Mark Rice knew he was going to make it onto “Antiques Roadshow.”
But it wasn’t his collector’s item alone — a decades-old Bob Dylan poster signed by the artist — that made landing a segment on the PBS series feel inevitable.
When Rice left Naperville for an appraisal event for the show being held in Ohio, he carried something he knew was far more valuable than a poster.
He had a story to sell, as sprawling and personal as a Dylan hit.
Rice, 72, started listening to Bob Dylan in the 7th grade. The year was 1963. He couldn’t recall the first song he ever heard, but he knew the first album: “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.”
From junior high on, he was hooked. He’d make a habit of visiting his local music store in his hometown of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, whenever he could just to see if Dylan had put out a new album.
“Back in those days, there was no internet to tell you,” he said.
If there was a new album to be had, Rice made a day of it. Before even leaving the record store, he’d set up in one of the store’s three sound booths and take a listen, top to bottom.
“I would always listen to all of them, all the way through, from beginning to end,” Rice said.
Year to year, his steadfast affinity for Dylan’s music never faded. As he grew up, went to college, married. As new releases turned to resells. Rice still picked through records for Dylan.
That’s how he ended up with an aging album from the singer-songwriter — and a souvenir to go along with it — while on a fortuitous trip to Woodstock some 40 years ago. This is where his “Antiques Roadshow” tale really finds its footing, Rice says.
In this Aug. 16, 1969, file photo, hundreds of rock music fans jam a highway leading from Bethel, N.Y., as they leave the Woodstock Music and Art Festival. More than 400,000 people attended the event, which was staged 80 miles northwest of New York City on a bucolic hillside owned by dairy farmer Max Yasgur. (AP)
Rice is what you’d call a Woodstock regular. He first ventured to upstate New York for the seminal musical festival, Woodstock ‘69. But, like Bob Dylan, Woodstock was a place he couldn’t shake.
He returned to the area for college. He’d regularly visit while in school and years after.
It was on one of those visits in the 1980s, accompanied by his wife, that he stopped at an antiques store.
There, Rice came across none other than “Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits,” released in 1967. He also scored the poster that came included with the album, a true late ’60s-fashion piece that embellished Dylan’s silhouette with psychedelic locks.
It was designed by Milton Glaser, the graphic designer best known for creating the “I (HEART) NY” logo.
Satisfied with finding the album-poster package, Rice went on to buy two more copies. They weren’t necessarily rare finds, more keepsakes than collectibles to auction off.
That is, until Rice had the posters signed. Not by Dylan. But by Glaser.
Six years ago, on a whim, Rice emailed the designer’s New York City studio wondering if Glaser, who was in his late 80s at the time, ever offered signatures. He didn’t know if they’d respond, but figured why not try? They did — with instructions for sending in the posters. Rice had them back and signed not long after.
He gave one to each of his two sons and kept the last copy for himself. He didn’t, and still doesn’t, have any intention of selling the rare, signed chattel. But when the opportunity arose to have it appraised and his story told on “Antiques Roadshow” — a series he and his wife had been longtime fans of — he jumped at the chance.
“I knew I was going to get on,” Rice said. “I just knew.”
“Antiques Roadshow” is a PBS program that tours the country in search of hidden treasure. Jumping from city to city, it attracts thousands of hopeful antique owners wanting to find out if their possessions are worth any money and maybe getting a shot at some airtime.
Attending one of Roadshow’s tour stops is essentially luck of the draw, determined through a ticket sweepstakes. Winners are given the opportunity to have their items evaluated by a an appraiser but they aren’t guaranteed they’ll appear on an episode segment.
When Rice heard the show would be stopping in Ohio last year, he entered and ended up being one of the 3,000 raffle winners.
So, come June 2023, Rice and his wife made the 400-mile drive from Naperville to Akron, his Bob Dylan poster and album safely tucked away in a blanket.
Rice arrived well before his allotted entrance time but was promptly sent to a designated appraiser. He laid out his story. They valued the poster at about $500. And that was that. But his Roadshow experience wasn’t done yet.
Instead of going home, he got a second look, this time by a specific “posters” appraiser. Even better, the twist brought Rice face to face with Nicholas “Nicho” Lowry, a regularly featured expert on “Antiques Roadshow” known for his handlebar mustache and bold suits.
Lowry asked Rice if he wanted to tell his story again — on TV. Rice immediately agreed.
Naperville resident Mark Rice pictured with a copy of “Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits” album and the poster that came with the record’s release in 1967. Rice brought both to an “Antiques Roadshow” tour stop in Akron, Ohio, in June 2023. (Mark Rice)
Rice grinned his way through the segment as Lowry asked questions, he said. It was all going smoothly, when, as they started to wrap up, Lowry had his own detail to add to Rice’s journey to roadshow.
Lowry, it turns out, had known Glaser, who died in 2020.
“That was it,” Rice said. “That was the hook.”
In a call Friday, Lowry said he knew Glaser “through the design community” and that they were professional colleagues for about 15 years.
“I’ve been doing the show for 27 years, we’ve seen thousands of pieces … but I can’t think of another instance where I’ve seen a work by someone I knew personally,” Lowry said. A lot of the show “really is a person’s connection with the item that they have,” he said, “and then if the appraiser can make a personal connection, I think that’s even better.”
Rice said, “That’s what ‘Antiques Roadshow’ is all about.”
“From Woodstock to Milton Glaser to ‘Antiques Roadshow’ to having two appraisals to two (Glaser) stories. Two different people coming together on one afternoon in Akron, Ohio, the stories merge,” Rice said. “Which is pretty unbelievable.”
Rice’s segment will air at 7 p.m. Monday on WTTW-Channel 11.
As for how much Lowry appraised his poster for, Rice teased, “You’ll have to watch to find out.”
Rush Copley Medical Center in Aurora will now be offering “world-class” cancer care after a recently announced partnership with The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, according to hospital officials.
At a ceremony announcing the partnership to Rush Copley Medical Center staff on Friday, Dr. Ying Zhang said the hospital’s cancer patients will get the same care as they would at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago or at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. Zhang is a radiation oncology specialist at Rush Copley and the hospital’s cancer service line medical director.
“With this partnership, our aim is to become the destination cancer program in the western suburbs, delivering world-class care but still with that compassionate, personal and neighborly touch,” he said in his remarks. “With Rush MD Anderson Copley, we aim to not just improve cancer care, but transform it.”
The partnership between Rush University System for Health, one of the Chicago area’s largest health care systems, and MD Anderson, one of the top cancer centers in the nation, was announced at locations across the Rush system on Friday
.
Each of the health system’s cancer centers, which are located at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, the Rush Copley Medical Center in Aurora, the Rush Oak Park Hospital and the Rush Copley Healthcare Center in Yorkville, will now be Rush MD Anderson Cancer Centers.
At the Rush Copley Medical Center in Aurora on Friday, a live band played as doctors, nurses and other hospital employees filled the main lobby. The hustle and bustle of hospital business continued around and through the crowd as a number of hospital officials spoke about the significant impact the partnership would have on the hospital’s cancer care.
“This collaboration represents a significant step forward in our mission to deliver exceptional care,” John Diederich, president and CEO of Rush Copley Medical Center, said in his remarks.
Speaking after the announcement ceremony, Zhang said that the partnership marks a “monumental change” in the way the hospital does cancer care. Over the last almost four years, Rush and MD Anderson have been working together to take a look at every piece of Rush’s cancer program to improve and integrate each piece into a larger system, he said.
For patients, this means they will receive individualized care from teams specializing in the type of cancer they have, according to Diederich. He said during his remarks that patients will also have access to a large number of treatment options, including experimental treatments and select clinical trials, at their local hospital.
These specialized teams of doctors for specific cancer types will work across the Rush system, according to Zhang, to ensure patients receive the same quality of care regardless of which location they visit to get their cancer treated. These teams collaborate to care for their patients, which he said will lead to quicker times for treatment and improved outcomes.
The collaboration with MD Anderson will also allow doctors from both health systems, Rush and MD Anderson, to work hand-in-hand, Zhang said.
Dr. Ying Zhang, a radiation oncology specialist at Rush Copley Medical Center and the hospital’s cancer service line medical director, said patients will now be able to receive “world-class” cancer care at the Aurora hospital thanks to the new partnership with The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. (R. Christian Smith / The Beacon-News)
“It’s a chance to learn from the best in the world and bring that knowledge back to our community,” he said.
While there have been big changes to the way cancer care is done at Rush Copley Medical Center, Zhang said the center is retaining its staff.
“What drew me to Copley, initially, was the clear commitment to exceptional, quality care,” Zhang said. “What kept me here, however, is the compassionate, personal and neighborly way that we treat our patients.”
A Gary woman was sentenced to 25 years Friday in federal court for her role in a June 11, 2021 Calumet Township bank stickup that left a security guard from Tinley Park dead.
Briana White, 29, signed a plea deal admitting to armed bank robbery and murder resulting from the discharge of a firearm during the bank robbery.
She will serve two years on probation after she is released. White was the last defendant sentenced.
Federal court records allege White, who was then pregnant, helped with planning, called the others during the robbery as she listened to the police scanner.
Her fiance, Hailey Gist-Holden, planned the robbery, because he was running out of money as the owner of the Illini Panthers, a fledgling second-year semipro football team. “Coach Hailey” couldn’t cover the rest of their hotel bill, so Gist-Holden allegedly got the players to help him rob the bank, federal court filings show.
Police were called just after 1 p.m. to First Midwest Bank on the 1900 block of W. Ridge Road in unincorporated Calumet Township.
Surveillance video showed two men in all black approached the bank from a wooded area southeast, according to charging documents. Gist-Holden shot the security guard in the face, who dropped to the ground, records state.
The guard later was identified as Richard Castellana, 55, of Tinley Park, Illinois, by the Lake County Coroner’s Office. He retired in 2019 as a Cook County Sheriff’s Deputy after more than three decades.
Arrested on foot, co-defendant James King, of Miami, one of his players, was the first suspect charged – in Lake Superior Court – before federal prosecutors stepped in and indicted him days after the robbery.
King admitted in his plea agreement coordinating with Gist-Holden, teammate Kenyon Hawkins and White in the robbery. Hawkins would be the get away driver in a U-Haul that Gist-Holden rented, while White would listen to the police scanner.
Documents alleged Gist-Holden would “handle” Castellana, shooting him dead before King went inside to get the cash.
A handgun and $9,000 cash in a black backpack were found about 25 yards from where King was arrested, police said. Gist-Holden was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences.
The team’s football players were recruited from other states like Florida, Texas, Georgia and California.
That day, Gist-Holden picked up Hawkins and King from the hotel and took them to his Gary home. There, White and Hawkins eventually convinced King to help with the robbery, Assistant U.S. Attorney Caitlin M. Padula wrote.
King, an aspiring NFL prospect, had joined the minor league Panthers in 2021 partly to create his recruiting reel, since the 2021 NFL Combine was cancelled due to COVID-19. Just before, King had worked as a bank security guard in his native Miami.
The Indiana Department of Environmental Management extended its public comment period for the U.S. Steel Gary Works’ air quality permit, but there’s no definitive timeline for the agency to make a final decision.
Indiana Department of Environmental Management branch chief Jenny Acker — one of five IDEM representatives who attended a hearing in Gary at 21st Century Charter School on April 25th — said they’re able to take as long as they need to parse the comments made by several residents. They then send their conclusions to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and it has 45 days from then to make its decision, she said.
The Title V Air Draft Permit as it is has issues, according to the Environmental Law & Policy Center. In a paper it passed out at the meeting, ELPC said the permit doesn’t make clear that the EPA’s final revisions controlling hazardous air pollutants will extend to Gary Works, for example, and fails to include adequate monitoring and testing, the paper reads.
Indiana Department of Environmental Management branch chief Jenny Acker introduces herself before a public hearing on the Gary Works Air Permit renewal on Thursday, April 25, 2024. (Kyle Telechan/for the Post-Tribune)
Further, it doesn’t contain adequate record keeping and reporting for multiple emissions units as required by law, it said, and most crucially to residents, didn’t consider environmental justice issues in the renewal. The EPA’s website defines “environmental justice” as “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.”
Of the eight currently operating integrated steel and iron facilities, Gary Works has “the most significant impact on communities of color and those exposed to lead paint through pre-1960 housing,” the ELPC said.
The environmental justice part is what brought out about 40 remonstrators, who let the IDEM representatives know they “aren’t second-class citizens.” Terry Steagall, of Highland, a retired member if USW Local 1010, asked the agency not to accept the steel industry’s rebranding of iron ore sinter plants as recycling plants.
Portage resident Libré Booker addresses IDEM employees during a public hearing on the Gary Works Air Permit renewal on Thursday, April 25, 2024. (Kyle Telechan/for the Post-Tribune)
“Fenceline monitoring is not a true measurement of pollution, and the monitoring needs to be at the pollution source along with fenceline monitoring with real-time reporting, not delayed reporting that does not allow for immediate corrective action,” he said.
Jennie Rudderham, of Gary, said the model Gary Works is using can’t be correct if pollution levels are six times above the permit level.
“Gary isn’t the city USX built — it’s (the) city it destroyed,” she said.
Dorreen Carey, president of Gary Advocates for Responsible Development, addresses IDEM employees during a public hearing on the Gary Works Air Permit renewal on Thursday, April 25, 2024. (Kyle Telechan/for the Post-Tribune)
Stephen Mays, president of the NAACP’s Gary chapter, suggested Gary Works could invest in hydrogen-based steelmaking, a greener process he said ArcelorMittal is already using in Germany.
“Two counties (in Indiana) pay for emissions — why are we getting taxed for your pollution!?” he said. “When storms come, we see you open the bleeders and let the contaminants out.”
In partnership with Texas-based CarbonFree Chemical Holdings, U.S. Steel recently announced a project aimed at cutting up to 50,000 tons a year of planet-warming carbon dioxide from U.S. Steel’s Gary Works plant. The SkyCycle process would capture the blast furnace carbon dioxide emissions and turn them into calcium carbonate, which has a wide variety of industrial and chemical uses.
Gary Advocates for Responsible Development member Kimmie Gordon, on right, is accompanied by her 14-year-old son as they address IDEM employees during a public hearing on the Gary Works Air Permit renewal on Thursday, April 25, 2024. (Kyle Telechan/for the Post-Tribune)
Environmental advocates like Dorreen Carey are skeptical of how effective the process will be.
“We want to know more about it,” said Dorreen Carey, president of Gary Advocates for Responsible Development, told the Post-Tribune previously. “What is their plan? … If this is just a plan for continuing to use coal over time, that’s not really getting us to a point where they’re not using fossil fuels.”
Gary resident Natalie Ammons speaks about concern for her grandchildren’s health during an IDEM public hearing on the Gary Works Air Permit renewal on Thursday, April 25, 2024. (Kyle Telechan/for the Post-Tribune)
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
BRIGHTON, Colo. — A former paramedic who injected Elijah McClain with a powerful sedative avoided prison and was sentenced to probation Friday after his homicide conviction in the Black man’s death, which helped fuel the 2020 racial injustice protests.
Jeremy Cooper had faced up to three years in prison after being found guilty in a jury trial last year of criminally negligent homicide. He administered a dose of ketamine to McClain, 23, who had been forcibly restrained after police stopped him as the massage therapist was walking home in a Denver suburb in 2019.
The sentencing caps a series of trials that stretched over seven months and resulted in the convictions of a police officer and two paramedics. Criminal charges against paramedics and emergency medical technicians involved in police custody cases are rare.
The other paramedic and the officer sentenced in McClain’s death received more severe punishments than Cooper after being convicted on additional charges of assault.
McClain’s mother told the judge prior to Friday’s sentencing that she blamed McClain’s death on everyone who was present that night, not just those who were convicted.
“Eternal shame on all of you,” Sheneen McClain said.
She said Cooper “did nothing” to help her son after he’d been restrained by police — didn’t check his pulse, didn’t check his breathing and didn’t ask him how he was doing — before injecting him with an overdose of ketamine.
Experts say the convictions would have been unheard of before 2020, when George Floyd’s murder sparked a nationwide reckoning over racist policing and deaths in police custody.
At least 94 people died after they were given sedatives and restrained by police from 2012 through 2021, according to findings by The Associated Press in collaboration with FRONTLINE (PBS) and the Howard Centers for Investigative Journalism.
McClain’s name became a rallying cry in protests over racial injustice in policing that swept the U.S. in 2020.
“Without the reckoning over criminal justice and how people of color suffer at much higher rates from police use of force and violence, it’s very unlikely that anything would have come of this, that there would have been any charges, let alone convictions,” said David Harris, a University of Pittsburgh law professor and expert on racial profiling.
Harris added that the two officers’ acquittals of the two officers following weekslong trials were unsurprising, since juries are often reluctant to second guess the actions of police and other first responders.
“It’s still very hard to convict,” he said.
Cooper said during the hearing that he was sorry he couldn’t save McClain.
“I want you to know that I would give anything to have a different outcome, Elijah,” Cooper said as if he were talking to McClain. “I never, ever meant for anyone to hurt you.”
He added that he wished he knew more at the time, implying that he could have used that knowledge to help McClain.
Sheneen McClain walked out of the courtroom as Cooper was speaking but later returned.
The judge who presided over the hearing Friday sentenced ex-paramedic Peter Cichuniec in March to five years in prison for criminally negligent homicide and second-degree assault, the most serious of the charges faced by any of the responders. It was the shortest sentence allowed under the law.
Previously, Judge Mark Warner sentenced officer Randy Roedema to 14 months in jail for criminally negligent homicide and misdemeanor assault.
Prosecutors initially declined to pursue charges related to McClain’s death when an autopsy did not determine how he died. Democratic Gov. Jared Polis ordered the investigation reopened in 2020.
The second autopsy said McClain died because he was injected with ketamine after being forcibly restrained.
Since the killings of Floyd, McClain and others put a spotlight on police custody deaths, many departments, paramedic units and those that train them have reexamined how they treat suspects. It could take years though to collect enough evidence to show if those efforts are working, said Candace McCoy, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
Cooper injected McClain with ketamine after police stopped him as he was walking home. Officers later referenced a suspicious person report. McClain was not armed, nor accused of breaking any laws.
Medical experts said by the time he received the sedative, McClain already was in a weakened state from forcible restraint that rendered him temporarily unconscious.
He went into cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital and died three days later.
Cooper’s attorneys did not immediately respond to telephone messages and emails seeking comment on the sentencing.
Since McClain’s death, the Colorado health department has told paramedics not to give ketamine to people suspected of having excited delirium, which had been described in a since-withdrawn emergency physicians’ report as manifesting symptoms including increased strength. A doctors group has called it an unscientific definition rooted in racism.
The protests over McClain and Floyd also ushered in a wave of state legislation to curb the use of neck holds known as carotid restraints, which cut off circulation, and chokeholds, which cut off breathing. At least 27 states including Colorado have passed some limit on the practices. Only two had bans in place before Floyd was killed.
Sheneen McClain told the AP prior to Friday’s hearing that justice had not been served. She said the two acquitted Aurora police officers, as well as other firefighters and police on the scene, were complicit in her son’s killing.
“I’m waiting on heaven to hand down everybody’s judgment,” she said. “Because I know heaven ain’t gonna miss the mark.”
