Herald and Review from Decatur, Illinois • Page 49

Central Illinois Decatur, Illinois, Monday, December 7, 1987 Page A3 (- treating staff wear gloves. If, in addition, the patient has a history of respiratory illnesses, health care workers wear face masks. "Right now, 1 would say our staff is most aware," Dixon said. "They are going to take preventive measures." Asked if those who treated the AIDS patient will take an AIDS test themselves, Dixon said, "Personnel can if they wish. I haven't mandated that Initially, the anxieties were up, but the staff has done very well." Dixon said about 10 staff members could have been exposed to the man's disease, but it's highly unlikely they would be at much risk of contracting AIDS.

a case like the Kirby patient's, should be listed as the primary or secondary cause of death. He said the first AIDS case was found in the Champaign area about three years ago. Carle now almost always has an AIDS patient under treatment, he said. AIDS is not known to be spread by casual contact, including nursing or other types of health care, unless there is an exchange of blood or bodily fluids. Dixon says he knows of no exchange of blood or bodily fluids between the AIDS patient and hospital personnel.

The Carle physician, who requested anonymity, said AIDS, in Victim not in high-risk group By CHERYL FRANK Clinton Bureau Chief MONTICELLO The smallest hospital in the state has treated its first AIDS patient, without knowing it at the time. A little over a month ago, a 60-year-old rural Piatt County man was treated at Kirby Hospital in Monticello. He stayed about five days, according to sources. After the man was transferred from Kirby to Carle Foundation Hospital in Champaign, he was given an AIDS antibody test that came back positive. In the meantime, another AIDS test ordered by his Monticello physician, which had been delayed, also came back positive, according to the Carle doctor who ordered the second test.

The man died Nov. 9. Family members say the cause of death was given as pneumonia, but confirmation of the official cause listed on the death certificate could not be made. The patient may have been only the second in the Champaign area to get AIDS, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome, through a blood transfusion given before 1985. That was the year hospitals began to screen blood for the AIDS antibody, the Carle physician said.

Having a patient with AIDS has resulted in new procedures and "is a real eye-opener," said Tom Dixon, Kirby Hospital administrator. "We have revised our policies (if a person had a transfusion before 1985) that will automatically be a red flag for us to treat people cautiously." He continued, "We're unique, because we're the smallest hospital in the state of Illinois. We have 18 beds. We're licensed for 21." Dixon said under revised policies, patients are asked in a questionnaire if they had any blood transfusions before 1985. If they have, Dixon said, nurses and other MONTICELLO Family members of a Kirby Hospital AIDS patient wonder why he wasn't given an AIDS test much sooner.

But the man was older, was not in one of the high-risk groups associated with AIDS and did not exhibit symptoms, such as cancer that discolors the skin or loss of mental faculties, doctors said. The 60-year-old man had, however, lost a considerable amount of weight, had no appetite, had fever and night sweats and his lungs were filled with fluid, according to family sources. He weighed 191 pounds in August and by Oct. 1, one relative said, he was down to 139 pounds. He told a close relative that his local physician and another physician whom he consulted didn't know what was wrong with him.

But the relative suspects he may have known, or been told, he could have had AIDS, but could not face the facts. Relatives say he was not homosexual or bi sexual and did not abuse drugs. But he did have three blood transfusions before 1985, one in the South when he was away from home. Family members and a Carle Foundation Hospital physician said they believe the man got AIDS through one of these blood transfusions. He had been treated several times before at Kirby Hospital.

Hospital administrator Tom Dixon said no one there thought of the man as a possible AIDS victim. Car EciDDs wommaon; suspect arrested Max Boch, left, set up this picture in a Taylorville coal mine in 1937. Photographic family records area history glass-plate negatives were state-of-the-art, a modern automatic looks almost alien. "My most modern camera was a Kodak Tourist the kind I took in the coal mines," Boch says. "Now they've got automatic everything on the cameras.

You don't nave to worry about nothing. But I'll tell you, an old man like me, I wouldn't By KEVIN McDERMOTT Pana Bureau Chief HE WITTS VILLE Max Boch, 77, looks amused as a reporter snaps his picture with an auto-focus, auto-flash, auto-advance compact Olympus. "Now, what kind of a camera's that supposed to be?" Boch says with a small laugh. To a man who remembers when bulky box cameras with By JUDY TATHAM Herald Review Staff Writer ATWOOD A 22-year-old local driver has been arrested in connection with a hit-and-run accident that killed a woman carrying newspapers early Sunday morning. Donna Robison, 60, of Atwood died a few moments after being hit at Main and Oak Drive, about two blocks north of U.S.

36. Jerry W. Dukeman, 22, who lives a few blocks away, was arrested about IVi to 2 hours after deputies were called at 5:22 a.m. He was booked on a charge alleging he failed to report an accident involving death, a class 4 felony cited in the state's motor vehicle code. Douglas County State's Attorney David Bartholomew declined to comment Sunday night on whether reckless homicide charges may be filed.

Bartholomew said Dukeman produced bond money Sunday afternoon and was released from custody. He said no charges will be formally lodged in court pending the outcome of the investigation. If less serious charges are filed in connection with accidents and drivers plead guilty to these offenses, the possibility of bringing more serious charges is blocked because of double jeopardy. The Illinois state police are helping to reconstruct the accident. Mail boxes were knocked down along the side of the roadway where it is believed Robison was delivering.

She used a cart to transport the newspapers. "As near as we can tell, she was off the roadway," Douglas County Coroner Dennis Dietrich said. There were no witnesses to the accident, according to preliminary information, but reportedly an Atwood resident who saw a car go by and spotted the injured woman provided a license plate number to authorities. A young woman, Stephanie Chesnut, who lives in the area, went to Robison's aid. "I went over to do what I could, but she was badly injured." She said the victim lived for a few moments.

"She couldn't talk to me," so was unable to say what happened. Chesnut described Robison as "a very nice lady, liked by everyone. The whole town is talking about what happened." Robison was helping her son and daughter-in-law, Roger and Rosa Robison, also of Atwood, deliver Champaign News-Gazette newspapers. She was to begin carrying her own route for the Herald Review on Saturday. A young Max Boch poses for his father, I 1 nnr t- i 1.1 black tunnel.

"I took that one about 1896, Max Boch said, to have no business trying to start with one of those modern cameras." Boch, a life-long Hewittsville resident, grew up with cameras when they were still a novelty. His father, Stephen Boch an Austrian immigrant, coal miner and veteran cf the Spanish-American War passed his love of photography on to his six children. As a result, Max Boch and his three surviving brothers share one of the area's finest collections of early 20th century photographs and equipment. Boch said his father the "old man," as he calls him learned photography from a friend, Waldo Harmon, who learned it in college. "(Harmon) taught the old man what he learned in school, then the old man was more interested in it than he (Harmon) was.

"From about 1909, 1910, the old man started making pictures. That was his hobby." Neither Stephen Boch nor any of his children made a career out of photography. The pictures were "made for their own collections and as favors for friends. "You take, for instance, this picture the old man made of the coal miner," said Max Boch, displaying a grainy black-and-white photo of a soot-covered miner. "That would have been about 1913 or '14.

I don't know his name, but I can remember, he came over and wanted his picture taken, so he could send it to his people back in the old country to show them what kind of job he had." Stephen Boch immigrated from the "old country," Austria, down in the coal mine. That's me on the left. I set (the camera) up and had the boss snap it. But this one ain't old this was made about 1940." Boch, a widower, has two grown children. Neither of them continued the family hobby.

But his granddaughter a photography student at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale has used his old cameras and glass plates for school projects. Boch said he seldom makes pictures anymore. But the collection he shares with his brothers is almost always of interest to someone most recently, to the Illinois Historical Society, which has used some of the photos to chronicle the Taylorville mine wars of the early 1930s. Boch never suspected the collection would be of historic value, he said. "Us kids were fortunate that he (their father) started that, because everybody else doesn't have any pictures from way back." find work.

It wasn't until about 13 years later that he saved enough money to send for his wife and two oldest children, Agatha and Ferdinand. That, Boch said, explains the age difference between the two oldest siblings and the four younger boys Max, Fred, Frank and Otto. Those four are the only survivors of the family, and all of them still live in the Christian County area. Max Boch, born in 1910, grew up watching his father document history with a bulky black box. Like his brothers, he quickly picked up the hobby.

"Even when I was in second grade, I used to take pictures of the school kids, and then sell them back to the kids." He began working in the coal mines in 1926, at the age of 16. His 48 years in the mines provided some of his most fascinating photos. He displays a photo of four tired-looking miners in a jet- Photo by Kevin McOermott Max Boch discusses his photographic past. Lovington fur trade comes to close valuable. "The trappers and coon hunters usually brought their carcasses in around noon.

We never knew how many to expect," Robert said. "If it rained a lot the trappers had to take their traps out of the river or lose them and, if the season was too dry, the furs weren't as good as they should be." Although the Foster brothers aren't buying any fur or wool, they're still open for business in Loving-ton on State Street six days a week. From behind their old counter in the aging store, Robert said, "We sell bulbs for raccoon hunting lights and some other sporting goods." And John smiled. "This is a loafing place," he said. "Some mornings, it gets kinda full in here.

We open any time we get up here and we close any time we want to leave. It gets you out of the house. took about two days and nights. Then the dressed furs were placed in one of 10 freezers at their store. "One time we had so many furs, we were losing them before we could get to them," John said.

"They were rotting and the fur was falling out." About once a week, one of their relatives drove a truckload of furs to the Belt Fur Co. in La Plata, Mo. They didn't use a refrigerated truck to transport their frozen furs. They just made a point to deliver the furs on a cold day. "When we took over the business 40 years ago, we let a broker in New York sell our furs, then we changed to Missouri where we personally dealt with the buyers," John explained.

Their furs were made into coats, capes, stoles, hats and collars. John pointed out that the quality of the furs often depended on the weather. A mild autumn could mean that the animals' furs were thinner and not as 100-mile radius. Trappers brought their undressed carcasses from as far away as Mount Sterling, Astoria and Cuba, 111. John estimated that, in one six-week season, they bought, dressed and sold some 10,000 muskrat furs, 7,000 to 8,000 raccoon furs, 150 mink, 150 coyotes, 400 to 500 opposums, 100 red fox and 100 grey fox furs.

"We didn't get many beaver skins," Robert said. "Beavers are hard to trap and most Illinois beaver skins are too small." The Foster brothers paid their customers market prices according to the qualities of the furs brought in. A good, undressed muskrat was worth $4 to $5, a raccoon $25 to $30, mink $22, coyote $5 to $10, red fox $20, grey fox $23 and opposum 25 to 50 cents. aren't worth much," Robert said. "They're tender and hard to skin." Skinning, scraping, stretching and drying the furs By NANCY BURCHAM For the Herald Review 1 LOVINGTON It's trapping season in Illinois, but the Foster Fur Wool Co.

of Lovington won't be buying any furs. "We decided to quit last year," said John Foster, 68, from their store on State Street. "There was too miich work to do and not enough skinners." John and his brother Murray took over the company in 1947 after their cousin Oral Foster died. Oral had started buying furs at his house in the early 1900s before moving to the store on State Street. Robert Foster, 76, joined his brothers in 1950 and Murray is now deceased.

"Ninety percent of the furs were brought in between Nov. 25 and the end of December," Robert said. "We had to have four or five people skinning seven days a week then." For years, they were the only fur buyers in over a J..