A real Man of God Malice in Wonderland a real man of god

***

Leonard Mullins, whose blood-alcohol level was 0.19, was convicted in July of second-degree manslaughter and fourth-degree assault. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and fined $500.

Special Report:

Alcohol and Driving --

Every day's tragedy

THE

STILLNESS

AND

THE

VOID

OWENSBORO

1988

They died. In cars and trucks and tractor-trailers, on motorcycles and farm tractors, as drivers and passengers and pedestrians.

Chuck Rawdon eased his black Chevrolet Monte Carlo to a stop in front of his friend's house in Owensboro.

They died. At nearly every hour of the day and night, some in crushing head-on collisions, others alone.

It was May 29, 1987. Chuck, 16, had a new driver's license and a new paint job.

They died. Old and young, black and white, affluent and poor.

They died.

Because someone drank and drove.

Chuck picked up Brian Wedding, 15, for a Friday night of cruising. They hit the road as soon as Brian finished loading the dishwasher.

The price of driving under the influence of alcohol is high in Kentucky.

In some ways it can be measured. Drunken driving raises insurance premiums and health-care costs and forces government to spend more money on enforcement.

A fatal traffic accident in Kentucky costs an estimated $220,000 just in lost wages, medical expenses and property damage, according to a National Safety Council formula used by Kentucky State Police.

That means that in a year's time, Kentucky loses more than $55 million because of drinking drivers who play a deadly game of roulette.

''In my opinion, it's no different than grabbing a loaded gun and going out on the highway indiscriminately shooting at vehicles,'' said state police Lt. Ed Shemelya, who saw a lot of fatal accidents when he was a trooper.

''Sooner or later, you're going to hit somebody.''

In that instant, the payoff is made with something much more precious than money. It is made with someone's mother or father, brother or sister, cousin or friend.

As the boys neared the driveway leading to Long's house on U.S. 231 in Daviess County, Chuck slowed the car and glanced down the road. A hill partially blocked his view.

The pain suffered by the survivors cannot be measured.

Drunken driving ''takes away from us the most precious thing we have, and that's life,'' said Lois Windhorst, who founded Kentucky's first chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving in 1981. ''It ruins life.

''I look at people who have lost their children. They're never going to be the same again.

''I see people who have been maimed. They're never going to be the same again. Your lives never go back to the same.

''It's taken something from you that you'll never have again.''

They were going to visit Brian's girlfriend, but they had a few things to take care of first, such as putting gas in the car.

To demonstrate the magnitude of the tragedy caused by drinking and driving, the Herald-Leader has examined a year's worth of traffic deaths in which, according to official police reports, alcohol use was involved or suspected. A 10-page special report is inside today's newspaper.

The accidents occurred from May 14, 1987, through May 14, 1988 -- the da Larry Mahoney ran his pickup into a church bus near Carrollton, killing 27 people, 24 of them children and teen-agers.

The message is simple: Although the bus wreck received a lot of attention because so many people died, it was not the first sign of a problem. The potential for death in accidents involving alcohol exists all the time.

Nationally, 142,550 people died in the United States from 1982 to 1987 in crashes involving alcohol -- an average of one death every 22 minutes. There are more than 650,000 injuries a year across the country.

Alcohol is a factor in 50 percent to 55 percent of all traffic deaths, according to the National Safety Council. About two in five Americans will be involved in an alcohol-related crash at some point in their lives, the

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates.

The Herald-Leader examined reports on 255 deaths that occurred in the one-year period leading up to the fiery bus crash near Carrollton. That was the number police thought were alcohol-related when the accident reports were filed. It is a conservative figure.

Further investigation by Connie Cocanougher, who runs the federal Fatal Accident Reporting System in Kentucky, turned up an additional 141 deaths. The names of those people and reports on their deaths were not available to the newspaper.

During the year examined, death struck almost every day.

Chuck's hands moved on the steering wheel as he began turning left into the driveway. It was dusk. ''I think there's a car coming,'' Brian said.


The 255 deaths reviewed for this article were striking because they were so varied, yet so similar.

Three-fourths of the dead were men. Nearly half of the dead were between the ages of 16 and 25, and more than half the wrecks occurred between 6 p.m.and midnight.

Not all drinking drivers were over the blood-alcohol level at which Kentuckians are presumed drunk -- 0.10 percent -- but driving abilities can be impaired at well below that level.

The youngest victim was 8 months old; the oldest, 86. The victims were coal miners and doctors, factory workers and garbage collectors, salesmen and students.

Jimmy Maggard's Pontiac popped over the hill. He had been drinking, and he was speeding. His headlights were not on.


Eighty-one people died in wrecks in which drunken drivers hit other cars or pedestrians. That number includes the drivers who were drinking and their passengers. In single-car wrecks involving drinking drivers -- wrecks in which a driver who had been drinking didn't hit someone else -- 174 drivers and passengers died.

Many of their pictures -- all those the newspaper could obtain -- are running today.

This is the cost of drinking and driving.

Maggard's car smashed into the passenger side of Chuck's car. Chuck survived, but Brian was killed instantly.

This is the stillness and the void.

When the the sheriff's cruiser arrived, Maggard, whose blood-alcohol level was 0.16 percent, told the officer he did not remember driving. He did not remember the wreck.

This is so we don't forget.

IN

TIME

WITH

THE

MUSIC

BARDSTOWN

1988
Lunch was over, Geraldo Rivera was on television and time passed slowly at the Colonial House Rest Home.

Then Lucille Edmonds came and brought three-quarter time.

The next 45 minutes would fly like her hands as they moved across the keyboard of an upright piano in the corner.

Some residents had turned their chairs to face the piano even before Mrs. Edmonds ambled in yesterday. After all, said resident Elizabeth Riggs, the woman is "very much of an inspiration."

"She has a clear mind for a woman of 98."


Mrs. Edmonds -- all 4 feet, 11 inches of her -- wore a bright red wool coat as she entered the lobby carrying a colorful, wooden cane from Mexico. Just above her smiling face, she wore a black fur hat.

For 11 years now the Mississippi native has been doing this: She visits nursing homes in Bardstown each week to play old songs on the piano as residents sing along.

Her traveling show hits the Colonial House at 1 p.m. each Tuesday and Federal Hill Manor, Bardstown's other nursing home, on Fridays. Her daughter, Rose Dianis, 68, drives her.

Mrs. Edmonds moved to Bardstown 11 years ago to live with her daughter and son-in-law after her husband died and "I got a fall or two."

A friend from church started her playing at nursing homes.

Residents look forward to her visits, said Sallie Schreiber, Colonial House administrator. "They enjoy the music, especially live music. And they enjoy her company."

Mrs. Edmonds said, "I get as much out of it as they do, maybe more."


The retired piano teacher, who gave her last recital at age 87, plays from memory now. "I can't see well enough to read," she said, giggling.

The piano awaiting her at Colonial House had an All-American Songbook that she would never open. Pictures of her and the Lord sat on top, along with a vase of purple silk flowers.

But Mrs. Edmonds was not ready to sit and play yet, so she peeled off her coat and made the rounds.

She shook Ann Jackson's hand. "I'll remember that name," Mrs. Edmonds said.

"I'm from Jackson, Mississippi."

She shook Catherine Shircliff's hand. "I'm crazy about her," said Mrs. Shircliff, 76, of Louisville. "She's the highlight of our Tuesday."

She shook Ella Cecil's hand. "She looks so pretty," said Mrs. Cecil, 70, of New Haven.

Then the tiny woman shuffled across the room to the piano. "All right," she said without turning around on the bench, "what do you want me to play?"

" 'Bringing in the Sheaves,' " 70-year-old Virginia Parsley hollered around a wad of gum.

As the first chords wafted through the nursing home, at least 10 more residents came into the lobby to join the 15 already there. They came on walkers and in wheelchairs, on nurses' arms and on their own two feet.

Mrs. Edmonds' hands danced across the keyboard, her head bent to watch them.

Nobody cared what she played during the show -- "I haven't even heard of some of 'em she plays," said Frances Kellems, 62, of Louisville -- but most sang along.

That included Pearl Chinn, a fragile-looking woman in the chair next to Mrs. Kellems. "She has trouble talking," Mrs. Kellems said of her neighbor.

But she sang harmony with ease.

Mrs. Edmonds played "The Old Rugged Cross," "The Sweet By and By," "How Great Thou Art," "Nearer My God to Thee," "The Missouri Waltz" and "My Old Kentucky Home."

Outside, the sun was not shining bright, but it gleamed on the cars in the parking lot. The day was cloudy but not gloomy.

"Aren't you all tired of singing?" the pianist said, turning on the bench and giggling. They were not, but they had no more requests.

"We've run out of songs," Mrs. Riggs said, smiling.

"What?" Mrs. Edmonds said. "I'm deaf in one ear and can't hear out of the other one."

She grinned, turned back to the keyboard and played more songs from some other time.

WHAT’S

WRONG

AT

RICHARDSVILLE?

RICHARDSVILLE

1988

Alongside Ky. 263, the postmaster in this sleepy, rural community spends his afternoons watching for signs of spring -- and any other thing that will help pass the lazy afternoon. It is the kind of town in which the unfamiliar is spotted easily.

But what’s happening at Richardsville Elementary School is a mystery: Students, teachers and staff members are coming down with strange ailments, and nobody knows why.

In the last 11 months, five of six pregnant teachers have lost their unborn babies, and faculty members want to know: Is it a coincidence, or is something at the school -- molds, chemicals, fumes, heavy metals -- causing the miscarriages?

Health department officials hope to be able to answer that question after they finish an extensive investigation in May.

''There are all kinds of things that could come out of this study -- or nothing,'' said Chuck Bunch, director of the Barren River District Health Department in Bowling Green.

Faculty members and some parents in Richardsville, a community north of Bowling Green, are anxiously awaiting the results.

''I'm really glad they did turn it over to the health department,'' said Judy Hittson, whose daughter attends Richardsville. ''When this first came up, they were trying to handle it in the school. I didn't like that.''

The high miscarriage rate is not the only worrisome news in a faculty report on health problems at Richardsville.

Students and school employees have complained of headaches, cysts, vision and breathing difficulties, and other health problems.

Principal Tom Hunt ''says there's no cause for alarm, but we could have a serious problem,'' said Renee Johnson, 13, a student.

Renee said she had been having headaches since the beginning of the school year.

Bunch met with concerned faculty members Feb. 16 to tell them the health department would investigate. ''You could tell they were very apprehensive,'' he said.

Most teachers and parents are concerned. But they are satisfied that officials are doing all they can.

''There's really no need to overreact,'' said Ida Bowling, a teacher. ''I mean, what do you do in a situation like that? You wait and hope nothing's wrong.''

Some, though, are not so patient.

''Why haven't they done something before now?'' asked Rose Basham, whose children attend the school.

One reason is that teachers did not suspect a problem until a pregnant colleague learned that her baby, due in April, probably would be born with multiple defects.

The teacher, who is in her late 20s, had had a miscarriage seven weeks into her first pregnancy last spring.

She was told the defects in the baby she was carrying now probably were genetic, Bunch said. But her tragic news prompted faculty members to compare notes.


Some of them told Hunt on Feb. 4 that they feared the school, which has 650 students in kindergarten through eighth grade, might be a spawning ground for health problems. Hunt told them to call a meeting of the faculty council.

The council met the next day and decided to do a study.

What they reported 10 days later seemed cause for alarm. Including the five miscarriages since March 1987, the study showed that over the last 20 months, seven of 10 pregnancies had ended in miscarriage.

Between 1971 and 1981, four of 14 teacher pregnancies had ended in miscarriage, and five of the children who were born had problems: allergies, club foot, migraine headaches, bronchitis and mental retardation.

The significance of the numbers is hard to determine, state epidemiologist Dr. James Moser said. Most experts think the normal rate of miscarriage is between 15 percent and 20 percent, he said.

But many miscarriages occur before the woman even knows she is pregnant, said Dr. Adele Franks of the federal Centers for Disease Control.

Unreported cases could make the rate as high as 50 percent or 60 percent, said Dr. Don Mattison of the National Center for Toxicological Research.

Such estimates are based on much larger samples than Richardsville's, but faculty concerns should not be ignored, Moser said. ''I think it's significant enough that the decision made by the health department to obtain further information is justified.''

But Moser added that the causes of miscarriage were hard to pinpoint. ''It doesn't give you any clues about what caused it or what might have caused it,'' he said.

The possibilities are almost limitless, Bunch said. As a result, the investigation will be unusual in its extensiveness: The health department will test for chemicals, bacteria, gases, heavy metals, mold, radiation and other possible causes.

Superintendent Robert Gover said all schools in Warren County soon would be checked for radon, a radioactive gas that occurs naturally in many areas of Kentucky. Radon is harmful only in enclosed areas, where it is suspected of causing cancer and other health problems.

The health department will gather information from teachers and staff members who have taught and worked at Richardsville as far back as 1970, Bunch said.

On Feb. 17, health officials tested for gases in and around the school.

Fresh in their minds was the problem with dangerous fumes that arose in two Bowling Green elementary schools in the fall of 1985.

The fumes, which smelled like gasoline and were highly explosive, were discovered in Parker-Bennett and Dishman-McGinnis schools. Their source was an underground cave.

Underlain by Kentucky's expanse of limestone, the Warren County area is known for its caves, geologic features that can harbor pollutants.

The 1985 mystery was easily solved: Storage tanks were leaking gasoline into the caves. Improved ventilation was the solution.

It might not be so easy this time, Bunch said. The odor of gasoline and kerosene sometimes fills the 40-year-old Richardsville school, but the source is the boiler room.

Reported health problems have been so diverse they might have more than one cause, Bunch said. Health officials are using the process of elimination.

Meanwhile, the school will stay open, Gover said. ''Unless you know for sure there's a problem in the school, why would you close it?'' he asked.

If there is a problem, health officials probably will find it, Bunch said. If not, those at the school will have to accept that the statistics are a coincidence.

''It will be up to them to decide whether they like it,'' Bunch said. ''We're going to be able to tell them what it isn't.''

State plumbing inspector Jerry Waddle already has decided it isn't the pipes in the school. They were found not to be contaminated. Water from every source inside the school is being tested for bacteria, Bunch said. Soil samples are being taken, too. Cleansers, insecticides and other chemicals used in and around the stark stone building also will be examined.

One test was easy: Health officials scanned the skies around the school for high-tension power lines, which have been linked to reproductive problems, Bunch said.

They found none. The school's unspoiled rural setting, virtually unchanged for four decades, makes the mystery all the more intriguing.

''I don't think they'll find anything,'' said Frank Duckett, who has two sons at Richardsville.

The quiet community of farmers, retirees and young professionals has a grocery store, a post office, a closed restaurant, a volunteer fire department and a farm-implement supply store.

The three-story school is easily the largest building in town.

In 1979, a new sewage treatment plant was built behind the school, which also got a 6,000-square-foot addition that year, Superintendent Gover said.

In 1983, asbestos was removed from the school, but the cancer-causing material was found only in enclosed pipes near the speech room, Gover said.

Next door, less than 50 feet from the open windows of classrooms on the south side of the school, is a pig farm.

The lot has been there since Meriott Stahl helped build the Richardsville school in 1946. Now Stahl's great-granddaughter, Lisa Taranee, goes to kindergarten there.

''I don't know what to think about it hardly,'' Stahl said of the report.

''There may be something to it, or it may be something that can happen anywhere else.''

Teachers cited the pig lot in their report. Flies from the farm have been more bothersome this year, and large rats frequently are seen ambling between the dumpsters beside the school and the pig lot food supply.

School officials spray extensively for flies each day. The insecticide will be tested, Bunch said.

The teachers also were concerned about the boiler room and inadequate ventilation.

The boiler, which extends under two classrooms, uses kerosene as fuel, and the odor of kerosene fumes wafts throughout the school. Inside the boiler room, the fumes are ''thick enough to taste,'' the faculty reported.

To complicate matters, five regular classrooms and one workroom have no windows or ventilation except for air conditioners.

Some students say they began getting headaches only after returning to school after Christmas.

At 9 p.m. Christmas Day, a wall clock had shorted out and fallen onto a bookcase in a dark classroom. The fire that resulted caused $100,000 worth of damage, Richardsville Volunteer Fire Chief Ricky Jones said.

School officials did not know at first if the damage could be repaired in time to resume classes when the holiday break ended Jan. 4, Superintendent Gover said.

But contractors washed and repainted the walls, replaced floor and ceiling tiles, and cleaned all the books in the library. And the school was ready in time.

Soon after everyone returned, Mary Alice Oliver, a teacher at the school for 30 years, became ill, faculty members said. Her doctor told her she was having an allergic reaction to mold.

Some parts of the school soaked with water from the fire hoses had not dried before they were remodeled, Ms. Bowling said.

Contractors cleaned some more, and Ms. Oliver recovered. But Eric Watt, 9, began getting headaches.

''When they come home holding their head and crying, you know they're not faking,'' his mother, Angela, said.

The boy would arrive home almost every afternoon ''with real severe headaches, then sleeping for three or four hours,'' Mrs. Watt said. ''This would only go on during the week.''

Eric's parents took him to the hospital for tests, but doctors found no reason for the headaches, his mother said. The headaches subsided several weeks ago, Eric said.

Mrs. Watt said she thought the boiler room was to blame, noting that the heat had been turned off for several weeks.

But Renee Johnson said her headaches now were ''worse than ever.''

''By the end of the day, you have a migraine,'' she said.

A small group of mothers visited the school 10 days ago. Brenda Miller, whose daughter had, for no apparent reason, blacked out and fallen in class the day before, was among them, Rose Basham said.

''You try to alleviate the anxiety that exists,'' said Hunt, the principal, who has a daughter of his own in fifth grade at the school.

Mrs. Basham said her son had ''come home plenty of times complaining'' that his eyes burned or that he had a headache.

''If they don't do something, some of these kids will be kept out of school,'' Mrs. Basham said.

Despite such threats, Hunt said attendance had remained steady among both teachers and students. No employee, including the pregnant teacher, has taken

a leave of absence, he said.

''You're talking about a quality person, an excellent teacher,'' Hunt said. ''Despite all her problems, she's teaching. She hasn't missed very much.''

Leslie McGinnis, whose wife, Jane, teaches at the school, said he would not worry unless the health department told him he should.

He is patient, even though his wife suddenly has developed blurred vision that doctors have not been able to explain.

Richardsville residents are somewhat miffed at the crush of news media attention they have received since the report became public, McGinnis said.

''We don't need the commotion, I guess,'' Ms. Bowling said.

Richardsville, the school, is self-conscious about the investigation.

''They kind of ignore it,'' said Heather Young, 14, who has headaches ''all the time.''

''They won't talk to you about it.''

Richardsville, the town, is quiet about the problem, too.

''I don't hear much about it,'' said Herbert Duckett, the postmaster.

''I think there's a concern,'' McGinnis said. ''But from what I know, everybody doesn't want to get it all stirred up before the investigation is through.''

Martin Houston, one of several Western Kentucky University professors advising health officials during the study, said he ''wouldn't be worried about my child going there.''

Melodye Whalin, a teacher at the school, said she trusted the health department. ''Of course, there's concern because of the numbers, but I think everyone is really calm,'' she said.

Larry Hughes and his wife, Ruthanne, both of whom teach at Richardsville, say they are not very worried.

''If I were overly concerned, I wouldn't be going,'' Mrs. Hughes said.

Hughes said he did not want to see the investigation become ''an emotional issue.''

Peggy Eaton, who has three children at Richardsville, did not even bother to open a letter from school about the faculty report. She was too busy, she said.

Keeping track of three young children can be difficult: One afternoon late last month, Ms. Eaton watched her daughters, Julie, 8, and, Tabatha, 9, play in the dead-end street in front of their house. She rushed into the narrow street when her son fell off his tricycle and began crying.

It had not been a good afternoon for the boy, Salem Lockhart, 5. As often happens, he had a headache when he came home from school.

Across the street, McGinnis was just getting home.

''If there's a problem,'' he said, ''it hasn't stopped basketball. Everybody still goes over to the school for that.''

Hours later, the school's windows glowed yellow as twilight settled. The gym was full of parents and children gathered for Optimist Club basketball.

Eric Watt rode his skateboard in the parking lot while his mother sat inside the gym.

''I feel like if there were an immediate danger for students and staff, the health department and principal would pull the kids out,'' Mrs. Watt said.

Then she hurried down the hall to a classroom the custodian had unlocked so the parents could see the 6 p.m. news.

''Everybody's just trying to wait,'' Ms. Bowling said.

''It may not be anything,'' Mrs. Hittson said. ''But then it may.''