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March 31, 2013
212th Year, No. 90
IN SPORTS
IN OUTDOORS
$1.50 Newsstand
Hugo Chavez’s
legacy gains
religious glow
By JACK CHANG
Associated Press
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Holding a Bible
in her arms at the start of Holy Week, seamstress
Maria Munoz waited patiently to
visit the tomb of the man she considers another savior of humanity.
The 64-year-old said she had
already turned her humble onebedroom house into a shrine devoted to the late President Hugo
Chavez, complete with busts, photos and coffee mugs bearing his
image. Now, she said, her brotherCHAVEZ
in-law was looking for a larger
house to display six boxes’ worth of Chavez relics
that her family has collected throughout his political career.
“He saved us from so many politicians who
came before him,” Munoz said as tears welled in
her eyes. “He saved us from everything.”
Chavez’s die-hard followers considered him a
living legend on a par with independence-era hero
Simon Bolivar well before his March 5 death from
cancer.
In the mere three weeks since, however, Chavez
has ascended to divine status in this deeply
Catholic country as the government and Chavistas
build a religious mythology around him ahead of
April 14 elections to pick a new leader.
Chavez’s hand-picked successor, Nicolas
By JESSICA WELSHANS
[email protected]
S
UNBURY — It’s lambing season at Owens
Farm, 2611 Mile Post
Road.
In early March, 104 lambs
already had been born, with
some 30 more ewes expected to
give birth, usually to twins, at
any time.
This is one of the busiest
times of the season.
“You are definitely meeting us
at one of the high labor times of
the year. We do have to check
around the clock,” said Caroline
Owens, co-owner, wife and mom
of three human kids at the farm.
Carrying two plastic buckets,
she walked to the side of a big
red barn that stands on the 212acre farm. She stepped onto
some wide, wooden planks and
disappeared inside.
Suddenly the fenced-off pasture outside the barn came alive
with loud bleating from the
sheep — lots of bleating. The
sheep swarmed into the yard
and ran to a cement feeding
trough, calling for Caroline to
bring the feed.
She came down the planks
and emptied her buckets.
While the sheep chomped
away at their corn, the tiny lambs
— some of which are weeks old,
others only hours — began to
(See AREA, Page A-6)
(See HUGO, Page A-6)
Pa. Navy SEAL killed
in paracuting accident
JESSICA WELSHANS/Sun-Gazette
Young lambs are seen at Owens Farm, 2611 Mile Post Road in
Sunbury. The Owens family has a Build-Your-Own Farm tour
that offers a selection of activities.
(More photos on Page B-1.)
Shroud of Turin put back on display
by Vatican in wake of new research
By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press
VATICAN CITY — The
Shroud of Turin went on
display for a special TV
appearance
Saturday
amid new research disputing claims it’s a medieval
fake and purporting to
date the linen some say
was Jesus’ burial cloth to
around the time of his
death.
Pope Francis sent a special video message to the
event in Turin’s cathedral,
but made no claim that the
image on the shroud of a
man with wounds similar
to those suffered by Christ
was really that of Jesus.
He called the cloth an
“icon,” not a relic — an
important distinction.
“This image, impressed
upon the cloth, speaks to
A nun pours oil in front of the Shroud of Turin
that went on display for a special TV appearance, at the Turin cathedral, Italy, Saturday.
our heart and moves us to
“This disfigured face
climb the hill of Calvary, to resembles all those faces of
look upon the wood of the men and women marred
Cross, and to immerse our- by a life which does not
selves in the eloquent respect their dignity, by
silence of love,” he said.
war and violence which
ASSOCIATED PRESS
afflict the weakest,” he
said. “And yet, at the same
time, the face in the
Shroud conveys a great
peace; this tortured body
expresses a sovereign
majesty.”
Many experts stand by
carbon-dating of scraps of
the cloth that date it to the
13th or 14th century.
However, some have suggested the dating results
might have been skewed
by contamination and
have called for a larger
sample to be analyzed.
The Vatican has tiptoed
around just what the cloth
is, calling it a powerful
symbol of Christ’s suffering while making no claim
to its authenticity.
The 14-foot-long, 3.5(See SHROUD, Page A-6)
Author returns
to area with new
military history
New York Times bestselling author and
Montoursville native
Adam Makos will appear
at the Otto Bookstore on
Friday.
E
Lifestyle
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Brett D. Shadle, of
Elizabethville, Dauphin County, always wanted to
be a member of the Navy’s most elite special forces
unit. A year after enlisting, he made it happen and
went on to become a highly decorated member of
the Navy’s famed SEAL Team 6.
U.S. military officials confirmed Saturday that
Shadle, a 31-year-old special warfare operator
chief, died Thursday when he and another SEAL
collided in midair during a parachute training exercise over the rugged desert of southern Arizona.
Shadle was taken to University of Arizona
Medical Center in Tucson, where he was pronounced dead.
Shadle and a fellow SEAL were practicing “routine military free-fall training” when the accident
occurred Thursday afternoon, said U.S. Special
Operations Command spokesman Kenneth
McGraw.
Family members said Shadle was stationed in
Virginia, was married and had a 2-year-old son and
4-year-old daughter.
Work on intersection
at mercy of weather
By MARK MARONEY
[email protected]
A city intersection will not be paved until the
middle of April, according to a spokesman for the
Williamsport
Municipal
Water Authority. Meanwhile,
motorists will continue to deal
with rough streets created by
a water main replacement
project that continues to drag
on months after it began.
Mother Nature plays a key role in the delay of
the permanent paving at West Third and Arch
streets, said Chuck Hauser, authority director of
engineering.
Plants that manufacture asphalt can’t start to
make it until it gets warmer, he said.
Potholes that were dug up by snowplow trucks
(See WORK, Page A-3
INSIDE
Deaths
Elizabeth
Lo uise
Bush
Dale J. Mattison
Barbara I Raup
John D. Raup
Good morning, Mary Heim.
Thank you for subscribing to the Sun-Gazette!
Visit our Web site at www.sungazette.com
... A-7
Classic Landers..................F-6
Crossword ..........................F-6
Editorial.............................A4/5
Horoscopes ........................F-6
Lifestye .............................E1/8
Support groups ..................E-6
Television............................B-4
Weather..............................A-8
A-6
Williamsport Sun-Gazette, Sunday, March 31, 2013
From Page A-1
Area family educates would-be farmers
(From Page A-1)
romp around and play in
groups. Running and wildly kicking their back legs
every so often, the lambs
stopped to bleat for their
mothers, then went back
to playing again.
“They are showing off
for you,” Caroline said.
Owens Farm sits atop
rolling hills off of a rural
road in the countryside
between Sunbury and
Danville.
Its scenery is broken up
by small patches of wooded
areas, but the barns and
farmhouse overlook the
pastures where the family
— husband Dave, Caroline
their
children,
and
Melissa, 14; Kevin, 16; and
Kyle, 18 — work the farm
all year long.
Katahdin
Grass-fed
hair sheep, Coopworth
sheep, Tamworth piglets,
chickens, a few horses,
cows, border collies and a
few barn cats call the farm
home, too.
In 1992, the Owenses
lived in New Hampshire
on a small farm. They
moved to Pennsylvania in
2008.
“It was just so successful, we outgrew the 13-acre
farm,” Caroline said.
Caroline always had
been involved with agriculture, even during her high
school years. She worked
as a vocational agriculture
teacher and received
degrees from Cornell
University and Boston
University.
Dave, she said, became
interested in an independent lifestyle through alternative methods of agriculture. He now works as a
engineer and runs his own
database and software
consulting business. He
also is a beekeeper on the
farm.
After the two started
the
farm
in
New
Hampshire and began
raising their own food and
animals for meat, neighbors became interested.
“They would come to us
and say, ‘If you are raising
a pig, could you raise one
for me and (if there are)
any extra lambs, I would
like to buy one,’” Caroline
said.
Animals at Owens
Farm are raised with no
chemicals, no growth hormones and are grass-fed.
Raising non-commercial foods isn’t the only
thing done at the farm.
The Owenses have a
drive to educate those who
want to learn what life is
like on a real, working
farm.
“It’s the sheep camps,
adopt-a-sheep program
and lambing slumber parties ... anything we can do
to show the people what
goes on behind the scenes,”
she said.
The educational aspect
evolved for the Owenses
while they were homeschooling their children
back
on
the
New
Hampshire farm.
Groups in the homeschooling
community
began to ask for tours.
Caroline said it made
sense to begin educational
tours for others, too.
For instance, during
lambing season in the late
winter weeks of February
and the beginning of
March, the farm holds
Lambing-Time Slumber
Parties.
Participants come to
the farm, check for newborns at night and in the
early morning and even
watch them being born.
They help care for the new
lambs and their mothers
and sleep in the barn.
“They see the whole
gamut from taking care of
the lambs and helping
when there is trouble,” she
said, “even just walking
through a flock of sleeping
sheep. It’s not all about the
learning — some of it is
about a unique experience.”
Sheep Camp, a handson interactive learning
experience, is offered for
kids ages 7 to 12.
Each middle schoolaged participant gets his
or her own sheep for the
weeklong camp.
“The kids do a lot of
activities that, to the child,
is fun, but there is actually
Shroud of Turin goes back
on display at Vatican
in wake of new research
in with the border collie
and do foot trimming (the
children are invited).”
The sheep adopters get
hands-on experience helping out caring for the
sheep when they visit.
“Shearing, that is a biggie. They get to keep the
sheep’s wool and when the
sheep has a lamb, they get
an email saying, “Just had
twins! Come and visit,’ ”
she added.
Most of the farm visits
come from local families
that have adopted sheep,
but Caroline said there are
out-of-state residents who
also have adopted sheep.
“Everyone gets letters
once a month. It’s like a
sheepy penpal,” she said.
Public education also is
important to the family.
The farm hopes to show
where food comes from
and how it is raised there.
A
Build-Your-Own
Farm tour offers a selection of activities from
throughout the farm.
“From a personal standpoint, we feel like it brings
a lot of meaning to us to
pass on the knowledge (of
farming) to others that
would want to do it themselves,” she said. “(We are
happy to share) the awareness to the consumer and
for the little children to be
exposed to all of this, to
know where food comes
from, and (hoping) that
they are going to pass that
onto other generations.”
Owens Farm also gives
farmer-to-farmer workJESSICA WELSHANS/Sun-Gazetteshops, lambing clinics,
The lamb in front is a Coopworth sheep that provides wool. The lamb in sheep 101 and pasteurized
pork workshops.
back is a Katahdin hair sheep, which also is sheered for textiles.
“We are trying to help
career
choices,” people get started so more
learning
involved,” this is their first experi- and
ence with livestock,” she Caroline said.
Caroline said.
people will be successful in
The Adopt-A-Sheep pro- having small farms, and
The camps teach sub- said.
Such interactive educa- gram is a pretty unique (so) that small farms are
jects such as animal science and fiber arts. tion gives children the offering at Owens Farm. available to the conParticipants will weave, chance to experience a Families or individuals are sumers,” she said.
dye and spin the wool of farm lifestyle and to learn assigned a sheep and they
“We think its important
can follow the life of that to be transparent. People
their sheep or learn how it about themselves.
“At some point, all these specific sheep while it lives have their dentist, doctor,
digests foods with its four
kids are going to make on the farm.
stomachs.
auto mechanic and nowa“The sheep stays here days I would encourage
An obstacle course with decisions on what they
the sheep helps show how want to do with their life, and the family comes to them to have their farmto work with the animal career and hobbies. If the visit. We set up scheduled ers,” she said.
and “get inside its head.” kid thinks he is interested field trips when significant
Owens Farm also raises
“Kids who come to the in animals and determines things happen,” Caroline and sells meat and honey.
camp usually have not he really is, I hope that will said. “For example, if we
For more information,
grown up on farms and further him on his path are going to bring them all see www.owensfarm.com.
OBITUARY
Elizabeth Louise Bush
(From Page A-1)
foot-wide cloth is kept in a climate-controlled case in
Turin’s cathedral, but is rarely open to the public. The last
time was in 2010 when more than 2 million people lined
up to pray before it and then-Pope Benedict XVI visited.
The latest display coincided with Holy Saturday, when
Catholics mark the period between Christ’s crucifixion on
Good Friday and his resurrection on Easter Sunday. A
few hundred people, many in wheelchairs, were invited
inside the cathedral for the service presided over by
Turin’s archbishop. It was only the second time the
shroud has gone on display specifically for a TV audience,
the Vatican said.
The display also coincided with the release of a book
based on new scientific tests on the shroud that
researchers say date the cloth to the 1st century.
The research in “The Mystery of the Shroud,” by Giulio
Fanti, of the University of Padua, and journalist Saverio
Gaeta, is based on chemical and mechanical tests on
fibers of material extracted for the carbon-dating
research. An article with the findings is expected to be
submitted for peer-review, news reports say.
Hugo Chavez’s legacy gains
religious glow in Venezuela
(From Page A-1)
Maduro, has led the way, repeatedly calling the late
president “the redeemer Christ of the Americas” and
describing Chavistas, including himself, as “apostles.”
Maduro went even further after Argentine Cardinal
Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis earlier this
month. Maduro said Chavez had advised Jesus Christ
in heaven that it was time for a South American pope.
That comes as Maduro’s government loops ads on
state TV comparing Chavez to sainted heroes such as
Bolivar and puts up countless banners around the capital emblazoned with Chavez’s image and the message
“From his hands sprouts the rain of life.”
“President Chavez is in heaven,” Maduro told a
March 16 rally in the poor Caracas neighborhood of
Catia. “I don’t have any doubt that if any man who
walked this earth did what was needed so that Christ
the redeemer would give him a seat at his side, it was
our redeemer liberator of the 21st century, the comandante Hugo Chavez.”
Chavistas such as Munoz have filled Venezuela with
murals, posters and other artwork showing Chavez in
holy poses surrounded by religious symbolism.
One poster on sale in downtown Caracas depicts
Chavez holding a shining gold cross in his hands beside
a quote from the Book of Joshua: “Comrade, be not
afraid. Neither be dismayed, for I Will be with you each
instant.”
Elizabeth
Louise
(Crooks)
Bush,
88,
Williamsport, passed into the arms of her God on
Thursday morning, March 28, 2013, just one day
before the Christian celebration of Good Friday.
She suffered a major stroke at home in the early
morning of Tuesday, March 20 and was taken to
the Williamsport Regional Medical Center, where
she spent the final week of her life. Her grieving
family was blessed by the fact that she rallied several times to converse with each one in an understandable way.
Born in Nashville, Tenn., on Dec. 21, 1924, she
moved to Williamsport with her father and mother, Oliver N. Crooks and Caroline (Murrey)
Crooks; and her brother and sister, William and
Caroline, all of whom predeceased her. In 1943,
she graduated from the Williamsport High School.
She went on to graduate from Hood College in
1947, with a degree that qualified her to teach
high school English.
However, her future husband, Alvin C. Bush,
renewed their acquaintance after he returned from
his service with the U.S. Navy during World War
II in the Pacific Theatre of Operations. That began
their 66 year love affair and led to their marriage
on June 21, 1947. They built a house on his parents’ Wyno Farms in Muncy Township and she
was his constant partner in private and public life.
Over the next ten years, they were blessed by the
birth of two boys and two girls: Charlie, Cindy,
Karen, and Michael. It was the exact family she
had hoped for.
While her children were developing, Elizabeth
served as the den mother of the local Cub Scout
Pack and she was elected as president of the
Pennsdale PTA. Later on she was active as a volunteer with the Girl Scouts. She also served on the
board of directors of the Williamsport Junior
League.
Afterward, she became the full-time manager of
the dairy and specialty store they opened on their
family’s farm after she completed a training course
at Penn State. At the same time, her community
interests were increasing with service on the
YWCA board, the United Fund board, and the
board of the Lycoming County Republican
Women’s Committee, with additional service as its
chaplain.
In succeeding years, she completed training and
qualified for her realtor’s license, working at that
profession for the next eight years. At the same
time, she found time to become the co-founder of
Project Impact at the Muncy State Prison, which
provided help for the inmates’ children. She served
on the board of the Lycoming County Realtors
Association, along with its state board. Elizabeth
also became a teacher of literacy and an
Ombudsman, who protected residents of nursing
homes.
Her community service was recognized by a
number of awards, including her name, paired
with her husband’s, in a star embedded in the floor
of the Community Arts Center’s lobby. Her image
is also included in the Community Mural across
from the Community Arts Center.
Elizabeth enjoyed spending summers at their
mountain cottage, which was a point of reunion for
the entire family. She was a nature lover and had
a remarkable ability to identify birds, flowers, and
other wildlife. She was a devoted Christian and
lived by her faith. She enjoyed spending time with
her bridge-playing friends, reading, and she had a
wonderful sense of humor, always making her
grandchildren laugh.
Surviving are her husband, Alvin C. Bush; her
four children: Charlie (Carmen), Cindy, Karen,
and Michael (Tera); a nephew in Texas, Joel
Stearns (Kim) and two daughters; nine grandchildren: Tracey, Jacqueline, Laura, Casey, Jesse,
Nathaniel (who is predeceased), Rachel,
Catherine, Brian, and Madeline; and seven greatgrandchildren.
Friends of Elizabeth are invited to her Life
Celebration service at 12 p.m. Monday, April 1, at
the Pine Street United Methodist Church, 441
Pine St. Her family will receive friends from 11
a.m. to 12 p.m. Burial service will follow at Twin
Hills Memorial Cemetery.
In lieu of flowers, her family will be grateful for
contributions made in her name to the Alvin Bush
Family Scholarship at Pennsylvania College of
Technology.
Arrangements are being handled by the James
C. Maneval Funeral Home, Ltd. “A Life
Celebration Home” 500 W. Fourth St.,
Williamsport.
To share your fondest memory of Elizabeth visit
www.lifecelebration.com
Funeral directors are responsible for obituaries and corrections.
MORE DEATHS ON PAGE A-7