Salute to women WWII vets

Salute to women WWII vets

On May 15, I attended a Wom- en’s Veterans Conference titled “Empowering You” sponsored by the Cleveland VA, Community Guests and the Mahoning County Veterans Service Commission. The 910th Airlift Command provided the color guard. The Mahoning County Sheriff’s Department provided security, and Mahoning Veterans Service provided the location. There were health exhibits, a line-dance demo, massage, fashion show, lunch and more. The speaker was Dr. Mary Ann Echols.

The best part of this conference was the ability for younger veterans to interact with the true trailblazers — the women who joined the services during World War II. These women left family and homes and had absolutely no idea what they were getting into since they had no one who had gone before them. If it weren’t for these great women, we would not be here.

Melanie M. Mayesky, Ohio National Guard and Desert Storm veteran, Austintown

Series ran slipshod over WRTA

As a lifelong resident of Mahoning County and a frequent rider of the Easy Go service provided by the Western Reserve Transit Authority, I am tired of reading all of the negative coverage that The Vindicator gives to this valuable community resource.

The latest in a series of one-sided reporting was written by News Outlet reporter Doug Livingston and appeared on the front page May 17 and 18.

In his two-part series titled “Transit in Transition,” Livingston rehashes all of the problems that the WRTA has dealt with in the last couple of years while totally ignoring the great things that the new countywide service provides.

As a person with a visual disability who is unable to drive, the WRTA allows me to maintain a sense of independence that I would not otherwise possess. With a mere phone call 24 hours in advance, I can travel anywhere in Mahoning County for a reasonable fare.

Although to the average reader, the reporter seems to have all his financial facts straight, complete with graphs and charts. What he fails to realize is that to a great many county residents (myself included), the WRTA provides something that can never be properly measured on a balance sheet. It is a thing called dignity

What bothers me most about this kind of negative coverage is that it could be written by people who have never boarded a bus in their lives.

I would like to challenge Livingston to take the EasyGo sometime, and maybe he would not be so quick to criticize. Maybe then he would act like the late Paul Harvey and present us with “the rest of the story”.

Gene DeCapua, Canfield