Herald and Review from Decatur, Illinois • Page 73

dooGcufl Wmm Thursday, March 16, 1989 Herald Review Decatur, Illinois I Jj oud tow off pro 3 Learning art of shopping proves hard My girlfriend, Carolyn, came to see me a few days ago. She was wearing a fantastic casual coat. It was quilted and had a hood, deep pockets and piping on the collar and sleeves. I was particularly interested in the coat because I don't have an all-purpose coat. I have a dress coat and a khaki thing that I use when I'm fishing or camping.

So, I Railroad crossing accidents In Illinois in 1988 (total industry figures, not just Amtrak): 374 total grade crossing accidents (50 fatalities); 27 percent (total accidents) at cross bucks, 33 percent at crossings with just flashers, 39 percent at crossings with gates and flashers. In 1987, there were 356 accidents (32 fatalities), meaning there was a five percent increase in 1988. Nationally, there is an average of 17 grade accidents a day. Victim's fiancee faces sorrow By JEFFREY RAYMOND Mattoon Bureau Chief HUMBOLDT Fate smiled on Mary Volk and Michael Rund when it brought them together. Mary had gone through a divorce less than three weeks earlier when she went to a fund-raising dance in Villa Grove for Michael and his three daughters.

He lost his wife of seven years, Linda, on Dec. 15 to Hodgkin's disease, a form of cancer. He was left him with a 6-year-old and twin 4-year-old daughters to raise. But into their personal losses would come promise for the future. Michael later told Mary, who has two children, three good things had happened to him.

He said the first was that the state would pay for most of the costs of his wife's medical treatment, and the second was the fund-raisers in Villa Grove brought in another $13,000. Finally, in a letter, he told Mary the rest of his good fortune. "The third best thing that is so great in my life is I met you and I don't ever want to lose you," Mary recalled him writing. Her voice broke as she was overcome by tears. More often, though, she laughed through the sobs at the memories.

The couple was engaged on Feb. 24.. They planned a June 1990 wedding. Michael bought her a gold wedding ring that was inlaid with seven diamonds, one for each member of their new family. They had less than two full months together, but Mary said it was "the absolute happiest I've ever been in my life." i It was actually the second time they had met.

When Mary was 13 and Michael 14, their parents themselves longtime friends introduced the youngsters. "I had this mad crush on him. I thought he was so neat because he was so shy," Mary recalled. But that boyish shyness kept them from getting together again until 18 years later and neither one wanted to let go. feel appropriately attired when I'm conducting business or breaking camp in a torrential downpour.

I feel overdressed or under-dressed when I'm doing anything else. Admiring the coat, I asked Carolyn where she got it and Michael wrote letters, sent cards and brought presents for Mary's children, including Valentine's candy for her daughter. "He was so good to me. He was so kind and so gentle. He just made me so happy," Mary said, her voice strained with emotion.

In turn, she brought him to God. She took him to church the Sunday after their first date and he went with her when she taught her second grade religion class at St. John's Catholic Church in Areola. He even took communion for the first time in 14 years. Relatives from both families gathered Sunday to celebrate the twins' fourth birthday, which actually fell on Monday.

It was the first time both families had come together. Mary helped the twins celebrate again in a smaller party Monday. That day, recalled Mary, "He said, 'If I die tomorrow I'll be the happiest man on The next night, after coming over for dinner and to help move a refrigerator back to Mary's sister, Michael's van was hit by an Amtrak train. It killed him and his daughters instantly. Mary cried.

"I just can't believe he's gone." FAMILY PORTRAIT: Jamie Rund, 6, left, poses with her 4-year-old twin sisters Brittany and Natalie, right. Danger well known Prairie Talk Sarah Joyal Rund and his daughters twins Brittany and Natalie, 4, and Jamie, 6 were killed instantly. Rund, who distributed soft drinks in the Champaign-Ur-bana area for the 7-Up Kem-merer Bottling Group, previously worked for the Union Pacific Railroad as a brakeman. "It's kind of strange," said David Bader, a UP manager at Villa Grove. "Crossings are one of those things you always pay a lot of attention to when you work for the railroad." TUSCOLA (AP) Mike Rund, killed with his three young daughters when he drove his van around a railroad crossing gate Tuesday night, was a former railroad employee who knew well the danger of such action.

The Douglas County Sheriff's Department said Rund, 32, drove the van around crossing gates while red lights flashed and into the path of the south-, bound Amtrak train late Tuesday. Coroner Dennis Dietrich said 'He was so good to me. He was so kind and so gentle. He just made me so happy Mary Volk, Rund's fiancee Loving(ton) couple celebrate 65th anniversary By DAVE PETRINA Herald Review Staff Writer She was 18 and a senior at Lovington High School. He was 21 and a working man who had skipped high school.

They eloped on a snowy night 65 years ago and were married at the Methodist parsonage in Sullivan March 15, 1924. "He was old enough to know better and I wasn't," said his longtime wife, laughing. "Some of these things are too far back to remember," said her husband, but recalling he and his new wife had started wedded life with $8. Max, 86, and Helen Cummins, 83, celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary Wednesday in an unlikely place a patient room in St. Mary's Hospital.

Max Cummins has been hospitalized four times in the past few months with a serious illness. His wife is in good health. The highlight of the celebration was a special anniversary dinner prepared by the hospital. The couple dined on chicken, 'yV8 ww, ill 11 a Ny-' what it cost. "Oh, you know me," she replied, "I saw this exact coat in a catalogue for $50 and I nearly ordered it.

Then I was at the discount fashion store and they had it for $39.95. Well, I figured they would mark it down, and sure enough, a week later it was $30; "I didn't want to buy it because there were still a lot of coats left and I was gambling on them marking it down again. So, a week after that, I went back and it was $15. 1 was going to buy two, but this color goes with my whole wardrobe so I settled on this one." I could have killed her. I've seen her pick up lined suits for $20, leather shoes for $5 and all sorts of casual wear for as little as $1.

The woman doesn't shop, she stalks. She will spot her prey and patiently bide her time until the store is practically paying her to take it off their hands. If it's not on sale, she won't think about buying it. Adding insult to injury, Carolyn is immaculately groomed. Even her sloppy cleaning-the-house clothes look fantastic on her.

It makes me sick. I can color coordinate and acce-sorize like a pro. I can locate absolutely one-of-a-kind kinky pieces of jewelry and wear them with flair. (My pewter and crystal dragon earrings are legendary among my friends. But I cannot shop.

Shopping, for me, is either out of necessity or lust. If I need a suit, I will go looking for a suit and find one and buy it. I can't wait for it to go on sale, because I need it now. It doesn't occur to me to buy a suit on sale when I don't need one. On the other hand, I couldn't begin to count the times that I have been in a store looking for pantyhose and have walked out with two overstuffed bags of clothes that I didn't need at all but wanted desperately.

In fact, most of my wardrobe has been acquired in this manner. (Including my pewter and crystal dragon earrings.) I know that merchants all over Central Illinois have some sort of sixth sense about me. I can visualize them busily dusting off all the bizarre costume jewelry that they've had in the back room for months, and hanging out all the clothes that were just too outrageous for saner women to buy. "Here comes that Joyal woman" they chortle, wringing their hands in anticipation. And the moment I leave they get out the red tags and start marking everything down, down, down.

Whereupon my friend Carolyn, watching from her car with a pair of high-powered binoculars, strolls in and buys out the store for $19.95. And everything she buys coordinates with her wardrobe. Sarah Joyal lives in Decatur with her husband, Don, a welder at Archer Daniels Midland and four children said Helen Cummins between bites of food. Her husband ate his meal propped up in bed while his wife sat at the table alongside his bed. "They didn't even spend their wedding -night together.

Dad took her back home afterwards and she went to school the next day," added their daughter. Helen Cummins finished high school before the couple set up housekeeping in Macon. The couple moved to Ohio for several years and then returned to farm near Lovington until 1933, when an auto accident injured Cummins and forced him to change jobs. He then operated a Standard Oil service station in Lovington for 27 years, retiring in 1961. "I used to be a weightlifter of sorts.

I could scratch lift five pounds more than my weight," said Cummins, who weighed about 135 as a youth. The Cummins are longtime members of the United Methodist Church. Max Cummins also has served on the school and cemetery boards. He has been a Mason for 48 years and is a past master. They have seven grandchildren, three step-grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.

The couple celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary with a trip to Hawaii. The 65 years of wedded life is not a record for Lovington. "We have one couple in town who just had their 70th anniversary," said Helen Cummins. baked potato, beets, ice cream and carrot cake, served on a table decorated with a white tablecloth and two paper yellow roses in a vase. Helen Cummins also brought her husband's favorite fruit, a small dish of cut up strawberries.

And for the occasion there was a salt shaker (Cummins is on a salt-restricted diet) which he used liberally on his food. The Cummins' daughter, Lois DeVore, and her husband, Charles, of Crawfords- Photo by Larry Dai ley 65 WEDDING BELLS: Max and Helen Cummins celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary Wednesday in St. Mary's Hospital where Max was a patient. ville, were present. Helen Cummins' next month.

sister, Margaret Fabry of Lovington, also "We eloped so we didn't have a wed- attended the celebration. The Cummins' ding dinner. The snow was so deep it hit son, Robert of Las Vegas, is to visit the car bottom, but we didn't turn back," tad Ihiam Sffooig Thompson. Mayor Jack Thies said the city applied for the grant to help pay for work at the Henrietta Street lift station. The lift station was built to drain storm water from the west part of town near the Fayette Avenue-Interstate 57-70 interchange.

Improvements were made at the Henrietta Street pumping station where the overflow occurred because of lack of ca pacity in the small interceptors transporting flows from two areas of the sewer system. The problem was solved by replacing 2,300 feet of sewers with larger pipe and installing larger pumps at the lift station. Control of the raw sewage overflows will improve the water quality of Salt Creek and also will eliminate potential health hazards. was announced Wednesday. A $300-million expansion of the program is designed to help 226 communities that could face substantial federal finds if their sewers do not meet standards.

Effingham completed its project to eliminate combined sewer overflow problems in the wastewater treatment collection system last year, according to a press release from Gov. James R. SPRINGFIELD Effingham will receive $112,000 from the state's public work program known as Build Illinois to improve the city's wastewater treatment facility. This is the second compliance grant to be awarded as part of a Build Illinois program adopted last year to provide funding to Illinois communities racing to meet federal compliance deadlines. The award mroeefis stete COS Bachelor to miss auction I Bid for Bachelors will be minus one jnan tonight.

Mike Cleff was scheduled to be the Sixth bachelor auctioned in the March of Dimes' fund-raiser. However, Cleff is working and unable to attend the third annual event at the Decatur Holiday Inn. He is a sportscaster for WAND-TV. Cleff will be busy in Indianapolis covering the Illinois-McNeese State NCAA basketball tournament game. Although Cleff will be absent, his date "package will be auctioned off, said Promotions Manager Michael Mas-trullo.

Cleff, 24, is offering a a trip to St. Louis. Included is dinner at Whitey Restaurant, tickets to a St. Louis baseball game, a riverboat ride on the Mississippi and one dozen roses. by closing another elementary school building after the 1989-90 school year.

"The educational impact of these cost reductions is not severe and in some cases is even beneficial," the analysis said. "The high school pupil-teacher ratio will not increase above the state Some very small elementary classes will be combined into one section and the closing of buildings with small attendance will make the district transportation program more efficient and allow most of the students to attend better equipped facilities. "Head teachers will be eliminated; these are not needed since all buildings must have principals. The plan also does not foresee any severe negative impact in the elimination or reduction of the extracurricular activities in that a low number of students were participating in those programs." that require correction entail not further cutting but simply the submission of more information. "Although neither of Mattoon's financial plans met the targeted reductions, both contain drastic cost reduction and containment plans," the staff analysis said.

"Both plans exhibit a sincere effort to balance future annual budgets and elimination of the combined deficit." Under the referendum-passage plan, the Mattoon board said it would: not replace seven teachers retiring at the end of this school year; lay off two other teachers; not rehire 10 teacher aides; reduce custodial hours; close Franklin Annex; eliminate fifth- and sixth-grade athletics; and reduce extra-curricular, sports. These cuts would save more than $500,000. Another $587,000 would be saved Full board votes on plan today By HARVEY BERKMAN Herald Review Springfield Bureau SPRINGFIELD A State Board of Education analyst says the Mattoon school district's long-term cost-cutting plan meets state requirements. The full board will be examining and voting on Mattoon's proposal at its meeting in Springfield today. The cost-cutting was made necessary when the board placed Mattoon and seven other districts on a "financial watch list" in December.

The immediate reason for the placement on the list was the district's adoption of deficit budgets and need to borrow money two consecutive years. More long-term reasons are the area's steady decline in property values and the district's failure ever to get the public to pass a referendum raising education property taxes until its successful referendum last month. "I am personally glad to see the severe cuts that would have been implemented without a successful (referendum) do not have to be implemented." a board staff member wrote in a March 1 letter to Mattoon Superintendent Earnest Smith. Mattoon's proposal included two plans one predicated on passage, and one on the failure, of the February referendum. The staff letter informed Smith that, with minor exceptions, the Mattoon board's cost-cutting proposal met the state board's requirements.

The problems I.