By Jolene Farley
Political races in Hills, Beaver Creek and Steen ended Tuesday when the polls closed.

In Hills, four candidates vied for two open seats on the city council.

Keith Elbers, with 216 or 41.5 percent of the vote, and Linus Svoboda with 153 or 29.4 percent of the vote, will fill the seats.

Wendell Bengtson received 98 votes for 18.8 percent, while David McGuire received 46 or 8.8 percent of the vote.

In Beaver Creek, two candidates vied for a vacated council seat.

Carolyn DeBoer will fill the seat with 76 votes or 59.4 percent of the vote. Daryl Fuerstenberg received 51 votes or 39.8 percent.

In Steen, three candidates vied for two open seats on the city council.

Robert Sandbulte, with 63 or 45.7 percent of the votes, and Brad Bosch, with 61 or 44.2 percent of the votes, will fill the seats.

Leonard Otkin received 13 votes for 9.4 percent of the total.

Kim Gehrke, Beaver Creek, casts her vote for her favorite candidates at Beaver Creek City Hall Tuesday. At the time of the photo, 48 out of 157 eligible voters in the community had visited the polls, according to the poll judges.

Photo by Jolene Farley

Six Hills-Beaver Creek-Ellsworth High School football players received post season honors from the Southwest Ridge Conference. They are (left to right) Jesse Leuthold, Cody Scholten, Pat Nelson, Tyson Metzger, Zach Wysong and Chris Reid. Leuthold, Metzger, Reid and Wysong made the All-SRC Team. Nelson and Scholten drew honorable mention.

By John Rittenhouse
Eight members of the Hills-Beaver Creek-Ellsworth football team drew post-season honors from the Southwest Ridge Conference coaches.

H-BC-E, which won the league for the second consecutive season with a 7-0 record, had six players make the 2002 All-Southwest Ridge Conference Team. Two more Patriots drew honorable mention.

Along with the players, H-BC-E head coach Dan Ellingson and assistant coach Dan Lorang were named the league’s coaches of the year.

A total of 25 players made the all-league team, and H-BC-E's six selections led the way.

Making the team for the Patriots are seniors Chris Reid, Jesse Leuthold, Brant Deutsch and Tyson Metzger, junior Curt Schilling and sophomore Zach Wysong.

Westbrook-Walnut Grove and Southwest Star Concept placed four players each on the All-SRC roster.

SSC seniors Tyler Leopold and Andy Daberkow, who were named the league's Back of the Year and Co-Lineman of the Year respectively, topped the list for the Quasars. SSC senior Mitchell Leopold and sophomore Ryan Scheevel also made the squad.

W-WG seniors Chris Munson, Ryan Paplow, Kurt Faber and sophomore Tom LeBoutillier represent the Chargers.

Lincoln HI and Lakeview picked up three All-SRC selections each.

LH senior Mark Pederson was named the league’s Co-Lineman of the Year. Seniors Jared Boeck and Tom Pearson also made the team for the Rebels.

Lakeview seniors Tyler Laleman and Codi Shemon and junior Tyler Jeseritz graced the roster.

Sioux Valley-Round Lake-Brewster seniors Corey Place and Robby Armstrong, Edgerton seniors Kyle Landin and Josh Eernisse and Lake Benton junior Garrett Peterson round out the roster.

Sixteen players drew honorable mention from the SRC coaches, including H-BC-E senior Pat Nelson and junior Cody Scholten.

SSC seniors Eric Joens and Steven Mathias and junior Brooke Mathias, Edgerton seniors Dominick Facile and Jayson Van't Hof and sophomore Travis Hulstein, SV-RL-B senior Zach Schmitz and juniors Anthony Johnson and Mark Riley, Lakeview seniors Zach Geistfeld and Shawn Louwagie, Lake Benton senior Matt Prosch and junior Dayton Hurd and LH junior Justin Jerzak also drew honorable mention.

By Lori Ehde
According to the Minnesota Department of Health, more than 800 Minnesotans were treated in hospitals last year for injuries caused by domestic assaults.

In Rock County District Court, three assault cases recently concluded. Two of them involved assault of women by their boyfriends and one involved siblings.

The most recent case involved a Luverne man who was stabbed in the back in July by his sister, whom he lived with.

According to the complaint, Deputy Ken Baker was dispatched to 410 S. Freeman Ave. at 6 a.m. July 9. He was met at the door by 34-year-old Amy Christine Lee.

She had blood on her white tee shirt and blood was splattered on the wall and carpet, according to the report.

She began crying and said she and her brother, Anthony Holybear, had been in an argument. She said they’d been drinking and she had trouble remembering details, but she said she picked up a knife, "approximately as long as a pen."

Baker noticed Holybear, who said he didn’t want to press charges, had trouble walking and that blood was oozing from a puncture wound in his upper back.

Lee was charged July 10 with three counts of assault, and pled guilty to third-degree assault.

In a sentence hearing Oct. 28, she was ordered to serve 30 days in jail starting Nov. 1. She was further sentenced to five years of probation, an $838 fine, out-patient chemical dependency treatment, domestic abuse counseling, restitution, and to submit a DNA sample.

In another case, Billy McLaughlin, 18, Luverne, was sentenced to 30 days in jail for beating up his girlfriend earlier this year.

According to the complaint filed Feb. 25, Deputy Jason Aanenson came to 501 W. Hatting at 9 a.m. Feb. 23 in reference to a possible assault.

McLaughlin’s girlfriend met him at the door with a cut below her right eye and a mark on her forehead.

She told Aanenson that McLaughlin, her "live-in boyfriend" had come home at 6 a.m. and appeared to be "under the influence of something."

She said he had been using marijuana and meth and had been stealing money from her to buy drugs. When she confronted him that day about his drug use, she told Aanenson he slapped her three times.

According to reports, he grabbed her by the arm, pushed her to the floor, and proceeded to punch her three times in the face with his fist and again in the stomach. She said he also kicked her in the stomach.

When McLaughlin was found hiding behind a door in the apartment, he was arrested and transported to the Nobles County Jail, Worthington.

In addition to 30 days in jail, McLaughlin was sentenced in August to one year of probation, a $538 fine, a domestic abuse assessment and restitution.

A third domestic assault charge filed March 6, Beaver Creek’s Christopher Mark Ault, 25, was sentenced to two days in jail and fined $538.

According to the complaint, Deputy Greg Lingen responded to a call at 5:43 p.m. March 5 at 201 S. 4th St. in Beaver Creek.

Ault came to the door and told Lingen he and his girlfriend had been arguing, but that everything was okay.

Reports stated that Lingen found her at a nearby residence, upset and crying. She told him Ault had grabbed her by the arm and pushed her to the ground in front of her 3-year-old child and her friend.

At that point, she told her friend to take the child away and call law enforcement.

In an Aug. 26 hearing, Ault was ordered, in addition to the jail and fine, to a year of probation and a domestic abuse assessment.

According to the Southwest Crisis Center, Luverne, domestic violence continues to plague Rock County homes.

In October, which was Domestic Violence Awareness Month, the Crisis Center sponsored a display on the courthouse lawn that showed names of 51 people who died in domestic disputes in Minnesota in 2001.

The phone number for the Southwest Crisis Center is 283-9917. Victims can call the center for help in escaping violent situations and to connect with other local resources for families.

Thermal oxidizer to fire up today
The thermal oxidizer, the hopeful solution to smell and air quality from the ethanol plant, is scheduled to be turned on today.

The $1.5 million oxidizer was origonally ordered in January and arrived for installation in July.

Unfortunately the installation kept getting set backs, first because state inspectors required some pipe replacement.

When the original date for installation had to be delayed getting the company reps back to install it caused another delay.

The first part of this week the installation crew installed additional airlocks the oxidizer requires and on Wednesday had to fine tune the burners.

Plant manager, Rick Serie, expected the burner turned on between 2 and 3:00 p.m. today.

The oxidizer will eliminate emissions coming out of the stack, but in the winter, when the temperature is below 68 degrees, steam will still be visible.

GEP presents Sanders Family Christmas
The Green Earth Players open their production of "Sanders Family Christmas" this Friday.

The play is a sequel to an earlier Green Earth production, "Smoke on the Mountain", performed by the group several years ago.

The musical comedy follows the Sanders family around the south in the ‘30s and ‘40s as they go from church to church singing a mix of familiar tunes as well as some unfamiliar holiday tunes.

Paula Gerrig, Slayton, is the first time director for the play, and Sue Sandbulte is the musical director.

Members of the cast include Shane Amborn, Bruce Baartman, Fran Bohlke, Traci Carlson, Terri Ebert, James Harsma, Cheryl Nath, Phil Voigt and Louella Voigt.

Chamber teams up with Wrestling Club for fund-raiser
The Luverne Chamber of Commerce, along with the Blue Mound Wrestling Club are co-sponsoring the sale of a Luverne Coupon book.

With many of the coupon books sold by local groups, a big chunk of the money goes to a for-profit business that puts the books together and gets a local group to sell them.

However, with this book the Chamber and Wrestling Club are doing the entire project, so all the money will stay local.

The book will contain $850 worth of coupons and will cost $20.

The book sales will be conducted by members of the wrestling club as well as some local businesses.

The sales campaign will run from Monday, Nov. 18 through Thursday, Dec. 14.

The late Katherine Graham comments on our Russell Wiggins
Below is part of an e-mail I received from Rick Jauert.

Jauert is currently reading a recently released book from the late Katherine Graham. A comment she made about Rock County Hall of Famer, Russell Wiggins, former editor of the Washington Post, where she was publisher is included.

I wanted to share with you an excerpt from Katherine Graham's new book, "Katherine Graham's Washington ('A huge, rich gathering of articles, memoirs, humor, and history, chosen by Mrs. Graham, that brings to life her beloved city'). It is a wonderful book. I'm 300 pages into it with another 600 to go. I thought this item might make a good little anecdote for your column since it highlights still another claim to fame for Luverne's Russ Wiggins. "Washington was still a segregated city, though with pockets of integration (notably the streetcars), and racism was an ugly aspect of the city. It was under Russ Wiggin's editorship, in the
late 1940s, that the (Washington) Post published the first picture of a black bride. Russ had especially selected two people
with Ph.D.s from Howard (the Black University in DC) to break that particular barrier, hoping to keep the protests to a minimum, and he personally took all the protest calls that came through the switchboard."

Publisher Roger Tollefson can be contacted by e-mail at tolly@star-herald.com

Ray Binford, 90, Luverne, died Sunday, Nov. 10, 2002, at Tuff Memorial Home in Hills.

Services were Wednesday, Nov. 13, at Grace Lutheran Church in Luverne. Burial was in Maplewood Cemetery, Luverne.

Ray Binford was born to George and Maggie Binford on Nov. 30, 1911, on the family farm in Magnolia Township, Rock County. He grew up on the family farm and was educated in country schools. As a young man, he helped his parents on their various business ventures.

From the mid-1930’s to 1946 he worked as a hired farmhand for his uncle, Harry Binford. In 1948 he bought his own farm northeast of Luverne. He retired from farming in 1973 and began to rent out the farmland. Even though he was retired he stayed active overseeing the operation and helping with repairs. In 2000 he moved to Tuff Memorial Home in Hills. He was a life long resident of Rock County.

In his youth he enjoyed riding his Harley-Davidson motorcycle and was considered an excellent self-taught mechanic.

Survivors include one nephew, Wayne Meier, Michigan; one niece, Nancy Vosicka, Missouri; and several second cousins.

Mr. Binford was preceded in death by his parents, one brother, Lyle, and two sisters, Ruth Wartenhorse and Fern Meier.

Engebretson Funeral Home was in charge of arrangements.

Amanda Woodley, 89, Le Mars, Iowa, formerly of Luverne, died Sunday, Nov. 10, 2002, at Plymouth Manor Care Center, in Le Mars.

Services were Wednesday, Nov. 13, at Bethany Lutheran Church in Luverne. The Rev. Paul Fries officiated. Burial was in Maplewood Cemetery in Luverne.

Amanda Margaretha Maria Kathrina Mary Wilke was born to Lillie and Robert Wilke on Jan. 30, 1913, near Inwood, Iowa. She received her schooling in Inwood with valedictorian honors. She then taught school.

She married Fay Woodley on June 22, 1932. They farmed in Iowa and in Rock County beginning in 1955. When health failed they moved to Luverne in 1967. Mr. Woodley worked for Hanson Silo Co. Mrs. Woodley worked in several local cafes.

She was a member of the Round Table Extension Club. She enjoyed gardening and crafts and cooking.

Survivors include one grandson, Scott (Tina) Draayer; great-grandchildren, Katie and Joshua Draayer, daughter-in-law Carol Draayer and son-in-law, Earl Draayer; two stepgrandchildren, Ashlee and John Draayer, all of Le Mars; one brother, Wayne (Bev) Wilke, Lester, Iowa; three sisters, Eleanor Nagle, Helen Knobloch, both of Larchwood, Iowa, and Vera Von Der Lieth, Rock Rapids, Iowa; and many nieces, nephews and cousins.

Mrs. Woodley was preceded in death by her parents, her husband, Fay, one son, Ralph Woodley in 1977, and one sister, Marcella Hoffenkamp.

Dingmann Funeral Home, Luverne, was in charge of arrangements.

By John Rittenhouse
Four athletes representing the Star Herald coverage area drew post-season honors from the Red Rock Conference.

Two members of the Hills-Beaver Creek and Adrian High School volleyball squads were selected to the 2002 All-RRC Volleyball team, or drew honorable mention.

The All-RRC roster consists of 24 team members. A total of 15 athletes drew honorable mention.

Area athletes making the all-league roster are Adrian senior Jenna Honermann and H-BC junior Erin Boeve.

H-BC senior Sarah Rozeboom and Adrian junior Kylie Heronimus drew honorable mention from the league's coaches.

Conference champion Westbrook-Walnut Grove drew four all-conference selections.

Seniors Shanell Amundson, Katie Hansen, Becky Schultz and Katie Swanson represent the Chargers.

Murray County Central, Mountain Lake-Butterfield-Odin and Fulda drew three selections each.

MCC seniors Mandy Dierks and Shelly Halbur and junior Cara Counter, ML-B-O senior Carissa Haglund, junior Mikkala Junker and sophomore Tracey Hildebrandt, and Fulda seniors Rachel Gunderman, Katrina Kramer and Erin Oakland grace the roster.

Southwest Christian, Sioux Vallley-Round Lake-Brewster and Red Rock Central picked up two all-league selections each.

SWC seniors Rebecca Raak and Danielle Vander Woude, SV-RL-B seniors Ashley Janssen and Rosa Malenke and RRC seniors Katie Furth and Lindsay Olson are members of the team.

Rounding out the All-RRC roster are Edgerton senior Amber Poppen, Comfrey senior Holli Pederson and Southwest Star Concept senior Brianna Liepold.

Joining Rozeboom and Honermann as honorable mention selections are MCC seniors Kayla Johnson and Kim Spartz, Fulda sennior Jamie Goedtke and junior Susan Grandgeorge, SWC seniors Bethany Anderson and Juliet Spronk, SV-RL-B senior Erin Haberman and freshman Molly Eichenberger, W-WG junior Jenny Heinich, RRC junior Andrea Kirchner, Edgerton sophomore Kendra Van't Hof, Comfrey senior Jessica Schumann and SSC sophomore Brittany Cranston.

Lori DeJongh-Slight, a 1989 Luverne High School graduate, poses with the family pet for a recent photograph in her Boone, Iowa, home. DeJongh-Slight is head coach of the Des Moines Area Community College volleyball team, which plays at the National Junior College Athletic Association Tournament in Toledo, Ohio, today through Saturday.

By John Rittenhouse
Lori DeJongh easily could have disassociated herself with volleyball after a disheartening high school experience, but she didn't.

After making the Luverne High School roster as a junior in 1987, DeJongh and another senior classmate were victims of a numbers crunch that led them to being cut from the team.

Instead of giving up on volleyball, DeJongh showed some intestinal fortitude and accepted the offer to serve as Luverne’s student manager for the 1988 season.

More than one decade later, boosters of the Des Moines Area Community College volleyball program on the Boone Campus are glad the 1989 LHS graduate did not give up on the sport.

Now known as Lori DeJongh-Slight, daughter of Luverne's Norm and Norma DeJongh, she has led the DMACC Lady Bears to its first berth in the National Junior College Athletic Association Tournament as program's head coach.

“We leave for Toledo, Ohio, Wednesday (yesterday), where the national tournament will be played,” DeJongh-Slight said, from her DMACC office Friday.

“The tournament will be played Nov. 14-16, and there will be 12 teams there from all over the nation. We would need to win seven matches to become national champions.”

All things considered, it’s amazing the Lady Bears have made a national name for themselves at this stage of the game.

DeJongh-Slight was hired to start the volleyball program for DMACC in 1999. Now, four years later, the Lady Bears are contending for a national championship.

“This is gratifying,” the coach offered. “It's not like they brought me in to take over a team that was bad. We built this program from scratch. We made it to the region tournament that first year, and we've been slowly chipping away at it, getting better and better, and now we've won our first regional championship.

“I give the credit for our improvement to our girls and the people we have working for the volleyball program. We've gone from non-existence to a national power in four years.”

DMACC brought DeJongh-Slight into the fold to build a quality program, and she did it with little coaching experience at the junior college level.

After a short stay as a student at Northwestern College (Orange City, Iowa), DeJongh-Slight enrolled at Iowa State University in Ames, where she said her interest in coaching bloomed. After her stay in Ames, DeJongh-Slight enrolled at Buena Vista University (Storm Lake, Iowa), where she took a job as an assistant volleyball coach.

DeJongh-Slight gave up her assistant duties at Buena Vista to take head-coaching positions at Colo-Nesco, Aurelia and Storm Lake High Schools in the 1990s before taking over the post at DMACC in 1999.

As expected, DMACC struggled during a 3-20 initial season in 1999, but three conference wins allowed the Lady Bears to advance to their first regional tournament that year.

The team made a dramatic improvement in 2000, when it compiled a 19-20 record before placing fourth in its conference. The program took another positive stride in 2001, finishing tied for third in the regional tournament and compiling a 29-19 record.

The first three seasons set up a breakthrough 2002 campaign.

The Lady Bears finished second in their conference and went 5-0 to win their first region championship. In order to win the region title, DMACC had to knock off four-time defending champion Kirkwood Community College, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
“Kirkwood won our region the last four years, and we ended up beating them in three games. We fell behind 7-1 in the first game, but we came back to tie the game at seven. We ended up winning that game and never trailed during the rest of the match,” DeJongh-Slight said.

DMACC will enter the national tournament as the nation's No. 3-ranked team with a 47-7 record, and the coach hopes that will lead to No. 3 seed for the 12-team event.

The competition will be tough, but DeJongh-Slight believes her team made up of one athlete from Minnesota (Kasson), two from Bucharest, Romania, and 12 from Iowa can make a run at a national title.

“It's going to be tough, because there will be a lot of good teams in Toledo. We're hoping our experience will pull us through. We've played against a lot of Division JCCAA Division 1 teams this year, so we're thinking we have a little more competitive experience than some of the other teams have,” she concluded.