Rescuers end effort to find body of man presumed dead in sinkhole

SEFFNER, Florida -- Florida rescue workers have ended their efforts to recover the body of a man who disappeared into a sinkhole that swallowed his bedroom while he slept in a suburban Tampa home, and the house will be demolished, a public safety official said on Saturday.

Jeff Bush, 36, who is presumed dead, was asleep when the other five members of the household who were getting ready for bed on Thursday night heard a loud crash and Jeff screaming.

Authorities have not detected any signs of life after lowering listening devices and cameras into the hole.

"Our data has come back, and there is absolutely no way we can do any kind of recovery without endangering lives of workers," said Hillsborough County Fire Rescue spokeswoman Jessica Dam.

The sinkhole also has compromised the house next door, officials said Saturday.

Officials planned to let family members, accompanied by firefighters, into the threatened  home for about 20 minutes to gather some  belongings, Hillsborough County Fire Rescue spokesman Ronnie Rivera told reporters Saturday.

She said demolition of the home would begin early on Sunday.

Bush's body hadn’t been removed by Saturday afternoon and the ground near the home was still "very, very unsafe," Rivera said at a televised press conference Saturday.

"At this time we did some testing and we determined that the house right next to the house that’s actually damaged is also compromised by the sinkhole," Rivera said.

Jeff's brother, 35-year-old Jeremy Bush, jumped into the hole and furiously kept digging to find his brother.

"I really don't think they are going to be able to find him," Jeremy said on Saturday. He "will be there forever."

A small memorial of balloons and flowers for his brother had formed near the house on Saturday morning.

"I thank the Lord for not taking my daughter and the rest of my family," he said.

Jeremy himself had to be rescued from the sinkhole by the first responder to the emergency call, Douglas Duvall of the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office. When Duvall entered Jeff Bush's bedroom, all he saw was a widening chasm but no sign of Jeff.

"The hole took the entire bedroom," said Duvall. "You could see the bed frame, the dresser, everything was sinking," he said.

Norman Wicker, 48, the father of Jeremy's fiancee who also lived in the house, ran to get a flashlight and shovel.

"It sounded like a car ran into the back of the house," Wicker said.

"There is a very large, very fluid mass underneath this house rendering the entire house and the entire lot dangerous and unsafe," Bill Bracken, the head of an engineering company assisting fire and rescue officials, told the news conference late on Friday.

"We are still trying to determine the extent and nature of what's down there so we can best determine how to approach it and how to extricate," Bracken said.

After suspending the search overnight, it resumed at daylight on Saturday, with engineering consultants trying to determine the extent of the collapse so that a perimeter boundary can be established for setting up heavy equipment for future excavation.

Several nearby homes were evacuated in case the 30-foot wide sinkhole got larger but officials said Friday it only appeared to be getting deeper. Soil samples showed that the sinkhole has compromised the ground underneath a home next door, engineers said Saturday.

The residents of that house were allowed 20 minutes in their home on Saturday to gather belongings. Firefighters and residents formed an assembly line to move items out of the house into SUVs and trucks.

Rescue officials said that in addition to soil samples, they were focusing on engineering analysis, ground penetration radar and other techniques to determine the extent of the ongoing collapse. Listening devices were being used to detect any evidence of life although Bush was presumed dead.

The Bush brothers worked together as landscapers, according to Leland Wicker, 48, one of the other residents of the house.

The risk of sinkholes is common in Florida due to the state's porous geological bedrock, according to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. As rainwater filters down into the ground, it dissolves the rock, causing erosion that can lead to underground caverns, which cause sinkholes when they collapse.

Reuters

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Texas Monthly: Sign Language Interpreters Bring Live Music to the Deaf

On the last night of the 2012 Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago, the sun set over a crowd of thousands who had stood for hours waiting to see Jack White, the headliner. A figure strode onto the stage, setting off a cascade of cheers.

But it was not Jack White, the singer-guitarist, it was Barbie Parker, the festival’s lead sign language interpreter.

Ms. Parker, a Texas native, and members of her Austin-based company, LotuSIGN, had interpreted more than 20 bands’ sets for deaf and hard of hearing festival attendees that weekend. As evidenced by the positive reception she received, her interpretations had won over a good part of the hearing audience as well.

At live music shows, Ms. Parker, 45, does not just sign lyrics — she communicates the entire musical experience. She mouths the words. She plays air guitar and air drums. She jams along with the bands.

“Music is such a large part of who I am,” she said. “I want to be able to open up that experience.”

Ms. Parker was bored in her accounting job and had two young children when she enrolled in her first formal American Sign Language class at San Antonio College about 20 years ago. She became fascinated with interpretation after reading a book about it at her local library and, in a chance encounter just hours after reading it, met the sister of a friend who happened to be an American Sign Language interpreter.

Ms. Parker is now an integral part of Austin’s deaf community. Her two adult sons are proficient in A.S.L., and her company has provided sign language interpretation at music festivals across the country for several years. Next week, she and other LotuSIGN interpreters will take the stage with artists at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin for the sixth year in a row.

The number of deaf and hard of hearing music fans taking advantage of interpretation at free shows held at Auditorium Shores as part of SXSW has risen noticeably in the past few years, Frank Schaefer, the officer manager for the festival, said in an e-mail. The increase can be attributed, at least in part, to a growing number of interpreters who specialize in that kind of work.

A good interpreter is adept at signing, but Ms. Parker also wants her team to impart the emotions and feelings music conveys. Lauren Kinast, 44, who lost her hearing gradually, attended a Rolling Stones concert signed by LotuSIGN interpreters. Ms. Kinast had listened to the Stones growing up, but when she saw Ms. Parker and a colleague interpret their music, she came away with a greater appreciation of the band.

“Everything made it different, better,” Ms. Kinast typed in an interview. “Having the songs interpreted in my language, understanding the emotions behind it, the meaning behind it, and being a part of the concert experience just took my love for them several notches up.”

Ms. Parker first gained recognition in the mid-2000s for interpreting music at the funeral of the parent of a well-known member of the deaf community in Austin. At one point during the service, she needed to sign an emotional musical performance.

“The singer got inspired, so the interpreting had to get inspired,” Ms. Parker said. The signing seemed to further stir the singer, which further moved Ms. Parker. “There was a kind of reverb,” she said. “The deaf audience was just — I just saw these jaws drop open like, ‘Oh, that’s what it’s like.’ ”

After that, she began receiving requests to interpret at weddings, children’s recitals and, of course, live shows. In 2007, she started her own company, Alive Performance Interpreting, which in 2009 became LotuSIGN.

“They’re five-star interpreters,” said Stacy Landry, the program manager for the local government’s deaf and hard of hearing services in Travis County. (Ms. Parker has obvious clout in the field — her traditional interpreting services were used in January when she intepreted President Obama’s Inaugural Address in Washington.)

LotuSIGN interpreters specialize in analyzing lyrics for the artist’s intent in a song. But sign language interpretation, no matter where it takes place, is about more than translating words into gestures and signs. The interpreter must communicate an overall experience by expressing the speaker’s tone, the meaning behind phrases and idioms, and even if someone’s cellphone interrupts an otherwise-silent lecture hall.

One year, Ms. Parker interpreted at a Sheryl Crow concert held to celebrate of one of Lance Armstrong’s Tour de France titles. He was asked to take over on the drums for one of Ms. Crow’s songs.

“Well,” Ms. Parker said, “he wasn’t any good.”

Ms. Parker let the discomfort show on her face as she imitated Mr. Armstrong’s uneven drumming. She nodded subtly to assure perplexed members of the deaf audience that she was indeed doing this on purpose.

As the audience reacted, Ms. Parker saw a deaf man elbow the hearing man next to him and cringe. The hearing man nodded and made a similar pained face.

“They had this shared experience,” Ms. Parker said. The deaf man was truly part of the crowd.

LotuSIGN is working to mentor others in the hope of expanding access to live events. “You can’t do it without a lot of experience,” Ms. Parker said. “It is the hardest work I have ever done.”

Kathryn Jepsen is the deputy editor of Symmetry magazine.

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Next Groupon CEO will have experience, Lefkofsky says

Groupon has fired its chief executive and the money-losing company faces several challenges, but Executive Chairman Eric Lefkofsky is undeterred. The Chicago-based e-commerce site, he said, is "inches away from greatness."

Lefkofsky, Groupon's co-founder and largest shareholder, speaking to the Tribune in his first public comments since Thursday's ouster of Andrew Mason, declined to discuss specific reasons for replacing Mason, though he pointed out at least one recent management error.

He also sounded as if he now agrees with the widespread sentiment that Mason didn't have the right skills to deal with the company's unique problems: It is global, large, technology-driven and growing fast, but it's also unprofitable, dogged by competitors and under intense scrutiny for its missteps.

Lefkofsky said he looked forward to hiring a CEO "who has experience dealing with the issues we're dealing with … who has been there and done that."

In spite of Groupon's troubles, "the long-term horizon of the company is fantastic," Lefkofsky said.

He'll have to forgive Wall Street if it casts a skeptical eye at his optimism. Even though it's less than 5 years old, Groupon popularized the idea of using the Internet to match local merchants and customers and it is now an established business. A new CEO isn't going to make the company's problems magically disappear.

Groupon is at a crossroads, not just because it has to find a replacement for Mason, the co-founder whose playful, irreverent style set the tone for the company's culture. Groupon faces shrinking consumer interest in its daily deals business that sends online coupons for everything from restaurants to pedicures to inboxes every day. And it has huge problems in its European operations.

Groupon is attempting to evolve its business model beyond daily deals into an ongoing, search-driven local marketplace. But the investment has been expensive. To boost growth, the company launched a separate business selling products at steep discounts. But that retail business has dragged down profit margins.

"While a new CEO may bring better skill sets (particularly in technology or online commerce), we believe that the challenges Groupon faces will only increase," wrote Edward Woo, an analyst at Ascendiant Capital Markets.

Lefkofsky supports the new course Mason had charted with input from him and other members of the board of directors.

In North America, email now drives less than 50 percent of Groupon's transactions. Half of local transaction volume comes from what the company calls its "deal bank," its searchable inventory of deals that are active for longer periods of time.

"This isn't about 'Oh, my God, we're going down the completely wrong road,'" Lefkofsky said. "Largely, the strategy and the business is going to continue down the exact same path it has been on."

He described Groupon as a "pioneer of curated commerce. We're selecting a certain number of deals every day, and then we're serving them out to people, sometimes via email, sometimes via mobile."

But the board decided that as the company enters the next stage of its evolution, the time was right to find "a new CEO that had some of those skills we need long term," Lefkofsky said.

In the interim, Lefkofsky and another director, former AOL Inc. executive Ted Leonsis, will run the company.

"Both (Ted) and I felt the company was inches away from greatness," Lefkofsky said.

That's a stretch judging by the stock market. Groupon's shares are down 75 percent in the 15 months since it went public at $20 a share. On Friday, in reaction to Mason's exit, the stock jumped more than 12 percent to close at $5.10.

While Groupon caught fire as a startup, it has stumbled repeatedly as it has grown. The company made embarrassing mistakes during the process of going public and then faced scrutiny over its accounting methods.

Since going public, Groupon has turned a quarterly profit only once.

In the fourth quarter, its net loss grew to $81.1 million, and the company projected weaker-than-expected operating income for the current quarter.

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Blackhawks' streak at 21 with overtime win over Blue Jackets

Chalk one up for the "slug defenseman."

Brent Seabrook's goal in overtime kept the Blackhawks' record-breaking streak alive as they edged the Blue Jackets 4-3 Friday night at the United Center to remain without a regulation loss this season. At 18-0-3, the Hawks keep piling up the points, securing 39 of a possible 42 this season.

Friday night's hero — with a little help from his friends — was Seabrook, who took a pass from Jonathan Toews 3 minutes, 23 seconds into overtime and beat Blue Jackets goaltender Steve Mason for the game-winner.

"(Toews) is good — he's a hell of a player," Seabrook said, giving credit to his captain. "He usually likes to shoot low and I think Mason was probably thinking he was going to shoot it. (Toews) had a slug defenseman (in me) going down on the off side so he made a great pass. I don't think the Blue Jackets defenseman, Mason or I expected it to come. Somehow he saw me and made a great pass.

"He didn't look at me once and I didn't yell. He's pretty good in those situations so I just let him do his thing. I don't think I shot the puck, it was such a hard pass it hit my stick and just bounced in."

Against a banged up and usually bumbling Blue Jackets squad, the Hawks increased their points streak over the course of two seasons to 27 consecutive games — third-longest in NHL history.

Viktor Stalberg, Patrick Sharp and Bryan Bickell had goals in regulation and Ray Emery earned the victory in net for the Hawks.

Vinny Prospal, Artem Anisimov and Ryan Johansen scored for the Blue Jackets but it wasn't enough. The Blue Jackets, who entered the game with the fewest points in the league, were without defensemen James Wisniewski, Jack Johnson and John Moore and forwards Derick Brassard and Brandon Dubinsky but fought gamely.

A night after the Hawks opened their victory over the Blues with a Toews goal just 10 seconds into the game, the Blue Jackets struck quickly when Prospal jumped on a big rebound Emery yielded off a Derek Dorsett shot and fired it into the open net with 31 seconds elapsed.

Stalberg later continued his mastery over the Blue Jackets with his 11th goal in his 15th game against them when the winger tapped in a puck in the crease during a scramble.

"We're finding ways to really get it done," Stalberg said. "It's pretty amazing to be a part of a run like this. It seems like it hasn't gotten to our heads at all. We're staying with it … and that's all we can do right now."

The Jackets kept coming and took the lead when Anisimov's shot from the point deflected off the Hawks' Daniel Carcillo and bounded past Emery.

Late in the second, the Hawks' offense kicked into gear. Sharp evened the score at 2-2 when his backhander from the left circle somehow made it through Mason's pads and trickled across the goal line.

Bickell's splendid individual effort put the Hawks ahead just less than a minute later. The winger stripped Anisimov of the puck, skated in two-on-one with Stalberg and rifled a wrist shot from the left dot past Mason to the stick side.

After Johansen tied it midway through the third, the goalies held and the game went to overtime where Toews and Seabrook won it.

"(The Blue Jackets are) a hard-working team," Seabrook said. "They play 60 minutes hard and you have to come to play this team hard every time. There are no easy games in this league and you never can take a night off. I thought we fought hard on the second part of a back-to-back and it was good to get the win."

ckuc@tribune.com

Twitter @ChrisKuc

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U.S. Judges Offer Addicts a Way to Avoid Prison

Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Emily Leitch of Brooklyn, with her son, Nazir, 4, was arrested for importing cocaine but went to “drug court” to avoid prison.

Federal judges around the country are teaming up with prosecutors to create special treatment programs for drug-addicted defendants who would otherwise face significant prison time, an effort intended to sidestep drug laws widely seen as inflexible and overly punitive.

The Justice Department has tentatively embraced the new approach, allowing United States attorneys to reduce or even dismiss charges in some drug cases.

The effort follows decades of success for “drug courts” at the state level, which legal experts have long cited as a less expensive and more effective alternative to prison for dealing with many low-level repeat offenders.

But it is striking that the model is spreading at the federal level, where judges have increasingly pushed back against rules that restrict their ability to make their own determination of appropriate sentences.

So far, federal judges have instituted programs in California, Connecticut, Illinois, New Hampshire, New York, South Carolina, Virginia and Washington. About 400 defendants have been involved nationwide.

In Federal District Court in Brooklyn on Thursday, Judge John Gleeson issued an opinion praising the new approach as a way to address swelling prison costs and disproportionate sentences for drug trafficking.

“Presentence programs like ours and those in other districts mean that a growing number of courts are no longer reflexively sentencing federal defendants who do not belong in prison to the costly prison terms recommended by the sentencing guidelines,” Judge Gleeson wrote.

The opinion came a year after Judge Gleeson, with the federal agency known as Pretrial Services, started a program that made achieving sobriety an incentive for drug-addicted defendants to avoid prison. The program had its first graduate this year: Emily Leitch, a Brooklyn woman with a long history of substance abuse who was arrested entering the country at Kennedy International Airport with over 13 kilograms of cocaine, about 30 pounds, in her luggage.

“I want to thank the federal government for giving me a chance,” Ms. Leitch said. “I always wanted to stand up as a sober person.”

The new approach is being prompted in part by the Obama administration, which previously supported legislation that scaled back sentences for crimes involving crack cocaine. The Justice Department has supported additional changes to the federal sentencing guidelines to permit the use of drug or mental health treatment as an alternative to incarceration for certain low-level offenders and changed its own policies to make those options more available.

“We recognize that imprisonment alone is not a complete strategy for reducing crime,” James M. Cole, the deputy attorney general, said in a statement. “Drug courts, re-entry courts and other related programs along with enforcement are all part of the solution.”

For nearly 30 years, the United States Sentencing Commission has established guidelines for sentencing, a role it was given in 1984 after studies found that federal judges were giving defendants widely varying sentences for similar crimes. The commission’s recommendations are approved by Congress, causing judges to bristle at what they consider interference with their judicial independence.

“When you impose a sentence that you believe is unjust, it is a very difficult thing to do,” Stefan R. Underhill, a federal judge in Connecticut, said in an interview. “It feels wrong.”

The development of drug courts may meet resistance from some Republicans in Congress.

“It is important that courts give deference to Congressional authority over sentencing,” Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Republican of Wisconsin, a member and former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. He said sentencing should not depend “on what judge happens to decide the case or what judicial circuit the defendant happens to be in.”

At the state level, pretrial drug courts have benefited from bipartisan support, with liberals supporting the programs as more focused on rehabilitation, and conservatives supporting them as a way to cut spending.

Under the model being used in state and federal courts, defendants must accept responsibility for their crimes and agree to receive drug treatment and other social services and attend regular meetings with judges who monitor their progress. In return for successful participation, they receive a reduced sentence or no jail time at all. If they fail, they are sent to prison.

The drug court option is not available to those facing more serious charges, like people accused of being high-level dealers or traffickers, or accused of a violent crime. (These programs differ from re-entry drug courts, which federal judges have long used to help offenders integrate into society after prison.)

In interviews, the federal judges who run the other programs pointed to a mix of reasons for their involvement.

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Incomes see largest drop in 20 years

U.S. consumer spending rose in January as Americans spent more on services, with savings providing a cushion after income recorded its biggest drop in 20 years.

Income tumbled 3.6 percent, the largest drop since January 1993. Part of the decline was payback for a 2.6 percent surge in December as businesses, anxious about higher taxes, rushed to pay dividends and bonuses before the new year.

A portion of the drop in January also reflected the tax hikes. The income at the disposal of households after inflation and taxes plunged a 4.0 percent in January after advancing 2.7 percent in December.

The Commerce Department said on Friday consumer spending increased 0.2 percent in January after a revised 0.1 percent rise the prior month. Spending had previously been estimated to have increased 0.2 percent in December.

January's increase was in line with economists' expectations. Spending accounts for about 70 percent of U.S. economic activity and when adjusted for inflation, it gained 0.1 percent after a similar increase in December.

Though spending rose in January, it was supported by a rise in services, probably related to utilities consumption. Spending on goods fell, suggesting some hit from the expiration at the end of 2012 of a 2 percent payroll tax cut. Tax rates for wealthy Americans also increased.

The impact is expected to be larger in February's spending data and possibly extend through the first half of the year as households adjust to smaller paychecks, which are also being strained by rising gasoline prices.

Economists expect consumer spending in the first three months of this year to slow down sharply from the fourth quarter's 2.1 percent annual pace.

With income dropping sharply and spending rising, the saving rate - the percentage of disposable income households are socking away - fell to 2.4 percent, the lowest level since November 2007. The rate had jumped to 6.4 percent in December.

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Groupon CEO Andrew Mason to staff: 'I was fired today'

After he was fired Thursday, Andrew Mason wrote a note to his Groupon colleagues filled with the same offbeat humor, charm and candor that defined his tenure as chief executive of the daily deals company he co-founded.

"After four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I've decided that I'd like to spend more time with my family," the letter began. "Just kidding — I was fired today."

His ouster came as no surprise. Questions about his future have been swirling for months because of Groupon's poor performance since going public a little more than a year ago.

The end of the road for the 32-year-old Mason came a day after the Chicago-based company posted disappointing fourth-quarter earnings that sent its stock reeling. But his exit was signaled three months ago when an anonymous leak to a well-read tech blog indicated that Groupon's board of directors was considering replacing Mason.

Mason even alluded to his preordained departure in his farewell note: "If you're wondering why ... you haven't been paying attention. … As CEO I am accountable."

Mason's firing also reflects a changing company with needs different than the skyrocketing startup that he helped create in 2008. His rapid rise and fall is hardly unusual in entrepreneurial circles. It's hard to transition from visionary to manager of a complex, global enterprise and the pace at Groupon was nearly unprecedented.

"I've always thought they got a bad rap in the press," Matt Moog, a Chicago tech entrepreneur, said of Groupon's leaders. "It's extraordinarily difficult to grow a company as fast as they did and get it all right the first time. The change in leadership will give them a chance to back away from that criticism a little bit and try to keep growing the company."

Groupon's struggles have been stunning, and dispiriting, to many in Chicago because so many expectations were wrapped up in its early success. The city's tech scene has worked through several boom and bust cycles trying to put itself on the map as a regional center. That ambition is held not just by local entrepreneurs and investors, but civic boosters all the way up to Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

And for a while, Groupon delivered the goods. The company evolved into one of the hottest names in technology in less than three years, single-handedly redefining Chicago as one of the most exciting cities in the country for digital business. Employment at the company grew from a handful to more than 10,000 worldwide as the company's valuation blossomed into the billions.

Groupon's red-hot growth attracted numerous imitators, from LivingSocial to Amazon. Google noticed the competitive threat to its local advertising sales and tried to purchase Groupon in 2010 for nearly $6 billion. Groupon's leaders said no deal.

For a while it looked like a smart call. Investors cheered Groupon's initial public offering in November 2011. It ended its first day as a public company worth more than $17 billion.

But since then Groupon has floundered, as consumers' appetite for heavily discounted deals on restaurants, yoga classes and pedicures has shrunk. To boost growth the company started Groupon Goods, an online retailer selling a seemingly random assortment of products — everything from leggings to cowhide rugs — at a discount.

Few analysts believe Groupon can effectively compete in the online retailer space against the likes of Amazon. Some see it as little more than an expensive way to beef up sales and, ultimately, as a distraction from its lagging daily deals business.

A more promising initiative may be Groupon's local marketplace, a shift from pushing out daily deals to pulling in customers through ongoing, search-driven offers. Launched in November in Chicago and New York, customers who search online for various products and services will see relevant deals on Groupon, hopefully pulling them to the site to fulfill their purchases.

The company called it an "evolutionary step" toward demand shopping, while Mason, on what was his last conference call as CEO of Groupon on Wednesday, said it was a necessary change of direction.

"It's hard to believe that just a short time ago we were a deal-a-day business," he said. "As you can see, our business continues to evolve at a breakneck pace."

Questions about the company's direction — and identity — will now fall to someone else.

Groupon, valued at less than $3 billion, said it has launched a search for Mason's replacement. In the meantime, Executive Chairman Eric Lefkofsky and Vice Chairman Ted Leonsis will be in charge.

"This company is in a different phase of its growth now and it requires a slightly different skill set," said Arvind Bhatia, a senior research analyst at Sterne Agee. "What they need is somebody who has e-commerce experience and who has an operational background — not just a visionary."

As co-founder and chief executive, Mason not only was Groupon's public face, but also defined its culture. Unlike Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and other high-profile tech entrepreneurs, Mason did not grow up a computer-programming whiz.

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Jane C. Wright, Pioneering Oncologist, Dies at 93

Dr. Jane C. Wright, a pioneering oncologist who helped elevate chemotherapy from a last resort for cancer patients to an often viable treatment option, died on Feb. 19 at her home in Guttenberg, N.J. She was 93.

Her death was confirmed by her daughter Jane Jones, who said her mother had dementia.

Dr. Wright descended from a distinguished medical family that defied racial barriers in a profession long dominated by white men. Her father, Dr. Louis T. Wright, was among the first blacks to graduate from Harvard Medical School and was reported to be the first black doctor appointed to the staff of a New York City hospital. His father was an early graduate of what became the Meharry Medical College, the first medical school in the South for African-Americans, founded in Nashville in 1876.

Dr. Jane Wright began her career as a researcher working alongside her father at a cancer center he established at Harlem Hospital in New York.

Together, they and others studied the effects of a variety of drugs on tumors, experimented with chemotherapeutic agents on leukemia in mice and eventually treated patients, with some success, with new anticancer drugs, including triethylene melamine.

After her father died in 1952, Dr. Wright took over as director of the center, which was known as the Harlem Hospital Cancer Research Foundation. In 1955, she joined the faculty of the New York University Medical Center as director of cancer research, where her work focused on correlating the responses of tissue cultures to anticancer drugs with the responses of patients.

In 1964, working as part of a team at the N.Y.U. School of Medicine, Dr. Wright developed a nonsurgical method, using a catheter system, to deliver heavy doses of anticancer drugs to previously hard-to-reach tumor areas in the kidneys, spleen and elsewhere.

That same year, Dr. Wright was the only woman among seven physicians who, recognizing the unique needs of doctors caring for cancer patients, founded the American Society of Clinical Oncologists, known as ASCO. She was also appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to the President’s Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer and Stroke, led by the heart surgeon Dr. Michael E. DeBakey. Its recommendations emphasized better communication among doctors, hospitals and research institutions and resulted in a national network of treatment centers.

In 1967, Dr. Wright became head of the chemotherapy department and associate dean at New York Medical College. News reports at the time said it was the first time a black woman had held so high a post at an American medical school.

“Not only was her work scientific, but it was visionary for the whole science of oncology,” Dr. Sandra Swain, the current president of ASCO, said in a telephone interview. “She was part of the group that first realized we needed a separate organization to deal with the providers who care for cancer patients. But beyond that it’s amazing to me that a black woman, in her day and age, was able to do what she did.”

Jane Cooke Wright was born in Manhattan on Nov. 30, 1919. Her mother, the former Corinne Cooke, was a substitute teacher in the New York City schools.

Ms. Wright attended the Ethical Culture school in Manhattan and the Fieldston School in the Bronx (now collectively known Ethical Culture Fieldston School) and graduated from Smith College, where she studied art before turning to medicine. She received a full scholarship to New York Medical College, earning her medical degree in 1945. Before beginning research with her father, she worked as a doctor in the city schools.

Dr. Wright’s marriage, in 1947, to David D. Jones, a lawyer, ended with his death in 1976. She is survived by their two daughters, Jane and Alison Jones, and a sister, Barbara Wright Pierce, who is also a doctor.

As both a student and a doctor, Dr. Wright said in interviews, she was always aware that as a black woman she was an unusual presence in medical institutions. But she never felt she was a victim of racial prejudice, she said.

“I know I’m a member of two minority groups,” she said in an interview with The New York Post in 1967, “but I don’t think of myself that way. Sure, a woman has to try twice as hard. But — racial prejudice? I’ve met very little of it.”

She added, “It could be I met it — and wasn’t intelligent enough to recognize it.”

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Economic expansion weakest since 2011

The U.S. economy barely grew in the fourth quarter although a slightly better performance in exports and fewer imports led the government to scratch an earlier estimate that showed an economic contraction.

Gross domestic product expanded at a 0.1 percent annual rate, the Commerce Department said on Thursday, missing the 0.5 percent gain forecast by analysts in a Reuters poll.

The growth rate was the slowest since the first quarter of 2011 and far from what is needed to fuel a faster drop in the unemployment rate.

However, much of the weakness came from a slowdown in inventory accumulation and a sharp drop in military spending. These factors are expected to reverse in the first quarter.

Consumer spending was more robust by comparison, although it only expanded at a 2.1 percent annual rate.

Because household spending powers about 70 percent of national output, this still-lackluster pace of growth suggests underlying momentum in the economy was quite modest as it entered the first quarter, when significant fiscal tightening began.

Initially, the government had estimated the economy shrank at a 0.1 percent annual rate in the last three months of 2012. That had shocked economists.

Thursday's report showed the reasons for the decline were mostly as initially estimated. Inventories subtracted 1.55 percentage points from the GDP growth rate during the period, a little more of a drag than initially estimated. Defense spending plunged 22 percent, shaving 1.28 points off growth as in the previous estimate.

There were some relatively bright spots, however. Imports fell 4.5 percent during the period, which added to the overall growth rate because it was a larger drop than in the third quarter. Buying goods from foreigners bleeds money from the economy, subtracting from economic growth.

Also helping reverse the initial view of an economic contraction, exports did not fall as much during the period as the government had thought when it released its advance GDP estimate in January. Exports have been hampered by a recession in Europe, a cooling Chinese economy and storm-related port disruptions.

Excluding the volatile inventories component, GDP rose at a revised 1.7 percent rate, in line with expectations. These final sales of goods and services had been previously estimated to have increased at a 1.1 percent pace.

Business spending was revised to show more growth during the period than initially thought, adding about a percentage point to the growth rate.

Growth in home building was revised slightly higher to show a 17.5 percent annual rate. Residential construction is one of the brighter spots in the economy and is benefiting from the Federal Reserve's ultra easy monetary policy stance, which has driven mortgage rates to record lows. (Reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
 

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Chicago archdiocese to close 5 schools in cost-cutting move

Budget cuts announced Wednesday by the Archdiocese of Chicago signal that the area's Roman Catholics are entering a period of austerity when there will be less money for their parishes and schools.

The cuts, which were officially announced as Cardinal Francis George and other leaders of the church gathered at the Vatican to select a new pope, include closing five schools, eliminating 75 positions at the archdiocese's headquarters and placing a moratorium on loans to parishes from the archdiocese bank for three years. Other changes include creating stricter guidelines for local parishes applying for subsidies and reducing the number of the agencies in the archdiocese.

George, who spoke publicly about the cuts when asked by reporters in Rome, said they are needed to address the archdiocese's chronic financial problems. The archdiocese has run deficits of more than $30 million annually over the last four years, including being $40 million in the red for the fiscal year ending in June 2012.

All told, the measures will save tens of millions of dollars over the next few years, officials said.

“The expenses have gone up, and the income is pretty well flat,” George said after a news conference in Rome about Pope Benedict XVI's last audience Wednesday in St. Peter's Square. “We tried to ride out the recession without making any changes — and we can't do that. We're giving more grants to parishes and schools that need more money. The budget is not balanced. Not just layoffs, but a lot of other things being done, other ways to use the resources we have.”

The archdiocese sold $150 million in bonds in 2012 that helped it get through a cash-flow problem, but ultimately that wasn't enough, George said. He hopes the cuts will enable the archdiocese to balance its budget in two years.

Although the cardinal's announcement made headlines, the archdiocese's financial situation has been no secret to its priests. Several clergymen said they knew the archdiocese had planned to scale back loans to parishes.

“We have already made adjustments,” said the Rev. Dennis Ziomek of St. Barbara Parish in Chicago's Bridgeport neighborhood. “We have to be responsible stewards with the money.”

In a letter posted on the archdiocese website, the cardinal thanked parishioners for their generosity and asked them to pray for the employees now out of a paycheck.

At the archdiocese's Pastoral Center headquarters on Wednesday, people funneled in and out of the building during their lunch breaks but declined comment on the layoffs. Before the announcement, staffers received memos asking them to report to their desks early Wednesday.

Of the 75 positions, 55 were full-time jobs. Sixty people were let go, while the remaining posts had been vacant. Those cuts are expected to save $11 million to $13 million annually by fiscal 2015, George wrote in his letter.

Employees who received pink slips will get job counseling, extended health benefits and generous severance packages.

“We're keeping up counseling for helping people find jobs, looking for places where they might look for jobs,” George said.

Along with the layoffs, the archdiocese will reduce the number of capital loans and grants it gives parishes, while creating “stricter criteria” for them to qualify for the financial assistance.

A Parish Transformation initiative in the works for at least two years will also try to save money by laying out measures to provide more financial stability, though the letter did not give details.

Those cuts are expected to save an additional $13 million to $15 million annually by fiscal 2015, the letter states.

By next year, the archdiocese will reduce its aid to Catholic schools by $10 million. It plans to give scholarships to children affected by the five school closings so they can attend nearby Catholic schools. Officials said low enrollment was a key factor for closing the schools: St. Gregory the Great High, St. Paul-Our Lady of Vilna Elementary and St. Helena of the Cross Elementary in Chicago, plus St. Bernardine in Forest Park and St. Kieran in Chicago Heights.

Now, Catholic schools will start relying on scholarships for student financial aid instead of grants from the archdiocese to make tuition affordable, Superintendent Sister Mary Paul McCaughey said.

She pointed to a new partnership with the Big Shoulders Fund, a charity supporting urban Catholic schools, that will help families pay for school with scholarships.

McCaughey did not expect tuition at other Catholic schools to immediately rise because grants from the archdiocese have been reduced. About two-thirds of schools already have posted their tuition rates for the upcoming school year, she added.

“Although things are challenged, I think (Chicago) is a Catholic community that's always supported its schools,” McCaughey said. “I think the support will be there.”

Outside of St. Bernardine Elementary in west suburban Forest Park, one of the schools that will close this summer, Maria Maxham said she was devastated when she heard last month that she'd have to send her children, one in second grade and the other in fourth grade, to a different school.

Maxham, who lives in Forest Park, said she is not sure the two will attend another local Catholic school because some lack what she thought was St. Bernardine's strength.

“There is so much diversity at St. Bernardine, and that's part of what makes it so fantastic,” Maxham said. “It was a special place and a second family for us.”

The school, which has been open since 1915, has about 100 students currently enrolled in its preschool-through-eighth-grade classrooms.

Administrators, teachers and parents were notified of the closing in January, when McCaughey led a meeting at the school and explained the large amount of money that the archdiocese needed to reduce from the schools budget, Principal Veronica Skelton Cash said.

One family left the school shortly after hearing the news, she added.

Cash, who joined the school in the fall, said there was much frustration among staff members afterward. Many believed they would have at least a few years to turn things around.

“I could see a lot of things changing for the better at this school,” Cash said. “The culture of the community is changing, and we were getting more and more inquiries about the school. There was momentum going forward.”

Current employees were given guidance on severance and benefits by the archdiocese's human resources officials, Cash said. Teachers without jobs will also be placed on a priority list for future employment with the archdiocese, she said.

“I'm incredibly disheartened,” said Daniel Kwarcinski, who hopes to find a job at another private school after teaching art for seven years at St. Bernardine. “There's a need for a school like this where we are at.”

In Rome, George said the decisions to let people go and reduce aid were not easy. But he reiterated that the archdiocese's financial situation drove the decision.

“We have to balance the budget, especially if it's precarious,” he said. “The growth being very slow means we can no longer ignore the kinds of deficit situations that have been imposed on us. We have to take action.”

Tribune reporter Manya A. Brachear reported from Rome, with Tribune reporters Bridget Doyle and Jennifer Delgado in Chicago.

mbrachear@tribune.com

bdoyle@tribune.com

jmdelgado@tribune.com

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