| A story of survival: Hope gives strength to family of one injured ...
WOODBURN, Ore. - On the wall in the basement bedroom Jared and Amy Nelson share - his hospital bed snug up against her quilt-covered queen - hangs this cross-stitched message: "The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time." That simple, framed sentence holds a truth that Amy has learned to live in the year since a van full of Utah State University agriculture students returning from a field trip crashed near Tremonton. Eight classmates and their instructor died Sept. 26, 2005. Jared Nelson and another student, Robbie Petersen, survived. While Petersen is back at USU, Jared, who turns 23 on Sunday, spends his days in a wheelchair, being ferried to doctors and therapists from Portland to Salem, Ore.
NN wants you to get on the bus to safety
Say a Category 3 or greater hurricane is bearing down on Hampton Roads, and areas are being evacuated. You don't have transportation, but a yellow school bus shows up in your neighborhood. Get on it. That's the ticket out. Evacuation plans for an estimated 7,000 residents of Newport News who lack transportation call for a fleet of school buses to pick them up and take them to safety. If it's a Category 2 or lower hurricane, that's typically a school designated as a shelter. For a Category 3 and higher storms, the bus trip would be longer - out of the city. While the practice has been in place for years, it was just Tuesday night that the Newport News City Council considered formally adopting it in a 222-page Emergency Operations Plan.
Dave McCarthy: Local group provides keys to van for wounded Marine
NORTH KINGSTOWN -- Thanks to a special lady from Rhode Island, a quadriplegic Marine from Wisconsin will receive heartfelt cheers -- and a set of keys -- when he's wheeled on the field at halftime of the Naval Academy-University of Massachusetts football game. Former Sgt. Jason Wittling, of Mason, Wis., will be on the 50-yard line Saturday, Sept. 9, at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis, Md., to take the keys to a specially equipped van. With a Marine escort, and a general or two at his side, Wittling will receive the $60,000-van courtesy of Wheels for Warriors, a division of the North Kingstown-based Operation Support Our Troops, which is supported by donations and in-kind services from the public. "There are a lot of good people on this earth and they seem to find me," said Mary Kay Salomone, who heads Operation Support Our Troops out of her home in North Kingstown.
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