Columbia Missourian Newspaper 1982-12-24

              COLUMBIA, ",. 63 CI
to oui header $ tom tfe sto and management o the Columbia UissouAian
75Jh Year No. 88 Good Morning! It's Friday, December 24, 1982 3 Sections 16 Pages 25 Cents
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Iran, owner plays Santa for the last time with free meals for all
By Adam Jahiel
Mlssoufian staff writer
CENTRALIA - This Christmas is the
last tune that Ray Ballew will have a
chance to play Santa Claus at his restau-rant,
the Welcome Inn
For the past seven years, Ballew has pro-vided
a free Christmas dinner to anybody
in Centralia who wanted one. But the holi-day
tradition will end this year when Bal-lew
sells the inn to Mr. and Mrs James
Faulkner of Pleasant Hill, Mo.
So 59- year-- old Ballew and his wife, Mar-garet,
along with Welcome Inn employees
and a small volunteer group, are planning a
Christmas extravaganza Saturday
Available to anyone who wants dinner
will be a meal served from 100 pounds of
ham, 100 pounds of turkey, dressing, veg-etables,
candied yams, cranberries, pie,
cake and ice cream
For those who have no transportation to
the Welcome Inn, Ballew has arranged for
volunteers with cars to pick them up at
their convenience
" If they can't make it in on their own,
we'll haul ' em up," says Ballew
And those who don't want to venture out-side
on Christmas Day can call the inn and
Ballew will arrange to have meals deliv-ered
to their homes.
Ballew sas he plans to feed about 300
people this year.
If it sounds like lots of tune and effort,
that's just what it is The cooking will begin
at 5 a m., and dinner will be served from 11
a. m to a bout 2pm
Dons Kessler, who has been a waitress at
the Welcome Inn for the past seven years,
has worked at four holiday dinners since
she has been there ' The Christmas din-ners
are beautiful," she says. " People are
grateful that we are open Otherwise, they
would have a pretty lonely Christmas "
The Christmas tradition at the Welcome
Inn started in 1975 when Ballew and his
friends joined together to serve up the first
of the free holiday dinners. After that,
friends shied off, but Ballew kept the occa-sion
going
It makes for a busy Christmas Day , but
Ballew says he likes activity. When he's not
tending bar, waiting on customers or an-swering
the phone, he visits with custom- -
ers, fixes things, and helps with the cooking
and cleaning As for newcomers, he greets
them as they step in the door with a thun-derous
" Hi ! Welcome to Centralia "
Mrs. Frances Bugg of Centralia, who wall
attend her third Christmas dinner at the
Welcome Inn on Saturday, says, " People
look forward to it, and they talk about it
weeks before it happens. There's no music
and no singing, just a lovely dinner with
lovely people "
And she adds, " It's the nicest thing that
ever happened to Centralia "
Santa's helpers
spread elfish cheer
with food baskets
By Judith V. Lelchook
Missounan staff writer
Like 200 other homebound Columbians, 87- year-- old
Mary Mareau spent Wednesday morning
looking forward to the delivery of a Christmas
food basket. The basket was full of festive sup-plies
her monthly $ 300 retirement check doesn't
allow her to enjoy.
Since the death of her 97- year-- old husband more
than a year ago, mounting housing costs and pain-fully
crippling arthritis have kept Mrs. Mareau
marooned indoors.
An appearance Wednesday by the Visiting
Nurses Association offered Mrs. Mareau a chance
to socialize and to receive the ingredients for a
holiday pie and deumplmgs " just in case someone
should drop by for a holiday meal."
Lydia Coad, one of the original nurse organizers
and director of the VNA, said Mary represents the
average client she and her 50 employees serve ev-ery
month disabled persons in their upper 70s to
early 80s. By 5 p. m Wednesday, three roomfuls of
Christmas goodies had been delivered to the
homes of Columbia's other Mary Mareaus.
But it was the amount of goods pouring into the
VNA's North Providence Road office that amazed
Mrs. Coad.
" There's definitely a tremendous outpouring
this year," she said " We're always receiving lots
of goodies. But this year's quantities were so
much greater."
Columbians had earlier invaded the office, heft-ing
armloads of cotton blouses, woolen mittens
and comforters. They arranged mountains of
canned goods, walls of bright yellow American
cheese, piles of powdered Danish butter cookies
and slabs of plastic- wrappe- d ham.
Five groups contributed supplies this year, the
systems and procedures department of Shelter In-surance
Cos., the Trinity Lutheran Vesper Guild,
Toastmasters Inc., the American Institute of
Business Women and the Sunshine Girls Club of
the Ellis Fischel Cancer Center.
Mrs. Coad isn't sure why the companies chose
the VNA as the object of their outpouring.
" What we like to believe is that what we do ev-ery
day impacts on the lives of all Columbians.
We're touching a large range of life."
Members of the Ellis Fischel Sunshine Girls
Club also act as Santa's helpers. The club's three
" do- its- " are Dons Nole, Delores West, and Mari-lyn
Palmer. They arrived at the State Cancer Hos-pital
laden with more than $ 100 worth of holiday
goodies.
The women's brand of mischief includes staving
up to all hours and listening to their surgical ward
clients' tales of woe and discouragement. Ms.
Nole has worked as a nurse's aide for 18 years;
Ms. West has been a licensed practical nurse for
nine ; and Mrs. Palmer has been an aide for five.
The Sunshine girls were only too wiHing to do
everyone else's job on Wednesday. Between arri-vals
of donations and sorting the provender, the
ground floor office of the VNA looked like a com-petition
for good deeds and better intentions
Meals on Wheels Director Lorraine Kalen
loads up with Christmas dinner parcels
at the Salvation Army distribution center.
Nick Duggan
The bags of food are being distributed to
needy families Several agencies are
helping those in need this Christmas
Senate passes gas. tax
to aid U. S. highways
Baltimore Sun
WASHINGTON - The 97th Con-gress
adjourned with the Senate's
enactment of a gas- ta- x highway re-pair
bill amid demands for institutio-nal
reforms to prevent a recurrence
of the delaying tactics that nearly
doomed the " gas- ta- x legislation.
A week of long dark nights of the
Senate's soul, reflected in increas-ingly
vituperative marathon ses-sions
finally ended Thursday morn-ing
when the Senate voted 81-- 5 to cut
off a conservative filibuster against
the gas tax- bi- ll Then the bill itself
was approved on a 54- 3- 3 vote.
Senate Majority Leader Howard
H Baker Jr., R- Te- nn , had predicted
passage of the bill, but he was taking
no chances Thursday as several sen-ators
were flown on Air Force jets
back to Washington from their home
states or vacation spots.
The bill, sent Thursday to Presi-dent
Reagan, who had strongly sup-ported
it, will raise the federal tax
on gasoline and diesel fuel by 5 cents
a gallon, from the current 4- c- ent
lew to 9 cents, beginning next April
1.
The tax increase will finance a
major overhaul of the nation's high-ways
and bridges that the Reagan
administration estimates will create
320,000 jobs
The Senate was far less concerned
Thursday with the details of the gas- ta- x
bill than with the ordeal mem-bers
had been through to pass the
measure and the delay it caused in
the start of their Christmas holiday s
During the protracted gas tax de-bate,
which began Dec 10, the Sen-ate
was ' tyrannized and immobi-lized
by a handful of men" and the
chamber was turned into ' the laugh-ing
stock of this nation," Sen Dennis
DeConcim, D- An- z., said Thursday.
While the Senate's rules permit-ting
extended debate are designed to
protect the rights of the minority, he
said, " they do not give them license
to dictate" to the majority.
Procedural stalling tactics had de-layed
until Thursday the vote on the
gas- ta- x bill, and at one point stalled
a vital omnibus spending bill needed
to keep the federal government in
operation
Sen George Mitchell, D- V- t., had
the last word before Thursday's final
vote on the gastax bill, summing up
the more than three- wee- k lame duck
session and the impatience to ad-journ
when he quoted Cromwell's
admonition to the English Parlia-ment
in 1653
" You have sat here too long for
any good to have been done Depart,
I say, and let us have done with you
In the name of God, go."
Mitchell added, " I say, in the
name of God let us vote and go "
Christmas forecast: rain
By Kevin Virobik Adams
Missounan staff writer
Any hopes for a snowy Christmas
in mid- Misso- uri probably will be
washed away by dark gray thun- dershow- ers
Saturday.
The 1982 Christmas period, with its
unseasonably warm weather, hasn't
shown any sign of winter and
won't, says a National Weather
Service spokesman
In fact, Thursday's high of 66 de-grees
was only 4 degrees below the
record set m 1893. And Wednesday's
high of 64 degrees was 3 degrees
short of the record high of 67 set m
1893
Most of mid- Misso- un has had
above normal temperatures for De-cember.
Dewey Jobe of the Weather Serv-ice
says the warm temperatures
may give way to cooler tempera-tures
possibly in the upper 30s
and showers on Christmas Day He
says the rainstorm is a Christmas
gift from a snowstorm centered in
the Central Rockies and moving
southeast " The storm track has
been north of the central Missouri
region and has permitted warmer
weather," Jobe says.
He says the chances of a white
Christmas are " not too great."
But a Christmas without snow is
nothing new for Columbians. Only a
dozen times since 1899 has the city
had more than an inch of snow on the
ground on Christmas Day. Ten inch-es
in 1915 set the Christmas record
and the six inches that fell in 1924
and 1981 tie for second
Wintry weather may arrive early
next week
Water: How much will Columbia need in the future?
By Dean Kahn
Missouriart staff writer
Ron Powell remembers well the
scorching summer of 1980.
The torrid heat produced a record- settin- g
demand for water in Colum-bia,
pushing the city's mam source
of liquid relief the McBauie Water
Plant to its limit. One day, for a
handful of hours, the plant was
pumping at the rate of 16 million gal-lons
of water a day.
Fortunately, the city's reservoirs
kept Columbia residents from run-ning
dry until demand eased off .
" We were watching it closely for a
while," says the senior engineer at
the city's Water and Light Depart-ment.
Ensuring that Columbia has
I
enough water requires computer
analysis, long- ran- ge planning, fund-ing,
and as Powell will attest a
bit of good luck. At its meeting last
Monday, the City Council took a ma-jor
step to assure that long- rang- e
planning has an even greater say
than luck in the future.
City officials recommended that
Black St Veatch, a Kansas City, Mo.,
engineering firm, be hired to study
Columbia's water needs through the
year 2005. The $ 37,500 study . will be
up for council approval at its Jan. 3
meeting.
The city's most recent water study
was a 1971 update of an earlier 1966
report. The 1971 study looked at the
city's water needs through 1991.
Both studies have directed the
city's water- syste- m improvement
decisions to date. But the city now
views them as outdated guides for
spending tomorrow's dollars.
The council plans to authorize a
revenue bond issue in 1984 to fund
water system improvements. Thus,
the new study.
While emergency situations a
blazing summer, a major fire, a bro-ken
water main can momentarily
threaten the city's steady supply of
water, it is the long- ter- m changes in
the area that produce the need for a
new study, engineer Powell says.
The city's population patterns afe
changing, he says Population
growth itself has declined from the
t
booming days of the 1960s. Enroll-ment
at the University has slowed,
and housing developments have
been built in new locations.
When city staff opted for Black &
Veatch over two other companies, it
chose a familiar face That firm pre-pared
both the 1966 and 1971 city wa-ter
studies.
The 196b report turned the city
away from reliance on nearby deep
wells in favor of seven shallow wells
sunk near the Missouri River at Mc-
Bauie, 10 miles southwest of Colum-bia.
Black & Veatch's 1971 update
came in response to the rapid
growth Columbia expenenced in the
late 1960s. The city's population
jumped 20 percent in five vears,
from 48,900 in 1965 to 58.804 in 1970.
Growth and annexation more than
doubled the city's area, from 20
square miles to 41 5 square miles,
during those same years.
All those new Columbians meant
the city needed more water. Aver-age
daily use increased more than 50
percent, from 4 million gallons a day
m 1965 to more than 6 milbon gallons
a day in 1970. The current average
daily use is 7.66 million gallons,
down from the peak of 8.4 million
gallons in 1980, the year of the severe
heatwave
The maximum daily aagc the
amount of water pumped on the
city's thirstiest day has kept pace.
In 1965, maximum use was 6 95 mil-bon
gallons a day. In 1982, it was 11.5
milbon gallons, down from 1980' s re-cord
of 13 5 million gallons.
No Missounan
on Saturday
There will be no Saturday is-sue
of the Missounan because
of the Christmas holiday. To-day's
edition includes both
Friday and Saturday comics
and TV listings. Regular publi-cation
resumes Sunday.
Inside
Business 3C
Classified 3- 4- C
Friday Comics .5B
Saturday Comics 68
Opinion 4A
Record . 7A
Sports 1-- 3C
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