ADIOS, GAY ELLIKER. My dear friends the Ellikers have suffered inordinate loss over the past two years.
Patriarch Shirl passed away 23 months ago. (“Nevada loses an honorable man,” Barbwire 2-27-2014). He was followed in August 2014 by his beautiful ballerina grand-daughter Callie Hutson, 24.
Shirl and Gay’s son, Jim, 50, died as a passenger in a light plane crash near the Reno airport one year and one week after his niece, Callie. His memorial service at the Sparks LDS Church on N. McCarran was overflowing, as was love for his family. Alas, on that day, his mother was in the hospital and could not attend.
Now, comes news that Zora Gay Elliker, 80, passed away in Utah three days after Christmas.
Gay and Shirl ran Jewelart in Moana West Center in the mid-1970s and later acquired Tanner’s merchandise shows. They also operated a shop in Reno’s Antique Mall.
Visitation for Mrs. Elliker will take place from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. this Thursday, Jan. 5, at O’Brien-Rogers-Crosby, 600 W. Second in Reno. A graveside memorial service will be held at 11:00 a.m. Jan. 6 at Masonic Memorial Gardens, 437 Stoker.
For details, watch the expanded web edition of this column at NevadaLabor.com/
END OF TIMES SURVIVAL KIT. Defend yourself with humorous, humorless but always-peerless predictions for 2017 by subscribing to the Barbwire Confidential News Service. Last year’s dark foreshadowings unfortunately became reality, so I suggest signing onto the HushHush! list at BallotBoxing.US/
THE 2016 TOP 10: The current Reno News & Review includes Sonoma State University’s Project Censored list of the 10 most-censored (meaning under-reported) news stories of 2016.
So here’s the Barbwire list for 2016: Do Something, even if it’s wrong.
1. TRACY TACIT ON TOXIC TURF. Washoe School superintendent Traci Davis is painfully oblivious to toxic crumb rubber athletic fields. (Barbwire 12-23-2016)
2. FLAT-LINING EDUCATION. Despite the $1.4 billion tax increase the 2015 legislature passed, education funding levels remain flat. (Barbwire 7-21-2015)
3. OVERT RACISM at North Valleys area public schools. More soon.
4. AMBULANCE CHASING OR ELSE. Because of the phony malpractice insurance “crisis” manufactured by the medical lobby a decade ago, victims of bad medicine can’t get lawyers. A Las Vegas woman contracted major maladies in childbirth and was cast adrift by the system. Meanwhile, shysters like “Heavy Hitter” Glenn Lerner and his local peers get fat on accident cases. Much more at DoctorLawyerWatch.com/
5. RENO PD HIRING SCREENS OUT MINORITIES. Sparks PD’s numbers are worse.
6. LAND GRAB AMODEI. He’s not just trying to turn Nevada’s public lands over to developers, the Congressman hopes it makes him governor.
7. BUILDING BOOM, JOBS BUST. UNR and Tesla do everything they can to hire out-of-state contractors at substandard wages.
8. MURDER ON THE COMSTOCK. Madcap Storey County Sheriff Gerald Cook Antinoro botched the investigation into Judith Black’s homicide so her now-wealthy widower may well walk.
9. PARDON JACK JOHNSON. President Obama must grant justice for the great heavyweight champion after a century of neglect.
10. GOING MAD. Nevada’s mental health system has never recovered from the budget cuts of 1991.
Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Barbano is a 48-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com. E-mail <barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us> Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988.
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