Sculpture at Munhall Elementary to honor teacher
Dorene Tieche makes sure to mix history and the arts when teaching her third-graders at Munhall Elementary School in St. Charles about Native Americans.
To that end, she has often asked local sculptor Guy Bellaver to make presentations to her class about Ekwabet, the Potawatomi Indian chief statue he created that looks over the Fox River along the Freedom Walk in downtown St. Charles. He tells how he sculpted the statue, as well as the history behind Ekwabet.
Because of Tieche's dedication to local history and the arts, Guy and his wife Elizabeth are donating a sculpture titled "Running Crow" in her honor to Munhall Elementary. The dedication takes place at 1:30 p.m. Thursday.
The Bellavers obtained the piece, created by Skeeter Aschinger, at the city's Fine Art Show.
"Dorene is one of those teachers whose curriculum is always imaginative, and I just love that she has had Guy make those presentations to her students," Elizabeth Bellaver said. "She was also a big help in getting the elementary schools involved in Ekwabet's 20th Birthday Pow Wow last year."
Get a costume: Young kids are affected by hard economic times, and they rarely understand why. But they would start to wonder if they couldn't get a Halloween costume this year.
The Kids Treating Kids outreach program will try to fix that by handing out free costumes to children, from babies to teens, who are in need.
The costumes will be available from 4 to 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Pottawatomie Community Center in St. Charles.
Hiking for thrills: It was a favorite of local kids for several years, but eventually the Fabyan Forest Preserve Ghost Hike faded away.
So it's always good to see that a terrifying hike is still intact. This haunted hike is called the "Trail of Terror" and it's been spooking families for 19 years.
The Three Fires Council of the Boy Scouts of America stages this event at Camp Big Timber, 37W955 Big Timber Road in Elgin. The spooking starts Friday and Saturday night and also takes place the following weekend.
There's a kids hike from 1:30 to 4 p.m. Oct. 24 that has no thrills and chills - just fun and games.
The haunted hike costs $10 a person and organizers say it has attracted more than 5,000 guests since it began.
A scary boo-boo: Another thought crosses my mind when thinking about the Fabyan Forest Preserve Ghost Hike of years ago.
About 25 years ago, the newspaper I worked at had installed one of the first computer systems to eliminate the need for typewriters in the newsroom.
The computer got a mind of its own and started scrambling our stories, combining sentences or words of various stories. It made for a proofreading nightmare.
One embarrassing mistake made it into print when an obituary was combined with a news release about the Ghost Hike. So a portion of it read: "He will be buried at the annual Fabyan Forest Preserve Ghost Hike, with the Rev. Thomas Dempsey officiating. Doughnuts and apple cider will be served."
You can imagine the calls we got the next morning.