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Retha Lucas away peacefully Oct. 26, 2012 in Four Lakes, Wash. at the age of 91. She was born to Fay and Hollis Dickerson March 23, 1921 in Ewan, Wash. She was third in line of seven children. During WWII she worked at Fairchild Air Force Base and during this time she met and married James Lucas. When James returned from the war they settled on a small farm outside of Cheney where she lived for the past 64 years. Her husband worked construction and she worked the farm and...
Walter J. Mayer, Lt. Col. USAF Retired Jan. 22, 1921-Oct. 24, 2012 Another of America's Greatest Generation warriors took his last flight Oct. 24 at Four Lakes, Wash. and finally got to touch the face of God. Walter was born in Uniontown, Wash., to John V. and Cecilia Mayer at the family farm on Jan. 22, 1921. He attended schools there and graduated in 1939. He completed one year of college at the University of California at Berkeley before joining the Army Air Corps in 1941...
The mill in downtown Cheney grinds local wheat into flour, but residents can’t stop in to buy a bag for baking. “You can smell it in the air when they’re milling,” Mary Robinson said. Robinson and her family recently opened a restaurant that’s returning the focus to local food and nourishing the local economy through partnerships with local producers. The Mason Jar bake shop and bistro opened last week at the corner of F and First streets. The Mason Jar is focused on bringi...
The near misses and close calls that propelled Eastern Washington to the top of Football Championship Subdivision polls finally went the other way last Saturday in Cedar City, Utah. Lost opportunities in the red zone, a missed field goal with 2 minutes, 51 seconds to play and a sensational special teams effort were the difference as Eastern fell 30-27 to Southern Utah at Eccles Coliseum. Colton Cook kicked a perfect down-the-middle 36-yard field goal with just 3 seconds remain...
When the Cheney volleyball team looks back on 2012, first-year head coach Brianne Lowe hopes they focus on the good things, and not the what-ifs. Both of those took place last week for the Lady Hawks at the District 7 playoffs, playing good volleyball in all three games despite coming up short of a trip to this week’s 2A regional. Cheney knocked off fifth-seeded West Valley 3-1 Wednesday to advance to the double-elimination round for the second time in the last four years, e...
Beau Baldwin, the coach, now sports a 39-18 won-lost record at Eastern Washington University following the Eagles’ 30-27 Big Sky Conference football loss to Southern Utah University last Saturday in Cedar City, Utah. The record for Beau Baldwin, part-time psychoanalyst, has never been recorded but one has to guess it’s maybe pretty good too. Baldwin said during Monday night’s coaches show that he had some serious consoling to do following Eastern’s loss that was administered b...
Junior quarterback Andrew Graham hasn’t done a lot of passing this season for his run-oriented Cheney team, and that held true Friday night in the regular-season finale with Colville. But when Graham did throw he was pretty effective – completing five of 10 attempts but with four of those going for touchdowns in the Blackhawks 42-7 rout of the Indians on a cold, damp evening at Eastern Washington University’s Roos Field. And as dominating as Cheney’s running game can be, going...
I don’t know about you, but I find it all too easy to sometimes come up with a reason I just can’t exercise on a given day. I tell myself that my life is too crowded with work and meetings, or that I’m too tired from sleeping poorly the night before. Mind you, if I do exercise I always feel the better for it. But there is what a scientist might call an “energy barrier” to finding what it takes within myself to go for a swim at noon or a significant walk after work. I find that as I get older, it’s not easier to come up wit...
Have I got a deal for you! Wouldn’t it be fun to eat out Saturday night, Nov. 3? At 6 p.m. Tyler Grange #610 serves their annual free harvest dinner. “Bring your appetite and a dessert or a side dish,” dinner organizer Lyle Polack said. What’s on the menu? Turkey, potatoes and gravy, green beans and beverage, all for free. In case you don’t know it, the Tyler Grange cooks are known for their culinary skills. The famous Tyler Grange baked goods auction follows the dinner. Y...
By BECKY THOMAS Staff Reporter When I moved to Washington from Wisconsin nearly four years ago, I didn’t know how to pronounce Spokane, let alone Cheney. Now I roll my eyes every time someone says “Chaney.” I usually know everyone at any given public meeting. I don’t ever get lost in this town anymore, even when someone sends me to the Bermuda Triangle, a.k.a. N. Second through N. Fifth streets. After three years and a month as a staff reporter here at the Cheney Free Press, I’m saying goodbye. I never could have predicted...
After a month where tens of millions of citizens have watched a series of debates, what has been accomplished in the race for president? These events were presented in a number of different formats and designed to shed new light on the candidates’ views. Each side will say they were the winner in any of the three face-to-face showdowns between President Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney. The same is true when the so-called experts parse what was said between Vice President Joe Biden and Paul Ryan. Any of dozens of p...
Standing left to right: freshman Eloise Moore, mathematics; sophomore Trenton Riggs, language arts; junior Matt Anderson, health and fitness; senior Matt Hammerschmidt, support services; senior Liya Radion, family and consumer science. Sitting left to right: sophomore Raven Pacheco, graphic arts; senior Nahiely Heredia, vocal music; senior Michala Youmans, world languages; senior Jessica Kimball, social studies. Not pictured: freshman Morgan Wichman, agriculture; sophomore...
The year-end budget report for the 2011-12 school year continued difficult financial news in the Medical Lake School District. The district saw its revenues decrease by $1.5 million from 2010-11, although almost all of the decrease came from the end of federal stimulus money and Impact Aid reductions. A drop of 88 FTE students, however, proved to be another struggle. Last year, the district recorded 1,805 students, including those taking part in the Running Start program. At the Tuesday, Oct. 23 school board meeting,...
On March 10, 2012, a young high school student stepped into the soft spotlight on the Rialto Theater stage in Tacoma, Wash., and said “Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and/coarse and strong and cunning.” The words belonged to Carl Sandburg, but they were spoken by Langston Ward, a Mead High School student representing Eastern Washington in the Poetry Out Loud state finals. Ward was one of more than 20,000 students from 68 Washington high schools to participate in Poetry Out Loud las...
The Cheney School Board hosted leaders from district schools and the cities of Cheney and Airway Heights at a roundtable discussion Oct. 24. The meeting’s top issue was facility constraints at Cheney High School. Principal Troy Heuett named three main needs for the building: more classroom space—as evidenced by new portable classrooms outside the building, a larger cafeteria—as evidenced by long lunch lines and students eating in the halls, and a performing arts cente...
SEATTLE – Imagine going to college without paying tuition up front - and committing instead to paying a small percentage of your future income so that others can do the same. This new idea has been proposed for funding a student’s portion of higher education at Washington’s public colleges. Payments would be made for a long enough time period to make them affordable, and the money would go into a trust fund for other students’ education. At the Economic Opportunity Institute (EOI), they call it the “Pay it Forward...
Spokane County Sheriff’s deputies and the K-9 unit tracked down and apprehended a man who fled from a traffic stop on I-90 near Four Lakes Tuesday morning. At approximately 10:45 a.m. Dep. Jeff Thurman stopped a vehicle driven by 42-year-old Isidro Mendez-Ortega, who presented the deputy with an Oregon state identification card and what appeared to be a fraudulent Social Security card. During the questioning Thurman noticed a rifle on the front passenger side floorboard and when asked about it Mendez-Ortega said he was huntin...
Finding a location for a new Spokane County jail site moved forward in a public meeting Thursday, Oct. 25 with the results of the qualitative analysis portion of the current Essential Public Facility siting process. The top three locations will move forward to the weighted analysis stage, which will last through November. This marks the second time the county has gone through the siting process to determine a new jail facility, following the 2009 process that resulted in two facilities split between downtown Spokane and the...
Dané Standish didn’t intend to pursue community health. She was just advised to take a few courses in it while waiting to get into nursing classes at Central Washington University. “My first class I absolutely fell in love with it,” she said. Standish said she loves how health has many facets that interact with each other. “That’s what I believe in, that it’s not just the physical health. There’s so much that goes into being healthy,” she said. Standish is the new communit...
By BECKY THOMAS Staff Reporter Adequate parking is often an issue in college towns. Recently, local leaders began working on addressing current and future parking issues in Cheney. The city’s Community Development Department is seeking help from the EPA to complete a parking audit. “Basically looking at our existing parking citywide,” city planner Brett Lucas said. “Hopefully we’ll see where our strengths are parking-wise in the city, and where our deficiencies might be.” The most obvious parking issue in Cheney is surround...
For the past 42 years, Lakeland Village’s College In-Resident Volunteer (CIRV) program has provided college students an alternate style of housing. Students, after first passing a background check and going through training, volunteer for 15 hours each week with Lakeland Village clients. In exchange, they receive housing, utilities and have the option to eat at the facility’s dining hall. Volunteers live across the street from the main facility, where three buildings are spl...
Six-year-old Aubry Stickney from Windsor Elementary is all smiles as a member of the future Blackhawks’ cheer camp that performed at halftime of Friday night’s Cheney-Colville football game. The cheer camp was held Oct. 24-25 at the high school....
The adoption of Spokane County’s Joint Land Use Study in Airway Heights took a large step forward Oct. 29 with the Planning Commission recommending repeal of the city’s current mixed-use ordinance. The recommendation was forwarded to the City Council for its Monday, Nov. 5 meeting at 5:30 p.m. A public hearing is scheduled at the meeting to further explain the upcoming process regarding the city’s penultimate approval of JLUS. For nearly the past year, the city has been in discussions with surrounding jurisdictions relat...
Cheney streets supervisor Paul Lesser removes the summer flowers from planters along First Street Oct. 25....
The race for the congressional 5th District House of Representatives seat was whittled down from a field of four in the Aug. 7 primary to two: Republican incumbent Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Democratic challenger Rich Cowan. McMorris Rodgers is seeking her fifth consecutive term as representative. She is currently the vice chair of the House Republican Conference and the highest-ranking House Republican woman. She is also a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. McMorris Rodgers previously served in the...
