher and Paul will spend Thanksgiving in Angola with Mrs. disher’s father. Mrs. Earl Edwards of Bobtown, Pa.‘, who spent two weeks with Mr. and Mrs. Fletcher Marsh, returned to her home Friday. Mr. and Mrs. Warren Riddle of Toledo, Ohio, came Sunday to spend the week with the former's mother, Mrs. John Riddle. Mr. and Mrs. Elmer Stucky and daughter, Gwyn and son, Teddy, attended the North Central-Valparaiso football game at Valparaiso Saturday. They were accompanied home by Bill Nicholson, Bob Stoner. Arlyn Shiffler and Jim Stucky, students of North Central at Naperville, 111., who spent the weekend with them. Mr. and Mrs. H E. Holloway and daughter, Marilyn, spent Sunday in South Bend. Mr. and Mrs. Carl Thomas and sons left Wednesday for Florida, where they will spend the winter.

robbers compound the problems of scientists in finding Maya women. At Rio Azul, Adams says, "It’s a shame that.we’ve not got anything out of those big tombs

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Secrets of aging well

Aunt Susie sits in a sunshiny corner of her small apartment at Greencroft Retirement Village in Goshen. Spread out before her on a lap board are piles of colorful double knit patches. "Come in, come in,” she calls happily as my three girls and I enter the simple kitchen. I braced myself for trying to keep the kids out of knicknacks and candy dishes while I talked with the oldest of my living aunts, now an incredible 90 years of age. I say incredible not because 90 is so unusual these days but because you start feeling old yourself when you realize that someone you used to teach summer Bible school with in Chicago or the upper peninsula of Michigan or the deep hills of Kentucky has reached the big "9-0”. “Girls,” she said calling to Michelle and Tanya, “you’re just in time to help count patches. I remember so well my children helping to count patches for hours.” Susie organized them into an efficient team as quickly as a Harvard-trained business graduate. The girls were delighted, sorting and matching colors of odd patches that had been donated to make comforters to send to those in need. Susie handed them scissors and pencil so they could mark each pile with the right number. “Mom says there’s a big need , for blankets right now,” I noted. "Yes, and someone just brought me a whole closet full of material. I should have enough patches to last me to the year 2000," she sighed cheerfully. While I won’t reveal the ages of my other aunts. I'm blessed by a bevy of long-living relatives who continue to enrich my life. Adeline is always interested in the age and development of our three girls, to compare to her own grand and great-grandchildren. Elnora smothers me with a big perfumy hug and inquires about my latest writing project. Arlene is always ready with a good joke, and manages to make me feel at ease about taking kids into a beautiful house. I look at their pretty though’now-wrinkled faces and wonder: will I age so well? The first question usually asked of a person who has made it to 90 or 100 is “What is your secret of long life?” They usually don’t have -a clue,, and reveal some weird habit like drinking hot

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SCOUTS TOUR PLANT — The Tiger Scouts of Syracuse toured The Papers Incorporated in Milford Tuesday afternoon to learn how a newspaper is printed. Shown, left to right, are Michael Taylor, Paul Seidner, Jesse Swain, Alex Sielesnew, Justin Mock, and Kevin Newcomer. (Photo by Stacey Lesch)

that were looted, because there are some indications that there were ‘retainer’ burials" — people who might have included wives and concubines.

water before going to bed every night or eating sauerkraut every day. I thing the real secret is that there is no secret. Why does one person who ate only organically grown vegetables all her life die of cancer at 45? Why does the next line to be a 100 smoking cigars and choking his arteries with cholesterol 9 Even the statement “God blessed me with a long life” doesn’t ring completely true when a young person dies. Does that mean God cursed that person with a short life? While there may be no one secret to a happy, long life, there are certainly well known helps: eating well, exercise, having a support group of family or friends to turn to; independent living for as long as possible seems to help. Faith in God, a willingness to help others, and meaningful work or hobbies to occupy time also seem to bring fulfillment. My Dad’s sisters and in-laws regularly get together to celebrate birthdays, and they seem to derive much satisfaction from planning these get togethers. There is a downside. My 90-year-old aunt says she doesn’t especially want to live to see 100. My 93-year-old grandmother doesn’t either. I used to have trouble understanding that, but when many of your friends have died, aches and pains make every day a struggle, when you are simply tired of getting up every morning and going through too familiar routines, when you deeply long for the rest and joy of an eternal life with God, then there is only beauty in saying “I’m ready to go; take me home. Lord "

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Wed,, November 22,1989 — THE MAIL-JOURNAL

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