by Tena Starr

copyright the Chronicle 4-3-13

NEWPORT — Phil White, IROC’s most visible and stubborn defender, wasn’t particularly anxious to talk about the place on Monday morning.  The night before he’d succumbed to what was pretty much inevitable by then.

Following IROC’s last event — the home show on Sunday — he’d dropped off the keys in a deposit box for Community National Bank, its new owner.  If he was sad, he didn’t admit it.  Still, it was clear enough that it was an emotional parting, although Mr. White is not yet ready to write the recreational facility’s obituary.

IROC had until April 1 to come up with over $1-million or face foreclosure.  Mr. White’s last-ditch efforts to get a time extension or somehow raise the money fell short, and IROC closed for good Sunday afternoon.

Mr. White continues to hold out hope that the facility will reopen with a new owner.  In the course of an interview he suggested that foreclosure might just be a necessary phase to get the facility out from under its debilitating debt.

“I don’t like to give up until there is nothing else that can be done,” he said.  “Until the facility is sold as a garage, or knocked down, it’s still available to be bought.  I’m hoping that one or more individuals will buy it.  The bank hasn’t drained the pool yet,” he added hopefully.

Steve Marsh, president and CEO of Community National Bank, said it’s likely to be a while before the bank drains the pool.  The next step for the bank is to go back to court and make matters official, he said.  Then, at some point, the bank will put the facility up for sale.

IROC, which has not made mortgage payments in months, owes over $1-million, Mr. Marsh said, and the last time an appraisal was done the facility was not worth that.  In this case, the bank’s loss, even if it sells the place for less than what’s owed, will be no more than 10 percent because the loan was guaranteed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development, which would limit the bank’s losses on what was a risky undertaking.

“When this whole thing started it was a thin deal to start with, but we felt it was in the best interests of the community to have it,” Mr. Marsh said.  “That’s why we financed it when others wouldn’t.  “Our hope is that it will be sold to someone who will continue its current use.”

So far no one has showed up with a checkbook, he said.  “There are no potential buyers that I’m aware of.”

Mr. White, who is a lawyer by profession, got involved with IROC back in 2006 when he was asked to take over as chairman of the board.

He said he was much impressed with the arena and thought it was a valuable community asset.

That arena was originally supposed to be an ice rink.  The fact that it isn’t continues to rankle some, who had hoped, among other things, to see North Country Union High School’s hockey program move from the ice rink in Stanstead, Quebec, to Derby.  These days, North Country students play at Jay Peak.

IROC never did turn into a place for people to skate, and its big central arena has been used primarily for events, such as the Northeast Kingdom History Fair and the North Country Chamber of Commerce Home Show, both held last week.

“I don’t think that what I started doing was much different from what a lot of people do,” Mr. White said about his efforts to help the struggling facility stay afloat.  Lots of people donate time to causes, he said, and there are many people who have done more to save IROC from oblivion than he has.

One day, he’d scheduled an 11 a.m. appointment with the bank to turn over the keys.  An hour and a half before the meeting, Carl and Susan Taylor donated $100,000, he said, and IROC stayed open.

The recreational facility was losing money every year and was about $3-million in debt when Mr. White inherited chairmanship of the board.  “I feel pretty good about half of that getting taken care of,” he said about the debt.

The bank, he said, has been about as patient as it could be.  “Community National Bank has been terrific to work with.  They’ve given us lots of options and as much time as we could conceivably ask for.  I think we tried everything, and we just couldn’t get that debt paid off.”

As chairman of the board, Mr. White began to take a closer look at the facility and its potential uses, as well as possible money makers.

“I started seeing the value of IROC as a fitness center,” he said.  “We really opened it up to low-income folks and started the youth initiative so kids could come for free.  That was inspiring.”

Ten years ago, people were talking about the need for kids to have a place to go, Mr. White said.  “Then there it was.”

One night, at IROC, he found every basketball court filled with teenagers — 40 or 50 of them all playing basketball without benefit of adults organizing a special event.

“They’d just said let’s go hang out at IROC,” Mr. White said.  “That was the vision.  I felt good that more of that was happening.”

But it didn’t pay the bills.

“I think we realized early on that IROC needed to be both an indoor and an outdoor recreation facility,” Mr. White said.  “And also that we needed to get out of debt.”

Towards that end, he organized the Tour de Kingdom, a one- to five-day recreational and cycling event that is just what its name suggests — a tour of the Kingdom.  The first year, 50 locals participated.  The second year, people from out of the area attended, as well, and said the event was even better than The Prouty, a cycling event organized by Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center that raised over $2-million in 2008.

“I figured we didn’t need to raise that kind of money, but special events could be the key to long-term success,” Mr. White said.

Those special events have grown to the point where, this year — and there will be a this year for special events — 25 days of running, biking, swimming and kayaking are planned.  Special events include the Dandelion Run, the Tour de Kingdom, the Kingdom Triathlon, and the Kingdom Swim, which is now a world championship event.

The success of special events and ever increasing participation “had its own motivational force on me,” Mr. White said, explaining why he tried so valiantly to keep IROC open.  “And then there’s this trial lawyer in me that doesn’t like to lose.”

Special events will continue, Mr. White said.   “We’ll find a home, I’m sure.  We can live off the land.  We have four or five hundred people signed up for them, and I don’t think we’ll just tell them to go home.  They’re of incredible value to the community and worth running with or without IROC.”

Special events raised about $200,000 a year, and donations from towns amounted to roughly $3,200 this year, Mr. White said.  “And I think, over time, that would continue to grow.”

Strategy for saving IROC from foreclosure included cutting expenses as well as raising money.  Solar panels decreased the propane bill by $3,000 to $3,500 a year, and payroll was basically halved to about $200,000 a year from a little more than $400,000 in 2006, Mr. White said.  He said that, in 2008, about $700,000 had been pledged to the organization, but those pledges evaporated by December of that year as the economy tanked.

“I think if we had had the time and were out of debt and not facing imminent foreclosure, we estimated it could run.”

IROC benefitted from about $50,000 to $75,000 a year in donations, Mr. White said, and there were more lined up to contribute an ongoing, if not huge, base of contributions.

“So there is a model on which it could be run.  It wasn’t just big donations.  There were hundreds, even thousands, who donated what they could.  It could well be the doors are closed on that as a recreation center for good.  It could also be a phase that was necessary to deal with the debt.  What we estimate is that, without the debt and property taxes, we can run it.”

Mr. White said he has no idea why IROC failed so spectacularly in its first years, or why the facility never became self-sustaining.  Perhaps, it was all just based on hope to start with — hope that the community would support it, and it would somehow work out, he said.

What he saw in terms of the facility’s use, however, inspired him to devote his skill set to ramping up its activities and membership, and to try, against all odds, to keep going.

“What I saw was increasing use of IROC by all aspects of the community,” Mr. White said.  “Seniors complained about kids splashing in the water fountains, and kids complained about seniors walking too slow on the walking track.”

In 2011-2012, about 3,500 adults had signed up for some kind of membership, Mr. White said.  And at least an equal number of young people were using the facility for free.  When all types of memberships and passes were added up, the total indicated that about 20 to 25 percent of the people in the area were using IROC, he said.

“I feel there’s an awful lot of good that’s come out of the facility,’ he said.  “I’d see people losing 50 to 100 pounds, people whose lives were changed.  Kids had a place to play.  A day doesn’t go by when I don’t see something that says, this is why I’m doing it.”

contact Tena Starr at tena@bartonchronicle.com

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Bill Stenger addresses the Jay Town Meeting about changes at Jay Peak. Photo by Bethany M. Dunbar

copyright the Chronicle 3-20-13

by Tena Starr

The Northeast Kingdom has long been Vermont’s Cinderella stepchild — pretty and poor.  It’s the region with the consistently highest unemployment rates, lower than average wages, arguably best scenery, and a culture all its own that it’s fiercely clung to.

For decades, it’s cried out for development, and jobs.  And it seems likely it’s about to finally get them.

As everyone knows by now, Bill Stenger, Jay Peak Resort’s CEO, plans to invest millions in the region, from Jay Peak to Burke Mountain, with Newport in between.  And a Walmart is supposedly coming to the area.

Mr. Stenger has said his investments will create 10,000 jobs, of which between 1,500 and 2,000 will be in Orleans County.   And the Walmart that some have so yearned for would supposedly provide about 300 more in Vermont.

But what effect will all that development really have on working people in the Northeast Kingdom?

Jobs are one certain way to measure economic success, and in theory the more jobs the better.   At the moment, the Northeast Kingdom economy seems to be holding its own, although it has undergone much change in recent decades, primarily in a gradual shift away from agriculture and forestry.

According to the Vermont Labor Department, the Newport area’s unemployment rate was 8.2 percent in January, down from 9.5 percent in January of 2012.  However, that drop in the jobless rate was largely due to a reduction in the size of the workforce rather than the number of people without jobs.

“The unemployment rate didn’t come down because more people were working; over 2,000 jobless workers simply left the labor force,” says a report issued by the Public Assets Institute on Monday.  The report is talking about the state as a whole.

“People drop out of the labor force when they get discouraged,” said Paul Cillo, president and executive director of the Public Assets Institute, which looks at financial data and jobs in Vermont with an eye toward developing policy.

“What we’re seeing is slow, steady growth in the Vermont economy,” Mr. Cillo said.   “But we haven’t seen that it’s doing much for Vermont workers.”

Mr. Cillo’s organization concerns itself not only with jobs, but also with wages — another economic measure.  He said that while a tight job market theoretically drives up wages, in practice there has been no evidence of that for some years.

According to the state’s latest livable wage report, which was issued in January, a living wage in Vermont is $12.48 an hour.  That figure, however, is considered to be half what it would take to run a childless household.  In other words, the assumption is that $12.48 per hour is a livable wage if there is another person in the home also making at least that amount.

“The Vermont Livable Wage is defined in statute as the hourly wage required for a full-time worker to pay for one-half of the basic needs budget for a two-person household with no children and employer-assisted health insurance, averaged for both urban and rural areas,” says the report, which is prepared by the Vermont Legislative Joint Fiscal Office.

“The livable wage is different from the wage for a single person because it accounts for the economies achieved by multiple-person households,” the report says.  “This figure does not, however, include all potential household expenses because it is for families without children.”

The livable wage for a rural single person is $15.74, according to the report.  For a single parent with one child, it’s $23.41; for a single parent with two children, it’s $28.03.  For a household of two adults with two children and one wage earner, it’s $30.12; and for a home with two adult workers and two children, it’s $18.72.

The urban livable wage differs by a few cents.

The most recent figures available from the U.S. Department of Labor, from the fourth quarter of 2011, show an average weekly wage in Orleans County of $668 ($16.70 an hour for a 40-hour week) and $809 ($20.23 an hour) for Vermont as a whole.

Mr. Cillo said the Public Assets Institute has been considering what other factors would be indicators of the economy, particularly in the Northeast Kingdom.

The Northeast Kingdom economy is slightly different from that of other parts of the state, he said.  In general, Vermont has transitioned from farming to more of an income-based economy.  That matters, he said, because when you’re on a farm big expenses like childcare tend to not be an issue, since the family is at home.

“It’s a different way of life, and I think the Northeast Kingdom tends to have more people still living that kind of lifestyle,” Mr. Cillo said.  “As soon as people leave the farm they have child care costs, clothing — those things cost money.  I think that makes it hard to use statistics to understand the economy of the Northeast Kingdom.  We have all these numbers, but they don’t really tell the story.”

It’s encouraging that agriculture is experiencing something of a revival in the Northeast Kingdom with young entrepreneurial farmers finding ways to prosper, Mr. Cillo said.

Steve Patterson, executive director of the Northeastern Vermont Development Association (NVDA), is also encouraged, both by successful agricultural models, the revival of Hardwick around local food and agricultural ventures, and by Mr. Stenger’s development plans for Orleans and Caledonia counties.  That development will occur rapidly but not all at once, he said.

The 10,000 jobs figure that’s been tossed around is perhaps misleading, Mr. Patterson said.  That does not necessarily mean there will be 10,000 new, permanent jobs, he said.   Some, such as construction, will be temporary, that being the nature of construction work.  Others will be created indirectly.  For instance, he said he gets at least one phone call a week from someone who would like to supply Jay Peak with something or other.

“The big issue is the indirect impact this will have,” Mr. Patterson said.  “It’s sort of like Hardwick, success breeds success.”

“Newport is just exploding with opportunity,” he said.  “The spinoff from Burke hopefully will generate more interest in the St. J area as well.”

Mr. Patterson said that he and members of the group that is trying to evaluate and meet labor force needs are working on salary schedules for the jobs that Mr. Stenger’s development will provide.

Penne Ciaraldi, who works for Community College of Vermont and is a member of the workforce group, said that, generally, wages for those employed by the developments look to be decent, although a full profile hasn’t been worked up.

“Construction will be a big one,” she said about future demand for jobs.

By some estimates, about 5,000 construction jobs will be created.

According to the Vermont Labor Department, the average wage of a construction manager in 2011 (the latest figures available) was $39.25.   A construction laborer’s average wage was $14.51; a carpenter’s, $20.08.   Plumbers averaged $20.54, and electricians $19.28.

On the other end of the scale, Walmart’s wages are nothing to write home about.  Walmart itself says its average national wage for a full-time employee is $12.40.

However, that does not account for its part-time employees.  CNN says a typical Walmart employee is paid $22,000 a year, just below the federal poverty line for a family of four.

Glassdoor, an online site that looks at wages and working conditions, says an average Walmart sales associate earns $8.84 an hour and a cashier earns $8.45.

The hourly wage for a Vermont worker averaged out to $16.36, according to the state’s labor department.  The mean was $20.71.

Not surprisingly, the highest wages are in the medical professions, with anesthesiologists having an average hourly rate of $117 and surgeons $104.   The rate for physicians was $79; for psychiatrists, $65; and for general practitioners, $75.58.

The average Vermont wage for food preparation and serving related occupations was $11.99; for waiters and waitresses, $12.58; for maids and housekeeping cleaners, $10.83; amusement and recreation attendants, $9.88; cashiers, $10; retail salespersons $12.42; office and administrative support occupations $16.03; dishwashers, $9.60; hotel, motel and resort desk clerks $11.77; secretaries and administrative assistants (except legal, medical and executive) $14.44.

According to Mr. Stenger’s figures, 260 employees will be needed for the new Marina Hotel in Newport.  Of those, 60 are needed for retail; 50 for administration; 75 for food and beverage service; 25 for operations; and 50 for hotel operations.  Hiring would start in October of 2015.

At Burke Mountain, two hotels are scheduled to open in November of 2014.  They would employ 25 people in administration and sales; 75 in food and beverage services; 100 in operations; and 25 in maintenance.  Two more hotels, set to open the following year, would employ the same number of people in approximately the same professions.

Back at Jay, the Stateside Hotel is expected to employ 225 people and open in December of 2013.  A new medical facility at Jay would hire four administrators, five registered nurses, and three doctors.

At AnC Bio in Newport, 250 people are expected to be hired.  — 34 percent in manufacturing, 33 percent in research, and 33 percent described as “masters +.”  The facility’s “clean room” is planning to hire another 250 employees, 20 percent in administration, and the remaining 80 percent in jobs requiring higher education.

Menck Windows in Newport plans to hire ten people in administration, five in management, and 125 in manufacturing.

While there is some concern that the Northeast Kingdom might end up with an economy that relies heavily on service jobs, which tend to be low paying, Mr. Cillo said that not all service jobs are dead ends.

“Some service jobs are fine,” he said.  “You just don’t want to have a disproportionate number of them.”

contact Tena Starr at tena@bartonchronicle.com

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Photo by Richard Creaser

by Richard Creaser

copyright the Chronicle 3-4-2013

NEWPORT CENTER — A missing Newport Center man’s body was found Monday afternoon by State Police divers in Lake Memphremagog.  Vermont State Police Lieutenant Kirk Cooper said he was 53-year-old Jacques LeBlanc.

According to the State Police, Mr. LeBlanc broke through the ice at approximately 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 2.  Mr. LeBlanc was in the process of moving an ice shanty while using a tractor when he broke through.  While the exact cause of the accident has not yet been determined the presence of a nearly one-third of a mile long pressure crack appears to have been a contributing factor.

Lieutenant Kirk Cooper of the Vermont State Police. Photo by Richard Creaser

The State Police estimate the depth of the water at the accident site as between 25 feet and 30 feet.  Prior to the entry of divers the State Police had operated a remote operated vehicle in the hopes of finding the victim, Sergeant Sean Selby reported.

The State Police dive team is contending with difficult conditions caused by a combination of low light and heavy sedimentation in the water, Lieutenant Cooper reported.  The divers are tethered to ropes to help guide them back to the opening that rescuers have cut through the ice, Sergeant Selby said.

“The safety of the dive team is a top priority,” Sergeant Selby said.

Newport Center volunteer firefighter Pat Corkins said that pressure cracks along the lake have been the cause of several other breakthroughs both this season as well as in the past.  Mr. Corkins was one of the Newport Center Fire Department members assisting at the site on Monday morning.

“When the ice is buckling like that you can bet there’s thin ice or open water around it,” Mr. Corkins said.  “You need to stay as far away from those cracks as you can, at least a hundred feet or more.  But you can’t always see where the cracks are especially in the dark or during whiteout conditions like you have today.”

Lake ice conditions can vary greatly from one location to the next, Lieutenant Cooper said.  That can make navigating the lake with a vehicle treacherous even for experienced ice fishermen, he said.

“The safest thing to do is to not drive on the ice at all,” Lieutenant Cooper said.  “You don’t really know the depth of the ice until you drill through it.”

Contact Richard Creaser at nek_scribbler@hotmail.com

by Paul Lefebvre

Phil White, left, and Chris Braithwaite in Vermont Superior Court. Photo by Paul Lefebvre

copyright the Chronicle 2-27-2013

Two months after it was filed, Chronicle publisher Chris Braithwaite has prevailed in his suit against the utility and wind developer Green Mountain Power (GMP).

In an announcement Tuesday, Mr. Braithwaite said GMP has agreed to pay the legal fees that he incurred fighting a criminal charge of unlawful trespass brought against him while covering a wind protest as a reporter on Lowell Mountain in December 2011.

GMP will pay Mr. Braithwaite $22,500, the amount requested by his attorney, Philip White of Newport.

Mr. Braithwaite called the settlement “a fair resolution of this matter,” in a press release Tuesday.

In his statement, Mr. Braithwaite also said he had learned that David Coriell, the GMP agent at the mountain, was acting in good faith when he instructed police to arrest him for trespass.

Information discovered by Mr. White indicated that Mr. Coriell had failed to carry out GMP’s instructions that reporters covering the protests should not be arrested.

When Mr. White brought that evidence to light, Judge Howard VanBenthuysen threw the charge out and later dismissed with prejudice, which barred the state’s attorney from refilling it.

Once the criminal case was dismissed, Mr. Braithwaite sued the utility company.

GMP spokeswoman Dorothy Schnure said Tuesday that the company settled despite its belief it would prevail in court on the basis of the facts and law.

“We realized the settlement would be in the best interests of our customers,” she said, adding that GMP could have spent up to $100,000 in litigation.

“That would not have benefited our customers.”

Mr. White praised Mr. Braithwaite in a written statement Tuesday.

“I’m glad Chris stood up for the press, and for his ability to cover this story,” he wrote.  “I’m also glad that GMP had the wisdom and the foresight to settle this civil case promptly.”

contact Paul Lefebvre at paul@bartonchronicle.com

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Maureen Fountain, whose husband was killed in a car accident by an addict, gave a heartfelt speech about the need for the treatment programs. Photo by Joseph Gresser

by Joseph Gresser

copyright the Chronicle 2-20-2013

NEWPORT — An issue that aldermen thought they had settled more than seven years ago returned Monday night and reawakened many of the old passions.  Some neighbors of the Bay Area Addiction Research and Treatment (BAART) clinic on Union Street strongly opposed allowing methadone to be dispensed at the site, and Aldermen John Wilson and Robert Baraw seemed dubious, at best, about the proposal.

Others, including Mayor Paul Monette and former Newport Police Chief Paul Duquette, strongly supported the plan to centralize BAART’s services.  The most moving statement was given by Maureen Fountain, who told how her husband and two other men were killed in a car accident when a heroin addict fell asleep at the wheel and crashed into their car.  Ms. Fountain said her experience makes her favor the BAART plan.

Alan Aiken of BAART told the city council that recent work on Coventry Street has made that street unsafe for patients who walk to the present treatment site.  BAART dispenses methadone from a van parked at the city’s recycling center just off Coventry Street, and Mr. Aiken said that patients who walk to get treatment are at risk of being struck by fast-moving traffic.

He suggested that it would make more sense to begin providing methadone to clients at the organization’s clinic on Union Street.  During the course of the discussion, Mr. Aiken pointed out that he had come to the council to let them know of his plans, not to ask permission.

When it opened, he noted, the clinic was granted a permit by the planning commission to operate as a clinic.  Alderman Denis Chenette, who served for many years on that commission, agreed with Mr. Aiken’s interpretation of the rules.

Some of those who questioned the move pointed to a recent, unsuccessful, attempt by an unknown gunman to rob the Union Street clinic of its methadone supply.  One woman, who declined to give her name to the press, said she has kept her doors locked for the seven years the clinic has been open and has been especially vigilant since the robbery attempt on January 23.

When the aldermen gave permission for BAART to set up in Newport seven and a half years ago, neighbors of the Union Street clinic vehemently objected to having methadone dispensed there.  As a compromise, BAART agreed to set up a mobile clinic early each morning at the Coventry Street site.

Mr. Aiken argued that the current situation has no advantages.  All BAART patients have to come to Union Street at least once a month for counseling and evaluation, he said, and there have been no complaints by neighbors since the clinic opened its doors.

He said that when construction on Coventry Street prevented access to the recycling center, methadone treatment was moved temporarily to Union Street without any complaints from neighbors.

The mobile dispensary, he said, was originally conceived as a unit that could travel around Orleans County treating addicts in several towns, but it was quickly discovered that people in treatment tend to have jobs and are not able to leave work in the middle of the day to get a dose of methadone.

When the clinic opened, Mr. Aiken said, most of the people it treated were heroin addicts.  Today 90 to 95 percent are seeking help for addiction to prescription drugs, he said.

In supporting the idea of moving the dispensary to Union Street Mr. Duquette picked up on Mr. Aiken’s description of the clinic’s clientele.

“These people are not lepers, they don’t have a second head coming out of their backs,” he said.  “You’d be surprised.”

He said combining all the services in one place is just common sense.

Mr. Wilson said he is upset that Mr. Aiken is seeking to change a situation that he thought has worked well over the past seven and a half years.  If there is now a problem with pedestrian safety, BAART should have come to the council looking for better lighting on the road, or a new sidewalk.

If neither of those solutions could be arranged, he asked, why had BAART not looked for a new home away from a residential area?

Craig Monfette, who said he operates a day care center not far from the clinic, agreed.  He said there are four day care centers and two schools in the neighborhood.  He reminded council members and Mr. Aiken of the outcry from the neighborhood when dispensing on Union Street was first proposed.

“We got everyone out,” he said.  “We can do it again.”

He said he and his neighbors were disturbed by the robbery attempt and said that a determined person could overcome any precautions the clinic might put in place.

“These are our security concerns.” Mr. Monfette said.  “They haven’t changed.  They never will.”

Phil Laramee, a neighbor, seconded Mr. Monfette’s concerns.  He said it was lucky that the receptionist at BAART was able to “BS” the gunman into believing there were no drugs at the clinic.

Cathy Dubois said Mr. Laramee was incorrect about what happened at the clinic.  She said she was the person who faced the gunman.

“I didn’t BS him,” she said.  “I told the truth, that I didn’t have access to any methadone.”

Ms. Dubois said that new security measures that will be part of an already planned renovation of the clinic would have kept the robber from leaving the clinic, had he even been able to get in.

These would include a panic button, she said, that would summon police “in a heartbeat.”

Others pointed out that there have been robberies at North Country Hospital, and the Cumberland Farms store has been held up seven times, without calls for restricting mini-marts in residential neighborhoods.

Mayor Monette said he changed his mind about moving the clinic a month and a half ago.  For the seven years of its existence, he said, “I was dead set against” dispensing on Union Street.

Recent visits to the van and to the clinic led him to believe that it would be more efficient to have the whole program in one place “like a pharmacy.”

Treading carefully to avoid identifying any of the program’s participants, Mr. Monette said, “they are people gainfully employed working in the community and paying taxes.”

Ms. Fountain told a hushed room that her support for the clinic came directly from her own experiences.  She said the man who killed her husband had taken a large amount of heroin the day before the accident.

He went to a clinic in Burlington, she said, and was given a dose of methadone, but was allowed to drive away in violation of proper practice.

She said she was encouraged to have a face-to-face meeting with the man by the Department of Corrections and despite her trepidations, did so.  She was told not to expect much response from the man, Ms. Fountain said, but the two spoke for four hours.

She said she maintained a relationship with the man over the years, but after nine and a half years, she said, “I blew up.”

“I told him, ‘You killed three men, destroyed three families,’ and that he needed to get help,” Ms. Fountain said.  “Miracle of miracles, he did.”

Ms. Fountain said the man has been in treatment for a year and a half.  She said she could tell that it had been successful.  “He was a different person.”

She said the man has been released on probation.  Should he get in trouble, she said, the police would call her immediately.  So far, she said, there have been no calls.

“You have to stand up and look at it as a public health issue,” Ms. Fountain said.  “They need your support.  They’re challenged every single day.”

Ms. Fountain said that after her husband’s death she promised herself that she would take every opportunity to keep this from ever happening again.

“I’m not talking as a medical person,” Ms. Fountain said, “I’m speaking as a widow.”

contact Joseph Gresser at joseph@bartonchronicle.com