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Monday, January 26, 1987 / University Daily Kansan
Dan Ray/KANSAN
Pam Hoekstra, Kansas City, Mo., performs with soap star Michael Damian from "The Young and the Restless." Damian performed yesterday at Liberty Hall, 642 Massachusetts St.
Soap star thrills fans with singing, acting in Liberty Hall show
By PEGGY O'BRIEN
Staff writer
Staff writer
The Super Bowl wasn't the only event that some Lawrence residents were excited about yesterday.
Michael Damian, who plays Danny Romalatti on the CBS daytime series "The Young and the Restless," drew a crowd of about 120 fans to Liberty Hall, 642 Massachusetts St., hoping for an autograph kiss. The event was sponsored by the Topeka CRS affiliate, WIBW.
Damian, 24, was born Michael Damian Weir. Although he is popular for his acting, his first love is singing.
Musical parents got him started, and he began his career singing with his eight brothers and sisters. They were known as the Weirz. Damian said he dropped his last name because his family was pretty well known, and he wanted to try to make it on his own.
"If it weren't for my family, I'd never have been on the show," he said.
Damian said that unknown to him, his older brother had been sending his picture to magazines. Two months later he was in Tiger Beat Star, a teen magazine. His big break came when he performed on "Dick Clark's American Bandstand."
Shortly after that appearance, the producers of "The Young and the Restless" signed him on as their singing rock star. He has never studied acting, but has been on the show for six years.
When he meets people on the street, their reactions are always different, Damian said. Sometimes they say he's taller in person. Usually, they want to know if he's married.
"There ain't no rings on these fingers," he said.
He said he'd gone out with a few women, but he is now "basically available."
Although Damian said he used to appeal to a younger audience, he is now popular with women of all ages.
The fans in attendance agreed.
The fans in attendance agreed, "I was impressed with how handsome he seemed," said Marie Lassite Lassiter, an assistant Lassiter brought her two daughters, Angela, 13, and Nan, 9, to hear Damian perform and answer questions. It was Angela's birthday. Nan Lassiter she watched the show whenever she wasn't in school.
A few men were in the crowd, generally taking pictures of their wives and daughters with Damian.
The audience was split on who they were hoping would be involved with Danny on the show. His new love, Cricket, is rivaled by Tracey, his ex-wife. The Lassisters were pulling for Tracey, but Marilyn Franklin, Lawrence resident, said she liked Cricket, Franklin, who attended with her husband, said she watched "The Young and the Restless" all the time.
"I watched the show long before Danny was on." she said.
Damian picked two girls from the audience to act out scenes from the show with him. One acted a scene as Cricket, and the other, Suzy Otey, a 17-year-old from the embrace Damian and Otey enacted. Otey said, "My knees were weak."
Kay Kelly, Lawrence resident,
was decked out in her rhinestone
jewelry in the hopes of acting a
scene with Damian. She said she
was supposed to look like Kay
Chancellor, a wealthy woman on
the show who usually wears diamonds.
Acacia plans to return to KU
The Acacia fraternity may return to the University of Kansas after disbanding less than a year ago.
By JERRI NIEBAUM
Staff writer
He said he expected the fraternity to succeed because of the strong interest students have shown in the greek system. He said twice as many students were involved in the system as there were five years ago.
Jeff Eller, national representative of Acacia from Indianapolis, will recruit members during the next week.
Johnson attended a meeting on Wednesday at the Kansas Union for students interested in starting a new chapter of Acacia. He said he thought a new chapter would be started.
Richard Anderson, Leneka junior and president of the KU chapter of the Acacia fraternity last year, said he knew why the fraternity disbanded.
Eller said the house disbanded last spring because members lost interest. The fraternity had been active at KU for 43 years.
"They've got a great tradition," Jon Johnson, Topeka sophomore, said about the Acacia fraternity.
"I just couldn't tell you that," he said.
"They've had a lot of difficulty keeping their membership up." Eller said. "They were burned out . . . They just didn't want to fight any-more."
Jeff Swearingen, Quincy, Ill., junior, and president of Phi Kappa Tau, said that although his fraternity Tau's lease with Acacia was up May 15, he would try to negotiate rental for at least one more year. Otherwise, the fraternity will begin searching for a new house, he said.
Charles Wheeler, president of the Interfraternity Council, said, "A lot of people were shocked to see Acacia leave in the first place."
Eller said he planned to get about 12 members involved in Acacia before he returned to Indianapolis. He was pleased with the four men who showed up at Wednesday's meeting and was optimistic about achieving his goal.
Acacia still owns its house at 1100 Indiana St., but Eller was not definite that new members would live in the house. Acacia is leasing the house to the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity.
Eller plans to have the fraternity active again this semester and hopes to have members living in a house next fall.
Despite a 1986 Kansas law making it illegal to drive without a seat belt, only 28 percent of all licensed drivers wear their seat belts while driving, an official from the Kansas Department of Transportation said Friday.
Small percentage of drivers use belts
The fraternity needs about 40 members before it can regain its charter. Eller said he thought a group would be moving into a house next fall, although he was not sure they would have a charter by then.
By LISA A. MALONEY
"Right now, the charter has been suspended," he said.
The 1996 Kansas Legislature passed the law, which is enforceable by a $10 fee after July 1, 1987. Now, legislators have some type of seat bolt legislative.
However, Willbourn said the number was a 15 percent increase from 1985 and represented the prevention of 35 deaths and 750 injuries.
Russ Williburn, of the Office of Traffic Safety, Kansas Department of Transportation, said that according to a survey taken between fall 1985 and fall 1986, only 23,000 out of a total 1,316,000 licensed Kansas drivers wear their seat belts.
"The major argument that the opposition put out was that it was an infringement of their rights," he
Willbourn said the seat belt law met opposition when it was first introduced to the Legislature.
said. People did not want the government to tell them that they had to wear their seat belts.
The main reason the law passed, he said, was because of pressure from the U.S. Congress. It Kansas failed to pass some type of seat belt law, but it has been used in the state highways, collected from gasoline taxes, would be withheld.
Some people might consider the $10 fine too low, Willbourn said. “But the Legislature's intention was not to impose such a fine," he said, "make it more of an educational thing.”
reductions in car accident fatalities, but the reduction in deaths could be as much as 50 percent, he said.
The Legislature also delayed the law's enforcement date until July to give drivers a chance to establish the habit of buckling up, he said.
"I anticipate a sudden increase in seat belt usage." Willburn said. "However, if it's not enforced, it will drop from the initial peak." He said that state highway patrol officers were now issuing warning tickets.
Residents of Nebraska repealed their seat belt law in November by a one-third of 1 percent margin, 46.9 percent. The Corner, program coordinator for the
Nebraska office of highway safety, said that since the repeal, seat belt usage rates had dropped by four percent in Lincoln.
"We anticipate that the rate will go down, because there were some people who only wore the belts because there was a law," Corner said. "At the same time, we hope we gained a few converts.
"Once you develop that habit, you automatically put it on."
Seat belt usage in Nebraska went from 11 percent, prior to the law, to 52 percent usage, just before the law was repealed. he said. A law requiring infants and small children in some of restraint is still in effect, he said.
Corner said that although injuries decreased 7 percent last year with the seat belt law, fatalities increased, from 238 to 288. However, the state also reported an increase in the average number of miles driven, which increased the chances of having an accident.
When a moving car hits an object, the weight of the driver, multiplied by the speed of the vehicle equals the amount of force directed towards the point of the impact. A 100-pound person, traveling at 30 mph equals 3,000 pounds of thrust going out the windshelf, he said.
"Unrestrained objects in a car in a crash are nothing more than guided missiles." Corner said. "Seat belts for the force so people can withstand it."
"Some crashes are unsurvivable, that's true, but at least with a seat belt, you have a chance," he said.
A state would have to have a seat belt usage rate of at least 70 percent before there would be any dramatic
"It only takes two seconds to put a ball on. You can be a wheelchair or BSRS."
He said that the repeal of the seat belt law was part of a general voter backlash against government regulations. In addition to the seat belt law voters were faced with a proposal to consolidate smaller schools with larger ones, and a 1 percent sales tax to pay for the process.
The Associated Press
Kansas farm slump linked to increase in bankruptcy
HAYS — Bankruptties were up 31 percent in Kansas in 1986 as the state's industry slumped. A 5 to 20 percent increase in bankruptcy filings is forecast for 1987.
A total of 7,217 cases were filed in federal bankruptcy courts in Kansas City, Kan., Topeka and Wichita last year, compared with 5,503 that were filed in 1985.
March brings doubt, hope for equality
Russell Brenner, the bankruptcy court clerk for Kansas, predicted a 5 to 20 percent increase in bankruptcy filings this year.
CUMMING, Ga. — The civil rights movement arrived in all-white Forsyth County, Ga., this weekend, a generation behind the times and 75 years after the last of the black residents had been chased out.
Nationally, bankruptcy filings for the fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, were up 32.3 percent from 1985.
But there remains the issue of what Saturday's massive brotherhood march actually accomplished.
Asked whether he would return to Forsyth County, Ralph Taylor, a middle-aged black man from Atlantic City, "Not by myself. Not by myself."
The marchers came from across the United States and numbered 10 times what was expected.
United Press International
A few rocks and a number of racial epithets were hurled at the marchers. There were no major incidents, but about 60 people were arrested, most of them among the 1,000 white counter-demonstrators led by members of the Ku Klux Klan.
When the demonstration was over, the snow had turned to mud and the best intentions to doubts. In Forsyth County, little had changed.
But there was no rush to study the intricacies of the Constitution in Forsyth County, where the modest black population was run out in 1912 following the rape of a white teen-ager in which a black man was implicated
But the brightest sign was hatred.
Hours after the march ended,
teenagers crushed through the KKK.
He did not return, his own shouting, "Keep Forsyth white."
Such was the aftermath of the South's biggest civil rights march since the 1960s, a demonstration that required the presence of more than 2,200 National Guard troops and police officers to keep the peace. Even then, peace was a tenuous thing.
For the marchers, it was a repayment for the previous week when a small brotherhood march in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday was broken up by white supremacists throwing rocks.
Frank Sanchez, a lawyer from Tallahassee, Fla., said, "To me, this was like the U.S. Constitution coming to life. We came here to breathe life into the Constitution and I think we've done that."
Whites hauled signs reading, "Black Trash" and "The Future is red necks, white skin and blue collars."
Randy Case, 31, a lifelong Forsyth resident, was angry that the National Guard was called in with taxpayer dollars to protect the marchers.
There were signs of welcome for the marchers. While many of the residents along the march route watched through binoculars from front porches or glared angrily at the walkers, one family stood by a huge oak near the road and waved. Another resident wore a thick coat, sunglasses and stocking cap pulled low to protect his anonymity. He flashed "V" for victory and his apologetic sign read, "I live here."
"I'm not associated with the Klan, but as soon as it (the application) comes in the mail next week I will be," he said.
Oil prices have increased in 1987, which has helped. Brenner said. However, aircraft and farming remain depressed.
"I haven't seen anything that will give farmers relief yet," he said.
each filing category. There were 5,741 Chapter 7 cases filed in 1986 compared with 4,314 in 1985. The courts recorded 280 Chapter 11 and 12 filings, compared with 213 Chapter 11 cases in 1985. The Chapter 13 cases amounted to 1,196 in 1986, an increase from 976 filed in 1985.
The increase in bankruptcy filings has created a need for additional employees and more office space. Brenner said.
Chapter 7 allows for an orderly liquidation of assets and debts; Chapter 11 allows for the reorganization of debts and assets; and Chapter 13 allows individuals the opportunity to reorganize their debts.
Four types of bankruptcy cases can be filed now, including the new Chapter 12 bankruptcy, which is directed toward the nation's struggling farmers.
Statewide, increases were seen in
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