Sunday, July 20, 2008 11:09 PM CDT
COLUMN: Mattoon native's grandson helped limit NIU tragedy
Bill Lair/Managing Editor
blair@jg-tc.com
It’s been five months since the tragic shootings at Northern Illinois University.
A former student opened fire in a geology class, killing five people and wounding 16 before turning the gun on himself.
Ryanne Mace, 19, of Carpentersville, the granddaughter of the Rev. Miley and Janet Palmer of Decatur was among those who died. The Palmers are former Charleston residents.
We learned recently that the grandson of a Mattoon native was also in Cole Hall at NIU on Valentine’s Day and his quick reaction probably saved more lives from being taken.
Ron Haddock, a member of the Mattoon High School Class of 1947, stopped in the office recently to tell us that the grandson of Doris Hill Miller, also in the MHS Class of 1947, played a major role in preventing the tragedy from being even bigger than it was.
Doris provided more details of the story.
She told me that her grandson, Drew Jeskey of St. Charles, a junior at NIU, was late getting to the geology class at Cole Hall that day so he sat in the back of the lecture hall instead of his usual spot near the middle of the room.
Mrs. Miller said her grandson said he couldn’t tell that Steven Kazmierczak had a gun when he opened the door behind the lecturn and walked out.
After Kazmierczak fired the first shot, which Jeskey said was the loudest noise he ever heard, he joined other students scrambling to get out of the room.
“It was really frightening for all of them,” Mrs. Miller said. “(Drew) got down on the floor, managed to get outside and called police on his cell phone.”
Jeskey’s call to 911 was the first notice police had of the shooting. They responded quickly, Mrs. Hill said.
Kazmierczak continued shooting and had 40 rounds of ammunition remaining when the police arrived.
“But the minute the police got there, the guy shot himself,” Mrs. Miller said.
“I’m real proud of him,” Mrs. Miller said of her grandson. “I think he did what he should have done. He did keep his cool and he did call the police.”
Jeskey also is a member of the NIU soccer team. Steve Simmons, the NIU soccer coach, said ESPN and the New York Times did stories on the shooting and interviewed Jeskey in the days after the incident.
“Right away, he called the police,” Simmons said. “He was able to keep his wits. In that particular moment, it would be easy for anybody to run for cover. He was able to do the extra and call police.
“I don’t know but it is certainly possible that more people could have been killed,” Simmons said.
“He’s an awesome kid and comes from an awesome family,” the coach said. “He’s a vital part of our team. He’s a poster child for our program.”
His grandmother is understandably proud of Drew, and grateful that he escaped the incident without harm.
Doris Miller said she grew up in the Hill family who lived on South 16th Street in Mattoon. Her brother, Jerry Hill, still lives along Illinois Route 16 between Mattoon and Charleston.
She went to Eastern Illinois University where she met her eventual husband, Jack Miller. Jack played basketball at EIU.
“I grew up in Mattoon and loved it there,” she said. “And I have many fond memories of my time at Eastern.”
After graduating from Eastern, Jack taught and coached at Pontiac before moving on to Waukegan schools.
After he retired, they moved to Antioch, where they still reside.
Drew Jeskey and the NIU soccer team have played at Lakeside Field against Eastern in recent years. This year, Eastern’s team will play at Northern in DeKalb in September.
While East-Central Illinois still waits for a reversal on FutureGen’s fate, there was news last week about carbon sequestration — one of the key elements to FutureGen’s potential benefit.
First, the Environmental Protection Agency issued its first regulations on the burial of carbon dioxide underground.
The EPA seeks to protect drinking water from the gas of the bubbles in carbonated beverages. The fledgling technology is critical to reducing carbon dioxide released into the air from power plants.
The EPA’s proposal upgrades the 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act to include a new category of injection wells solely for carbon dioxide storage, and creates extensive requirements to prevent leaks.
FutureGen, as most everyone in Coles County knows, will divert carbon dioxide emissions from the air and inject them into the ground thousands of feet below the surface.
The Montana Legislature also is looking into carbon sequestration.
The Journal Gazette and Times-Courier are part of Lee Enterprises. The corporation has newspapers all across the country, including several in Montana.
For the last 13 months, the Montana Legislature’s Energy and Telecommunications Interim Committee has been studying carbon sequestration issues. The eight-member panel, comprised of four Democrats and four Republicans, directed its staff to produce a comprehensive report on the topic.
They learned that carbon sequestration is hardly a simple matter.
The most complicated bill dealt with defining who owns the underground “pore space” where carbon might be injected and who is liable for the carbon once it is put there. Typically, such space is left behind after natural gas or oil is removed. But such underground minerals are not always owned by the person who owns the surface of the land.
Further complicating things, said one of the legislative researchers who wrote the report, is the fact that the federal government has yet to classify carbon dioxide as either a pollutant or a commodity.
Carbon sequestration is a topic we are sure to hear much more about in the future.
But first, the federal government and FutureGen need to agree to embark on the test site west of Mattoon to gauge the feasibility of this near-zero emissions coal plant idea.
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