Elburn man finds his 'dream job' west of DeKalb

The wide, open spaces of a golf course served as Pete Leuzinger's backdrop for 31 years as a course superintendent, but now the wide, open spaces of DeKalb County cornfields play that role.

In what he calls "a dream job," the 62-year-old Leuzinger has been a turf grass instructor in the Kishwaukee Community College Horticulture Department for the past four years.

Leuzinger, who now lives in Elburn, is best known in these parts for being the course superintendent at St. Charles Country Club from 1975 to 1994. He later went to Ivanhoe Club in Mundelein before hooking on as instructor at Kishwaukee, which he hopes to do until he retires.

And he's got an important message for any students in the Tri-Cities area who are interested in pursuing a career in landscaping or caring for golf courses or athletic fields:

"Kishwaukee is the only community college in this area offering a horticulture program," he said. "A kid doesn't have to go to the University of Illinois to start. They can be part of a great program here."

Because horticulture is not offered at Waubonsee or Elgin Community College, Leuzinger said that out-of-county horticulture students at Kishwaukee don't have to pay extra fees.

I went to visit Leuzinger on the campus during his department's "workweek," in which students work on various landscape projects throughout campus.

Several students were working on a dry rock wall and plantings near the campus' main building, while others worked on a nature trail on the far west side of Kishwaukee's 120-acre campus in Malta, about five miles west of DeKalb.

"This nature walk is brand new," Leuzinger said. "You are one of the first people to walk on it."

Leuzinger said the horticulture program follows the theme of the community college.

"We're training kids to work within their communities and, at the same time, we save the college money and give kids experience in doing this kind of landscape work," he said.

Tough-luck lights: What makes it so hard to keep all of the light bulbs on a theater marquee operating properly?

One might ask that of the Arcada Theater in downtown St. Charles when noticing that a few of the bulbs and lights on the historic theater have been out for a long time.

When he purchased the theater in May 2005, Arcada owner Ron Onesti poured $30,000 into getting the marquee shining with the "bright lights" one would expect of an active entertainment venue.

Onesti Entertainment publicist Romi Herron said the lights ran into some tough luck the very first night they were on display.

"A retail vehicle along the street hit the electric box that fed that set of lights," Herron said. "Since then, the funds haven't been available to do that kind of restoration a second time."

Herron said that Onesti Entertainment would have to follow guidelines of the historic preservation commission to work on the marquee.

"We can't just substitute the lights with something cheaper," Herron said. "It was just one of those things, where you acquire a historic treasure like the Arcada, and put so much into something that would be so visible to the public, and then on the same night it is knocked out."

It needs fixing: The health care reform debates are so complex, with so many options to consider, it's almost like trying to buy phone service.

I know our Congressman, Bill Foster, was getting all kinds of grief early on for not setting himself up for a firestorm by holding a public meeting when it was apparent that certain factions were taking great joy in disrupting those proceedings across the country.

From where I'm sitting, Foster has done a fair share of one-on-one meetings and teleconference town hall sessions to get his views across, while also hearing concerns of his constituents.

Regardless of where it all ends, and how a health package approved by Congress ultimately performs, I can base my thoughts only on personal experience. And that leads me to say that something absolutely has to be done.

My regular full-time job was with a small business (I only freelance at the Herald), so I fully understand that health insurance is a shakier proposition in that case.

After years of putting it off, I finally convinced myself to quit being a baby and schedule a colonoscopy because it is the right thing to do. So I scheduled it, and then asked the insurance company what it would pay.

Because my wife and I have been blessed with good health, we had not used our insurance for anything for eight years. So, of course, they weren't going to pay anything for the colonoscopy because we hadn't used any deductible. My quick math showed that I had paid about $36,000 out of pocket over the last eight years for an insurance product I did not use. And when I wanted to use it, thinking a health insurance company would also appreciate this kind of preventive measure, I couldn't.

There's something wrong about that. The bad thing, of course, is that this story is probably minor in comparison to some of the other tales out there about how this country's health care spiraled into an expensive and ineffective mess. The other bad thing is that health care reform likely wouldn't help my scenario.

Miss this Lane: After writing about how great its hamburgers were in past columns, it was a bummer to see the River Lane Pub in Geneva dark and empty. It's been closed for about a month now, with one of the year's most popular signs on it - "For Lease."

dheun@sbcglobal.net