Patrick Sullivan

Features Patrick Sullivan There are two portraits of Jere Clark to choose from: a solid citizen who
takes care of troubled children in Bellaire or a monster who preys on
them.
The gulf between them is wider than the Jordan River Valley.
At the end of a preliminary hearing in April to determine if there was
enough evidence to prove Clark molested a foster child in the care of his
family, lawyers argued over whether Clark should be freed on bail while
the case wound its way through 86th District Court.

Features Patrick Sullivan Opposition to the city’s plan to remove the Spirit of Traverse City from
Clinch Park is gaining steam.
In the meantime, while the mini train could be figuratively derailed by
the end of this summer, or otherwise moved someplace else, it literally
derailed and part of it tipped over on July 4. The train was back in
service Wednesday after repairs.
Michelle Hazard started the Facebook group Save the Spirit of Traverse
City after she discovered the train had been removed from the city’s
bayfront plan and was not expected to return in 2012.
The group has generated hundreds of comments and prompted nearly 1,500
people to hit the “like” button.

Features Patrick Sullivan Charlevoix woman accused of killing her mother has lots of silent support
By Patrick Sullivan
The day Sandra Gregory killed her mother, the two women had just received some bad news.
Amelia “Meadie” Gregory was having trouble seeing.
A doctor thought the vision problem was neurological, which probably meant the 94-year-old would need to move from the home she shared with her daughter on US 31 just south of Charlevoix into an assisted living facility.
Amelia Gregory told her daughter she didn’t want to go into a nursing home; she wanted to be with her husband, who is deceased.
Sandra Gregory told police she granted her mother’s last wish on March 27. Now Sandra Gregory, 73, is in jail awaiting trial on a charge of open murder.
She used a walker to reach the podium at a recent court hearing where, through her attorney, Kraag Lieberman, she waived a preliminary hearing on the charges.
District Court Judge Richard May denied a request that Gregory be released on bail.

Features Patrick Sullivan Over the past few months, there has been an uproar across the state over
Governor Rick Snyder’s plan to place emergency managers into school
districts and municipalities deemed to be under financial stress.
Emergency managers have broad powers to negate public union contracts and
to supersede local school boards, city managers and town councils. Local
communities that are under the kind of fiscal stress that could make them
targets include the Village of Elberta and Bellaire. Benton Harbor and the
Detroit School District have already been subject to emergency managers.
The Northern Express recently sat down with three of the locals behind a
petition drive to force a referendum to repeal Public Act 4, a law passed
in March at the request of Gov. Snyder to implement the emergency manager
program. We spoke to Amy Hardin, Betsy Coffia and Kevin Skarnulis. Francis
Cullen, the fourth member of the group, could not attend.

Features Patrick Sullivan There must be something about the sport of running.
In 50 years the Traverse City Track Club has had three presidents and all
of them are still alive.
George Kuhn, the club’s first president, won’t guarantee running leads to
a long life.

Features Patrick Sullivan People might not have noticed that in the dust of a lousy economy there
are fewer cops on the road in Northern Michigan.
In Benzie County, Sheriff Rory Heckman is afraid criminals have taken note.
In one case, a would-be gas station stick-up man told a clerk he would
come back and rob the place once the cops had knocked off for the night.
Last month, there were two more opportunistic crimes -- at Pinecroft golf
course, just outside of Beulah, thieves somehow made off with six golf
carts. At the Watson Benzie car dealership in Benzonia, tires were stolen
from a Jeep and concrete blocks were left in their place.

Features Patrick Sullivan It was somber at the Dennis W. Finch Law Enforcement Center Wednesday
morning when police met with the press to tell them about the body they
had found and the arrest they had made.
Carly Lewis had been missing since June 2. A Facebook group devoted to
finding her had grown to nearly 4,000 members. Her family and friends
prayed she would turn up alive by Wednesday, her 17th birthday.
“We were hoping, obviously, this would culminate in a runaway, but it
didn’t,” Traverse City Police Capt. Brian Heffner said.

Features Patrick Sullivan A Dispute at 18 Miles Per Hour: No one wins when it’s cyclists vs. motorists on the roads
By Patrick Sullivan
What should have been a peaceful, quick ride down Front Street in Traverse
City on a spring evening turned ugly last month when a motorist apparently
decided he didn’t want to drive behind someone riding a bicycle.
Joel Gaff, Jr. was riding in the right vehicle lane at around 18 miles per
hour when a car crept up behind him and the driver laid on the horn. The
31-year-old wasn’t in the bike lane, but he was riding as fast as the car
ahead of him, he said.
“I was traveling at the speed of traffic,” Gaff said. “Often I find it
safer to ride in the vehicle lane when you travel at 18 or 20 miles an
hour.”
That’s because in the bike lane, car doors and pedestrians can pop in
front of riders without warning.
“As long as you’re not impeding the flow of traffic, it’s actually legal
to ride there, even if there is a bike lane,” he said.

Features Patrick Sullivan Aubrey Checks and Konrad Winston Pressley partied in Traverse City on New
Year’s Eve and stayed with friends.
The next day they returned home to Gaylord and headed to a trailer on
Arrowhead Trail, a gravel road in the woods about five miles southeast of
Gaylord. The couple hoped to score some heroin there.
Maybe they hoped it would take the edge off the suffering they felt from
the night before.
That’s not what happened.

Features Patrick Sullivan When a pair of men got into an argument with a homeless man on Union
Street in Traverse City outside a row of bars earlier this month, things
escalated quickly.
Witnesses said David John Ursuy, a felon who spent years in prison for
assault and theft convictions, pulled a pocket knife and stabbed the two
men, 33-year-old and 26-year-old Traverse City residents, after the men
intervened when Ursuy was arguing with one of their girlfriends.
The men suffered non-life threatening wounds to their upper arms that
required hospitalization according to Traverse

Features Patrick Sullivan A couple of years ago some of the staff at Goodwill Industries noticed
something about the homeless population in Northern Michigan.
A lot of them are military veterans.
“Ryan Hannon, the street outreach coordinator, brought it to my attention
back in February, 2009 that there were approximately 13 homeless veterans
in the area that were not receiving services,” said Pam Cuthbert, director
of veterans programs at Goodwill. “Because of Ryan we got in touch with
the VA hospital down in Saginaw.”

Features Patrick Sullivan A couple of years ago some of the staff at Goodwill Industries noticed
something about the homeless population in Northern Michigan.
A lot of them are military veterans.
“Ryan Hannon, the street outreach coordinator, brought it to my attention
back in February, 2009 that there were approximately 13 homeless veterans
in the area that were not receiving services,” said Pam Cuthbert, director
of veterans programs at Goodwill. “Because of Ryan we got in touch with
the VA hospital down in Saginaw.”