Today Cedar Hill (Duncanville, Tex.), Vol. 35, No. 11, Ed. 1 Thursday, June 8, 2000 Page: 1 of 10
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JUNE a, 8000
VOL. 30 NO. 1<1
44 PAGES IN FOUR SECTIONS
AND SUPPLEMENTS
A
Cedar Hill's oldest newspaper,
yet new each week
PIGEST
today ■■
Summer
Concerts begin
Free concerts are presented
Friday evenings in June from 7:30-
9:30 p.m. at the Valley Ridge
Amphitheater, 2850 Park Ridge
Drive. Musicfest 2000 is sponsored
by the city of Cedar Hill Paries and
Recreation department and the
Music Performance Trust Fund
through Dallas/Fort Worth
Musicians Association.
• June 9 - The Project Band
(Top 40 pop)
• June 16 - Soul Tsunami (High
energy R&B)
• June 23 - Lani Bartley Band
(Y oung Country)
Soft drinks and snacks will be
sold at each performance.
State Park
offers programs
Cedar Hill State Park will offer
programs throughout the summer.
This week’s programs are:
Coyote Howl - Park Ranger
Carol Vallejo will present a short
program about coyotes and lead a
hike to a remote location for a
“Howl.” Meet at the Dorba Trail
parking lot on Saturday, June 10 at
8 p.m. for the 1-hour program.
Backyards are for the Birds -
Learn the three essentials to every
bird’s survival. Also learn how to
choose the right seed and how to
pick a bird-friendly area for a feed-
er. Meet at the Penn Farm parking
lot at 8 a.m. for the 1-hour pro-
gram.
Water Day is
June 10
Anita Nelson will demonstrate
pond design and building skills at
10 a.m., Saturday, June 10 at Kings
Creek Gardens.
CHISD summer
schedule begins
Cedar Hill ISD administration
offices began the summer schedule
Monday, June 5. ^
The administrative offices of
Cedar Hill ISD will work their
usual summer schedule of hours
through Thursday, July*28. Offices
will be open on a four-day week
from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The office will be closed for
lunch from noon to 1 p.m. All
offices will be closed on Fridays.
Regular hours will resume
Monday, July 31.
Hope Lutheran
offers VBS
Gospel Light’s SonZone
Discovery Center will talk about
GP4U (God’s Plan For You). Each
night participants will learn
through crafts, songs and games.
The dates are June 25-29, 6:30-
8:30 p.m. There will be a kick off
dinner for the kids on Sunday at
5:30 p.m. with VBS starting at
6:30. Bring a plain white cotton T-
shirt (put your name on the tag) for
a special logo iron-on transfer.
VBS is for kids now completing
Pre-K thru 6th grade. Reservations
can be made by calling the church
at 972-291-7902 by June 15. The
church is located at 917 N. Straus
INSIDE
CEDAR HILL
TODAY
Sports....................................9-
Opinion.................................4
Religion.................................6
Lifestyle........................People
SUPPLEMENTS
eopleTodav (including SW
Address), Market Place Today
(including Autoworld)
Vi
THIS
NEWSPAPER
RECYCLES
verified
HILLTOP PLAYERS PLAN NEW PRODUCTION, SEE PEOPLE
CEDAR HILL
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Let the music begin
02000
Cedar HiH Today
500
Cl >D buys
building site
Type of school not yet determined
By KIRK DICKEY
News Editor
Today photo by DAVID WH.FONG
Cedar Hill’s Musicfest kicked off Friday June 2, with the BottomLine Band singing mellow tunes
from Jimmy Buffet and other laid back rockers. A small crowd gathered in front of the Valley
Ridge Amphitheater as the performance began. Parks and Recreation officials are hoping for a
larger turnout to the rest of the concert series, which will continue through the end of the
month. For information about bands and times, see the digest at left.
Local makes Miss Texas bid
A Cedar Hill Independent School
District purchase of a 17-acre tract of
land at the 900 block of Joe Wilson
Road will soon give the district one
more option in school building.
The school board approved the
$100,000 purchase at its June 5 meet-
ing. It will be the site of either an ele-
mentary or intermediate school
according to Superintendent James
Rueter, who said a specific use for
the school was not yet decided.
The bond program approved in
1999 included money to develop
future school sites. An elementary
school is going to be built in the Lake
Ridge area. There is also money to
build an intermediate school in the
southeast quadrant of the city. This
site is located in the southeast quad-
rant.
The decision of how to develop the
land will come later. Rueter said the
district may decide to build an inter-
mediate school at another site in the
southeast quadrant and save this site
for another elementary.
Rueter said the district had been
looking at this and other sites for the
past few years.
“We try to keep track of sites that
are available across the district, but
until the bond was passed, we didn’t
have money to go out and purchase
any sites,” Rueter said. “1 can’t tell
you how many sites across the district
that would have been very good
school sites, which have been sold
and developed in the time that I have
been here. But not having the money
to purchase those sites, we were pow-
erless to do anything.”
Rueter said that in a growing city
like Cedar Hill, there is a definite need
to buy land as soon as possible.
“Every time you turn around, there
is a new subdivision and say ‘Well,
there was a school site and all of the
sudden it’s gone,’” Rueter said.
The deal will likely close at the
end of the month.
See SCHOOL, Page 3
By KIRK DICKEY
News Editor
Cedar Hill’s Shannon Sturdivant
may be competing in the Miss
Texas America pageant in July, but
that doesn’t mean she is just another
pretty face.
Sturdivant, a 1999 graduate of
Cedar Hill High School and a fresh-
man at the University of North
Texas, has her eye on international
business and plans to make a living
in international trade, probably cen-
tering around Latin America.
Sturdivant, who is brushing up
on her Spanish now, said there
aren’t very many trade ties between
here and Latin America. She would
like to open those up.
She mentions Telemundo and
other growing Hispanic businesses
as possible jumping off points for
her future, but has not locked down
a set path yet. She plans to move on
to Texas Christian University or
Texas Tech to pursue a degree in
international business.
* One thing is for sure though, she
likes the idea of traveling.
“I am not interested in any par-
ticular type of business, but I have ^
always been interested in the world
trade aspect of it,” Sturdivant said.
She believes her mother’s
Hispanic heritage will lend itself
well tc| a world where a bilingual
person can carve out their own
niche (her great-great-grandparents
came over from the Canary
Islands). And after starting her
career, she plans to move on to
learning Italian.
But for now, she is just trying to
make it through the next few weeks.
The Misp Texas America pageant is
scheduled for July 5-8 at the Will
Rogers Auditorium in Fort Worth.
It will be televised on July 8.
“The more my mom talks about
it, the more nervous I get,”
Sturdivant said. “I know that once I
get there I will be nervous, but right
now I am just ready for it to be over
with.”
She said she has friends who will
also compete in the Miss Texas
Pageant and they have told her not
to worry about it.
“I’m excited, and 1 have been
‘picked’ to win overall swimsuit, so
I have been in the gym constantly,
so that I don’t disappoint anybody,”
Sturdivant said.
But after this contest, she wants
to take a break from the pageant cir-
cuit, which she has been involved in
since 1998.
That year, she competed in Miss
Teen Texas, after Cedar Hill
Football Coach Ron Calloway
asked her if she wanted to be in the
pageant. Calloway, who has
coached pageant winners before,
told her she had what it takes to win
the contest.
“I just kind of laughed about it,”
Sturdivant said. “I mean, I have
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Festival committee
becomes corporation
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Shannon Sturdivant
done modeling in the past, but I
never figured that I wanted to do
beauty pageants. I watched it on TV
all of the time, but I never thought
‘Oh, I want to do that.’”
She said that when she competed
in the pageant, she felt like the real
rookie of the group.
“Everybody was coming in with
these big huge trunks and stuff and I
came in with a gym bag and a cou-
ple of hanging bags,” Sturdivant
said.
She said she was nervous, but
that after a few words of encourage-
ment from her mother, she was able
to go in confident. The confidence
paid off, winning first runner up in
See MISS TEXAS, Page 3
By KIRK DICKEY
News Editor
The Country Day on the Hill
Committee will apply for non-
profit corporation to give added
protection to its members and pro-
vide more structure to the commit-
tee in the form of by-laws.
The committee discussed that
decision and this year’s festival at
their June 1 meeting. Jimmy
Mobley, a local attorney,
explained the procedure of apply-
ing for non-profit corporate status
to the committee.
He said that once the commit-
tee decides its role, its corporate
name, its scope and its purpose, he
can start the paperwork. Mobley
said the corporation could be
probably be up and running by the
end of the month, in plenty of
time to plan for the festival,
planned for Oct. 14.
“Every one of the past chairs
agreed and advised that we go
ahead with this non-profit,”
Jimmie Ruth White, a committee
member, said. “Everybody wanted
to do it under their time and they
just never had the time.
“Nobody said forget it and
everybody said we should go for-
ward,” She said.
The vote for the application
was passed by a large margin.
The organization will not nec-
essarily be a tax-exempt corpora-
tion. It could apply for that later if
they so chose.
Mobley said the corporate
shield will provide some protec-
tion for individuals, but not in all
cases.
“It’s just something that you
need to have in place,” Mobley
said. “Nobody is protected from
intentional acts. Negligence is
(also) difficult to protect. It would
depend on what the act is and
depending on what happens.
“I always have people come to
me and say, ‘1 want you to protect
me so that I can’t be sued,’”
Mobley said. “I tell them ‘I can’t
do that. All I can do is provide
you with a decent defense.’ And
that is all that this does.”
The corporation will just cover
the board. People who are per-
forming acts on the square should
have their own insurance as well
as the people who are selling food.
See COUNTRY DAY, Page 3
Summertime sees increase in bicycle thefts, attempts
By KIRK DICKEY
News Editor
All across America, people
expect summer to bring a few things
with it: snow cones, family vaca-
tions and the heat of the summer
sun.
But for some unlucky children, it
also brings an increase in bicycle
thefts. That is true in the case of
Cedar Hill, where seven bicycle
thefts were reported in the past
month, up from a normal rate of
about 1 -2 a month.
“The kids get out and just don’t
think about watching them,” Sgt.
Pam Uffelman of Cedar Hill’s
Criminal Investigation Department
said.
Uffelman and Officer Victor
Vasquez, who worked as a school
resource officer for Permenter
Middle School this year, both said
that it is not uncommon for bicycle
thefts to increase during the sum-
mertime. Children have more time
REGISTRATION SITES
• www.natlbike.com/register.html
The National Bike Registry charges $25 for a lifetime registration and
services the entire country.
• www.bicyclelink.com/registration/index.html.
BicycleLINK is an international registry, costing $10 for 10 years.
•www.nashville.net/~cycling/stolen.html.
Free registration at the Nashville Cycling Club.
to ride around and often do not think
their bicycles will be targeted.
These thefts are a crime of
opportunity according to Uffelman.
“They are out, running around,”
Uffelman said. “They lay their bike
down to do something and when
they look up, it is gone.”
Vasquez said that many thefts
could be avoided if children took
certain precautions. Children do not
always think to bring a bike chain or
other anti-theft device with them
when they are out.
Bicycle chains significantly
reduce the chances of a bicycle
being stolen, according to officers.
It is a visual and physical deterrent.
Vasquez said he has seen many
bicycles disappear because they did
not take the time to chain them up.
Another tip from the police is to
engrave the owner’s driver’s license
number into bicycle.
That was echoed by bicycle-
source.com, an online information
page.
That page suggests that the
owner choose somewhere obvious,
like the top tube, to act as a deter-
rent against theft. Driver’s license
numbers are the easiest for police to
look up.
Bicyclesourcc.com also suggests
7odi»y photo by DAVID WILFONG
A bicycle sits chained at Crawford Park as its owner takes a dip
in the pool nearby.
that bicycle owners register their model, serial number, color, etc.
bicycles with local or national bicy- “If you have the information on
cle registries. Short of that, keeping tap, registering a stolen bike works
all of the vital information about the just as well as registering it before it
bicycles can be helpful: make, is stolen,” according to the site.
P
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Gooch, Robin. Today Cedar Hill (Duncanville, Tex.), Vol. 35, No. 11, Ed. 1 Thursday, June 8, 2000, newspaper, June 8, 2000; Duncanville, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth623602/m1/1/: accessed May 1, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Zula B. Wylie Memorial Library.