News-Press from Fort Myers, Florida • Page 15

sEws-ftess Charlotte Reports From Staff Writers, Bureaus And Wire Services SECTION MONDAY, MARCH 20, 1978 Charlotte program helps elderly find new home For 10 years, Elsie Stithem has been bringing elderly people into her home and caring for them when they or relatives could no longer do it. Her well-kept, quiet house is currently a home for two elderly men and an elderly woman. One man has lived with her and her husband for five years. She figures she's given a home to about 100 old people so far, long before the Department of Health program began. Mrs.

Stithem was a nurse's aid, always leaving home to care for the elderly and sick. Now she and her husband remain at home and do the work she's always done. "There's work in this, you betcha," Mrs. Stithem said. "But this is most assuredly better than a nursing home.

I can give them more use this type of care for the elderly say they feel the elderly need more than the right amount of medicine or clean sheets. "It almost broke my heart when my son told me I couldn't live with him," Lottie said. Lottie is 81. She came to Florida to live with her son, but she became ill and her son couldn't care for her because of his own illness. She would not give out her last name because she said her son lives in the area and she did not want other people to think badly of him.

She came to live with Arthur and Nettie Neureuther on Harvey Street in Punta Gor-da in September. The Neureuthers also care for another 81-year-old woman. Lottie said she didn't care what happened to her when they took her out of. her son's home. But if she didn't care, Nettie Neureuther did.

And she made Lottie care, also. "I needed attention," Lottie said sitting at the Neureuther kitchen table. Every once in a while, Mrs. Neureuther would reach over and squeeze Lottie's hand. "Anyone that age has a right to attention," Mrs.

Neureuther said. Ella Teeter worked for 28 years in nursing homes. She looks puzzled when she's asked why she would go to the extra work to care for an elderly person in her Punta Gorda home. "I never did give much to charity, but if I can do something for somebody, I'll do it," Mrs. Teeter said, trying to explain something that she considers not at all extraordinary.

Mrs. Teeter just believes that by bringing the elderly into your home, they can get the attention they need. By ROBIN TROESTER News-Press Bureau PORT CHARLOTTE There's a program at work in Charlotte County that helps elderly too healthy for an institution live a normal life at home. Not their home, but someone else's. The program is called Adult Congregate Living Facilities and is administered by the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services.

To date, about half a dozen elderly who need care but who do not require an institution are living in private homes in the county under the program. In 1975, the Adult Congregate Living Facilities Act was passed as a means to protect senior citizens from the possible abuses of such a situation and make sure the quality of care received would add dignity and joy to those elderly people who no longer could live in their own homes. Although department officials say abuses still exist, such as over-charging an elderly person or mental abusing or physically neglecting them, the program tries to see that those homes the department does know about are just about as preferable as the old person's home once was. Every home that takes in one or more elderly person that is not a relative must be licensed by the state department of health. The license cost $20 and the department makes an annual inspection of the facility plus local fire and health inspections are made.

Any elderly person who does not require nursing care can be placed in such a home and a contract is signed which states the monthly pay rate, usually between $200 and $500. The handful of people in the county who 2 robbers strike crippled man A short while later, two men matching the descriptions in the earlier robbery, stole a purse from a couple outside the Knights of Columbus in Port Charlotte, Clement said. Although no knife was seen, the two men told the victims they had a knife, Clement said. Clement declined to give the identity of the victims. Officials described the two men as one being short with a light build and about 20 years old with long black hair.

The second man was described as medium height and wearing a gray jacket. Clement said it was not known if the men made their escape on foot or in a vehicle. The investigation is continuing, he said. News-Press Bureau PORT CHARLOTTE Two white males robbed a crippled man at knifepoint late Saturday night in front of the Eagles Club in Charlotte Harbor, sheriff's officials said. Sgt.

Bill Clement said the victim, who escaped serious harm with a few bruises, was sitting in his car outside the Eagles Club at about midnight Saturday, waiting for his wife and son to come out of the building. Two men, one wielding an eight- to 10-inch hunting knife, pulled the crippled man from his car and stole his wallet with an undetermined amount of money in it, Clement said. Hit, run vehicle descriptions still vague l- -A rJ i -feW. 11 I fa. .1 WgPf i UU MS 1 ZA1 Sv license tag of three letters and three numbers.

Officials said they believed the victim, Ollie Owen, 66, was a transient. Officials also said they believed tio robbery took place. Police, Florida Highway Patrol and sheriff's officials ask anyone with information on the accident to contact them. the Lee County line and then being struck by a passing vehicle. Lawmen said they have vague descriptions of the two vehicles involved.

One vehicle was a small, red car bearing a license tag beginning with "10-E." The other vehicle involved was a late-model blue Corvette bearing a News-Press Bureau PUNTA GORDA Lawmen have come up with a little more information on the description of two vehicles involved in a hit-and-run fatality last week. On March 9, an Alabama hitchhiker died after being let out out of a car on U.S. 41 just north of Cape considers fishing ban support ported by the fishermen's organization, would restrict commercial fishing in all Florida cities' man-made canals to daylight hours. Cape residents have complained that around-the clock commercial fishing in the city's canals have disrupted their lives and disturbed their sleep. Commercial fishermen have countered that much of the late-night fishing is done by "moonlighters" or part-time fishermen.

They say fish in the salt-water canals are a natural resource, not Turn to FISH, Page 3B city's electors say they want the ban. Cape Coral Mayor Lyman Moore said this weekend he hopes the issue will be on the city's September primary ballot. Mann, who was not available for comment, had earlier urged Cape Coral residents to support a compromise to the controversy that has upset members of the Organized Fishermen of Florida. One compromise, by Rep. Mary Ellen Hawkins of Naples, has passed the House Natural Resources Committee.

Her bill, sup By H. J. CUMMINS News-Press Staff Writer Cape Coral's City Council tonight will consider endorsing special state legislation to ban commercial fishing in the city's canals. In the most recent development in the city's eight-year attempt to close the canals to fishermen, Rep. Frank Mann, D-Fort Myers, has promised to introduce a bill allowing city voters to make the final decision on the matter.

The bill would ban commercial fishing only after a majority of the News-Press Robin Troester over Charlotte Harbor. Most of his long-beaked friends probably are out doing an honest days fishing, but this fellow seems to have found an easier way of filling up.l Snack time This hungry pelican gets a fish snack from a Charlotte County resident on the Barron G. Collier bridge MARIANNA REP. Wayne Mixson, the legislature's only full-time farmer, says he will be state Sen. Bob Graham's running-mate in the upcoming governor's race 5B SUNSHINE AND warm weather, bringing Floridians to outdoor recreation after a cool winter, also are luring the state's snake population from wintering dens 8B Inside Today's B-Section WILFRED A.

"Rusty" Bannister, facing a 99-year prison sentence for kidnapping and sexual assault of a teen-age girl, remains at the Sarasota County jail while authorities tried to find room for him at a state prison with a psychiatric unit 8 HOSPITAL EMBEZZLER Sanford K. Bronstein is moved to a different prison and given weekly furloughs after a state senator inter-, vens for him, a newspaper reports 7B A strong majority of legislators responding to an Associated Press poll believe Gov. Reubln Askew isn't asking for enough money for your children's schools 8B Cypress land buying 75 complete Naples police plan canine cop addition but 1 By ALLEN BARTLETT News-Press Bureauj NAPLES Federal purchase of swampland in the Big Cypress National Preserve is 75 percent completed, a National Park Service official says. And park service negotiators are finding that about 90 percent of the former swampland owners had bought the property without seeing it, the official said. James' Sewell, head of the park service land acquisition office, said 391,043 acres of the about Preserve have been bought in Collier, Monroe and Dade Counties.

Many people that the 20 park service negotiators have dealt with thought they were owners of choice Florida property, Sewell said. "As it turned out, they bought a piece of swamp with no access or utilities available and no market for the land," he said. Sewell cited one example of what he termed a "boiler room sale." An individual said he was sold 2.5 acres of land with frontage on a paved road in southern Collier County, Sewell related. "When you think of 2.5 acres, you think of a piece of nearly square property, right?" Sewell said. But this tract actually was 27.5 feet wide, fronting the road, and about 3,950 feet deep into pure swampland, he added.

"That would be some back said. "They primarily aim at the person who is at an age where he is thinking about retirement," Sewell said of land swindlers. "The person buys it with the idea of paying for it in By ALLEN BARTLETT News-Press Bureau NAPLES Prowlers, thieves and robbers who do their work in Naples will have more to reckon with in the future. Naples officials are adding a "canine cop" to the city police department's night shift. Police Chief Gary Young said the dog patrol will be used mainly for burglary and prowler calls.

"Searching a building for a suspect burglar is a high hazard situation," Young said in explaining the need for the new patrol. "This is of particular danger at night. "The officer must frame himself in the doorway and from that moment on usually be in a position where he can be seen and, in return, can't see the subject inside." But after lawman Jeff Whit-taker and his police dog teammate are trained and at work, that situation will change, city officials said. The dog will be released to enter the building from the outside, Young said. It locates the suspect inside and holds him there so that officers can approach the suspect, he added.

"We are not going to train it to be one of these attack dogs," Young said. "We will train it for searching and holding" a suspect. "Anything that will save the police from injury or death is worth it," Councilman Randolph Thornton said of spending city funds for the project. Young said it will cost the city about $850 to have the dog and Whittaker trained as a team at Whispering Pines Pet Ranch, near Golden Gate. Another $300 is budgeted to cover veterinarian bills and equipment, he said.

City officials said Whittaker, who will keep the dog, will pay for the animal and its food. Young said the back of an older model patrol car will be modified for the animal and that it will remain with the officer on his night shift patrol. Young said the. animal will use its sense of smell to track a suspect, who could be hiding any number of places. "We have located burglars in duct work, cabinets, hollows in walls and every conceivable place," Young said.

"We have also missed several, according to the partner taken into custody." Because the animal's age isn't yet known, Young said he couldn't estimate when the canine patrol will be on the job. JAMES SEWELL POINTS OUT CYPRESS PRESERVE LAND PURCHASES ON MAP says land buys are about 75 percent complete time to retire down here and build a home," he said. "It is difficult for our negotiators to talk to this guy in the north who paid $1,200 to $1,500 per acre when you are offering him $300 per said. Negotiators persuade land owners by telling them how far the property is from a settled area, the type of vehicle (swamp buggy or airboat) needed to get to it and that the tract is under water half the year, he explained. Sewell conceded that if a person has been coaxed into buying swampland he has never seen, park service negotiators also can usually persuade the individual to sell the property.

Less than 1 percent of the Big Cypress land had exchanged hands more than once, Sewell said. "There is no real market out thereon that land," he said. "If we had not come here, I can't see how the Big Cypress would have amounted to much." In October 1974, Congress gave the Park Service six years to "substantially complete" purchasing the land as an ecological buffer for the Everglades National Park. "We definitely will be substantially completed by then," Sewell said, adding that the Park Service has actually been buying land for less than three years. Congress has allocated $116 million for the project, with the state adding $40 million.

Sewell said that $120 million has been spent. The office is weighing how much more money it will need, he said, when asked whether more money from Congress will be required. The Park Service "hopes to have an exchange this summer" of state-owned land within the Big Cypress, he said. A lawsuit is challenging whether this land can be given to the federal governent. "We are starting to get our ducks in a row for the transfer," he said of the 156,384 state-owned acres in the preserve, i.