Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 109, No. 325, Ed. 1 Sunday, June 23, 2013 Page: 1 of 42
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Heiberg recalled
s*artist who
served the music'
'.age 3D
INSIDE BUSINESS
Employers
learn about
costs of
health reform
Page ID
INSIDE SPORTS
Former Denton
player sidelined
by concussions
Page IB
INSIDE
Coupons &
savings of
$171
Not in all areas
Denton Record-Chronicle
Vol. 109, No. 325 / 38 pages, 4 sections
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Denton, Texas
One dollar
UNT slimming down administration
Up to 20 positions to
be cut this summer
By Jenna Duncan
Staff Writer
jduncan@dentonrc.com
The University of North Texas is
eliminating nearly 20 administrative
positions this summer to increase effi-
ciency following recommendations
from an outside consultant firm.
The Boston Consulting Group of
Dallas recommended the university cut
about 60 administrative positions that
appear no longer relevant — a number
that was marked down by the university
to “no more than 20,” UNT President
Lane Rawlins said.
“Most of their recommendations —
and I think they expected this — we did
not follow because we had information
they didn’t have,” Rawlins explained.
For example, the consultants sug-
gested cutting an administrator be-
cause they did not see any direct em-
ployees, though the position supervised
student workers.
Rawlins says he thinks the changes
will make the university more efficient,
as many of the positions that were elim-
inated had overlap with other jobs or
were no longer necessary to university
functions.
“No one has a right to hold a job that
no longer has work with it, and people
know that. That’s not news,” he said.
“Now and then you have to do this in an
orderly way, and we think we’ve done it
fairly well.”
The cuts are part of an ongoing bat-
tle to eliminate 100 positions to help get
the budget back in check and saving the
university about $5 million a year. Most
of the other 80 eliminations are coming
from current vacancies, Rawlins said,
and the university is working to offer
other employees whose jobs are being
eliminated other positions or retire-
ment packages.
“We’re really trying to find the easi-
est ways — the ways that are least de-
structive to people’s lives — to make this
all happen,” he said. “But if we don’t do
this, the university will stand still.... If
we didn’t make this happen, we would
be dead in the water and wouldn’t be
able to hire in the growth areas.”
See UNT on 12A
TODAY
IN DENTON
Mostly sunny
High: 94
Low: 75
Weather report, 2A
STATE
Four workers were hurt,
three critically, after a
barn frame collapsed
Saturday at an $80
million Texas A&M
University equestrian
complex under construc-
tion about a mile from
the main campus.
Page 4A
NATIONAL
A shortage of primary
care physicians in some
parts of the country is
expected to worsen as
millions of newly in-
sured Americans gain
coverage under the fed-
eral health care law next
year.
Page 6A
INTERNATIONAL
Unless the bloodshed in
Syria stops, the region
could descend into a
chaotic sectarian con-
flict, U.S. Secretary of
State John Kerry said.
Page 9A
FIND IT INSIDE
ARTS & COMMUNITY
3D
BUSINESS
ID
CLASSIFIED
4C
COUPLES
6D
CROSSWORD
5D
DEAR ABBY
5D
DEATHS
13A, 17A
OPINION
16A
REAL ESTATE
1C
SPORTS
IB
TELEVISION
15A
WEATHER
2A
7
2
David Minton/DRC
David Smith, left, served in Afghanistan as a Marine. The 23-year-old is now a graduate student at the University of North Texas, where he assists
Guenter Gross, a biology professor and director of the UNT Center for Network Neuroscience, in the Neuronal Cell Culture Lab. Gross is a veteran of
the Vietnam War and serves as Smith’s mentor.
Comrades out of arms
“You are thrust into the nexus of life and death
and you are never the same after that. ”
— Jack Lyon, a Vietnam War veteran who helped
start the Veterans Village of San Diego
Suicides worry war
veterans, who turn to
each other for kinship
By Peggy Heinkel-Wolfe
Staff Writer
pheinkel-wolfe @ dentonrc.com
Before a good friend of David
Smith, Keith Branch and Daniel Bur-
meister committed suicide, he ar-
ranged all his medications on a table-
top, took a photo with his cellphone
and sent the image to his friends. The
picture spoke volumes to the fellow
combat veterans.
For one thing, the trio look with a
skeptical eye at the many pills pre-
scribed to each of them. All three are
former U.S. Marines who survived the
battlefields in Afghanistan. Now that
they are back home in Texas, they are
trying to figure out how to survive the
rest of their lives.
Their friend’s final message under-
scored that it will take more than en-
during long waits for care at VA clinics
and filling prescriptions.
Their friend’s death also came not
long after the U.S. military announced
a record-setting 349 soldiers had com-
mitted suicide in 2012. More soldiers
died at their own hands than in com-
bat.
And then came another report — a
recent Department of Veterans Affairs
study that found veteran suicides were
increasing, too. U.S. veterans are tak-
ing their own lives at a rate of an esti-
mated 22 per day, the study found.
Branch, 26, now a student at the
University of Texas at Arlington,
counts at least nine soldiers from his
unit who have committed suicide since
they all returned to the U.S.
Smith, 23, a student at the Univer-
sity of North Texas, said he knew some-
thing was wrong with his friend in the
hours before he killed himself.
“The person I was hanging out with
the day before was not him,” Smith
said.
Thoughts of suicide
When he got to UNT, Smith knew
to look for others like him — military
veterans who hadn’t just served but
who had also seen combat.
Soldiers train for cohesion in their
company, but not all veterans are kin-
dred spirits. Veterans who fired at the
enemy, who were fired upon, who saw
their buddies die, who had their own
bodies mangled — those veterans
share a different kinship, he said.
See VETERANS on 10A
90-day reprieve granted for 211E. Hickory
Building targeted by
code enforcement to
get new roof, facade
By Peggy Heinkel-Wolfe
Staff Writer
pheinkel-wolfe @ dentonrc.com
Denton’s Health and Building Stan-
dards Commission granted a 90-day re-
prieve to the owners of 211E. Hickory St.,
after a contractor presented a rehabilita-
tion plan for the historic building.
Salty Rishel, owner of Denton-based
Distinct Designs Construction, told the
commission this week that his work would
include not only re-roofing the building
but also updating the facade.
Rishel and others provided testimony
to the commission at its regular meeting
Thursday afternoon, as it considered for
the second time in two months whether to
declare the 80-year-old building substan-
dard, the first step toward possible demo-
lition.
Instead, Rishel is working with the
property owners to ready the building for
leasing and expects to be finished about 75
days after all city permits for the work are
granted.
The building is one of several on East
Hickory Street subject to the city’s recent
code enforcement efforts.
Jimmy Normile, owner of Barney’s Au-
to Parts, has put his historic building up
for sale after he received a code enforce-
ment notice in May that the city considers
his a dangerous building. After receiving
code enforcement notices last year, Rob
Storrie closed his small-engine repair
shop inside the historic Travelstead build-
ing in January.
Last year, the Denton City Council au-
thorized about $3.1 million for a “grand
street” project along Hickory Street. From
See REPRIEVE on 12A
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Cobb, Dawn. Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 109, No. 325, Ed. 1 Sunday, June 23, 2013, newspaper, June 23, 2013; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1102498/m1/1/: accessed August 15, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .