This editorial will appear in Friday's print edition.

Father Tim: Five years later, a casualty of war

Some who die in war die quickly. Others take longer.

Father Tim – the Rev. Henry Timothy Vakoc – took just over five years. He died Saturday in a Minnesota nursing home of injuries inflicted by a roadside bomb in Iraq on May 29, 2004 – becoming the first chaplain to die of combat-related injuries in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

Vakoc, an Army major and Catholic priest who ministered to Fort Lewis units serving in northern Iraq, was coming back from celebrating mass in the field near Mosul when a bomb ripped through his Humvee.

His brain injuries were so traumatic that he was categorized as being in a “vegetative state,” but that was later upgraded to “minimally responsive state.”

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This editorial will appear in Friday's print edition.

The Tacoma School Board is happy with its superintendent hire, and it has reason to be. But the board shouldn’t stop expecting more.

Art Jarvis, who was named permanent superintendent last July, has ably put the district’s house in order following the disastrous reign of former Superintendent Charlie Milligan.
The school board gave Jarvis high marks in both public and employee relations and financial management in its recent performance evaluation.

Jarvis’ financial leadership helped prepare the district for the region’s economic woes and buffer cuts to state education spending. Tacoma is among the few school districts not laying off teachers in the wake of the Legislature’s patching of a $9 billion budget hole.

He also has rebuilt relationships within and without the school district. Jarvis is, perhaps above all, a people person who understands that the district cannot succeed if it’s at odds with the community.

But good fiscal management and community relations only get students so far, especially in a district where half of them are poor enough to qualify for free- or reduced-price lunch and test scores typically lag the state average on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning.

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When news of Michael Jackson's death broke this afternoon, we had an internal discussion about whether to write a quick turn-around editorial for Friday.

My impulse – since I'm the one who probably would have had to write it – was to say no. I couldn't figure what I would say, other than something along the lines of "great talent, weird life, even weirder face."

I had already written the tribute to Army Chaplain Tim Vakoc, and just didn't see a good reason to pull it and substitute one about Jackson. I suspect enough will be written elsewhere in the paper that readers won't mind that we took a pass on MJ.

UPDATE: The Los Angeles Times just moved an editorial on Jackson, so I'll get that in on the "rail" Friday. Here it is:

Michael — maybe we knew
too much about ye

What felt the most shocking, as the first reports of Michael Jackson’s death rolled out, was how expected the news was. Maybe not this day exactly, but if ever there were a Greek tragedy that seemed to be forming in the very first years of a man’s life, this was it.

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The Tacoma school board rightfully gave first-year Superintendent Art Jarvis high marks for financial management. He scored lowest in the area of student and teacher performance, a perpetual struggle for the urban district. It's there that Jarvis needs to make the most progress if the board hopes to retain community support.

On Saturday, the Rev. Tim Vakoc became the first military chaplain to die in the Iraq/Afghanistan war – more than five years after he was wounded. There are many like Father Tim out there, Americans who survived their war injuries but will never completely recover from them.

If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to kim.bradford@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.

Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

I hate to be the party pooper here, but this looks an awful lot like an adult religious leader conducting a religious ritual with a gathering of students at McIlvaigh Middle School.

Connie McCloud – a Puyallup cultural leader – told the students that the pole was a living spirit who watches over the community and “knows who you are.”

Nothing wrong with her remarks, but the setting? If a Baptist minister or Roman Catholic priest were invited to a public school to pray with students, everyone from the ACLU to myself and my colleagues would have cried foul.

I’m a fan of many aspects of Salish culture, which tends to be more community-oriented than the individualistic American mainstream. But I’m not sure why Indian rituals are exempted from the usual concerns about religion in the public schools.

Romance writers get out your pads and pencils ‘cause I just read the emails between South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and his Argentinean paramour and you’re gonna want to take notes.

Steamy is one word that comes to mind.

Sad is another.

Sad that we are even able to read and gawk at such a private correspondence. The State, a newspaper out of Columbia S.C., deemed this email exchange newsworthy. The love notes began over a year ago and displays in embarrassing detail how quickly grown-ups revert back to adolescence.

Yes, reading a grown man wax poetic about a woman’s “curves,” “tan lines” and “two magnificent parts” is now newsworthy.

But hey, the personal failings of politicians have long been fair game. Paging Ken Starr. Remember him? The man who helped expose President Clinton in his personal affair. Governor Mark Sanford does because in 1998 he called for President Clinton’s resignation, saying, “The issue of lying is the biggest harm.”

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