Letters To The Editor

CORRECTION: Sunday, January 7, 1996; C2 A letter in last Sunday’s sports section from Deanna R. Kuhn claimed that only 1 percent of the population hunts. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s latest statistics say 9 percent of the nation’s population hunts.

Let’s restore Albi to multipurpose

In response to a Washington State University athletic department complaint about insufficient seating capacity at Albi Stadium in 1962, the city increased the stadium capacity by 7,000 seats by digging out the floor of the football field and digging out the spacious track surrounding the football field.

Albi Stadium was donated by the Spokane Athletic Round Table as a multi-purpose stadium capable of holding many diversified sporting events, including stock car races around the inside oval track.

The manner in which the new seating was constructed fully destroyed the all-purpose stadium and relegated it to limited use for high school football approximately 10 weekends each year.

This ill-conceived improvement created a cement barrier that has subjected every football player to partial or permanent injury and the city of Spokane to potentially unlimited law suits.

It would be prudent to restore Albi Stadium to its original uses before spending substantial sums of money on the new turf and pad for the football field.

Elimination of this hazardous football field with its cement wall could encourage Cougars football to return to Albi and possibly exhibition football games by the Seahawks and many other professional sporting events.

The dormant land and its future potential is unquestionably available, and with good common sense, The Sports, Entertainment, Arts and Convention Advisory Board, now considering expenditures for the turf and pad for the football field, has this great opportunity to transfer the Albi Stadium wasteland into a useful and productive sports arena for the city of Spokane. Victor J. Felice Spokane

It’s time to speak out about ‘slaughter’

I read with horror your article by Rich Landers in the sports section on Dec. 21, in which he speaks of the elk killers’ “glory in Panhandle.”

It amazes me how the killers gripe when there is any restriction on their slaughter “rights.” They complain about weapons’ restrictions, location of elk to be killed, the number and age to be killed, as if the elk were their personal property to do with as they want. Those poor animals belong to all of us, and the killers’ whining is childish and cruel.

If there are not enough elk to slaughter, the killers want to kill the natural predators so there will be more elk to kill. The logic boggles the mind.

This festival of blood is perpetrated by our tax dollars and done on our lands for the bloody pleasure of less than 1 percent of the population, who kills animals for fun.

It’s time the general population started objecting to the slaughter of innocent animals, who have a right to live in peace just as we do. The manipulation of herds and environment is not sport. We know it and the “sport killers” do, too. Deanna R. Kuhn Spokane

We welcome letters of up to 300 words on all sports and outdoors topics. All letters are subject to editing. Writers are limited to one letter a month. Please include your signature, street address and telephone number where you can be reached for verification. Send to Letters to the Sports Editor, The Spokesman-Review, W999 Riverside, Spokane 99201, or fax to (509) 459-5098, or e-mail to sports@spokesman.com. To dictate a letter by telephone, call 458-8800 and enter the four-digit code, 4855.