Farewell, Phoebe

The following was submitted by The View staff reporter Jerry LaVaute:

My wife Jan and I, and then my two children, have had several dogs over the years.

Listed in the top three was Phoebe, a Yellow Lab who was 15. And this is a heckuva list.

Phoebe loved to run, she was a good family member, and she was loved.

She will now also be missed, because we chose to say goodbye to her yesterday.

The list of ailments and the types of accommodations we made to her increasing infirmity is too numerous to mention. Suffice to say that it was her time, and we all, including Phoebe, did it with dignity.

She actually belonged to my daughter Kelly, who bought her with her own money on Labor Day in 1995.

Kel was there with us yesterday in the vet’s office. I have to say, for her first time doing this, she was a trouper.

We all cried. In fact, some of the staff at the vet’s office had to fight back tears.

I will always remember the first time we visited our newly purchased home in late summer 2001.

We hadn’t yet closed on the house, but I wanted to talk with the owner about this and that.

Jan and I brought the two dogs that we had at the time, Phoebe and Maisie. Maisie is a golden retriever. What a pair they made.

When we pulled into the driveway, we let the dogs out, and they made a beeline for Woods Creek in the backyard.

They ran into the water with wild, reckless abandon, their tails wagging furiously as they waded in the stream.

They were so happy, and that’s the way I will remember Phoebe – happy.

Farewell, old friend. I miss you already.

Horror, followed by sadness

The following blog was filed by The View Staff Reporter Jerry LaVaute:


I was writing a story on Tuesday morning, and I began to cry.

It was brief, but it hurt, and it was a little embarrassing, even in the privacy of my home office. I should be under better control, I thought. Time to man up and act more professionally.

It’s happened to me a couple times as I write about stories that initially provoke horror in me, followed by sadness, and regret for the bad things that happen in the world, especially to children; and my inability to do precious little about it, except cry. Jeez.

The story surfaced as I was interviewing Sumpter Township Police Chief James Pierce about the importance of a “yes” vote on the police millage on August 3.

It is a millage renewal, the chief explained, and it provides a significant share of his budget.

Officer Beth Egerer stopped into his office for a moment, talking with the chief about two sexual assault cases that she had recently handled.

That story will soon be published in The View, but it was the second account that got to me.

Two children, nine and seven years old, were alleged to have been sexually assaulted by their grandfather.

Charged with nine counts of sexual assault, grandpa pled guilty to two counts of Criminal Sexual Conduct in the first degree.

Chief Pierce said that the prosecutor plans to request the maximum sentence, which is life imprisonment, or a sentence of not less than 25 years.

In the board meeting that followed our discussion, the Chief’s announcement of Egerer’s service was greeted by warm applause by officials and audience alike.

Me, I think about the two kids. Here’s hoping that they’re now in the hands of people in whom their trust isn’t betrayed, and that they can get past what happened to them.

May God grant his grace on them – they certainly deserve it.

Fun with spreadsheets (wait, read on!)

The following was posted by The View Staff Reporter Jerry LaVaute:

Fun with Spreadsheets

I’m currently working on three different Excel spreadsheets, and a fourth one was published today, a summary of the qualifications for the four remaining candidates for Public Safety Director in Van Buren Township.

They’re tricky, getting the look just right in the news, either online or in the newspaper. I haven’t seen the newspaper yet today, but I looked at it online and was reasonably happy.

Data properly arrayed on a spreadsheet is like a kaleidoscope – every time you look, you see something different, and it sometimes is fascinating.

And to get the data, you need help. So I get to mine for data using the subject matter experts in the communities in which I work.

This week and last, I worked with the Finance Director in Sumpter Township, its police chief, fire chiefs in the city of Belleville and Van Buren and Sumpter Township, the treasurer and deputy treasurer in Van Buren Township, the Van Buren Township Supervisor and the Deputy Clerk, and a few other officials in these communities.

As the Professional Golfers Association blurb goes, “These guys are good.”

It’s great fun to gather the data with their help, to try to make sense of it initially, to return to them to validate the data and so validate my conclusions, and to publish the results to a reading audience hungry for facts, expressed in a simple, helpful manner.

Past spreadsheets of mine have compared police compensation in four communities, and another was a detailed explanation of the “blended rate” used to pay police officers who double as firefighters in Van Buren Township.

For the former spreadsheet and the story that accompanied it, I won an investigative journalism award. Very cool.

Next up is a comparison of firefighting staffing in Belleville and Sumpter and Van Buren Townships, and a look at water and sewer rates in what we call the tri-community.