Paul Luvera Journal

I've previously written about Allison Fisher, know among pool professionals as "the duchess of doom" for an exertaordinary playing ability (October 2006) Now there is "the black widow," Jeanette Lee. She won a gold medal in American pocket billiards in the 2001 World Games in Japan and since thjen has won titles and awards in some thirty national and international contests. Born in Brooklyn in 1971, Lee is half Korean standing 5'8" tall with beauty that has caused her to be named…

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In my continuing list of people I would like to have known, but never met, here's a man I wish I had known. I am struck by the story of the unique life of this man I had never heard about until I read the following obituary. Imagine a husband and wife being sent to Auschwitz in two separate camps, yet  both surviving and then being reunited. What a wonderful and unique outcome. And, that is in addition to his achievement of his…

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I enjoy a Sunday newspaper, or at least I used to, before the Seattle PI folded. But, now we are subscribing to the Sunday New York Times and it's like the newspaper of old before newspapers became as thin as a razor and were filled with only  AP wire news without any local news. so, on this Sunday here are the things that caught my interest while reading the weekend papers. There is a lengthy article about a young woman, Keli Carender…

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On February 26ththis year Kermit Tyler died in San Diego. Kermit was at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 when the Japanese attacked by air. He was an Army Air Force first lieutenant on temporary duty at a radar information center that day. Two privates at the center reported to him that they were seeing a very large and unusual number of "blips" on the screen which indicated to them it was aircraft about 132 miles away and closing fast….

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 My maternal grandfather Peter (Petar) Babarovich died the year I was born – 1935. He died on March 5th of that year and I was born in February of 1935 so I never knew this unique man. Nonno Babarovich was born April 12, 1861 in the village of Splitska on the island of Brac in the Adriatic Sea. He died in Anacortes, Washington March 5, 1935. Peter was the second child Ernest Babarovich and his wife Louise Setelich. The family…

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As hard as it is for me to believe, I was born on this very day, which was a Thursday, February 21, 1935. That was the year when the average cost of a new house was $3,450.00, a new car $625.00 and a gallon of gas $.10. On January 8th of that year, Elvis Presley was born and on January 11th Amelia Earhart became the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California. On February 13thBruno Hauptmann was convicted and…

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The hero of this story is a dog named Blue who is a Queensland Heeler breed and the family pet. Blue’s best friend is Victoria Bensch, a three year old who lives in Cordes Lakes, Arizona. Cordes Lakes is about thirty miles East of Prescott, in North Arizona high country. Early Thursday, Victoria was bouncing on a trampoline at her in home in a rural part of Cordes Lakes that borders on state land. Blue, who had been her companion from birth and was always…

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The Player by Philip Seib is a book about Christy Mathewson (1880 – 1925) who is regarded as baseball’s first superstar. This turn of the century player was among the initial group of five players inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936. The others were Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb and Walter Johnson. He played over ninety years ago but there are sports historians who still write about him. They called him "Big Six (six feet tall…

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Peter J. Daly is a Catholic priest, in Prince Frederick, Maryland who recently wrote about what he had learned after twenty four years of being a priest in the Catholic Northwest Progress newspaper http:www.seattlearch.org Here is part of what he had to say about what he had learned: "I’ve learned to be more accepting of people.I take them as God sends them. We are all works in progress. This insight has made me more compassionate. Twenty five years ago I…

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Alison Kairis is my grand daughter who is in her second year at Gonzaga University. She is an outstanding athlete, a great student and an outstanding human being. You can take it from me as a very unbiased and objective source of information. So, you'll understand and forgive my adding the following to this blog….. AREA RESIDENT NAMED TO PRESIDENT’S LIST  AT GONZAGA UNIVERSITY      Alison L. Kairis, a Sophomore from Bellevue, WA, was among the 987 undergraduate students named…

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