Welborn familyhonored at CH

See Page 8A

NE TexasMoms meet

Church holdspie making

JailRoundup

Parade entrydeadline

© 2014 Mount Pleasant Daily Tribune

See Obituaries page 3A

• Helen D. Hanes• Edgar Allen Knox• Martha Alice Meagley

Sports

Local News

Obituaries

Northeast Texas Moms meets monthly to support parents and caregivers of children/adults with intellectual disabilities. Its Facebook page is Northeast Texas MOMS (Mothers of Memorable Students). They are in the process of trying to get an ARC chapter started as well, so they would love community support. The MOMS group meets the last Monday of every

Nevills Chapel Baptist Church will be making fried pies Nov. 21-22. Varieties will include peach, apple and apricot. The pies are $24 a dozen. Call the church 903-572-5664, Mary Turner at 903-572-0309, or Diane Goates at 903-573-6772.

First Glance

Daily TribuneMount Pleasant, Texas Www.Dailytribune.net 140th Year, No. 225 1 Section, 8 Pages Thursday, November 21, 2014 75¢

Thank our veterans and military every day!

By LOU ANTONELLIManaging Editor

Police Chief Wayne Isbell, who oversees the operation of the Mount Pleasant Animal Shelter, has named Sergeant Mark Miller as its administrator.

Isbell took advantage of the departure of shelter manager Holly Steen to reorganize the shelter’s structure. Steen was replaced by an animal control officer,

bringing the total to three, while Miller takes over the shelter’s administration.

Miller, who started in his new post Nov. 12, will still be officed at the police station.

“Practically speaking, there’s not enough space at the shelter,” Isbell said. “He will be going back and forth.”

Isbell said he made the change to improve shelter operations.

By ANNETTE WHITEand EMILY SIDES

Tribune Staff Writers

Approximately 80 Titus County residents met on the square in downtown Mount Pleasant Thursday night to demonstrate empathy for the 43 missing students from the teachers’ college in Ayotzinapa and demand justice from the Mexican government.

Mexican-Americans and Mexican nationals rallied and marched around the courthouse informing bystanders and chanting cries for justice.

The vigil was to demonstrate empathy and demand justice for the 43 rural Mexican students who were last seen on Sept. 26 in Iguala, Guerrero, during a protest of discriminatory hiring and funding practices by the Mexican government. The students were all male and enrolled in the Raul Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College of Ayotzinapa.

Video surveillance shows the students being escorted away in police vehicles after six of their fellow protestors were gunned down. None of the students have been seen or heard from since. Mexican authorities stated the city’s then-mayor Jose Luis Abarca ordered the students to be turned over to a local drug gang.

Selene Fernandez was the event’s organizer. Her husband, Israel Garcia, is a Mexican national working under a U.S. government work permit. Garcia interpreted Fernandez’ chanting and informed

By LOU ANTONELLIManaging Editor

Mount Pleasant is on the way to bucking the statewide drought trend for a second year in a row, according to rainfall totals gathered at the Mount Pleasant Regional Airport.

The county saw 49.4 inches of rain in 2013, soundly breaking the drought that prevailed in 2012, With a little less than two months left in the year, the county airport has already seen 38.3 inches, according to Airport Manager Paul Henderson.

“It’s been another good year,” he said.

The airport has $100K worth of weather monitoring equipment that constantly broadcasts such data as temperature, visibility, cloud ceiling and such to pilots, Henderson said. Keeping rainfall records is another of the airport’s meteorological functions.

The latest figures reported by Henderson were as of Nov. 5. This past spring was a soggy time as May saw 6.2 inches of rain, and April 5.4 inches – the two highest monthly totals of the year so far. July had five inches, and June had four.

The pace slowed somewhat in the fall, with 3.2 inches in September and 4.1 inches in October. Up until the fifth of November saw 1.3 inches, but more is on the way. As of Thursday afternoon the National Weather Service was predicting a 90 percent

See Vigil, Pg. 3A

See Weather, Pg. 3A

See Shelter, Pg. 3A

GARY BORDERS/Daily Tribune

GARY BORDERS/Daily Tribune

GARY BORDERSv/Daily Tribune

An unidentified woman holds a sign that read “Todossomos Ayotzinapa,” a widely used Twitter hashtag. It translate into “We Are All Ayotzinapa,” the name of the teachers college where the missing were students.

Students at Annie Sims elementary school race to grab a cardboard turkey on a pipe and return it to the starting line in the annual Turkey Trot held Thursday. Parents participated as well with their children in the race, which is an annual event. A photo of the winners is on Page 2A.

Selene Fernandez, in the white sweater, leads those gathered at a candlelight vigil Monday in a series of chants.

Candlelight vigil heldfor missing students

New director ofanimal sheltertakes the helm

AyotzinApA: the Missing

MEXICO

Rainfallplentifulin 2014

month at 6:00 at the Luminant office on the square. The November meeting will be held at 6 p.m. Monday, Nov. 24.

As of Thursday morning the Titus County jail had 87 inmates, 16 females and 71 males. There were four arrests in the previous 24 hours, two for DWI, one for drug related charges, and one for revocation of probation.

The annual Mount Pleasant Rotary Christmas Parade will be held at 6 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 6. This year’s theme is Christmas Lights on Parade. Today is the last day for entries. For any and all questions, please call the civic center at (903) 575-4190.

Mark Miller

“I think this change in the organizational structure will allow us to have better oversight,” he said. “I wanted to pull someone from the department to work

bystanders of the reason for the vigil.

Fernandez led the event by handing out pictures of the 43 students to demonstrators. She then began calling each name and chanting “vivos los llevaron, vivo los queremos’’ which means “they were taken alive, we want them back alive.”

“They were students in a rural area like Mount Pleasant,” Fernandez said in Spanish. “Their parents didn’t have money to send them anywhere else.”

The crowd then chanted in Spanish, “Ayotzinapa, your pain is our pain.”

Maria Ramirez, resident of Mount Pleasant and a