Friday, May. 09, 2008

Dear editor

Priorities

Editor:

I am writing in response to Mr. Lary Short’s letter in last week’s paper. I have known Lara Lee Hogg for seven years. Our husbands served in the military together. His implication that Lara Lee has somehow incorrectly aligned her priorities is just not true.

Lara Lee used her experience and leadership to improve the relationship between the city of Fort Worth and Keller ISD. Dialogue is now taking place that previously did not occur thanks to Lara Lee. She is working hard to reduce the number of hazardous bus routes in KISD. Your tax dollars, regardless of where you live, are going to bus children safely to school. I hope that, through her efforts, our roads will quickly improve and this money can be moved back into the classroom. This will benefit every child in KISD.

In only one year of service to the Keller ISD community, Lara Lee has fully grasped the challenges that the whole district faces and has worked diligently to ensure that those challenges are directly addressed. She serves the district — the entire district — with wisdom, grace and courage and has done an outstanding job in doing so.

Julia Duke

Fort Worth

Get involved

Editor:

What makes a great place to live even greater? Is it the schools, parks, restaurants or shopping? Maybe it is the lack of congestion and lack of business. However, like water down a hill, our city continues to grow with the increasing number of students, traffic and a market place for shopping and entertainment.

What an opportunity we have to build an even greater city. How do we achieve such an overwhelming task to increase everyone’s quality of life? The city, the schools the youth programs and churches are incredibly successful as individual entities; however, how do we become greater?

For an example we must continue to communicate between the Parks and Recreation Department and the Keller Youth Association. We must continue to communicate between the city of Keller and Keller ISD. We as individuals must continue to volunteer our time by using our talents and taking responsibility for our city by getting involved. Our city is filled with talented individuals, business leaders, artists, and educators at all different skill levels of expertise. It is our responsibility to create an environment that uses these talented individuals in our community and gives direction to our leaders.

Everyone is in a different time in their life, but we are all in this time now. We must be responsible for communicating as citizens, residents, students, to our individual organizations in a positive way. Not just agreeing with everything that is said, but educating ourselves about the issues and communicate these ideas.

My challenge is to the leaders of the community. The leaders are the individual board members, the committees and individual groups. It is not just the KISD school board or the Keller City Council. It is our responsibility to be involved and informed in what is happening in our city. Whether you agree or disagree, get involved and be a part of the process. Our leaders’ responsibility is to hear what we are communicating, and we must communicate to other group leaders. Everyone is a leader in some capacity with some organization whether it is scouting, churches, HOA, quilting club or whatever. Our opportunity lies in communicating individual interest groups’ ideas and looking for other opportunities to build synergy with other groups.

We cannot allow our individual interests to overshadow the overall responsibility to build a better place for everyone. Our responsibility is to look for opportunities to improve, don’t just sit back and let someone else do the job. Let’s all get involved and take advantage of building a greater place to live. It is our choice and responsibility to choose the leaders of our community that work together with all individual groups rather than choosing a leader that only represents a few individual interests. This is how we make a great place to live even better.

Perry Lynch

Keller

Cancer risks

Editor:

I wish to applaud Laura Quesada for telling her story and for her persistence in seeking a correct cancer diagnosis and care. However, I wish to correct a misstatement about inherited breast cancer. She stated: "and it (breast cancer) turns in to ovarian cancer." This is not correct.

There is, however, a genetic link between breast and ovarian cancer; and thus individuals with inherited breast cancer (10 percent of breast cancer patients) have a higher risk of ovarian cancer. For families with multiple members affected be either breast or ovarian cancer, there is now a blood test (called BRAC testing) available to determine if one has the gene predisposing to breast or ovarian cancer. The presence or absence of the gene in turn can affect whether high-risk individuals wish to have prophylactic treatment or take medication to decrease their breast-cancer risk.

I would also point out that MRI imaging of the breast has been shown to be useful in high-risk women in addition to mammography for early detection of breast cancer. More information on genetic testing is available through Myriad Genetic Laboratories, 800-469-7423.

Dr. Erica W. Swegler

Keller

Helpful police

Editor:

I don’t know how many times over my 50 years, I have had to call a police department for help in some matter. Most of the time it is minor things, some times not so minor. I also can’t believe how many times I don’t think they ever responded. We would wait to see them but they never showed. This is very disturbing to me.

So, when my wife wanted to call the Keller Police Department for help a few weeks ago, I was very skeptical if they would even care about our issue. We had just moved from one area of Keller to another. Our street has no street lights and is very dark at night. We had not been in the house for longer than a week when we started having someone mess with our automobiles. My wife wanted to call for help, but I thought it was a waste of time. But like most husbands, I lost and she called anyway.

She told them of our problem and asked if the department would patrol our street more. The dispatcher told us she would report the problem. In my heart-of-hearts, I thought that was as far as it would go. I was wrong, terribly wrong! Not only did they start showing up much more, they even stopped one night a couple of weeks later and physically got out of the patrol car and shined a flashlight around our vehicles. I could not wipe the grin off my face! I was so surprised and happy to see our concern taken seriously.

It has been about two months I guess, and they are still patrolling the area more. My hat is off to the Keller PD for their concern for our problem. We appreciate it so much. I promise, for the next six months, I will not say, "Well, it must be the end of the month, they just pulled over another car." I promise.

John Henderson

Keller

Bigotry

Editor:

It is sad indeed that we have to be treated to weekly doses of religious bigotry in the advertising section of The Keller Citizen. I am writing about the ad placed by the Tyler Young of the Roanoke Church of Christ, which has a distinctively anti-Catholic message each week.

One of his latest commentaries about the Catholic Church "teaching" on "Limbo" is not only attacking, but inaccurate as well. He claims that Pope Benedict wants to remove "Limbo" from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Perhaps if he bothered to do any research he would find that "Limbo" is not in the catechism, and never has been (for the Catholic teaching on baptism, see John 3:5, CCC 1257). I suggest that if Mr. Young wants to attract people to his church, he should come up with a message expressing the love of Christ (John 3:16) rather than bearing false witness against his neighbor (Exodus 20:16). I hope that in the future The Keller Citizen will use some discretion and not allow advertising containing religious bigotry.

Rob Meyer

Keller

Not 'gospel’

Editor:

Concerning "Limbo in Limbo," I very much hope that your readers do not take every paid advertisement in The Keller Citizen as "gospel."

The content of "Limbo in Limbo" was filled with erroneous information. I have to believe that the author is hoping that readers who are not familiar with Catholic doctrine will accept what he wrote as being true – negatively to the Catholic Church, of course. Please readers, do not fall into the trap of accepting what you see at face value. Sometimes it just is not ... and this is one of those times.

Andrew M. Bahl

Fort Worth