The Quad-City Times - News, Sports and more from the Quad Cities region or Iowa and Illinois

You are not logged in.
Login

Log in to qctimes.com
Email:
Password:
Remember my information.
Register
Site Help

Note to users: Technical difficulties are causing some comments to not appear. We appreciate your patience as we work on it.

Paying it forward; farewell to Dorothy

Font Size:

Default font size

Larger font size

By Bill Wundram | Monday, May 12, 2008 11:53 PM CDT | () comments

ON this 13th day of May: Hits and misses around our sunny/soggy towns …

“Yesterday, I went to Target in Moline to get my prescriptions. There was a wait, and I got to talking to another senior-age person about the cost of us keeping going,” says Virginia Miller of Moline.

“Behind us was another woman, not of our age group. When it was my turn, I asked the cost just in case I could get only half. That was all right. I could afford that, so I left the counter. I did some shopping and when I returned to get my prescription, the young woman waiting on me said. ‘Here is your prescription and you don’t owe anything.’

“The third woman in line had heard my conversation about cost and paid for it! That is a wonderful example of your ‘Pay it Forward’ campaign.”

‘Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack’

Everything was quite solemn, as it should have been for the memorial service for Dorothy Wulf, 91, the grande dame of baseball in the Quad-Cities, who died in March just before opening day. Then, the packed Newcomb Presbyterian Church in Davenport broke into smiles.

Dorothy White, the ageless pianist at Von Maur’s who also is Newcomb’s pianist, began playing that grand old familiar tune.

The choir sang. Everyone in the church sang. Had Dorothy been there, she would have sung the loudest.

Hymns, yes, but just for Dorothy, it was “Take me out to the ball game, take me out to the crowd, buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack, I don’t care if I never get back …”

The rafters rang. It was such a hit that everyone sang it a second time.

“We couldn’t have a service for Dorothy without singing that,” said the pastor, the Rev. Rick King.

The only voice missing was Harry Caray’s. Harry always said that was the only song he knew the words to.

Abbey in darkness — for how long?

The spectacular lights that rim the Abbey in Bettendorf have been turned off, at least for the moment. “We’re leaving them off until we get this thing with the city resolved,” Joe Lemon said Monday from California. I guess he wants the neighborhood to see how dark it can be when the switch is off.

Things to wonder about …

DON’T YOU wonder what strangers think when they come off the Mississippi bridge near LeClaire, and the first official Iowa-side sign they see on Interstate 80 says “Silos and Smokestacks”? That must do a lot for tourism.

DON’T YOU wonder how long the City of Davenport is going to keep pouring money into the Credit Island golf course — the favorite spot for fish every time the big river goes past flood stage?

Out of the Senate, into the kitchen

Veterinarian Joe Seng, when he isn’t in the Iowa Senate and he isn’t tending to pets (he had just removed a McDonald’s toy from a dog’s tummy while we talked), can’t stand still. He’s opening a restaurant called Joe’s Club, 7th and Fillmore, just a few feet from his clinic. The old place is nostalgically remembered by west-enders as the Chief saloon, and subsequently flopped as a coffee shop run by two churches.

Joe has still more in his plate. He just took out a liquor license for his Renwick mansion, the one he bought as a “summer home” from Chris Ales. It is one of the classiest restored magnificent mansions in the Q-C. It’ll be a B & B, and is ready for special holidays, weddings, etc.

“I just can’t sit still,” he says. To keep from fidgeting in his spare time, he’s just acquired his 25th accordion. He will play on an instant’s notice, whether you ask him or not.

Bill Wundram can be contacted at (563) 383-2249 or bwundram@qctimes.com.