Friday Finishers Sept. 21

Thursday, September 20, 2007 7:06 PM CDT

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Reaching for the skies. That was the theme on a couple of fronts this week as Racine and Kenosha celebrated some aeronautical dedications. SC Johnson kicked things off with a ground breaking for its new Fortaleza Hall, a tribute to late SCJ chairman Sam Johnson on the company’s 14th Street campus. The hall will house a replica of the Carnauba, the S-38 Sikorsky seaplane that ventured to Brazil in search of the palm wax that set the course of the Johnson family business more than seven decades ago. That was followed on Thursday by the dedication of Gateway Technical College’s new $3.1 million Horizon Center, a blending of aeronautical and automotive training instruction at the Kenosha Airport with top-of-the line equipment. One facility looks back at a successful history and one looks ahead to new successes.

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Another bright spot in the past week came Saturday at Memorial Hall where all the "Lighten Up! In Downtown Racine" lighthouses were blinking for attention as the crowd bid for their beacon services in perpetuity. The annual auction of the public art project lighthouses didn’t break a record, but a Downtown Racine Corporation spokesman said it churned up a healthy donation for Downtown projects. A blink of the beacon goes to Jefferson Lighthouse School students and artist Emilia Djordjevic for the top bid in the voice auction segment which drew a $6,000 bid for "Rays of Light." A beacon, indeed, for our Downtown’s bright future.

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Despite the roller coaster ride our hopes for a pennant for the Milwaukee Brewers this season have been getting, we concede we will have to withdraw Brewer pitcher Ben Sheets from consideration in the Major League Baseball Ironman contest. Actually, there is no such contest. Sheets returned to the ranks of the injured with a hamstring problem this week. Now pitching . . . Brett Favre.

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Tune in. It was certainly a different time, but not so much different than today in many ways. Racine’s own Rosie the Riveter, Rose Truckey, answered the country’s call to boost war production more than 50 years ago, churning out airplane wings at Racine’s Case plant. She’s featured tonight in a Milwaukee Public Television show, "Stories from the Home Front: The War in Wisconsin" which airs at 9 and 11:30 p.m. on MPTV-10. Rose went on to become a bank vice president, now retired, and married one of those soldier boys. Rose and her co-workers were "scared to death" with their brothers and husbands gone to war and dedicated themselves to making sure each rivet on each wing would be perfect to keep them in the air. They knew the meaning of sacrifice. Tune in. 9 tonight.

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