Green Bay News

BARABOO, Wis. (AP) – Circus World Museum is rolling out a new program on wagon wheels.

The Baraboo historic site recently launched an Adopt a Wagon program to raise money for restoration of its unparalleled collection of circus wagons. For $200 to $1,000, donors can help fix up wagons of their choice.

“People don’t realize what it takes to restore one of these wagons,” Harold “Heavy” Burdick, the museum’s wagon superintendent, told the Baraboo News Republic.

Circus World also launched a membership program, the Center Ring Society. Performance director Dave SaLoutos said both programs generated traffic for Circus World’s website when they were introduced earlier this month.

“I wouldn’t say they are going viral, but they are getting quite a few hits and sparking interest,” he said.

Under the Adopt a Wagon program, visitors to http://www.circusworldbaraboo.org can choose a wagon and, in exchange for their donation, enjoy perks such as Circus World passes and behind-the-scenes access.

SaLoutos said the wagons require many hours of annual care and maintenance. Proceeds from the Great Circus Parade in Milwaukee used to fund that work, but since the parade was discontinued, Circus World leaders have been looking for a new revenue source.

Burdick once oversaw a staff at Circus World’s wagon shop, but today only he and volunteers undertake restoration work. That means some projects progress slowly. An infusion of cash would allow the museum to buy materials and hire contractors to move restoration work along.

Two wagon restoration projects are currently underway at Circus World. Both aim to rebuild wagons that haven’t seen the street since the last Great Circus Parade in 2008.

The Italian bandwagon, dating to the 1860s or ’70s, is nearly street-ready after about a year of work. Carvings were removed and fixed, and the wagon was sanded and repainted.

Burdick said the bandwagon will appear in this summer’s Big Top Parade. “That’s good to see it back and done,” he said.

A project farther from completion involves the 1882 Old Woman in the Shoe float. Burdick and volunteers are rebuilding the float, using as many original pieces as possible. Local woodcarver Homer Daehn will be hired to replace pieces that are beyond repair.

“It’s a project, there’s no doubt about it,” Burdick said. “We don’t know what we’re going to get into when we take it apart. It’s going to take some time.”

Given time and money, the shoe’s gold-leaf paint will shine like new again. “It’ll look better than it ever did,” Burdick said. “It’s going to be spectacular.”

Dean Smith, the coaching innovator who won two national championships at North Carolina, an Olympic gold medal in 1976 and induction into basketball’s Hall of Fame more than a decade before he left the bench, has died. He was 83.

The retired coach died “peacefully” at his North Carolina home Saturday night, the school said in a statement Sunday from Smith’s family. He was with his wife and five children.

Smith had health issues in recent years, with the family saying in 2010 he had a condition that was causing him to lose memory. He had kept a lower profile during that time. His wife, Linnea, accepted the Presidential Medal of Freedom on his behalf from President Barack Obama in November 2013.

Roy Williams, the current North Carolina coach who spent 10 years as Smith’s assistant, said Smith “was the greatest there ever was on the court but far, far better off the court with people.”

“I’d like to say on behalf of all our players and coaches, past and present, that Dean Smith was the perfect picture of what a college basketball coach should have been,” Williams said in a statement. “We love him and we will miss him.”

In a career that spanned more than 40 years, Smith coached the likes of Michael Jordan and James Worthy and influenced the game and how it is played in ways that are unrivaled.

His “Four Corners” time-melting offense led to the creation of the shot clock to counter it. He was the first coach at North Carolina, and among the first in the segregated South, to offer a scholarship to a black athlete. The now-common “point to the passer,” in which a scorer acknowledges a teammate’s assist, started in Chapel Hill and became a hallmark of Smith’s always humble “Carolina Way.”

He was a direct coaching descendent of basketball’s father, James Naismith, playing and later coaching at Kansas for the inventor of the game’s most famous student, Jayhawks coach Phog Allen.

Smith would pass lessons learned in Kansas along at North Carolina, adding more than a few of his own. He tutored perhaps the game’s greatest player, Jordan, who burst onto the national stage as a freshman on Smith’s 1982 national title team, and two of basketball’s most successful coaches, fellow Hall of Famers Larry Brown and Williams.

The numerical record of his accomplishments is staggering. His only losing season came in his first, and he left the game having surpassed Kentucky’s Adolph Rupp as the winningest men’s basketball coach in Division I history.

He led the Tar Heels to 13 Atlantic Coast Conference tournament championships, appearances in 11 Final Fours, five national title games, and NCAA championships in 1982 and 1993. North Carolina won at least 20 games in each of his final 27 seasons, and made 23 consecutive appearances in the NCAA tournament.

Along the way, more than 95 percent of Smith’s lettermen graduated from one of the nation’s premier public universities.

His devotion to a humble, team-first philosophy – the famed “Carolina Way” – bred a fierce loyalty among the Tar Heels. Williams was an enormous success at Kansas, able to resist returning to his alma mater in 2000. He could not do so three years later when Smith called, and Williams tearfully left the Jayhawks behind after 15 seasons and returned to Chapel Hill.

When North Carolina held a reunion for school’s 1957 and 1982 championship teams in 2007, Smith drew the largest applause from the crowd, even as he stood alongside Jordan and fellow Tar Heel greats Worthy and Phil Ford. During the ceremony, Jordan put his arm around Smith and kissed him on the head.

Smith remained in the background after his retirement, keeping an office at the Dean E. Smith Center – the arena that opened while he was still coaching in 1986. He often consulted North Carolina players as they considered whether to leave school early for the NBA, and would occasionally watch Williams direct practice and take notes. He was hesitant to give them to his former assistant, fearful of suggesting something that might not work.

Though he never ran for office, Smith also helped shape political and social views in North Carolina as coach of the state’s beloved Tar Heels. At the urging of his pastor, he recruited blacks to his team, and in 1967 made Charlie Scott the first black scholarship athlete at North Carolina and one of the first in the South.

He was active in politics, often supporting Democrats and liberal candidates. He donated money to the presidential campaigns of Howard Dean and Bill Bradley, and supported former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards – a North Carolina alumnus – in his two presidential bids before later endorsing Barack Obama.

Smith’s church served as a base for his advocacy. He joined the Baptist congregation soon after arriving in Chapel Hill, helping build it from a 60-person gathering on campus to a full church with 600 parishioners. It was booted from the Southern Baptist Convention and the North Carolina Baptist State Convention in 1992 for licensing a gay man to minister.

“He was willing to take controversial stands on a number of things as a member of our church – being against the death penalty, affirming gays and lesbians, protesting nuclear proliferation,” said Robert Seymour, the former pastor at Binkley Baptist Church. “He was one who has been willing to speak out on issues that many might hesitate to take a stand on.”

Born Feb. 28, 1931, in Emporia, Kan., the son of public school teachers, Dean Edwards Smith graduated from the University of Kansas with a communications degree in 1953. He played for the Jayhawks teams that won the NCAA title in 1952 and finished second the next year.

He served as an assistant coach at Kansas to Allen and Dick Harp before joining the Air Force. He was an assistant basketball coach at the Air Force Academy, and also the baseball and golf coach for a year, before leaving in 1958 to join Frank McGuire’s staff at North Carolina. When McGuire left to coach in the NBA in the summer of 1961, the university tapped the 30-year-old Smith to take over.

Smith went 8-9 in his first season. In January 1965, in his fourth season, the Tar Heels returned to campus from a loss at Wake Forest to find an effigy of Smith hanging from a tree outside Woollen Gymnasium.

But Smith never had a losing season after his first. His breakthrough came in the 1966-67 season, when he led the Tar Heels to a 26-6 record. The season ended with the first of three straight ACC tournament titles and Final Four trips. His 1968 team lost in the final to Lew Alcindor and UCLA.

The Tar Heels lost in the title game twice more, in 1977 against Marquette and in 1981 against Bob Knight’s Isiah Thomas-led Indiana, before Smith won his first NCAA championship in 1982. In one of the tournament’s most enduring highlights, Jordan knocked down a 16-foot jumper in the final seconds to give the Tar Heels a 63-62 win against Patrick Ewing and Georgetown in New Orleans.

“A great writer in Charlotte once said that it was our system that kept us from winning the national championship,” Smith said after the game. “It’s the most ridiculous comment ever made and I always wanted to say that. We don’t have a system. We try to use our talent.”

Smith won his final championship in 1993 with a balanced team that won 34 games. Once in the Final Four, the Tar Heels beat Williams’ Jayhawks and Michigan’s “Fab Five” to claim another title in the Big Easy.

Smith retired in October 1997 with a career record of 879-254, having surpassed Rupp’s record of 876 victories during the NCAA tournament that March. When he left the game, he did so with more wins in the NCAA tournament than any other coach, though both records were surpassed in recent seasons.

Knight overtook Smith’s win total in 2007 while at Texas Tech, and the combustible coach summoned an Associated Press writer afterward, upset that he’d forgotten to publicly thank Smith following the game. Mike Krzyzewski – Smith’s Tobacco Road rival at Duke – later surpassed Knight and recently earned his 1,000th victory.

Smith seemed uncomfortable with the attention that came with breaking Rupp’s record. When Knight was on the verge over taking it over, Smith noted with a sarcastic smile, “I’m going to cry about that.”

“But still, it’s something that, we do it for the team,” Smith said. “When they’re excited, that’s why we’re in this field. I’m sure it’s that way with Bob Knight. It’s never one of his goals and certainly was never one of mine.”

More than 50 of Smith’s players went on to play professionally in the NBA or the ABA, and more played overseas. Among them: Charlie Scott, Walter Davis, Sam Perkins, Brad Daugherty, J.R. Reid, Jerry Stackhouse, Rasheed Wallace, Vince Carter and Antawn Jamison. Along with Williams and Brown, the only coach to win both an NCAA and NBA title, former Tar Heels with successful coaching careers include George Karl and Eddie Fogler.

In addition to wife Linnea, Smith is survived by daughters Sandy, Sharon, Kristen and Kelly; son Scott; and several grandchildren.

LANSING, Mich. (AP) – A state official says divers will explore an apparent shipwreck in Lake Michigan discovered by two treasure hunters who say it may be the long-lost Griffin, which disappeared more than three centuries ago.

Kevin Dykstra and Frederick Monroe found a vessel hull on the lake bottom in 2011 while searching for gold bullion that some believe was lost in the lake during the Civil War.

They met last week with state officials in Lansing.

State maritime archaeologist Wayne Lusardi tells television station WZZM he doesn’t think the men found the wreckage of the Griffin, which was commanded by the French explorer La Salle. It was last seen in 1679 near present-day Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Monroe says even if it’s not the Griffin, it’s still a historic find.

MILWAUKEE (AP) – Milwaukee police say road rage is suspected in an early morning shooting that left a driver dead and his passenger wounded.

Police say the shooting happened just after 1:30 a.m. Sunday after a 25-year-old Milwaukee man lost control of his vehicle and ended up in the ditch.

Someone approached the vehicle and shot and killed the driver and injured his passenger, who also is 25. The passenger is expected to survive and is being treated at a hospital.

Names of the victims have not been released. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports no one has been arrested as of Sunday morning.

MILWAUKEE (AP) – Two men are dead after a bar fight in Milwaukee.

Police say the fight involved up to four people around 1:30 a.m. Sunday.

Shots were fired as the group moved toward the door of the bar. Two men from Milwaukee, ages 22 and 36, were killed.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports no arrests have been made as of Sunday morning.

Ingredients:

1 (10 to 12 inch) center cut beef tenderloin
1 crumbled bleu cheese
8 to 12 strips bacon, cooked and crumbled
2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil
Salt or garlic salt
Fresh ground black pepper

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Make a cut down the center of the beef to make a pocket. Do not cut all the way through. Season pocket with garlic salt or salt and pepper. Stuff pocket with bacon and cheese. Close pocket to keep the stuffing in with plain wooden toothpicks or kitchen string. Drizzle the roast with some olive oil. Season outside of roast well with garlic salt or salt and pepper. Roast uncovered 30 to 50 minutes until internal temperature reads 135 degrees for medium rare or higher if you like it more well done. Remove from the oven and cover with foil. Let rest 15 minutes before slicing.

GREEN BAY – Foster Deadman, Division Chef for US Foods, joined FOX 11’s Emily Deem to share some Valentine’s Day inspired recipes!

Sweet Cream Stuffed Strawberries

1 lbs Cream cheese (soft)

.5 cup butter (soft)

3/4 tblsp. Vanilla

4 cups powdered sugar

Colored Food Gel as needed.

1) Scale out all ingredients

2) Combine butter and cream cheese in mixer and beat until smooth and creamy

3) Add vanilla and continue to incorporate

4) Add powdered sugar and mix on low until incorporated and increase speed once accomplished

5) Add appropriate colors in small batches as needed.

Red Velvet cupcakes

2.5 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cup cocoa powder

1 tsp baking soda

TT Red food gel

.5 cup milk

4 eggs

1 cup butter

2 cups sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1) Pre heat the oven to 350 degrees

2) Add all dry ingredients together, mix and set aside

3) Cream together the butter and sugar on medium speed until lemon yellow

4) Add Eggs one at a time then remaining wet ingredients

5) On low speed incorporate dry and beat until just mixed

6) Add food gel to desired color by hand to avoid over whipping

7) Portion into cupcake papers and bake for 20 mins

8) Allow to cool completely and frost.

We’ll see patchy freezing mist/drizzle is possible this morning. Watch for slick spots on roads and bridges today. Temperatures will stay in the mid 20s. By the afternoon we could have a few snow showers. Winds will be blustery out of the NNE at 15 to 20 mph with gusts to 25.

Skies will stay mostly cloudy tonight. There is a small chance for lake effect snow near lake Michigan. Temperatures will fall into the low teen and single digits.

Monday will bring partly sunny skies and it will be cooler with a high topping out near 20.

A storm system will move in late Tuesday into Wednesday morning and drop an inch or two of snow across the area. Cold weather settles in for the rest of next week with highs in the low teens and lows near zero.

DES MOINES, Iowa – Lottery officials say no jackpot winner was selected in the latest $380 million Powerball drawing.

The next drawing will be Wednesday after no one matched Saturday’s winning numbers.

Sue Dooley is the senior drawing manager for the Multi-State Lottery Association, which oversees Powerball. She says the estimated value of Wednesday’s drawing will be $450 million.

The huge jackpot is a return to form for Powerball, which has been known along with Mega Millions for its record-breaking jackpots in recent years. But the Powerball lottery has experienced a slump, with nearly a year passing since its jackpot total climbed above $300 million.

Powerball’s last major jackpot was in February 2014, when it climbed to $425 million.

Powerball tickets cost $2 each.

OCONTO FALLS – Organizers are working on final preparations and racers are getting in their last bit of practice ahead of next week’s World Series of Ice Drags.

The event will take place Feb. 13-14 on the Oconto Falls Pond at 399 North Flatley Ave.

Hundreds of racers are set to put their skills to the test on four shaved lanes of ice with speeds reaching more than 150 miles per hour.

This is the fifth time the local snowmobile club, the Oconto Falls Sno-Jokers will be hosting the event, making it more times than any other venue.

Fox 11’s Pauleen Le spent the morning checking out the event.

For more information on the Oconto Sno-Jokers and the World Series of Ice Drags, click here.

On senior night, the No. 7 St. Norbert men’s hockey team jumped out to a 2-0 first period lead and held on to top St. Scholastica 4-3 Saturday at the Cornerstone Ice Center.

Green Knights forward Erik Cooper scored twice, with his final tally breaking a 3-3 tie with under three minutes to play in the third period. Cullen Bradshaw and Marian Fiala also tallied in the contest.

The win snaps a four-game losing streak for SNC as they improve to 15-5-2 overall and 11-4-1 in NCHA play.

Filling in for the injured David Jacobsen, Tony Kujava made 15 saves to earn the victory. St. Norbert returns to the ice next Friday, when they travel to Northland College for a two-game series.

GREEN BAY – Some local students got a hands-on learning experience Saturday in Green Bay.

High school students gathered from the Green Bay area, Fox Cities, Milwaukee area and Upper Michigan for the VEX Robotics Competition.

More than 30 teams came together at Bay Port High School for a non-stop, action-packed day of competition where they battled against each other with robots.

Students spent the last two months constructing the robots.

Those involved with the event say the event is a great learning experience.

“We want everybody to have the chance to compete at something and everybody, basketball, football, that’s awesome but this gives the kids that aren’t into those athletics a chance to compete and have fun,” said Bay Port High School teacher David Vander Velden.

Saturday’s winners qualified for the state championship.

From there, top performing teams compete against each other in the World Championship this spring in Kentucky.

GREEN BAY – Mother Nature didn’t stop folks from enjoying an annual event in the Green Bay area.

People gathered for the annual Winter Family Fun Festival at the Green Bay Botanical Garden.

The free community event featured snowshoe demonstrations, edible crafts, snow carving demonstrations and more.

Organizers say this event is a great way to beat those winter blues.

“We put on winter family festival to give the community something to do during the wintertime, to show them there’s lot of fun winter activities and lots to see out here in the garden during the wintertime. So we’re in bloom in the spring and summer but there’s still a lot to see out here in the winter as well,” said special events manager Eileen Wesener.

This is the third year for the event.

The Marquette men’s basketball team picked the right time of the year for their first road win, topping Seton Hall 57-54 Saturday to snap a six-game losing streak.

Playing without top scorer Matt Carlino, the Golden Eagles received a pair of 14-point performances from JaJuan Johnson and Steve Taylor Jr. Germantown native Luke Fischer added 10 points.

Marquette started the game on a 17-4 run and led 30-22 at halftime before holding off a vaunted Pirates run late in the second half.

With the victory, they improve to 11-12 overall and 3-8 in Big East play. The team returns to action Tuesday night at 8 p.m. when they host Xavier at the Bradley Center.

GREEN BAY — Sophomore center Lexi Weitzer led the way with a career-high 16 points and Green Bay rebounded from their first conference loss of the year, topping Cleveland State on Saturday 74-50. The Phoenix now sit at 18-4 on the season with an 8-1 record in Horizon League play.

Mehryn Kraker scored 14 points, helped by a 4-7 3-point shooting day and freshman Allie LeClaire had 13 off the bench. The Phoenix pulled away late but were challenged by Cleveland State, forced into 24 turnovers. The Vikings committed 21 turnovers themselves.

Green Bay is next in action Thursday as they welcome Wright State to the Kress Center at 7pm. Wright State is currently second in the Horizon League standings.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) – A new smartphone app could shave critical moments off the time it takes to get help for someone in cardiac arrest.

WKOW-TV reports the Madison Fire Department and Dane County EMS are teaming up with Meriter-Unity Point Health to launch the “Pulsepoint” smartphone app in the Madison area.

At the push of a button, the app alerts people who have CPR training to assist someone who goes into cardiac arrest within a quarter mile of them. It also alerts the 911 center.

The American Heart Association estimates that effective CPR from a bystander, provided immediately after sudden cardiac arrest, can double or triple a person’s chance of survival.

The Pulsepoint app is free and available for Apple and Android devices.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) – Wisconsin students will take a new kind of standardized test next month.

The online test is expected to be more rigorous than the traditional pencil-and-paper exam it’s replacing. But the Wisconsin State Journal reports a technical glitch means school districts will get a scaled back version instead of a more complex system that isn’t working properly.

As a result, the Department of Public Instruction says, it won’t pay the full $11.1 million cost and it will negotiate a new price with the test vendor and creators. The state has paid about $1.2 million so far.

The test is linked to the Common Core State Standards and tests students in third through eighth grades in math and English.

DPI notified school districts Wednesday that they’ll get the scaled back version.

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Brian Williams is stepping away temporarily from the “NBC Nightly News” amid questions about his memories of war coverage in Iraq, saying it has become “painfully apparent” to him that he has become a distracting news story.

In a memo Saturday to NBC News staff that was released by the network, the anchorman said that as managing editor of “NBC Nightly News” he is taking himself off the broadcast for several days. Lester Holt will fill in, Williams said.

“In the midst of a career spent covering and consuming news, it has become painfully apparent to me that I am presently too much a part of the news, due to my actions,” Williams said in his memo.

“Upon my return, I will continue my career-long effort to be worthy of the trust of those who place their trust in us,” he wrote.

Williams has apologized for falsely saying on the air that he was in a helicopter hit by a rocket-propelled grenade while in Iraq in 2003.

Questions have also been raised about his claim that he saw a body or bodies in the Hurricane Katrina floodwaters that hit New Orleans.

NBC News President Deborah Turness said in an internal memo Friday that the network has assigned the head of its own investigative unit to look into Williams’ statements.

LA CROSSE – High school dance teams from around the state descended on La Crosse this week to compete in the state championships.

Several high schools from Northeast Wisconsin qualified for the state championships after competing in regional competition late last month.

A perennial winner, Green Bay Southwest High School Troyettes continued their dominance at the state level winning first place in the Division 1 Kick and Division 2 Pom categories.

Click here to see winning D2 Pom routine.

Bay Port High School took first place in Division 1 Jazz. Bay Port also claimed second place in Division 1 Pom, behind DC Everest High School out of Wausau.

Sheboygan South High School earned a first place win in Division 1 Hip Hop, in addition to finishing fifth in Division 2 Pom.

Other Northeast Wisconsin high school dance teams ranking in the top five at state in Division 1 Pom included Green Bay Preble taking 4th place. In Division 2 Pom it was a Northeast Wisconsin sweep. Following the first place Green Bay Southwest, second place went to Hortonville, third to Kaukauna, fourth to Ashwaubenon and fifth to Sheboygan South.

In Division 1 Kick, winners announced after the Saturday morning competition included Hortonville in fourth place and Green Bay Preble in fifth place.

In Division 1 Jazz, behind Bay Port’s first place win, Ashwaubenon took home the fourth place award.

Other dance divisions and categories were scheduled to take place Saturday afternoon with awards to follow. For the latest click here.

The championships are put on by the Wisconsin Association of Cheer/Pom Coaches championships and is recognized and endorsed by the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association.

PESHTIGO – Peshtigo is moving forward with plans to streamline its laws concerning urban hunting. But leaders say don’t expect to see a city-wide hunt anytime soon.

Following a change to state law, the city of Peshtigo is looking at changing its rules when it comes to hunting within city limits.

But some residents say, safety needs to be a priority.

Park officials say deer can be seen throughout the city.

“The city is surrounded by farmland, and forest land, so deer have always been part of what’s common to see in the city,” said Dave Zahn, Peshtigo Parks and Recreation Director.

Peshtigo has a long standing ordinance prohibiting hunting in the city.

But a recent state law called ACT 71, changes the rules.

“Act 71 would allow hunting under certain circumstances within the city limits. I believe it deals specifically with bow and arrow and crossbow,” said Zahn.

The law was created following complaints of damage caused by deer, and some argued, there was no way to thin out the herd within a city.

Under the law, any shooting must be at least 100 yards away from a building, unless the owner gives permission.

And any arrows, must be flung in a downward direction, meaning from a tree stand.

Peshtigo officials are not planning to have a hunt anytime soon, but wanted to update current codes.

That includes requiring any hunting stand to be at least 10 feet off the ground.

“Safety sake, yeah. Keep the projectiles from traveling too great a distance,” said Zahn.

“The ten-foot situation makes total sense,” said Bill Pluff, Hunter’s Choice Archery Owner.

Pluff says he has other concerns too.

“My first thought is being able to recover the deer, and by that, getting permission, so that would definitely have to be addressed,” said Pluff.

City leaders say much of the private property in Peshtigo would be impractical for hunting.

“There are a lot of concerns. I’m sure residents in town, that it’s going to be open season on deer, in the parks. That’s not going to happen. City ordinance does forbid any kind of hunting in city parks,” said Zahn.

Zahn says his he fields only a few calls each year for deer damage.

“This is just to comply with the state law, and it’s not because we have this great problem with deer, or any other creature,” he said.

City leaders say Peshtigo is a long way from allowing a hunting season within the municipality.

The city attorney is expected to have the local code updated in a couple of months.