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Kevin Graman

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News >  Spokane

Mayor, community dedicate new Garry park monument

About 200 people showed up at Chief Garry Park on Wednesday for the dedication of a memorial inspired by the park’s namesake, revered Spokane tribal leader Spokane Garry, who died in 1892. The Gathering Place monument, incorporating several Spokane tribal themes, replaces a deteriorating concrete statue of Chief Garry, which was removed in 2008, and the short-lived appearance of a totem pole favored by coastal tribes.
News >  Spokane

Annual powwow canceled due to lack of funding

For the first time in 22 years, the sounds of drumming and Salish voices raised in song will be silenced in Riverfront Park this August. The Spokane Falls Northwest Indian Encampment and Powwow, originally scheduled for Aug. 26-27, has been canceled because of lack of funding, according to committee Chairwoman Kathleen Warren.
News >  Spokane

Dad, brother of Navy veteran sue VA over his suicide

The father and brother of a Navy veteran who killed himself three years ago are suing the federal government, alleging negligence by the Spokane Veterans Affairs Medical Center. The death of Lucas Senescall, 26, on July 7, 2008, came amid a spike in the number of suicides by Spokane-area veterans.
News >  Spokane

Rider, horse injured in hit-and-run near Hayden

A North Idaho woman was seriously injured on Tuesday evening when a speeding pickup truck struck the horse she was riding north of Hayden. The driver fled the scene. Lauren Johnson, 20, was in fair condition Wednesday in the intensive care unit at Kootenai Medical Center following the 8:40 p.m. hit-and-run incident.
News >  Spokane

WIC aids in families’ nutrition

Saturday was the last day this summer that WIC food vouchers were available at local farmers markets under an initiative to encourage low-income families to buy fresh fruits and vegetables. The Spokane Regional Health District has been distributing the farmers market vouchers for about 10 years through its six Spokane-area offices, but this summer it again began the distribution at three markets – downtown, North Side and Millwood.
News >  Spokane

World War II hero nearly run down on Spokane street

Allan Wood survived Operation Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge, but a stroll across Riverside Avenue earlier this week nearly did him in. The 90-year-old veteran of World War II was nearly run down by a driver speeding around the corner from Monroe Street as Wood and his wife, Flo, crossed the avenue in front of the Masonic Temple after a Kiwanis meeting at the Spokane Club at about 1 p.m. Tuesday.
News >  Spokane

Courthouse family rights protest planned

A family rights group is planning protests on Friday against the child welfare system at courthouses across the nation, including Spokane. The protests, planned in 42 states and Washington, D.C., are being organized by an Internet-based movement known as Govabuse and will target family courts, child protective services and foster care systems that it says “separate and financially demolish families,” according to the organization’s website, govabuse.org.
News >  Spokane

‘Govabuse’ group plans Spokane protest

A family rights group is planning protests on Friday against the child welfare system at courthouses across the nation, including Spokane. The protests, planned in 42 states and Washington, D.C., are being organized by an Internet-based movement known as Govabuse and will target family courts, child protective services and foster care systems.
News >  Spokane

Fired CEO regains top casino job

The Coeur d’Alene Tribal Council has filled the top position at its casino in Worley, Idaho, with a tribal member who was fired from the same job and sued by the tribe five years ago for alleged breach of fiduciary duties. On Monday, David Matheson was named CEO of the Coeur d’Alene Casino Resort Hotel, a position he held from 1994 until his forced ouster in 2006.
News >  Spokane

State’s foster care system discharges ill-equipped young adults

On his 18th birthday, a boy with a history of behavioral health problems was turned out of the Spokane group home where he had spent the previous two and a half years in the state’s care and started a life on his own for which he was unprepared. Recently cut off of the powerful psychotropic drugs that had been used to control his aggression, Tyler Dorsey ended up in the Spokane County Jail on a domestic violence charge six weeks after aging out of child welfare.
News >  Spokane

Widow of Spokane pilot returns to village where plane went down

This spring, a French village honored the American crew of a World War II bomber at a memorial dedication attended by the Spokane widow of the plane’s pilot and their son. “They are a people who still remember,” said Pauline “Paula” Lorenzi, 88, one of 17 Americans and nearly 500 French to attend the May 28 ceremony in Le Cardonnois, France.
News >  Spokane

‘Exile Nation’ challenges drug policies

Charles Shaw considers himself a former POW of the drug war, a felon turned filmmaker who wants to expose the injustice of the mass incarceration of drug offenders, which he calls “a 40-year, one-trillion-dollar social catastrophe.” Shaw will be in Spokane on Friday for the local premier of his documentary, “The Exile Nation Project: An Oral History of the War on Drugs & the American Criminal Justice System.”
News >  Spokane

Go-cart crash injures father, daughter

A father and daughter were flown by helicopter to a Spokane hospital on Sunday afternoon after the go-cart they were riding in crashed at an off-road vehicle track in Diamond Lake, Wash.
News >  Spokane

VA chaplain suspended for counseling

The chaplain at the Spokane Veterans Affairs Medical Center is being suspended for three days without pay for counseling four VA employees and noting those sessions in the employees’ confidential medical records. The Rev. George Booker, a retired Army Reserve officer and veteran of the Iraq War, says he was only doing his job and he believes he is being unfairly harassed by a supervisor.
News >  Spokane

Decades later, servicemen’s remains returning to Spokane

A Marine private lost at the Battle of Tarawa in 1943 and an Army captain who died as a prisoner of the North Koreans in 1951 are finally coming home to Spokane. Although the U.S. Department of Defense’s Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command has identified the remains of more than 1,800 Americans since the 1970s, the return of two long-missing soldiers to the same community within a week of each other is remarkable.
News >  Spokane

Seven former Boy Scouts allege sexual abuse

Seven former Boy Scouts have sued the Boy Scouts of America in federal courts in Washington state alleging the organization failed to protect them from sexual abuse by Scout leaders in the 1970s and ’80s. One case was filed this week in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington in Spokane on behalf of a Monroe, Wash., man identified as Boy 7, who alleges he was abused at Camp Cowles on Diamond Lake in Pend Oreille County in 1974.
News >  Spokane

American craftsman

There are perhaps only five true concertina makers in the world, William Wakker says. His not only is made in America, as of Tuesday it’s truly American-made. Wakker, a Dutch classical musician-turned instrument maker, was one of 32 people taking the Oath of Citizenship before U.S. Magistrate Judge Cynthia Imbrogno in Spokane on Tuesday.
News >  Spokane

Merger seeks stronger mental health system

Two mental health agencies with long histories in Spokane will merge on July 1 to form Frontier Behavioral Health. The boards of directors of Spokane Mental Health, which last year provided services to 9,800 people, and Family Service Spokane, which served 2,300 people, are expected to approve the merger on Monday.
News >  Spokane

Spokane mental health providers merging

Two mental health agencies with long histories in Spokane will merge on July 1 to form Frontier Behavioral Health. The boards of directors of Spokane Mental Health and Family Service Spokane are expected to approve the merger on Monday.
News >  Spokane

Insurer OKs treatment for veteran’s brain injury

A Spokane-area woman who was injured by an enemy mortar explosion while working as a helicopter mechanic in Afghanistan has received approval from a government-contracted insurance company to receive the treatment her doctors say she needs. Jennifer Barcklay, 40, of Chattaroy, was diagnosed with traumatic brain injury after the September 2009 attack at a forward operating base in eastern Afghanistan, where she was employed by Blackwater, the private defense security contractor now known as Xe Services.