Traverse City Record-Eagle

Opinion

June 11, 2012

Cheers: 06/11/2012

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  • To Jake Melvin, a seventh-grader at Traverse City West Middle School who is battling a rare form of cancer with the help of parents Steve and Linda Melvin, friends, classmates and school employees who are providing moral support and financial help to defray costs of travel and treatment at DeVos Children's Hospital in Grand Rapids. As of last week, about $3,400 had been raised by a bake sale, candy sales at ball games, a Jog for Jake and a "Jake-A-Palooza" spaghetti dinner organized by students and staff at Long Lake Elementary School, where Linda teaches and Jake was a student.
  • To Addiction Treatment Services for resuming Phoenix Hall, a short-term, residential treatment program for women in Traverse City. The re-opening allows ATS to serve more women and also provide therapy geared to their recovery. In 2011, ATS served 346 people, including 98 women, in its program. Ninety percent came from Grand Traverse, Antrim and Leelanau counties.
  • To local YMCA philanthropist Robert Foster of Frankfort, who died in a boating accident near Kenora, Ontario, while fishing June 2 along the rocky coast of Lake of the Woods, a large inland lake bordering northern Minnesota. Foster, 71, was president and CEO of West Michigan Bank & Trust from 1987 to 2006 when he retired. He and his wife, Phyllis, anonymously pledged $2 million for the new Grand Traverse Bay YMCA if the community could raise $4 million by the end of 2011. The YMCA announced in January that it had met its $17 million goal to build a center on Silver Lake Road in Garfield Township.
  • To the late Matthew Hazelwood, who conducted the Interlochen Arts Academy Orchestra from 1993 to 2008. He died at age 57 last week in Bogota, Columbia, where he was artistic director of a youth orchestra that is part of the arts education program for nearly 50,000 young musicians in over 135 centers across the country. Hazelwood also was music director and conductor of the professional Great Lakes Chamber Orchestra in Petoskey that draws musicians from all over northern Michigan.
  • To the region's thousands of high school graduates. Congratulations.
  • To Don Cunkle for the June 2 Recycle-A-Bicycle. The second annual sale of about 160 used bicycles brought in about $16,000 for Recycle-A-Bicycle. Sellers get 75 percent of the sale and Recycle-A-Bicycle receives 25 percent. Cunkle founded and is volunteer coordinator of the swap and program, which operates under the umbrella of TART Trails. Recycle-A-Bicycle also has collected, repaired and distributed more than 660 bicycles to the homeless and needy throughout the community since 2007.

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