By CHELSEA KATZ
(Clockwise from top left) Among a litany of events in 2015, Texas Shakespeare Festival celebrated its 30th anniversary season in June and July, the Kilgore Chamber of Commerce drew Great Texas Balloon Racers back to Kilgore in late July, Kilgore Fire Department hosted its 4th annual Special Abilities Family Fun Event Day, the East Texas Oilmens’ Chili Cook-off drew another 10,000-plus to Commerce Street in early November, East Texas Pipe Organ Festival hosted fans for a fifth year and the chamber drew a record crowd for the Mt. Kilgore Snow Hill Festival Nov. 22 NEWS HERALD ARCHIVE PHOTOS The past year s top 20 headlines ran the gamut of topics from the economy, education and lifesaving events to crime, emergencies and murder. Based on readership on the News Herald s website, the top 20 stories (found at kilgorenewsherald.com/ yearinreview/2015) will be highlighted along with other similar or associated stories. These are the stories which most piqued readers interest.
Kilgore Police Department Evidence Officer Angela Burch plays “Taps” during the local memorial for slain Harris County Deputy Darren Goforth in late August. Burch who plays regularly for Memorial Day, Veterans Day and other ceremonies was honored by the Kilgore Chamber of Commerce in November as the 2015 Citizen of the Year. Kilgore National Bank Executive Vice President Pam DeCeault was named First Lady of Kilgore in April. NEWS HERALD ARCHIVE PHOTOS The good news throughout the community included lifesaving acts from lifeguards and complete strangers, a celebration of a Kilgore tradition now working on its next 75 years and two girls who turned a once-sour situation into national fame. Crimes were a part of the year also, though, including murders in Gregg and Rusk Counties, a raid on a drug house, a criminal betrayed by his own smartphone and a young boy killed near his house.
(From left) Kilgore City Council member Merlyn Holmes, Kilgore Boys Baseball Association’s Danny Henry, Mayor Ronnie Spradlin, Mayor Pro Tem Harvey McClendon, City Council member Lori Weatherford and former Kilgore Economic Development Corporation Board President Ty Sharp break ground on the in-development baseball complex on Commerce Street in early October. NEWS HERALD ARCHIVE PHOTO Emergency situations took place throughout the city and counties, but a new emergency services district in Gregg County began its first year to help protect the area. Car wrecks, including some fatal, were also part of the year s stories.
Throughout the year law enforcement across the area and across the country helped locate missing people who had run away or been held captive. Public education and higher education had their own stories on topics ranging from state accountability scores and the future of Kilgore ISD s learning environment to new leadership at Kilgore College, its ongoing asbestos allegations and cuts to staff. Another aspect was the purchase and sale of Kilgore Heights Elementary School after months of negotiations between the district and college.
Dr. Brenda Kays Finally, the economy took a major toll on the city from declining sales tax, a continued downward trend in the oil and gas industry and additional tax burdens placed on citizens.
GOOD NEWS
One of the biggest stories of the year involved the quick actions of four young men, on duty as lifeguards at a private event at Kilgore City Pool, who saved the life of a 12-yearold boy in August. The boy was unresponsive when one of the lifeguards noticed the situation. The team sprung into action and helped resuscitate him.
According to one witness to the scene, When they got that little boy out of the pool he was blue, and they did not stop till that littler boy came back. Another pair of lifesavers started the year when they helped Verner Laird after he collapsed following aa heart attack at the Houston Street car wash in January. As one onlooker called 9-1- 1, another woman, Yolanda Chappell, performed CPR until emergency responders could arrive and help stabilize Laird and get him to the hospital. For more information on Laird, see page 1.
The four lifeguards and Chappell were honored by the City of Kilgore and the Kilgore Fire Department during a Kilgore City Council meeting in August for their swift response to save two lives. Although not in Kilgore, Zoey and Andria Green invited anyone from the area to visit their lemonade stand in Overton in June. The girls shut down their previous stand after the police chief in Overton and the city s code enforcement officer alerted them and their mother to permits typically required to sell lemonade and other food stuffs and to the fact the stand was in a potentially dangerous location at the bus stop due to its close proximity to the road. The story made national headlines and became a trending topic on Facebook for a short time, though it did not earn the City of Overton many fans. Although still without the permit, the Green sisters opened their stand again five days later offering the lemonade for free with a jar for donations a loophole the police chief suggested. The girls earned enough money about $800 to take their dad on a Father s Day trip to Splash Kingdom Waterpark and to set up two scholarship funds at Overton High School.
In other good news throughout the community and the year, the Overton Films-produced documentary Sweethearts of the Gridiron about the Kilgore College Rangerette earned nine awards from film festivals across the state and in Madrid, Spain, during its film festival circuit tour spanning most of the year. A private screening for the two original Rangerettes still living Doris Nyvall Snow and Gay Culp and their families took place before it returned to Kilgore for its premiere at Dodson Auditorium in October. In honors during the year, Pam DeCeault was named the First Lady of Kilgore during Beta Sigma Phi sorority s annual banquet in April. Then during Kilgore Chamber of Commerce s annual event in November, Kilgore Police Department evidence officer Angela Burch was awarded Citizen of the Year.
GOOD NEWS: EVENTS
Some of the year’s big happenings included:
Texas Two-Step benefiting Kilgore Boys & Girls Club and Kilgore Habitat for Humanity (January)
East Texas Treatment Center s Party in the Patch fundraiser (March)
KilGogh Arts Festival (March)
Texas Shakespeare Festival (May-July)
8280 fundraiser benefitting the victims of the earthquakes in Nepal (June)
Great Texas Balloon Race and Baseball, Balloons and Root Beer (July)
Kilgore Chamber of Commerce s Ladies Night Luau (August)
Special Abilities Family Fun Event – SAFFE – Day (September)
Kilgore College Rangerettes 75th anniversary performance (September)
Sweethearts of the Gridiron premiere (October)
United Fund s Doppelganger Dance (October)
East Texas Treatment Center s Oilman s Chili Cook-off (October)
East Texas Pipe Organ Festival (November)
Kilgore Chamber of Commerce s Mt. Kilgore Snow Hill Festival (November)
Mingle and Jingle (November)
Kilgore Chamber Christmas Parade (December)
United Fund s Wine Wonderland (December)
Jingle All the Way (December)
CRIME: MURDERS
Although no murders took place within the Kilgore city limits, some occurred nearby. Dustin Lynn Vanhalst was arrested in January as the sole suspect in the capital murder investigation launched after the death of John Cecil Jay Clements, Jr., in Rusk County. Emergency responders found Clements dead in his home after being dispatched and subsequently putting out a fire at the residence Jan. 15, 2015.
Justin Claude Deen, who helped point investigators toward Vanhalst, was arrested in August on a charge of tampering with physical evidence after Deen burned Vanhalst s clothes in a fire pit while Vanhalst took a shower hours after allegedly killed Clements. In November, Tommy Beason s body was found in Little Caney Creek in Liberty City, nearly one month after he had been reported missing by his family. Other unsolved murders include those of John Allen Franco and Paul Ray Jackson. Franco was killed in the Liberty City area of Gregg County in May shortly before police found him dead with a single gunshot wound to his head after responding to what first appeared as a car wreck. Jackson s death is also still a bit of a mystery as investigators continue to search for the person or people responsible for Jackson s death he was found dead on the ground outside a Liberty City residence in October.
The trial of Kilgore native Trey Sands accused killers moved forward but was pushed back throughout the year. Two of the three suspects accused of killing Kilgorenative Sands in 2014 in West Texas his body was found in the desert near Terlingua received first degree murder indictments from the Brewster County grand jury n February. Both entered not guilty pleas. The original murder indictment for the third suspect, Rhonda Joy Bloom, was dismissed in June and replaced with a charge of failure to report a felony.
The two men charged with first degree murder Keith Allen McWilliams and Charles Levi Morrow are set to stand trial in the early part of 2016.
CRIME: MISC
Closer to home, the only crime that resulted in a death within the Kilgore city limits in 2015 took place on a Sunday afternoon in August when Kyrsten Nicole Mc- Carty allegedly hit Robert Jack Poppi Moorhead with her van while the five-yearold was riding his push scooter on Florence Street, killing the Kindergartner. McCarty was arrested by Kilgore Police Department on a charge of accident involving death and was later indicted by the Gregg County grand jury in October. Dandre Orange was arrested in June following a drug investigation at an abandoned house that yielded six grams of crack cocaine, marijuana, a pistol and drug paraphernalia.
One crime brought some comic relief to readers as they learned how Michael Mc- Clure s cell phone led to his and Anita Richardson s arrest following an attempted robbery at the Zippy J s convenience store. Another noted aspect of the story was Mc- Clure s choice of weapon a BB gun. The rattling of the BBs inside helped tip off the clerk that the gun on the counter was not as dangerous as it first appeared.
EMERGENCIES
Car wrecks were not unusual during the year. One incident, in particular, occurred near Sabine High School when one minor fender bender in September turned into a series of four wrecks with one adult and one child critically injured, leaving two other children with non-life threatening injuries. A mom who had been standing outside her vehicle with a child in her arms following the first wreck was struck by another car in an ensuing wreck, resulting in severe injuries to her arm and head. The woman, who absorbed most of the impact, was airlifted to Trinity Mother Frances Hospital in Tyler while the child she was holding and two other school-age children older siblings of the child were transported by ambulance to Good Shepherd Medical Center in Longview. More recently a woman was killed after her car, while traveling southbound on Hwy. 259 Business, drifted into the northbound lane of traffic, colliding with a DISH Network van earlier in December shortly before the Christmas holiday.
To help with emergency situations in the unincorporated areas of Gregg County, 2015 marked the first year for the Gregg County Emergency Services District No. 2. The five-person board was appointed in January with its first official meeting coming a few months later. Recently, the commissioners approved its first capital purchase for the Sabine Fire Department.
COMING HOME
Three persons reported missing in 2015 two who ran away and one who was reportedly being held against her will were found unharmed. Samantha Strader, who disappeared from her stepmother s house and had been kept against her will in Upshur County in December 2014 was found safe in Greenville and reunited with her family in January.
Another happy reunion came for the Raymond family as Paiglynn Raymond returned home in time for Thanksgiving dinner
Raymond had run away almost exactly six months earlier when she left Sabine High School and caught a ride with a truck driver on Interstate 20. Although the teen had been in Dallas and Sherman for most of her time away, the cross-country search included reported sightings of the high school student in North Texas, Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico and even New York for a brief period. The year also brought the arrest of Christina Davison in February on drug charges during a traffic stop in Kentucky and her subsequent return to East Texas. Davison disappeared from her Kilgore apartment almost nine months earlier, hiding in Kentucky after fleeing a relationship she thought would end in her death. Davison s ex-common law husband, Craig Davison, had been under scrutiny after investigators named him a person of interest in what police thought was a homicide.
EDUCATION: KILGORE COLLEGE
Education also made the paper with multiple stories stemming from Kilgore College. One of the most-felt stories was the decimation of the college s staff. About 10 percent of the college s staff 38 positions was cut from the payroll either through retirement, layoffs or leaving vacant positions unfilled. The staff reductions came as the college found itself facing a deficit of a little less than $1 million even after eliminating some non-salary and nonpersonnel items. The cuts included the five maintenance staff members remaining on the college s payroll at the end of the 2014-2015 academic year.
Those employees were cut, along with the maintenance department, when it was outsourced to SSC Service Solutions, which also took over the already-outsourced custodial and grounds keeping services. All former employees were reportedly given an opportunity to continue working at the college through SSC. Former KC Physical Plant Coordinator Dalton Smith was also the lead accuser in the allegations against the college about mishandling of asbestos and other material throughout the year. The allegations, which began in 2014 continued throughout 2015 with the college receiving its all-clear from Texas Department of State Health Services in early December, closing the last of the investigations into the claims against the college. Smith, though, filed a defamation lawsuit against the college claiming the college had violated his First Amendment rights and the Texas Whistleblower Act the lawsuit will continue at least into the New Year.
Throughout the year, the college has also focused on construction projects in the central mall area called Mike Miller Plaza in the future and the Watson Library. Both are nearing completion for the spring semester and the next school year. The college closed out its year with the hiring of its newest president Dr. Brenda Kays. Kays was hired by the college after the KC Board of Trustees unanimously approved the recommendation. The selection came after a national search conducted by the board and college employees and a series of community forums for the search s four finalists and individual interviews with the full board at the close of each person s visit to campus in the fall. Kays will take over as president of the college following Dr. Bill Holda s retirement Jan. 31, closing out a 40-year career at the college as instructor, fine arts program director and president.
EDUCATION: KISD
A few miles away, Kilgore ISD had its own series of headlines from funding to state accountability. KISD found a solution for the question about what to do with Kilgore Heights Elementary School after it was replaced by the newer Kilgore Primary School. The answer came in the form of an agreement with Kilgore College: KC purchased the property in October as part of an interlocal agreement that allows the district more than $500,000 in credit to use for dual credit tuition for its students.
The district continued construction on a Career and Technical Education building to serve students enrolled in dual credit welding at Kilgore College. Plans also continued for construction at Kilgore High School and Kilgore Intermediate School in the cafeterias. In June the college tried to keep money matters in their own hands by eliminating the 20 percent local homestead exemption, which was given to the KISD taxpayers in addition to the required exemption allowed by the state. The 5-2 vote came in late June following the passage of a new law that threatened to lock school districts into the exemption for five-years and maybe longer, eliminating local control of that utem. Although alone at first, at least another 13 school districts joined KISD in the decision those districts now await any possible repercussions stemming from the decision. Kilgore Intermediate School became the first school in KISD to receive an improvement required rating on the state s accountability results, and the school year was spent focusing on those improvements.
As a district, KISD took on the future of education with a screening of Most Likely to Succeed in November and monthly Idea Exchanges to discuss how the future of education in Kilgore and the state could look. The year did not come without controversy, though, as first-year teacher Brian Bird was arrested in November on a charge of improper relationship between educator and student. The former world geography teacher submitted his letter of resignation in December.
ECONOMY
One of the top stories of 2015, though, dealt with the topic on many people s minds the oil and gas industry in Kilgore. Baker Hughes and Halliburton both saw major cuts in their Kilgore operations. The number of jobs eliminated at Halliburton was not disclosed, but the Baker Hughes Kilgore facility was closed with those layoffs permanent.
Kilgore Economic Development Corporation celebrated the opening of its newest project the Department of Public Safety Commercial Driver s License facility on FM 349 in December. Kilgore s sales tax returns saw a dip, which the city s leaders expected, with possibly more dips awaiting them in 2016. Tax payers within the community saw a heavier burden in property taxes as the amount each household pays has increased, even if the tax rates have not increased across the board.
Kilgore College approved in September a tax rate of $0.175 per $100 valuation about a 7.71 percent increase and the first in seven years. The city raised its tax rate by 5.8 percent $0.45 per $100 valuation to $0.47310. KISD did not increase its tax rate, but the burden on taxpayers still increased as the district rescinded its optional local 20 percent homestead exemption in the summer.