Top Ten Stories of '17

Of the over 1,600 stories posted on the Phillips County News website in 2017, 10 of them far and away had more reads than the rest. Using the analytics from the PCN website -phillipscountynews.com - the following stories were the top 10 read stories, in order, in the last 365 days. Thank you readers and advertisers and here is to making 2018 another great news year at your award winning community newspaper.

#1 Wasson to become centenarian next week

February 22, 2017

By: Mark Hebert

Earl Wasson admitted that he has had way more good days than bad in the 36,512 he's been alive and one person stands head and shoulders above the rest as his favorites.

"Marie was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen and she still is," Earl said of his wife of 71-years. "Boy, we have danced a lot."

On Tuesday, February 28, Earl will celebrate his 100th birthday with a celebration at the Hi-Line Retirement Center (from 2:30 p.m. until 4 p.m.) and though he is ready for the party, others in his family are finding some aspects of the party challenging.

"You just can't find anything with '100th Birthday' on it," Marie said. "My two daughters have been looking everywhere and have only come up with a few napkins."

#2 Barber Pole spinning again in Malta

After being on the mend for 3 months, Jerry Salveson is back in business

April 19, 2017

By Mark Hebert

For the past 40 years, when men around Phillips County have needed to have their 'ears lowered,' Jerry Salveson has been there, scissors in hand, so when Salveson went down with an injury which sidelined him for three months, the county started looking a lot shaggier.

The small open sign that generally swings beneath the bigger Jerry's Barber Pole sign (and similar sized Tow Ropes sign ) hadn't been seen on Central Avenue in Malta for three months as Salveson dealt with a bulging disc in his back and surgery in which doctors removed 45-percent of the disc in question. Salveson officially made his return to his barbershop the last Tuesday in March (though he did sneak a lucky few in the previous Friday) and in-between snips of hair, he answered a phone that was nearly ringing off the hook.

"Doing pretty good," Salveson would say, "No, I can't fit you in today, so how about 3:30 p.m. tomorrow?"

Salveson has cut the barbershop's hours to 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. (still closed on Mondays) following the surgery on his back.

"I kind of over did it yesterday," Salveson admitted. "I did 16 and I only wanted to do about 10. I was a little sore."

#3 July Fire and Phillips County Drought

Various Dates

The month of July in Phillips County started with a fire in the Zortman and Landusky (the July Fire) areas that ended up burning over 11,000 acres and ended with a small reprieve from extreme heats and a little bit of rain. In-between, folks in Phillips County suffered during one of the driest months in recent memory, a number of smaller fires and extreme heats.

Phillips County Volunteer Fire fighter Greg Kelsey told the PCN that local volunteer fire crews responded to at least 10 fires since the July Fire erupted (and had fire fighters at the July Fire at many times to make sure no structures caught fire.) Kelsey said that many of the smaller fires in the county were near the highway, three fires in one day as a vehicle hauling a trailer was shooting sparks into dead grass and starting small fires. Kelsey, who has been a volunteer fire fighter for 21 years, said that this July is as bad as he has seen as far as the lack of moisture.

"It is the driest I have seen, but we haven't had as many fire because the public is very conscientious of the dryness," he said. "But I would say this is probably one of the worst droughts since 1988."

Theodore Jambe of NOAA Federal told the PCN that the normal amount of rain in July for Malta is 1.67 and so far, Malta has received just 1.67 inches. In Saco, the normal precipitation for July is 1.53 inches and this July, Saco received just .41 inches. In Zortman, normal July rainfall is 2.35, but only .67 in July; Port of Morgan normally gets 1.92 but has received just 1.31 inches of precipitation. (Whitewater normally receives 1.35 inches and Dodson, 1.22, but neither had reported their totals as of August 3.)

#4 Otteson honored for teaching in Palm Springs

Date: March 1, 2017

By Mark Hebert

Becoming an elementary school teacher wasn't something Joshua Otteson knew he wanted to do early in life, though it easily could have been.

The 1996 Malta High School graduate has teaching in his blood as his parents, Andrew and Barbara Otteson, are well known in Phillips County for their dedication to education (Andrew taught for 40 years in Malta where Barbara was also a para-educator.) Though it wasn't initially their son's ambition in life to follow in their footsteps, Joshua did eventually become a teacher and was recently named Teacher of the Year for Cahuilla Elementary School.

"I was humbled," Otteson said of the honor. "As a PE teacher, you kind of get lost in the mix sometimes so I must have been making an impact that they noticed, which is awesome."

As surprised and honored as he was after finding out his peers had nominated him for the award, he was to the moon when he found out he had actually been picked as Teacher of the Year after being nominated for the award by his peers.

"Just to be nominated was a very humbling experience and to be chosen, I couldn't even believe it," he said. "I walked in the room and I cried. I was blown away when they showed me I was the teacher of the year. I was up against two of the best teachers in our school."

#5 Helping her head home

SUBHED: Sheriff's Office, community members help homeless woman find her way back to family

January 4, 2017

Mark Hebert

It was at the end of July, during the Dog Days of Summer, last year when the topic of Malta's lone homeless person, very new to the area, became a popular topic on a Facebook page dedicated to things to complain about. But instead of complaining about this new visitor, people wondered what her story was and how she could be helped.

Enter Jerry Lytle, Deputy Sheriff at the Phillips County Sheriff's Office. Lytle was one of the 200 people to see the post about the woman and he decided to put his investigation skills to work. About a month later, Deputy Lytle posted an update to the "complain about" site with the new news.

"She was actually a missing person out of California," Deputy Lytle said. "She gave us a false name to begin with so she was hard to track down, but eventually someone talked with her and got her real name."

In the meantime, the Malta visitor, named Karen, was seen around town during the day sitting outside local establishments and at nights it was reported that she was sleeping in the bathrooms at Veteran's Memorial and Trafton Parks and the Amtrak station. Deputy Lytle said that he talked with several of Karen's relatives, scattered throughout the country, but none seemed much interested in returning his calls.

Deputy Lytle was finally able to find a member of Karen's family that was willing to help. He bought her a one-way ticket to Florida so we could get her down there for the winter

#6 A reason for the freezin'

First-ever Malta-Glasgow Polar Plunge held at Nelson Reservoir to raise funds for Special Olympians

January 25, 2017

By Mark Hebert

While most people joked, laughed and stayed warm while standing atop the frozen water of Nelson Reservoir on Saturday, another group of folks were perhaps a little apprehensive, if not just as jovial, as they were about to become very wet and very cold in the very near future.

"As far as I know, this is the first Polar Plunge in Phillips County," said Jerry Benge as he helped contestants enter the event. "Polar Plunges have been taking off all over the state in bigger cities and so we figured why let them have all the fun and let's let people on the Hi-Line get wet."

As of Monday afternoon, The Malta-Glasgow Polar Plunge raised nearly $1,400 for Special Olympic Athletes, but that doesn't mean the fundraising for the event is over. If anyone reading this story would like to donate to the cause you can still do so by going to http://www.firstgiving.com/mtletr/malta-polar-plunge-2017 and clicking the "donate" button.

#7 Capt. Appelhans went MIA 50 years ago

Dodson resident went missing over Cambodia Oct. 16, 1967 and never found

November 8, 2017

By Mark Hebert

U.S. Air Force Capt. Richard "Dick" Appelhans, a former Dodson resident went missing in October of 1967. A headline in the October 19 issue of the Phillips County News that year states "Captain Appelhans Missing in Vietnam" but the truth of the matter was that Capt. Appelhans and his co-pilot, Capt. George W. Clarke, went missing in eastern Laos when the RF4 Phantom they were flying vanished.

"My mother was devastated," said Storm Christopherson. "We all took it very hard, but my mother took it the hardest."

In February of 2016, a presentation entitled "Where the Hell is Richard Appelhans" was held at the POW/MIA Museum in St. Louis, Mo., by Paul Clever of Olive Branch, Miss.

During his years of research, Clever came across the story of Dodson's Capt. Appelhans. During in his research, Clever came across testimony from a Thai military officer that described an Air Force Officer named "Richard" who was once held in a POW camp. Many physical attributes aligned with Capt. Appelhans and prompted Clever to continue his research on the missing Dodson native.

Clever said, unfortunately, if Captains Appelhans and Clark were in the Sompoi POW camp described by the Thia Officer that they are more than likely long dead.

"That doesn't mean we shouldn't go look for them," Clever said. "What we need is for the government to step in and go to the Laotians to figure this problem out. For 46 years, I was an MIA family member and what hurts the most is that nobody cares."

#8 In Case of Emergency

Phillips County Hospital participates in annual earthquake drill in Malta

October 25, 2017

By Mark Hebert

A cry for help went out at 10:19 a.m. last Thursday.

"I am down at Trafton Park and I was walking along and heard yelling and screaming," the panicked caller said into her cell phone. "I ran over to the bleachers and the bleachers collapsed and there are four kids under them and they need help."

Minutes later paramedics, firefighters and hospital staff across Phillips County were alerted of the disaster and sirens echoed across the city of Malta.

Thankfully, the panicked caller was Phillips County Ambulance's Gina Lamb and her frantic call and the disaster she reported was pretend. The call set Phillips County Hospital and Family Clinics version of the Great American ShakeOut in motion - the Shakeout happens annually on October 19 to promote earthquake readiness - and at the Phillips County Hospital, staff used the day as a disaster drill.

Shortly after sirens sounded, two Malta City Volunteer Firefighters (Chief Greg Boos and Casey Knudsen) arrived on the scene and found four children (Rylan Ohl, Gabrielle Rich, Giona Lamb and Gabby Giblette) beneath the "collapsed" bleachers, each with an injury or two (some with fake blood and all with ghoulish face makeup applied by Malta's Heather Jenkins.)

The firefighters assessed the injured while two ambulances arrived at the scene. Soon, the four children were all taken by ambulance to the hospital where nurses and doctors assisted the EMT's with the children and took them to the emergency room. Prior to the drill's beginning, Sherry Gairrett, FNP-BC and Phillips County Hospital's Trauma Medical Director, explained that the day's disaster drill was run in order to "tax our resources," she said, "to facilitate the most effective and appropriate care necessary for the members of our community if we did indeed have a true disaster."

"We identified a few things that we need to decide on how to handle in the future," Gairrett said. "Those things didn't have an impact on the care provided, but they could have so we identified a few things that we need to work on and that's why we do the drills; so that we can be better prepared."

#9 Recalling the menace that was 'Maria'

Disaster Strikes Home of Phillips County Man in the Caribbean

November 8, 2017

By Mark Hebert

Since graduating from Whitewater High School in 1970, Jeff Murdock has lived through military coups, has had malaria three times, was nearly shot after being accused of being a South African Military spy and was once thrown out of the country of Uzbekistan, but of all the tribulations he has faced in his lifetime, living through Hurricane Maria last September was perhaps the most harrowing.

Dominica - officially the Commonwealth of Dominica - is an island nation in the Caribbean Sea (southeast of Guadeloupe and northwest of Martinique.) The island was devastated by Hurricane Maria on September 19 of this year, the most powerful storm to ever hit the island with a population of approximately 60,000.

"All I could say is "oh my God'," Murdock recalled of the storm's end. "I was really in shock. It was incredible. When I looked from our vantage point, roofs were gone and people were walking around like zombies, trying to see who's trapped, who's dead, who's alive, who's crushed, what happened to people's homes. Power lines were downed, cars were damaged. It was just a disaster. It was like a war zone. It was like 10 atomic bombs had hit."

There is currently a fund set up at First Secutiy Bank for anyone looking to donate to help the Murdock's neighbors as they rebuild their lives on Dominica ( Box 730, Malta MT, 59538) and he said that he has already distributed about $8,000 to people on the island.

"Thank you from the bottom of my heart because that means a lot to the people here," Murdock said. "We gave about $300 to a local man who lost the roof of his church and it might as well of been $3 million as far as he was concerned. It meant so much to him. I just want to say thank you to everyone."

#10 Malta businesses host students for Job Shadowing day

Program hosted by Malta Chamber shows youths workplace possibilities

May 3, 2017

By Mark Hebert

Malta Chamber of Commerce's inaugural Job Shadowing Session brought eight young adults (seven from Dodson School and one from Malta High School) to town last Thursday and teamed them up with business leaders in Malta for an afternoon of training and information.

Malta Chamber Executive Director Dina Meneely said invites for the event were sent to all Phillips County Schools and students came to town to meet with mentors at the Phillips County Hospital (Ward Van Wichen), CHS Big Sky (Jeri Engstrom), Milk River Veterinary (Rick Levesque) and Blades Day Spa with Ann Sautter, who is also the Vice President of the Malta Chamber, said in the past she has people come job shadow with her, but admitted that it had been a long time.

"Dina came up with an idea for a mentoring program for our businesses, but we didn't get any response," Sautter said. "We decided that maybe we were going about it the wrong way and decided to present the idea to high school kids and let them see how many opportunities there are to stay in Phillips County and have careers here instead of moving away."

Dodson School Superintendent Gary Weitz said he was thrilled to see the program offered to students and brought Ireland Best.

"This is a wonderful opportunity for our students and I really appreciate the Chamber including us in this event and the kids are all here to make the best of it," Supt. Weitz said. "Hopefully they make some connections and decide on some careers."