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Jan 22
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Southern Indiana 5th grader reunites with first responders who helped save her life during basketball game
Jan 19, 2018 by Jessica Bard
Southern Indiana 5th grader reunites with first responders who helped save her life during basketball game.
Carly Fonda was playing in a Saturday basketball tournament just two weeks ago at Floyd Central High School when everything went wrong. The fifth grader had the game of her career, and her team was soon scheduled to be back out on the court for another one. “I felt pretty good through the first half,” she said. “And then, it was the third quarter, and I was not feeling very well.”
Carly asked her coach to come off the court. She couldn’t breathe. “He thought I was just messing around, and I fell out of my chair,” she said. Her heart suddenly stopped beating. “They were just like ‘She’s having a seizure,’” Carly remembers. “And then they checked my pulse, and I did not have one.”
A group of strangers in the crowd jumped into action. A nurse and a firefighter were among them, and they called for an AED shock to revive her. “I can’t thank them enough,” Carly said. “I don’t know what to do. We can’t find them, but I really just want to say thank you.”
Floyd Central High School is a public high school in the New Albany-Floyd County Consolidated School Corporation and is located in Southern Indiana, in Floyds Knobs, an unincorporated area in Floyd County, Indiana.
With mom and dad close by Friday, Carly was reunited with two of her guardian angels. “We always say her angels came out and took care of business,” said Beth Fonda, Carly’s mother. “So thank you all so much.” “You guys did not know me a lot, but you helped save my life,” Carly said to nurse Karrie Gricius and firefighter, James Richey. “I just can’t explain it.”
Carly and her family said they can’t express enough gratitude for everyone who helped save her life, which led to a diagnosis of a rare heart defect then open-heart surgery. It’s ”extremely [rare] from what I understand,” Gricius said. “It’s less than 10 percent that have this genetic anomaly, and the mortality rate is extremely high as well.”
Fonda is expected to make a full recovery, and eventually get back up to playing the game she loves. “Your incident actually is probably going to end up saving a lot more lives,” Richey told Carly. “There are several organizations that are actually purchasing AED’s that never had them because this was a big eye opener for them.”
Copyright 2018 WDRB Media. All rights reserved.
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Nov 12
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‘A labor of love for the Lord’ — Ship inspired by man’s faith in God finally sets sail
By Abigail Curtis, BDN Staff – Nov. 11, 2013
The schooner Beacon Won at the Front Street Shipyard in Belfast. The vessel that was built in Addison will travel to the Bahamas to be used as a charter boat this winter. It will make the voyage under engine power and will eventually be outfitted with two masts.
BELFAST, Maine — The stout, unfinished white boat, still without its mast and sails, looked a little out of place this week, moored as it was next to the multimillion-dollar superyachts of Front Street Shipyard. The boat — named the Beacon Won — was a hub of activity Monday morning during a stability trial. It also looked like it might have a pretty good story to tell, and it does.
“When we bought the boat, it was really in a dilapidated condition,” Capt. Bruce Dunham said Monday. “We looked at the boat for five minutes, and said ‘no way.’ We did not need a project. We needed a boat. But we came back. We looked at the boat again, and we could not stand to see the boat die.” At that point, the Beacon Won was nothing more than the hackmatack wooden skeleton, or ribs, of a 65-foot two-masted schooner, and a dream that seemed put on hold by the death of the man who had first dreamed of it.
Dino Fonda heard a message from God to build a ship back in 1986 when he and his wife, Cathy, were living in Venice, Fla. The couple traveled along the New England coast, searching for the right spot to build the boat, and they found it in the Addison Shipyard. They purchased the yard, and although Dino was not a trained boatbuilder, he had an engineering and building background and used books to help him with the tricky parts. He worked on the boat by hand for years while Cathy taught Spanish at Sumner Memorial High School. “It was a labor of love for the Lord,” Cathy Fonda, now 70, said Monday.
When Dino died in 2003, his ship was not much more than a hull and a deck, and although it changed hands in 2005, for eight years it remained unfinished in Cathy’s dooryard. That changed in 2010, when Dunham and his wife, Sheila Young, read an ad in a marine industry magazine for a partially built schooner. They were in the market for a boat to use in their charter business in the Bahamas, which includes bringing kids on board for sailing adventures and Christian mission work.
Boat owner and Capt. Bruce Dunham in the engine room of the schooner Beacon Won. They will motor to the Bahamas, making more stops along the way to finish the interior of the vessel. The plan is to put the two masts in place sometime next year, after the winter charter season.
The couple may not have needed a project, but they took one on, and still were smiling three years later as the ship neared completion. Volunteers from all over did much of the work to finish the Beacon Won, including carpenters from the Amish community of Lancaster County, Pa., who built the ship’s galley. One man who came to Maine to work on the boat had lost both his daughters in the 2006 Amish schoolhouse shooting. “This boat has been built by a huge cluster of good people,” Dunham said. “We are very humbled by the communities of Belfast, Jonesport and Addison.” He said that so far, finishing the Beacon Won has required an investment of about $550,000 in addition to the years of work. The 61-ton ship has been built to be stout and very solid, with 4,200 sheets of marine plywood, epoxy and fiberglass. Even though Dino Fonda was not trained as a boatbuilder, Dunham said that he built the hull strongly and well.
“He was a genius,” the captain said. “It had to be ordained, because he did everything himself.” David Wyman, an independent naval architect and marine surveyor from Castine, directed clusters of people around the boat Monday morning, shifting weight from one side to another to make sure that it would be sufficiently stable. “It’s been a fun project to be involved in,” he said. “She’s a great boat.” Dunham, Young and their crew plan to leave Maine this weekend, after finishing sea trials this week. They will meander down the Atlantic coastline, stopping in communities along the way so schoolchildren can visit the Beacon Won. They’ll be in the Caribbean by January to start the winter charter season there.
Cathy Fonda, who is spry and cheerful, with a faith as solid as the boat her husband envisioned, has become part of the Beacon Won’s family. She said that while she’s delighted that the boat is out of her yard and on its way to doing important mission work, she’ll be sad to see it — and the people aboard — leave the state. “I’m not going to like it, having to go [away] to get a hug,” she said after receiving a bone-cracking embrace from the ebullient Dunham. “It’s just exciting,” Fonda said. “I’ve said all along, I think Dino’s watching us, and jumping up and down. At least, I pray he is.”
Volunteers finishing ship inspired by man’s faith in God
By Sharon Kiley Mack, BDN Staff – Oct. 09, 2011
ADDISON, Maine — There are times in everyone’s life when patterns emerge, or coincidences become too frequent, or disparate series of events are inexplicably linked. Some raise their eyebrows and call it chance, while others credit divine intervention. Such is the story of a 65-foot two-masted wooden schooner being built in Addison by a band of volunteers who believe it was destiny that brought them together and their belief in God that will launch their vessel.
On a tiny patch of land at Pleasant River Bay, where the high tide threatens to float the ship even before it is ready, carpenters from Pennsylvania, Florida, Maine, Texas, Tennessee and the Bahamas are racing to finish The Beacon Won before winter. Capt. Bruce Dunham and his partner, Sheila Young, then plan to sail the schooner south, resting in Maryland and South Carolina, before continuing on to Nassau in the Caribbean. The ship will become a Christian mission ship — replacing two smaller ships the couple have been using for 19 years — and will take teenagers and church groups on week-long excursions, able to accommodate 30 passengers and a crew of six.
The story of The Beacon Won actually began 25 years ago, in 1986, when Dino Fonda and his wife, Cathy, were living in Venice, Fla. “For a year before we left Florida, Dino kept hearing the message [from God] to build a ship,” Cathy Fonda said Thursday. A devout Christian, Fonda said she never once questioned her husband’s belief. “So we left Florida looking for a place to build a ship. Little did we know then that we were going to build it for Bruce and Sheila.”
The Fondas traveled in a tiny 25-foot travel trailer along the New England coast, searching for just the right spot. Eventually they came to Jonesport, Maine, and Fonda said her husband knew it was the place to stop. One day, shortly after that, the Fondas drove through Addison. “Dino said he was told [by God] to take a left and look to the left,” Cathy Fonda said. “There at the end of the dike was a building with a sign — ‘Addison Shipyard’ — and a ‘for sale’ sign out front.” The couple bought the shipyard in 1988, moved their travel trailer to the site, and Dino began building his boat. “I taught school at Sumner High School [in Sullivan] for 15 years,” Cathy said. “I made the money. He built the boat.”
Dino Fonda worked on the boat for years, by hand, by himself, using books to help him with the engineering. He worked every good weather day, sometimes all the way into December. He bought six truckloads of hackmatack, set up a portable sawmill and cut the wood for the boat’s skeleton — the foot-thick ribs, the braces, the decking. Destiny kept throwing him both challenges and inspiration: The detached shop burned down one year but somehow the ship and its blueprints survived the blaze; another year Dino was working in a metal building alongside the construction site when a windstorm blew the roof off the building and the sides collapsed. He was left standing inside, unhurt.
But Dino couldn’t overcome cancer and died in 2003, leaving his beloved ship, which he had named Moriah, incomplete — not much more than a hull and a deck. “People here were so sad when Dino couldn’t finish the boat,” Cathy said. It sat, abandoned, for two years. Cathy sold the boat in 2005 to Steve Pagels of Bar Harbor. He kept the boat at the Addison Shipyard, but after a brief attempt to finish it, Pagels also put it on the market. For eight years, Cathy looked out her kitchen window every day at her husband’s unfinished dream.
A year ago, and 1,455 miles away in the Bahamas, Dunham and Young read a small advertisement in a marine industry magazine. “Partially built schooner. $80,000. Call,” was all that it said, Young recalled. “We arrived here last October, looked at it for five minutes and ran away,” Dunham said. “There was so much work left to do.”
But as they were leaving Maine they said some power larger than themselves brought them back to Addison and they decided they needed to buy the boat. Over the winter, Dunham reached out to his friend Paul Risk, an 89-year-old retired carpenter from Pennsylvania who had never even worked on a boat before, much less built one. Risk knew Dunham and Young through their work with Christian youth groups.
Risk landed in Addison this past July and immediately constructed a greenhouse-style structure to cover the unfinished ship. “I’ve been in construction all my life and I am overwhelmed at the work that Dino did. I don’t know how he did this all by himself,” Risk said. He began installing slabs of plywood, four sheets thick, over the ship’s ribs, which had been protected for more than 20 years by melted tar. As word of the project spread through the East Coast’s Christian communities, other volunteers began to arrive and youth groups became involved. Inquiries about helping out came from Tennessee, from Texas, from Maryland.
A bunkhouse was built above the workshop, recreational camper homes began arriving, Fonda opened her home for meals and Risk’s wife, Shirley, began cooking for everyone. Slowly, a wheelhouse was constructed. Fiberglass was installed on the deck. A retired U.S. Navy engineer arrived from Florida to line up the propeller shafts. Engines were installed. Local workers fabricated fuel tanks, lifted engines, planed the hackmatack. Once Dunham and Young finished their summer mission season in the Bahamas, they came back to Maine on Sept. 21 to join the workers. “As soon as we get her closed in, we’ll sail her out to warmer waters,” Young said. “And I’ll be right on board,” Fonda said, adding that she might stay on the ship for a bit of an adventure.
Launching the ship after more than 25 years of dreaming will be bittersweet for Fonda. “But we will have come full circle, from Dino’s dream of a mission to a mission group. I swear Dino’s jumping up and down in heaven. God just keeps bringing people and skills and expertise together.” “Not any one of us could do any of this,” Risk said. “But when you put us all together, it is amazing. It’s an awesome spirit of unity.”
Dunham, as captain, said working to complete the ship has been a “very humbling experience. It truly is a miracle.” While he works, Dunham wears Dino’s old ball cap and Dino’s work gloves remain hanging in the workshop. “In honor of him,” Dunham said. Dunham and Young welcome all volunteers, regardless of skill level. For information, call Fonda at 483-4655.
About The Beacon Won
The Beacon Won is a 65-foot gaff-rigged schooner, double masted, with two 3208 Caterpillar naturally aspirated diesel engines. It has five below-deck compartments separated by watertight walls and has a 5 to 6 foot draft. It has two passenger compartments below deck and an enclosed galley and dining/lounging area on deck.
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Jul 26
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Fonda couldn’t resist playing Nancy Reagan
By Caitlin McDevitt, 7/25/15
Jane Fonda plays Nancy Reagan in “The Butler”
Jane Fonda just couldn’t say no to a Nancy Reagan role.
“The idea that I could play Nancy Reagan was just too much to resist,” the actress says in a new clip promoting “The Butler.” “I thought it would be fun to play her.”
Acknowledging their political differences, Fonda adds, “I know people say, ‘Oh my gosh, Jane Fonda is playing Nancy Reagan.’ But I don’t think that whatever difference there might be in our politics really matters. As an actor, I approach her as a human being.”
Plus, Fonda says, “I happen to know that she’s not unhappy that I’m playing her.”
Watch Fonda as the first lady in a preview of “The Butler” below. The movie, which follows the career of a long-serving White House butler, hits the big screen on Aug. 16.
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Jul 26
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Dolce & Gabbana hit back at Peter Fonda lawsuit
Italian label Dolce & Gabbana has revealed that it did seek permission to reproduce stills of Peter Fonda in ‘Easy Rider’ as the actor sues for $6 million in damages.
T-shirts by Dolce & Gabbana bearing Peter Fonda’s image and the Easy Rider film title.
by Olivia Bergin, 25 July 2013
In the world according to label Dolce & Gabbana, the brand only found out that Hollywood actor Peter Fonda was suing the brand after news broke in the press. The 73-year-old star of the 1969 cult film Easy Rider , which he also produced, filed a complaint in the Superior Court of California for the County of Los Angeles last week over the Italian label making and selling T-shirts with his name and photo without permission. Fonda is also suing high-end retailer Nordstrom for selling the tops, which feature him in a black and white still from the film, and retailed at around $295 a piece (£192).
But it was news to the Milan Fashion Week label, who today revealed it negotiated a legal contract with Sony Pictures Consumer Products Inc., agent of Columbia Pictures Industries Inc., in which Sony Pictures Consumer Products Inc. stated to be the owner of all rights related to the images used on the Dolce & Gabbana Icon T-shirts. Fonda, brother of fellow Hollywood star Jane, claims he has “suffered injuries to his peace, happiness, feelings, goodwill, reputation, image, loss of fair market value of his services, and dilution of his current and future publicity value,” according to WWD.
Dolce & Gabbana claim that the use of Fonda’s image was through a contract made with Sony Pictures.
The $6 million sum (almost £4 million) he is seeking in damages accounts for punitive damages, legal fees and for Nordstrom and Dolce & Gabbana to surrender any profits they generated from the merchandise the actor claims they sold without his authorisation. The T-shirts were part of the brand’s autumn/winter 2013 collection, and featured stills and the logo from the film. In the past, the brand has emblazoned images of celebrity figures James Dean, Jonny Depp and Debbie Harry on it’s T-shirts, but it seems Fonda isn’t so flattered by the gesture.
Free Rider
by Ava Farshidi, July 26, 2013
When you put Peter Fonda’s image on a T-shirt and sell it for $295 without his permission, he’s going to come after you. Nordstrom learned this the hard way after selling nine different T-shirt designs by Dolce & Gabbana with images of the actor from his 1969 movie “Easy Rider,” which Fonda co-wrote, produced, and starred in. Particularly for Dolce & Gabbana the lawsuit could not have come at a worse time, as the Italian fashion duo is currently dealing with charges of tax evasion that have led them to close nine of their Milan stores in protest.
Easy Rider
Although Nordstrom has acknowledged that Fonda is pursuing a lawsuit against them, Dolce & Gabbana claim that they are unaware of any legal action taken against them. They claim that the use of Fonda’s image was through a contract made with Sony Pictures Consumer Products Inc., which they believe would make them legally compliant.
Fonda filed his complaint on July 19th in the Superior Court of California for the County of Los Angeles citing reasons such as suffering, “injuries to his peace, happiness, feelings, goodwill, reputation, image, loss of fair market value of his services, and dilution of his current and future publicity value.” It is reported that he is seeking $6 million in compensatory damages, punitive damages, attorneys’ fees, and any profits that have been made from the T-shirt sales.
It seems that this lawsuit has turned the T-shirt into a fashion faux-paux as Nordstrom has removed the T-shirt from their website. Apparently this season’s most fashionable trends thus far are tax evasion and use of likeness.
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Jan 21
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Passions Grow Over First Native American Saint
By Sebastian Smith (AFP) – January 17, 2012
FONDA, New York — Gazing down a frozen New York field, the statue of a Mohawk girl about to become the first Native American saint exudes calm. Yet the real Kateri Tekakwitha had a brutal existence — and ghosts from her dramatic life still haunt these hills. The 17th-century figure will make history when the Vatican canonizes her later this year, although the joy among America’s indigenous tribes will be mixed with some painful historical memories.
Kateri Tekakwitha will become the first Native American saint in the Catholic church (AFP/File, Stan Honda)
No other “Indian”, as the original inhabitants of the United States and Canada are widely, but wrongly, called, has made sainthood. Following centuries of being dispossessed, caricatured, or ignored, Native Americans will soon have the unusual experience of appearing in a positive light. Mark Steed, the Franciscan friar heading the Kateri Shrine on the banks of the Mohawk River, said that after more than 30 years of working among Native Americans, he is happy to see them win this boost. “They were put down, bypassed,” Friar Mark, a soft-spoken but steely tough 71-year-old, said. “So I think when you have a repressed people, any star in their crown is a plus.”
For many Native Americans, especially among the Mohawk and other Iroquois tribes straddling the US-Canadian border, Kateri’s sainthood was overdue decades ago. The Vatican needed a certified miracle from the three-centuries-dead tribeswoman and so followers submitted reports of dozens: everything from healing the sick to levitating a man off the ground and appearing herself, hovering in deerskin clothes. None of these passed muster. But then in 2006 doctors in Seattle confirmed an astonishing event. Against all medical expectations, an 11-year-old Native American boy fatally ill with a flesh-eating bacteria made a full recovery. His parents had been praying to Kateri. Although needing another five years, this one convinced the Vatican, and last month Pope Benedict XVI cleared Kateri for canonization. Her followers may not have a date yet, but they are already excited. “It will be a celebration of first magnitude,” proclaims the January issue of the shrine’s Tekakwitha News.
Friar Mark Steed at the National Kateri Shrine in Fonda (AFP/File, Stan Honda)
Kateri’s life story encompasses the despair and — for some — the hope sown in those tumultuous early years of the white settlers. According to Jesuit accounts and oral history, Kateri survived a settler-introduced smallpox epidemic at four, but was left orphaned and near-blind. The next calamity was a raid by French settlers and native allies who burned her village to the ground. Again she survived, spending the next decade in a newly built village across the Mohawk River in the woods near today’s Kateri Shrine. It was here, when she was about 20, that she was baptized and entered the crucial last four years of her life.
Ostracized by her tribe, Kateri — whose native name Tekakwitha translates as “The Clumsy One” — fled to a village of converts in what is now Canada. Despite being ravaged by illness, she tended to other sick and lived a life of extreme asceticism — including burning herself with hot coals — that attracted admiration from missionaries and converts alike. Tradition has it that when she died, aged 24, her smallpox-scarred face suddenly cleared. That story still inspires people around Fonda to gather in the shrine’s open-air chapel in summer, or in the 230-year-old wooden barn housing a chapel where a large painting of Kateri hangs behind the altar. But intertwined is the dark history of European conquest and the role played by Christian conversions. Tom Porter, who lives a short drive down the road from the Kateri Shrine, believes Kateri unwittingly contributed to the destruction of her people. “She was used,” he said in a rare interview.
Statue of Kateri Tekakwitha by Joseph-Émile Brunet at the Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, near Quebec City.
Unlike many modern Mohawks who have either converted or are not interested in any religion, Porter works actively to restore the old beliefs. He lives with family and a handful of followers on a farm where they grow their own crops, raise cattle and use work horses to plow the earth. A longtime Mohawk acting chief, Porter is immersed in the spiritual ways of his forefathers. Inviting a reporter to join a huge family meal in the compound’s main house, Porter, whose native name is Sakokwenionkwas, or “He Who Wins”, said the moon, the sun and thunder are more important to the Iroquois than saints or popes. “Christianity is not a shoe that will ever fit. Not for my feet, or my heart, or my soul,” he said. A humorous man, Porter carries echoes in his face of the proud, eagle-like features seen in old pictures of tribesmen. But he could not conceal his bitterness. To him, there is no difference between the spread of Christianity and the cruel policies, including forced assimilation in grim 20th-century government boarding schools, that were used to subjugate Native Americans.
Aged 67, Porter has made sure every one of his five daughters, one son, and 11 grandchildren follows the traditional ways. He thinks Kateri was probably forced to become a Catholic. “I don’t know if she really was a Christian or not,” he said. “They were in poverty at that time. The Europeans had destroyed everything, people were destitute and starving, and if you wanted to get help of any kind you had to be a Christian.” Porter conceded that few Mohawk agree with him. He even admitted that some in his extended family are devoted to Kateri. “It breaks my heart,” he said. Friar Mark acknowledged that there had been “terrible” sins and was determined to heal the wounds.
In the wooden chapel at the Kateri Shrine, a native blanket covers the altar. Snowshoes and deerskins hang from the rafters, and sacred herbs like tobacco and sage lie drying. There’s a crucifix, of course, but also a picture of the tree and turtle at the center of the Native American creation legend. Soon after taking up his position in Fonda a year ago, the tall Canadian friar went to call on Porter. “He was amazed,” Friar Mark recalled. Since then, the two have met often and while they don’t agree, they listen to one another, an odd couple making peace on the spot where a future saint once lived. “He’s a friend,” Porter said of Friar Mark. “When I was growing up, there was no one who hated priests and nuns more than I did. But I got over that now. All my enemies — they became my good friends.”
More links: USA Today, About.com, Wikipedia