In the News

December 22, 2011 Tweet 

Written by Lindsey VanHulle and Published by the Lansing State Journal

The St. Vincent de Paul thrift store in Lansing has found temporary locations thanks to community donations after a fire destroyed its REO Town headquarters.

 The Catholic charity will occupy two temporary storefronts on South Cedar Street in Lansing. Most of its inventory was lost in an early Sunday fire that is believed by Lansing Fire Department officials to have been accidental. 

 The store will open Monday to take in donations — clothing, furniture, household goods and other items needed to operate — that it hasn't been able to collect this week. St. Vincent de Paul will occupy empty storefronts at 5136 and 5206 S. Cedar St. 

 The properties are owned by Glenagain LLC. Local commercial real estate firm CB Richard Ellis/Martin contacted St. Vincent de Paul administrators to offer vacant retail space for short-term use. 

"Sometimes, the worst things are the best blessings," said Marcia Barrons Maiville, president of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul's Lansing District Council. "We lost a lot of the end-of-year donations that we would have normally been able to take advantage of, but you know what? There's a lot of people who I'm sure will be there in line next week to drop things off for us."

Also, Sam Eyde Sr., owner of Sam Eyde Management Co., offered rent-free warehouse space on Enterprise Drive.

"They do a lot of good and we've been a blessed family, and I have no problems helping them out," Eyde said. "We believe in it and they need some help."

Van Martin, the local CBRE's chairman and CEO, said the spaces in a shopping plaza near Cedar Street and Jolly Road will be offered rent-free.

"St. Vincent had a dire need," Martin said. "It was the right thing to do."

Lansing firefighters believe the fire at the charity's South Washington Avenue site was an accident, but did not offer specifics.

Fire department spokesmen could not be reached for comment Wednesday. They have said fire broke out in a room used to prepare items for resale.

Flames consumed furniture and clothing supplies that could have lasted two and six months, respectively, as well as other equipment valued in the tens of thousands of dollars, Maiville has said.

The organization gives items to people in need and sells items in its thrift store to raise money for community services.

St. Vincent also provides $20,000 to $25,000 a month in utility assistance.

November 11, 2011; Written by Kathleen Lavey and Published by The Lansing State Journal Tweet 

Tyrus Stine had just started 10th grade in September 1943 at Mecosta High School when he got a piece of news that would change his life.

 A family friend came to school to tell him his brother, Daniel, had been killed in Sicily while fighting in World War II. 

 Tyrus was a farm kid who already knew how to use a gun. In his mind, there was only one possible response: 

 "I dropped everything and went to Big Rapids to the military recruiting station," he said. 

 Stine joined the U.S. Marine Corps, beginning a three-year odyssey that would take him to California, Hawaii, Japan and other Pacific islands. 

Stine would train as a paratrooper, learn to use a machine gun and come ashore with the third wave of troops to invade the Japanese stronghold on the island of Iwo Jima.

He still finds it tough to talk about that bloody, monthlong siege that killed 228 of the 240 men in his unit.

Stine listened to one soldier call for his mother as he lay dying.

Winced as a solider carrying a flamethrower was shot, igniting the fuel pack on his back.

Volunteered for a dangerous trek to get more ammunition.

"There are so many things that happen out there. You can't tell it all," said Stine, 86, a retired General Motors Co. worker who lives on a Vermontville-area farm with his wife, Laurene.

But his family, which includes four children and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren, knows his story is unique and important.

Telling the story

They've helped him work on preserving as many of his memories as possible, to give that long-ago war captured mostly in black-and-white photos a living name and face.

Stine's son, Wayne, and daughter-in-law, Pam, recruited her uncle, Arlen Bates, a former Marine himself, to conduct a 90-minute interview recorded on DVD. Bates and his wife also created a photo album and history of Stine's involvement in the war.

A niece initiated the effort to get Stine's service medals, which finally arrived this fall, along with copies of his service records from the U.S. military archive.

"He went through a lot," Wayne Stine said.

About 2 million of the 16 million U.S. men and women who fought in World War II are still alive, but they are dying at a rate of nearly 700 a day. That makes efforts like the Stine family's even more important, said Geneva Wiskemann, secretary of the Michigan Oral History Association.

Personal stories add a dimension that official histories sometimes lack.

"This is where you not only can fill in the gaps of history, but the soul of people comes through," she said. "The inflection, the way they string words together, the words they use and the things they do not say. Silences speak."

Record interviews

The U.S. Library of Congress encourages people across the nation to interview veterans — not just of World War II but all wars — and to record their stories. People who sign up with the Veterans History Project also can get a kit to help them conduct and record their interviews.

The U.S. objective on Iwo Jima was to capture three airfields and drive out the Japanese, whose soldiers were encamped in bunkers, caves and tunnels throughout the rocky island, looking down at the beach from the vantage point of Mount Suribachi.

Stine jumped out of a landing craft and waded ashore on Feb. 19, 1945, his team charged with the responsibility for making its way north, right up the middle of the island.

"You just didn't think about what it was going to be like," he said of that yard-by-yard journey. "You just had to keep going. You had to protect the guys who were coming behind you."

Troops did whatever they could to keep the battle going, lighting the sky at night with tracer bullets so the machine gunners would have enough light to shoot, using tanks to shoot flames into caves to drive out enemy soldiers, pulling each other out of the line of fire.

Stine matter-of-factly described the night he got a chunk of shrapnel in his hip.

"One night we were throwing hand grenades at each other," he said.

Stine made his way back to a medical tent, got patched up and returned to battle.

Raising of flag

Stine was a witness to history as he watched fellow Marines raising the flag atop Mount Suribachi, an image that became an icon of U.S. victory in the Pacific.

Stine still thinks about the men he fought with from time to time.

He unfolds a photo of all 240 men in his original unit, a long, wide picture with rows of seemingly identical GIs.

All men wear the same neat khaki uniforms and caps, but every face is different, full of life, full of potential.

Stine is among just 12 of those from his unit who survived Iwo Jima and is the only one of that group still alive now.

"I guess I was one of the luckiest guys in the world to have made it through," he said.

Written by Melissa Anders and Published by LSJ; September 28, 2011 Tweet

 EAST LANSING - The Biggby craze is catching on.

CNBC has pegged Biggby Coffee as the nation's fastest-growing coffee retail chain.

The business news cable television channel recognized the East Lansing-based coffee chain in a special report on "America's Coffee Addiction." The special premieres Thursday at 9 p.m., with re-peats at 10 p.m., midnight and 1 a.m.

Biggby opened 10 new stores last year for a total of 115, a 9.5 percent growth rate, according to co-founder and CEO Bob Fish. That's a little more than the data CNBC used - it listed the shop with a 7.3 percent growth rate and eight new stores. The cable network used data from Technomic Inc., a Chicago-based food industry research and consulting firm.

Biggby's growth outpaced that of larger rivals, including Starbucks Corp. and Dunkin' Donuts.

Biggby, which has about 25 stores in the Lansing area, is not slowing down anytime soon. Eight more stores have opened so far this year, and another 13 are in development, Fish said.

The chain, which started out as one shop in East Lansing, now has locations in eight states.

"It's really rather remarkable," Fish said.

The company had nearly doubled its number of stores every two years since 1999, but that growth slowed during the recession, Fish said.

Now, he hopes to tap into the interest from current operators to add stores, coupled with a strong pipeline of new franchisees, in order to grow to 300 stores by 2015.

For more on this story, read Thursday's Lansing State Journal.