Alabama A&M celebrates homecoming week, A17 | Law & Order, A14 | Obituaries, A16 | Intersections, A15

Take a ride Local&State The Huntsville Times | Sunday, September 23, 2007
A13
Bicycles will be cruising the
streets of downtown and
old Huntsville this week-
end. A Vintage & Cruiser Bi-

Program puts focus

cycle Ride is set for today at
2:30 p.m. Those who want
to participate should meet
in front of Huntsville Mid-
dle School on Adams Street
by 2:15. The ride will be

on internal medicine
“conversationally paced”
and will be through the
downtown and historic
area and around Big Spring
before stopping for malts at
Sonic. Families are wel-
come and helmets are re- Joint training Alabama at Birmingham are as internists – doctors who
quired. For information, e- working together to launch a specialize in adult internal
mail nolenclark@mind-
effort may reverse new internal medicine resi- medicine.
spring.com. doctor shortage dency training program at “We’re doing all the plan-
UAB’s regional medical cam- ning with the assumption
By STEVE DOYLE pus on Governors Drive. that we will figure out a way
Road Watch Times Staff Writer Dr. Robert Centor, dean of to get the funding,” Centor
Traffic is reduced to one steve.doyle@htimes.com UAB’s Huntsville campus, said.
lane eastbound on Monroe A cure is in the works for a said the three-year program UAB’s Huntsville campus
Street near the Chamber of critical shortage of internal could admit its first residents now offers a three-year fam- Bryan Bacon/Huntsville Times
Commerce. medicine doctors in Huntsville. as soon as July 2009. It would ily practice residency for 36 Dr. Nancy Blevins of the University of Alabama at Birmingham
Officials from Huntsville be tailored for medical school faculty watches as first-year intern James Morrison examines
Governors Drive Hospital and the University of graduates who want to work Please see MEDICINE on A17 a patient at the Huntsville clinic.

Saint Clair Ave.

Governors Dr.
Aggressive Schools
Me

Harvard Rd.
mor

Eastbound

dogs often may try

Gallatin St.
ial Par

lane closed
kway

Bob W
allac
e Ave. N

S
vulnerable to shed
the feds
Huntsville Times

The right-hand, eastbound

lane is closed from Harvard
at the end
Road to Montgomery Street Poor care and neglect
through Oct. 15. To view
breed trouble, and then
Governors traffic, visit
www.al.com/traffic. pit bulls become victims
By NIKI DOYLE
Champ search Times Staff Writer
A weeklong competition niki.doyle@htimes.com
begins near Priceville to see No. 24 doesn’t have a name.
who has the 2007 World The black and white pit bull dog does-
Grand Champion among 700 n’t have a collar or any sort of ID. She’s
or so racking horses one of six pit bulls that the Huntsville An-
brought from 14 states to imal Shelter typically receives each day,
Celebration Arena. But it’s and she’s one of the six that will be eu-
not all about horses. A15 thanized if her owner doesn’t claim her.
The mangy pit bull, with her one icy
Got ethics? blue eye and one brown eye, won’t even
let shelter workers touch her.
A committee says all em-
ployees at the Alabama De- Dr. Karen Hill Sheppard, director of
Huntsville Animal Services, has tried. She
partment of Environmental
Management, and especially has watched the black and white pit bull
recoil when her cage clicks open.
its top staff, should have an-
nual mandatory ethics Sheppard said she’s tired of seeing
these dogs, who will be euthanized in a
training. A14
week if they aren’t claimed, come into
the shelter with ticks and fleas, mange,
Ditto driver worms - or worse.
What happened in the case It’s a pattern that Sheppard has seen
of the driver who plowed
emerging in the pit bulls that come
into three parked cars July through the shelter. The traits that make
4 at Ditto Landing? A14
these dogs so valuable – their strength,
tenacity and reputation as “tough dogs”
Helping hand – also make them victims.
Pat McMillion is a retired People tire of them after a while. Then
they discard them.
teacher spearheading ef-
forts to bring a one-room “They’re doing it for fun,” Sheppard
said as she closed No. 24’s cage, one of
schoolhouse to Burritt on
the Mountain. A14 seven cages that day holding neglected
pit bulls. “It’s such an evil thing to do. Hu-
mans are so amazing, but when you hear
SUV death about this kind of thing, it makes you so
An autopsy is planned on cynical.”
an 8-month-old girl found
dead in her father’s SUV in One of many
Mobile. Phong Tran, 27, of No. 24, a pit bull that obviously was
Mobile unintentionally left used for breeding, just showed up at the
Kaleen Tran in his Dodge
shelter. There’s no way for shelter work-
Durango after dropping off ers to tell if she was stolen, if she ran away
his two other children or if someone simply dropped her off.
Thursday morning at Little
Animal Services policy generally does-
Flower Catholic School, n’t allow the adoption of pit bulls because
said police spokesman Offi- of the breed’s reputation as unpre-
cer Eric Gallichant. Tran re-
dictable and potentially aggressive dogs.
alized that his daughter was With adult pit bulls, it’s hard to know
still in the SUV when he re-
turned to Little Flower at
5:45 p.m. Thursday to pick
up his children from after-
school care, Gallichant said.
Babs didn’t wait on opportunity, created own
ote: Thanks to
Officer Virgie Graham of Huntsville Animal Services picks up a pit bull off Glasgow
Road in north Huntsville to take it to the local shelter to wait for its owner to
claim the dog.
for sure how they were raised and what
kind of temperament they have devel-
oped, Sheppard said.
“If they do – for whatever reason – de-
cide to display aggression, the difference
of a bite between a Chihuahua and a 50-
pound pit bull is enormous,” she said.
“People are still a bit intimidated some-
times by adopting them.”
The shelter has limited slots for
adoptable dogs, and workers have to
choose the most likely to go to a good
home, she said.
The policy is also a safeguard for a city
that doesn’t want to be held liable for a
dog that injures someone, and for a shel-
ter that doesn’t want to take the chance
of adopting a dog that could hurt some-
one.
Even more so, Sheppard said, she
doesn’t want to see a pit bull fall into the
hands of an owner who wants the dog
for the wrong reason. Sheppard wasn’t
“Martha Fleming
Board members
look at pros, cons
if step is taken
By CHALLEN STEPHENS
Times Staff Writer
challen.stephens@htimes.com
In an effort to emerge from
its civil rights past, Huntsville
City Schools is taking the first
steps to shed a 37-year-old fed-
eral desegregation order.
“It is going to be painful, and
it is going to be disruptive,” at-
torney J.R. Brooks told the city
school board
Thursday
night, warning
that the board
could be forced
to transfer
many teachers
and redraw
school zone
lines.
Some board
Bryan Bacon/Huntsville Times members see a
reward in no J.R. Brooks is
longer being the attorney
required to ask for the city
the Depart- school sys-
director when the policy was developed, ment of Jus- tem.
but she understands its intent. tice and the
“It’s so easy to say it’s policy,” Sheppard
NAACP for
said, “but very infrequently is a policy cre- approval of where they want to
ated for one particular reason.”
build schools.
The first questions from the
The number problem Justice Department could arrive
Are pit bulls inherently vicious? It de-
in the next few days, Brooks told
pends on whom you ask. the board. “So the process be-
Statistics compiled by the Centers for gins.”
Disease Control and Prevention show He said a majority of the
that 60 percent of dog-bite fatalities were board has indicated that it is in-
caused by pit-bull types and Rottweilers.
terested in pursuing the matter.
The CDC data span 20 years of dog- But there has been no vote of
bite reports from 1979 to 1998, but the the school board, no formal ac-
center didn’t intend for its numbers to
tion and no public commitment.
be used as the basis for breed-specific leg- “I would say that the board
islation. According to the report, the data hasn’t voted on anything,”
could show a strong bias because bites
board President Doug
by certain breeds – pit bulls, Dobermans Martinson Jr. said Friday. “We
and Rottweilers – are more likely to be have not authorized the board
attorney to do anything. The
Please see DOGS on A19
Please see SCHOOLS on A17
The tract came with a land- as the Bank of Huntsville.

Blog with the Times

The latest news:
http://blog.al.com/breaking/
N Christine
Richard for her
research on the
life of Babs Roper.
Christine, if you recog-
used to ride her horse
up from their farm,”
Roper’s niece, Beth
Carter, remembered
Friday. She was refer-
mark home the couple re-
stored, and they turned its
fields into giant nurseries. It’s
said those colorful fields were
on many people’s route for a
When it was bought by Colo-
nial Bankgroup, Roper got a
seat on that board, too.
Meanwhile, the couple
were quietly buying other
Ask Us: nize some of your own ring to another of Sunday drive. property. Office complexes
http://blog.al.com/askus/ words, it’s because they Huntsville’s storied pre- If the land had a past, it and apartment buildings
Huntsville Scanner: were better than mine. LEE boom families. also had a future. It wasn’t joined their holdings.
http://blog.al.com/scanner/ From a tiny apart- When people talk through making history. Babs Roper took her hus-
Lee Roop’s Room: ment over a flower ROOP about Nolan and Babs Humana Corp. wanted to band’s seat on the bank board
http://blog.al.com/roop/ shop to one of our Columnist Roper, the phrase when he died in 1981 and be-
open a for-profit hospital here
Special Reports: biggest homes, Frances “hard-working” comes to compete with Huntsville came the first woman to sit
http://blog.al.com/ht/
“Babs” Roper’s life was a great up early. Hospital, and it wanted the on the board of Colonial
Huntsville story. Could it have “They were the workingest Ropers’ land to do it. Bankgroup of Alabama. It
Contact us happened anywhere? If you people I’ve ever known,” long- The corporation paid the didn’t take the bankers long
City editor Shelly Haskins knew her, you wouldn’t bet time friend Nell Lackey said couple $1 million for the land to learn that she was as savvy
532-4424 against it, but it suits this city Friday. in 1968. At the time, it was a as her husband.
shelly.haskins@htimes.com like baby’s breath suits a “Driven,” said another old record price for a single piece Well into her 80s, Babs
Regional editor Mike Hollis dozen roses. friend. of property in Huntsville. Roper still worked at the
532-4409 When Nolan Roper After years of seven-day But Nolan Roper wasn’t flower shop. She enjoyed her
mike.hollis@htimes.com brought his young bride here weeks, the shop was turning a Orange Beach condominium,
just a guy with a green
in 1938, Huntsville was a tex- profit, and in 1949 the Ropers thumb. He took a seat on the traveled widely and quietly
On the Net tile mill town of 13,000 peo- bought a piece of land. It was board of what would be Med- supported a host of local char-
Where we break ple. Whitesburg Drive, where the 7-acre “Old Cramer Place” ical Center hospital. ities and institutions.
Ellen Hudson/Huntsville Times
more news every their florist shop opened that on Franklin Street at Big Cove Later, Roper would help
day of the year. Frances “Babs” Roper had lived year, was a gravel road. Road. start a bank in town known Please see ROOP on A17
in Huntsville since 1938.