Monday, March 30. 1998
The University Daily Kansan
Section 7 · Page A
Jonesboro shooting victims buried
Three laid to rest Saturday after attack at school
The Associated Press
JONESBORO, Ark. — This grieving community buried two more little girls and a teacher Saturday, saying goodbye with songs, symbols of childhood and prayers that something good will come out of the tragedy.
Mourners wept for the victims of Tuesday's shootings at Westside Middle School and ministers said their short lives would not be forgotten.
"The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away," the Rev. Alvin Swan said to Stephanie Johnson's mother, Tina McIntyre. "God gave you Stephanie. You had 12 wonderful years."
At the end of the service at Emerson Funeral Home, McIntyre stroked her daughter's brown hair and kissed her on the cheek. She put a baby doll and a teddy bear with a yellow rose tied to it in the casket.
"This is a tragedy that we wish could be turned about, but it can't."
Swan told about 200 mourners. "Perhaps we can draw strength from this."
Johnson's was the first of three funerals Saturday for victims of a shooting rampage that left four young girls and a teacher dead. A funeral for Brittney Varner, 11, was held during the afternoon in a rural cemetery southeast of Jonesboro. English teacher Shannon Wright was buried in Bono, just a few miles from this northeast Arkansas city of 50,000.
"Britthney was always bubbly," said the Rev. William Holt, her minister at Revival Tabernacle Church in Bono. "I don't care how low you were, give her two minutes of time, and she would have you lifted back up.
"I will miss those hugs. I will miss that little sweet voice telling me she loved me. Those kids at school will miss that little precious girl."
A pink stuffed rabbit was placed inside Brittnev's casket.
Eleven-year-old Natalie Brooks and 12-year-old Paige Ann Herring, each remembered for smiles and upbeat attitudes, were laid to rest in separate services Friday.
All five died in Tuesday's bloody shooting, which sent 10 others to the hospital and left another slightly injured. Drew Golden, 11, and
Mitchell Johnson, 13, are being held on five counts each of murder and 10 counts of battery. Police say the two, dressed in camouflage and armed with rifles and handguns, ambushed classmates and staff members who had left the school after one of the boys triggered a fire alarm.
Wright died shielding a child, but she may also have been an intentional target.
Cindy Angel, 39, said Saturday night that her step-granddaughter, Misty Angel, 12, and Johnson came home from school Monday and told her of threats made by Mitchell.
"He said he was going to kill the girl who had broken up with him, and the others who had made him mad and Mrs. Wright," Cindy Angel said. "I didn't think much of it."
At the funeral for Wright, who leaves behind a 2-year-old son, ministers encouraged her fellow teachers to take a rose — a symbol of life — back to the school.
"Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friend," said the Rev. Gary Cremeens, quoting the gospel of John. "Help us to remember what she did with her life, and help us to go and do likewise."
Cremeens said Wright had the voice of an angel and acted like a saint.
Kristi Elliott / KANSAN
"There is a community and a
nation, I believe, who are grateful for what she has done," he said. "She gave her life doing something positive for our children."
At Johnson's funeral, mourners walked up to the open casket in groups of three or four as mourners listened to Hootie and the Blowfish's "Let Her Cry," and Elton John's "Candle in the Wind 1997." Several people wept softly during Puff Daddy's tribute to a fallen friend, "I'll Be Missing You."
A bulletin board showed pictures of Johnson, from infancy to a girl on the verge of her teen years.
"When I closed my eyes in remembrance, I seen Stephanie and the Lord spoke to me and said, 'She's so innocent,' " Swan said.
Safari so good for Clinton's African tour
The Associated Press
CHOBE NATIONAL PARK, Botswana—In a country that is home to 80,000 elephants, President Clinton turned from foreign diplomacy for a safari in one of Africa's premier wildlife refuges.
The safari was the president's first and only break from an otherwise grueling, 11-day tour of Ghana, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, Botswana and Senegal to forge a new partnership with Africa and expand American business investment opportunities.
Ten minutes from Clinton's thatched-roof lodge, dozens of baboons played in the brush and a muddy elephant sprayed river water on his back.
Schoolchildren clapping their hands and singing "This is Botswana, we greet you," welcomed the president and his wife, Hillary, on Sunday to the modest airport at Kasane. Minutes later, barefoot teen-age girls and boys danced a greeting in front of a fat 900-year-old baobab tree at Mowana Safari Lodge. The comfortable airconditioned resort is the Clintons' home for two nights on the Chobe River.
Guests are warned that hippo and other wildlife roam the grounds and can be dangerous. As always, the Clintons were accompanied by Secret Service agents.
With darkness descending and the
mosquitoes rising soon after their arrival, the Clintons spent their first night inside. There was a 5 a.m. roundup call for members of the president's party Monday. The early morning is the best time to see lions.
Sprawled over 4,200 square miles, Chobe National Park is named after the Chobe River on Botswana's north border. Her huge herds of elephants and Cape buffalo come together along the banks of the Chobe.
Arriving ahead of the president, members of his traveling party went out looking for animals and found them in abundance. They saw hippos submerged in the river and Cape buffalo standing on the shore. There were eagles, waterbucks, impalas, Egyptian geese, egrets, maribou stork, kudu, two wart hogs, many baboons and two dozen elephants.
The president's official delegation, numbering more than 100 people at earlier stops, slimmed considerably for the safari.
Clinton flew to Botswana from a three-day state visit in South Africa. He stopped in Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, to meet with President Ketumile Masire, who is to step down tomorrow after 18 years as leader of one of Africa's most economically successful and politically stable nations.
Masire was delighted that Clinton would visit Chobe because it probably will boost tourism. In just the last day or so, Botswana inaugurated a digitally-based cellular telephone system, and the president took note of that.
"The fight to make the most of your freedom, to do the right things with your freedom,to give your children the right future with your freedom - that, too, will be a marathon. But we want to run that race with you."
President
Bill Clinton President
The president announced he will establish a new radio broadcasting service for Africa to promote democracy and human rights throughout the continent. Broadcast 221/2 hours a week, Radio Democracy for Africa will be a division of Voice of America.
"America needs more Botswanas, and America is determined to support all those who would follow your lead," the president said at the State House, the presidential residence in Gaborone.
Excited about his safari, Clinton told Masire about a friend who stayed at the Mowana Safari Lodge and woke up one morning with a baboon sitting at the end of his bed, press secretary Mike McCurry related. Clinton also remarked that he had heard there was one elephant for every 18 people in Botswana; other estimates say there is one for every 16 people.
Beginning the day in South Africa, the Clintons joined Jesse Jackson for Sunday mass at Regina Mundi Catholic Church in the black township of Soweto. There were rousing cheers from the congregation, and the organist plaved "America the Beautiful."
The church was a refuge for Black activists during apartheid, and locals said it was the only place where Angelican Archbishop Desmond Tutu could say Mass.
Speaking at the altar, Clinton said South Africa's recovery from decades of apartheid would be a long struggle. He compared it to a marathon race that takes a long time and becomes painful.
"The fight to make the most of your freedom, to do the right things with your freedom, to give your children the right future with your freedom — that, too, will be a marathon," the president said. "But we want to run that race with you."
Archaeologists dig up oldest known synagogue
Place of worship found in Israel near Jericho
The Associated Press
JERUSALEM — Israel archaeologists have found the world's oldest synagogue in the ruins of a 2,000-year-old palace outside the West Bank town of Jericho.
Archaeologists uncovered the synagogue, which dates from 50-70 B.C., in the ruins of a Maccabean winter palace, Ehud Netzer, a professor of archaeology at Hebrew University, said Sunday.
Netzer said worshippers would have sat on a bench along pillars in the synagogue's basilica-shaped hall. The Torah,
the Jewish holy book, most likely was read in the middle of the room.
In an adjoining room, archaeologists found a U-shaped bench that Netzer said probably was used for ceremonial meals.
Netzer said the synagogue was important because of its age and direct connection with the Maccabean monarchy.
The synagogue was not lavish, but its floors might have been carpeted. he said.
He said it also gave scholars a clearer picture of synagogues that existed in the land of Israel prior to the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70.
The palace where the synagogue stands is adjacent to Wadi Kelt, then a Jewish town near Jericho that was a winter resort for the wealthy and year-
round home to farmers. Today Wadi Kelt is in the part of the West Bank that remains under full Israeli control.
Until the discovery of the Wadi Kelt synagogue, the oldest known synagogue was in Gamle in the Golan Heights. The Gamle synagogue was built about 50 years later than the Wadi Kelt synagogue, Netzer said.
An earthquake destroyed the synagogue and the palace in 31 B.C., and King Herod later built another palace over the ruins.
The Maccabees, or Hasmoneans, headed a successful revolt against the Greco-Syrians in the second century B.C., today marked by the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, and spearheaded a
restoration of Jewish political and religious life.
Pill arouses new hopes for impotence
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Tolman Geffs pops a pill every night so he's ready if his wife is in the mood for sex. It's his solution to the prostate-cancer surgery that left him impotent—and now millions of other men may try it, too.
The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved Pfizer Inc.'s Viagra, the first pill to treat impotence, after testing showed it helped about two-thirds of impotent men improve their sexual function.
"I consider it my nighttime vitamin," said Geffs, 64, of Trabuco Canyon, Calif., who has taken the pill as part of Pfizer's clinical trials. "It brings back the spontaneity in a normal marital life."
Pfizer said it would begin shipping Viagra to pharmacies within two weeks, with a wholesale price of $7 per pill. Men are supposed to take no more than one prescription-only pill a day, about an hour before intercourse.
Unlike other treatments for impotence, Viagra users won't get an erection unless they are sexually stimulated. That's because Viagra itself doesn't produce an erection — it maintains and improves one by affecting a chemical found mainly in the penis during arousal.
"There are some patients who only will need to take it for a short term and it jump-starts their own system," said Harin Padma-Nathan of the University of Southern California. "There are other patients that will need it lifelong, such as patients who had a spinal cord injury or severe diabetes."
Impotence affects an estimated 10 million to 20 million American men, yet only 5 percent get medical treatment. It's embarrassing to discuss, and treatments already available can make them wince: Penile implants require surgery; vacuum-style devices that force blood into the penis interrupt lovemaking; injecting drugs or inserting suppositories into the penis is uncomfortable and occasionally causes hours-long erections.
Padma-Nathan said just knowing there was an oral alternative quickly could increase the proportion of patients seeking treatment to 20 percent. Analysts agreed, predicting Viagra sales could hit $300 million this year alone.
But the pill also has been much-hyped as a sexual revolution for healthy men merely seeking to increase or improve their sexual activity. That's wrong, said specialists who are concerned about the potential for abuse.
"Yes, it's an erection improver but only in men with erectile dysfunction," said Padma-Nathan, director of The Male Clinic in Santa Monica, Calif. "This drug does not change libido or desire, and it's not going to have any impact on normal men."
Viagra, known chemically as sildenafil, is a failed heart drug that Pfizer pursued after some heart patients unexpectedly reported having erections.
In studies of 4,000 men with varying erectile dysfunction, 64 percent to 72 percent successfully completed intercourse after taking Viagra, compared to 23 percent of men taking a dummy pill.
Impotence increases with age and is caused mostly by such medical problems as diabetes, heart disease, prostate surgery and spinal cord injury. It also can be psychological or a side effect of certain drugs.
But just prescribing a pill isn't proper therapy, warned James Barada, an Albany, N.Y., physician representing the American Urological Association. Patients must get treated for underlying disease — and understand that the pill isn't a silver bullet, he said.
Barada said the pill was a great advance in the sense that it will increase awareness of impotence treatments, but it's not going to be for everybody.
Heart patients taking nitroglycerin should not use Viagra because the drugs can interact to reduce blood pressure, doctors said.
But other side effects were rare and mild — mostly headaches, facial flushing and upset stomach. A few men experienced strange visual effects: About 3 percent see a blue tinge while taking the recommended dose, and higher doses left them unable to distinguish between the colors blue and green.
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