BC-Sextuplets Hoax,0518

Missouri community that opened its wallets for couple's sextuplets learn it was scam

By MATT SEDENSKY
Associated Press Writer

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Doc: 00050386 DB: research–d–2006–2 Date: Wed Apr 12 04:14:34 2006

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aD8GUBDQG0 04-12-2006 04:14:34* BC-Sextuplets Hoax:Missouri community that

aD8GUG7C80 04-12-2006 09:42:09 S BC-Sextuplets Hoax, 1st Ld-Writethru:Misso

aD8GUPHKG0 04-12-2006 20:18:26 BC-Sextuplets Hoax, 2nd Ld-Writethru:Polic

aD8GUT9I81 04-13-2006 00:34:17 F BC-Sextuplets Hoax, 3rd Ld-Writethru:Misso

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BC-Sextuplets Hoax,0518

Missouri community that opened its wallets for couple's sextuplets learn it was scam

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By MATT SEDENSKY

Associated Press Writer

GRAIN VALLEY, Mo. (AP) – The library books on multiple births crowded the couple's coffee table. The bedroom-turned-nursery awaited the arrival of six newborns.

But in the end, authorities say Sarah and Kris Everson never had the sextuplets as claimed. All they had was what appears to be a big lie.

The couple's dramatic story had holes in it from the start – from their mysterious withholding of information for more than a month to the unanimous response of area hospitals that they hadn't helped deliver the newborns.

On Tuesday, authorities said the mystery had been solved – the entire tale was deemed a hoax aimed at tapping the generosity of others to pay the couple's mounting bills.

"I have never dealt with anything like this," said Police Chief Aaron Ambrose. "The level of fraud like this involving people, I have not."

Gary Bradley, the city administrator, said charges against the Eversons were forthcoming. Prosecutors had not yet determined how much the couple profited from the scam or whether they would qualify for charges beyond the municipal level.

The Eversons – Sarah, 45, and Kris, 33 – claimed to have given birth to four boys and two girls on March 8. The babies were apparently in intensive care.

The tale exploded in the local spotlight Monday when The Examiner in Independence ran on its front page a photograph of the couple holding six one-piece baby outfits and announcing the births.

Those who heard the Eversons' sad story of tight finances set up a Web site to solicit contributions – including a van, washer and dryer, cash and gift certificates. A real estate agent was even working to find the family new housing.

Sarah Everson showed an Associated Press reporter pictures of her in maternity clothes, her baring a huge pregnant-looking midsection, even sonogram images she claimed were of her infants. She showed off a tiny nursery, a closet full of baby clothes and the tiny diapers premature newborns must wear.

She said the entire story of her children's births was being kept secret by a court order enacted because a member of her husband's family was trying to kill the Eversons and their new sextuplets.

"I'm so afraid they're not going to make it," she sobbed. "Nobody understands how hard this is. I know that they're here. I know what I had to go through to get them here."

Sarah Everson said a detective begin questioning her Tuesday evening; Bradley and Ambrose said the Eversons were interviewed at the police station for about an hour, during which they revealed the story was a scam. They were released pending charges.

Reached by phone late Tuesday, Sarah Everson offered no explanation for the hoax. "I'm not talking to anybody right now," she said, "because nobody gets it."

The Web site soliciting gifts was taken down Tuesday night.

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Doc: 00136421 DB: research–d–2006–1 Date: Sat Jan 28 10:54:41 2006

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JD8FDP7G80 01-28-2006 10:54:41*F BC-MO--Art Museums-Blind:No longer impossi

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No longer impossible, blind embrace art and museums welcome blind

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mgsstffons

By MATT SEDENSKY

Associated Press Writer

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) – Warren Logan's hands skim the 15th-century marble bust, tracing the lifeless eyes, the slightly agape mouth, the precisely chiseled fur.

He is blind, but he can see.

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art's new touch tour is among programs at more than 100 museums nationwide that attempt to do what once was thought impossible: make art accessible – even visible – to those with little or no sight.

"I get a good picture of the art," 14-year-old Logan said after a recent tour. "I can actually visualize it."

The Nelson-Atkins program has participants first feel pieces of slate and marble – the materials of which the works they'll feel are made. Later, specially trained docents guide the hands of the visually impaired across 500-year-old Spanish tomb covers, an Italian bust of St. John the Baptist and numerous pieces by celebrated Modernist sculptor Henry Moore, asking them questions about their perceptions and offering them history on the piece.

Tina Jinkens dreaded class trips to the museum as a child. But now, the 35-year-old blind woman's face fills with delight as she touches art.

"I always felt like I didn't get that much out of it," Jinkens recalled. "But if someone can put their hands on a sculpture and really get something out of an exhibit it may open up new worlds to them."

Art museums first began to make their collections accessible to those without sight in the early 1970s, though with major museums like the Nelson-Atkins only now implementing such programs, the spread across the country has been slow.

The "Form in Art" initiative at the Philadelphia Museum of Art was among the first to reach out to the blind, a three-year program combining study of art history, tactile examinations of objects in the museum's collections and participants' own creation of artwork.

Because original paintings can never be touched, the Philadelphia Museum makes reproductions that may emphasize the heavy brush strokes of Van Gogh or another artist's signature elements, diorama-like models that use materials like glass to represent water or terry cloth for a lamb, and black-and-white interpretations that allow someone with limited vision to more easily see the contrast.

The museum also offers tours for the visually impaired that include more than 50 touchable pieces. Street Thoma, who heads the Philadelphia Museum's accessibility programs, said a blind person's initial visit to the museum can yield a strong reaction.

"When a blind person thinks of an art museum in society they think, 'That's not for me,'" Thoma said. "The feeling that the person gets is, 'Wow. I can be a part. I'm not cut out of this. I'm not isolated. I'm not alone.'"

Those sentiments are repeated before pieces of art tucked in museums across the country.

In Boston, the Museum of Fine Arts' longtime tour for the blind sometimes makes use of poetry or music. At the Umlauf Sculpture Garden in Austin, Texas, visually impaired visitors can listen to an audio guide that instructs them where to reach, what to feel for, and the history behind the piece. And at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where touch tours have been available since 1972, those without sight can lay their hands on masterpieces by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Auguste Rodin.

"Really, what these individuals are doing is what many people want to do when they visit the museum, which many people do when the guards aren't looking," said Francesca Rosenberg, who heads MOMA's accessibility programs.

The plight to earn a general acceptance of the idea that blind people can actually benefit from exposure to art and even develop a mental image of pieces has not been easy.

When Art Education for the Blind was founded in New York in 1987 to advocate museums making their collections accessible, many questioned the group's mission.

"People would laugh," said Nina Levent, associate director of the organization. "They thought it was a ridiculous idea."

John Kennedy, a University of Toronto at Scarborough professor whose 1993 book "Drawing and the Blind" is considered the seminal work on the subject, said those without sight can often understand art as well as those with full vision.

"Sculptures make perfect sense for the blind, but also blind people understand pictures," he said. "The image formed in the blind person's mind is, in most important respects, identical to the image formed in the sighted person's mind."

Kennedy's statement – that a blind person might come up with a mental image close to that of a sighted person – is stunning, and one that he still has difficulty getting some people to accept.

There were no naysayers when a small group of young people crowded the Nelson-Atkins' mezzanine sculpture gallery for a tour. Shirley Cottrell beamed as her 9-year-old granddaughter Brooke reached to caress a piece taller than her.

She could feel every little groove, Cottrell said. She could see.

–––

On the Net:

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: http://www.nelson-atkins.org/

Art Education for the Blind: http://www.artbeyondsight.org/

Form in Art: http://www.philamuseum.org/education/form–art.shtml

Museum of Modern Art: http://www.moma.org/education/moma–access.html

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Doc: 00278592 DB: research–d–2005–3 Date: Sat Sep 3 19:10:45 2005

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aD8CD1IAG0 09-03-2005 17:44:10 BC-Katrina-On the Bus:Final chapter in sto

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Final chapter in storm exodus is epic bus journey

Eds: SUBS 9th graf, 'He heard...', to UPDATE with last evacuees leaving Superdome.

%photo(AP Photos DN101-103%)

By MATT SEDENSKY

Associated Press Writer

ABOARD BUS NUMBER 1025 (AP) – They wait in the baking sun atop mounds of stinking garbage and walk barefoot through filthy pools of water. And they are smiling.

Finally, the escape from hell has begun.

For tens of thousands of Hurricane Katrina survivors trapped for days at the Superdome and other wretched shelters, boarding a rescue bus is the first sign of hope after days of squalid living and bestial violence.

Now, finally, Bus 1025 from New Orleans to Dallas begins to fill. Josephine Bingham, 68, is among the first to take a seat, wearing a warm, broad smile.

"Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord," she repeats. "I'm here now."

The commercial coach is cool and the seats recline – unlike the school buses other survivors traveled on. It reaches capacity just before 6 p.m. Friday.

Each of the 47 seats holds a story of survival.

Some waded through neck-high waters or fought off gangsters or watched people die. All of it makes 25-year-old Reginald Davis angry.

He heard the screams of rapes at the Superdome, where the last people were evacuated Saturday – six days after Katrina struck. He walked through feces. When his leg became infected, he says, no one would help.

"It wasn't fit for a dog," he says. "I had the worst experience I've had in my life."

By now, the brilliant orange setting sun is dulled slightly by thin clouds. And the preacher from Missionary Baptist is at work in Row Five.

Louis Cousin, 75, sits with a box of insulin on his lap. He's mad, too, but trying to make sense of it all.

"I'm being tested through all of this," he says. "This is not the only storm in our lives."

The hardship on this bus is palpable. The hurricane itself, plus lost houses, lost jobs, lost lives.

It makes some question returning to a city they loved.

Corey Jones is a 25-year-old truck driver and father of three. He has lived in New Orleans all his life. He loves the Cajun food, the Saints and Mardi Gras. But he believes his home has been destroyed and wonders when he'll be able to go back to work.

"I don't know if I want to go back," he says. "They lied to us. We got played like fools."

Bus 1025 is charting west in a hurry, but the blacktop unfurls calmly, bordered by little else than signs announcing towns like Jefferson and Marshall and Henderson. The odor on board is slight – just the faintest reminder of foul New Orleans.

Friday becomes Saturday. At the rear of the darkened bus, two construction worker buddies are wondering why they had to endure what they did.

Johnny Jenkins, 37, wonders if the levee was purposely broken to get the city more federal aid. Norris Gullo, 38, asks why they couldn't use generators to power the shelters.

And why were so very many poor minorities among the stranded? Nearly every face on this bus is a dark one, and the back-seat friends want to know why.

"They wouldn't have let rich people drown," Jenkins says.

Night wears on. Voices that before rose with competing visions of hurricane horror have gone quiet. For some, it is the first real sleep they've enjoyed for days.

The bus pulls into a parking lot in Mesquite, Texas, about 4:30 a.m., and Jenkins' radio plays "I Can See Clearly Now," the Johnny Nash song telling listeners how good the day will be.

From Mesquite, buses get instructions on carrying refugees to Dallas or points beyond. Storm survivors wait for eight hours before they go through security searches for weapons, drugs or alcohol.

The bright morning sun rises in the sky. The 530-mile journey is inching toward 18 hours when Bus 1025 finally opens its doors at a facility on the fringes of downtown Dallas.

The refugees are being housed in what was, until earlier this week, a minimum-security prison. Ironic, since a favorite synonym for the Superdome seemed to be "jail."

Still, the ride is finally over.

"I just realized I'm back where I was," says 56-year-old Biscuit Carter. "Free."

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Doc: 00065977 DB: research–d–2005–4 Date: Sat Oct 15 14:14:38 2005

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Profiler Categories: Business Crime Defense Law Medical Municipal

Travel

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aD8D8KE3G0 10-15-2005 14:14:38*F BC-New Orleans-Crime, Bjt:Some question wh

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Some question whether police are ready for New Orleans residents' return

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By MATT SEDENSKY

Associated Press Writer

NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Plywood covering Terry Knister's back door had been pulled off, his stained-glass window smashed. He feared a burglar and dialed 911.

Trouble was, no one was willing to help. All he was given by the New Orleans police was an incident number for insurance purposes. No officers were dispatched.

Police say they can't explain Knister's experience and insist it was an exception. But as this devastated city repopulates, and the number of military and out-of-town law-enforcement agents drops, the challenge of dealing with crime grows.

"We just don't have enough police officers to handle the calls we're getting," said New Orleans Councilman Jay Batt, who has received calls from more than 100 other residents with similar concerns.

Victims' accounts vary. Some allege police refused to take reports, others say their calls were never answered.

"I would not say we're at 100 percent. We're still in the process of rebuilding our infrastructure," said Capt. Marlon Defillo, a police spokesman. "But in terms of the department's responsiveness to the community, we are functional."

Tell that to Knister. The 49-year-old lawyer was told police would not be sent to his home.

"What about the bodies?" Knister said he asked the dispatcher, questioning what authorities would do if he or intruders were killed in a potential showdown. "They said, 'Call back if that happens.'"

The streets of New Orleans are patrolled now by a much-reduced force.

The National Guard – whose uniformed soldiers and Humvees were a daily fixture in the weeks immediately after Hurricane Katrina – now has 2,361 people in New Orleans, down from more than 6,000 after the storm struck Aug. 29, said a spokesman, Lt. Col. Pete Schneider.

Some see the absence of such patrols today as a sign of progress, but others say it increases the strain on the city's already-fractured police force.

About 300 federal, state and out-of-state officers remain on the streets, Defillo said, as little as one-tenth the level after Katrina hit. The city's police force is said to number about 1,500, down about 200 officers from before the storm.

The active-duty military has 257 people in Louisiana, but all but a dozen are medical support personnel. That's in contrast to just under 20,000 active-duty personnel right after Katrina.

"There's only so many hands that they have and so many cruisers and so many officers," Batt said. "We don't have a lot right now."

Fearing a rise in lawlessness as residents returned home, the New Orleans police set up an anti-looting unit of 200 officers.

"You got people going home, with people seeing they got nothing and spotting a house that's high and dry," said Capt. Bruce Adams, who leads the unit. "It's a sad situation. Illegal, nonetheless."

Helen Cheneau returned to her Ninth Ward home this week. The 62-year-old retired hotel maid knew her first floor would be ruined by floodwaters but expected her valuables upstairs to be safe.

Cheneau was wrong. Looters made off with her jewelry, TVs, a vacuum, a sewing machine and more – and even trashed the place. She's been unable to get police on the phone to take a report.

"I just feel like I was being violated," she said. "It's ridiculous."

Several miles north, in Lakeview, Jackie Federico was in a similar situation. An officer was unwilling to take her report, she said.

"He told me that they were not taking reports because it would be impossible to prove and that there was so much fraud going on," said the 52-year-old dental hygienist. "It's bad enough to get looted. But then to say that you may be lying?"

Defillo said the department was just beginning to process property losses and residents should try again. Police say they're making 20 to 30 arrests a day now, down from more than 2,000 a week before Katrina.

The drop in the number of arrests, despite the drop in the city's population, has put some residents at ease.

"I feel safer in the city now than I did pre-Hurricane Katrina," said Jean Stickney, who recently returned home.

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Doc: 00272291 DB: research–d–2005–3 Date: Fri Sep 2 09:10:57 2005

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Moving out in little steps, and wondering what's next

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By MATT SEDENSKY

Associated Press Writer

CHALMETTE, La. (AP) – As Hurricane Katrina roared, 65-year-old Linda Bertoniere escaped her flooded house, climbed a lamppost and clung, waiting for rescue. She was brought to a makeshift shelter and waited for days until a dump truck took her away. And now, sleeping in a dockside warehouse on a pallet of plywood, she waits again, hoping a boat will come.

For survivors of the storm, it is a seemingly endless string of waits – for a bus or boat, a shower or working phone, or word that a loved one is still alive. They made slight moves – to a neighbor's house or to a different shelter, only to again wait for what they hope will be their last move out of a disaster zone.

"We're just so exhausted," said Bertoniere, a retired restaurant manager. "We'll be glad when they put us some place and we get started on repairing our lives."

Here on the Mississippi River's eastern bank, more than 1,000 people remained at a 200,000-square-foot warehouse full of imported wood and steel. They struggled to rest on their plywood "cots" and dined on military rations as troopers armed with rifles and automatic weapons hovered and watched. Some had no shoes, others complained they didn't have their medicine.

Several hundred of the refugees in the swamped New Orleans suburb of St. Bernard Parish were ferried across the river after waiting outside with life vests on, huddled under tarps and wearing trash bags to keep their soaked clothes from getting even wetter in the afternoon rain.

"This is just devastating," said 47-year-old Katia Du'nn, a pianist whose house was destroyed. "They could have handled this so much better."

That was a complaint of many who stayed behind during the storm and are now questioning why the government isn't able to better respond.

U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-La., who met with local officials and refugees in the disaster area, said the primary problem was an inability to communicate, hampering efforts to get adequate resources for emergency responders.

"It's our duty to get them the things they need when they need it," he said. "And it's not happening."

Some storm refugees made their way to the foot of the Crescent City Connection bridge, abandoning the Superdome and convention center – where tens of thousands of refugees had converged in the storm's aftermath – in hopes of finding a way out sooner.

Kristy Wilson, a 26-year-old secretary, waded through neck-high waters, pushing her 5-month-old baby boy in a plastic storage container. She said she couldn't stand the convention center any longer after witnessing stampeding, shootings and death.

"We're hoping that we can get transportation out," she said, with the New Orleans skyline in the hazy distance. "We can't survive here."

Some survivors did make it out of New Orleans – on buses and crowded into open-back Army trucks. At least a handful appeared in no hurry to leave – some sitting on their front porches and others fishing on the river banks.

The highways spilling into New Orleans have been crowded only with a seemingly endless stream of ambulances, brown military trucks and state government pickups towing boats.

Some of the displaced sought to make it to faraway family and friends, but many others didn't care where they went – as long as it was away from here.

"Right now, all I'm concerned about is living," said Leona West, a 46-year-old baker. "I'm going wherever the bus takes me."

Many said the same, and the ordeal of living through brutal Katrina left some refugees wondering whether they still wanted to call the Gulf Coast home.

Kit Bauer, a retired school secretary awaiting a ride out of the region, said she was considering making her departure permanent.

"It holds very bad memories," she said. "Horrifying memories."

Others wondered how they could possibly make a living – or even find a place to live – in their ravaged hometown.

"This is my home," said Barnett Koons, a 27-year-old electrical technician who lives in the devastated St. Bernard Parish, where most homes were submerged. "But what's the point of living here? There's nothing here anymore."

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Doc: 00372832 DB: research–d–2005–3 Date: Sat Sep 24 13:23:00 2005

Alert Categories: bus dam lab law mun sci

Profiler Categories: Business Damages Labor Law Municipal Science

*** Version history. (* this story, F final, S semifinal) ***

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Expanded training seen as partial solution to flawed disaster response

Eds: Also moved in advance.

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mgsstffons

By MATT SEDENSKY

Associated Press Writer

WARRENSBURG, Mo. (AP) – He helped set up an airport shelter after Sept. 11 and coordinated response to a crippling ice storm. He's been a volunteer firefighter, worked as an EMT and did first aid in the mountains of New Mexico. And Brad Hubbard has academic credentials, too, about to complete a four-year program in crisis and disaster management.

At just 23, he's exactly what federal emergency officials want.

Hubbard is part of a wave of students in one of academia's newest and fastest-growing fields – broad programs in emergency management and homeland security seen as a partial solution to the ineffective responses to Hurricane Katrina and other disasters.

"This is all I ever wanted to do," said Hubbard, a Leawood, Kan., native and a student at Central Missouri State University here, "as long as I can remember."

Eleven years ago, still reeling from flawed responses to hurricanes Hugo and Andrew, the Federal Emergency Management Agency launched an ambitious effort to ensure disaster officials at all levels of government were properly trained to deal with catastrophe.

"People got their jobs all kinds of ways," said Wayne Blanchard, who has overseen FEMA's Higher Education Project since its inception. "And generally not because they had any identified management competencies, but who you know."

Cronyism wasn't the only problem. Disaster management wasn't seen as a profession, and adequate training was lacking for those in the field.

The Higher Education Project sought to change that by convincing colleges to offer degree and certificate programs in emergency management aimed at producing a new breed of professionals who could assume posts often held by appointees ill-equipped to deal with disaster.

Students scattered across the country go through research-based courses in subjects like quarantine and epidemiology; disaster-specific instruction for floods and earthquakes; lectures on politics, planning and leadership; and on-site experience in everything from community emergencies to the Asian tsunami.

"What, ultimately, all of us hoped was that by making this a degree program, we would start churning out and educating emergency managers who had a broader perspective," said George Haddow, a deputy chief of staff for FEMA during the Clinton administration who is now a private emergency management consultant. "Just, generally, professionalize the discipline."

Blanchard says there were four college programs in emergency management in 1994, but 121 today and another 110 programs under consideration. They're becoming so popular there is a shortage of qualified professors to teach in them.

"Even before 9/11 all these programs had more business than they could handle," said David Neal, a professor in the Fire and Emergency Management Program at Oklahoma State University.

Salaries are on the rise in the field, to an average of $45,390 annually, according to May 2004 figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, though managers in small jurisdictions can make half that and those in the private sector can make double. The U.S. Department of Labor projects emergency management will be one of the fastest-growing fields through 2012.

"Disasters are a growth business in this country," Blanchard said.

Observers say the result of the growth is a community of emergency managers with far different demographics than a decade ago. More have college degrees and more have chosen the field as a first career. They are younger and more diverse. And they have a blend of research-based knowledge with experiential education.

Why then, with all those advances in the quality of the emergency management profession, with so many more qualified people in the field, was the response to Katrina so botched?

Blanchard said it could be another five or 10 years before the true fruits of the program are realized, because those it attracted to the field are still in low-level positions without the authority to lead a response to a tragedy.

Mike Brown, who headed FEMA before stepping down two weeks after Katrina hit New Orleans, had limited experience in disaster relief. He was a lawyer who headed the International Arabian Horse Association before joining the agency in 2001.

"If you look at the kind of people who were in some of the responsible positions, they weren't products of an emergency management education and in many cases didn't have any firsthand experience," said Greg Shaw, a research scientist at George Washington University's Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management.

Many believe the problem lies not with individual emergency managers, but the system they work within, in which power and funding have been stripped away and those with the capacity to lead in a crisis are not in command.

"There has been success by these universities in producing educated emergency managers," Haddow said. "But they are working in a system that doesn't take advantage of their talents and skills."

Even as interest from colleges looking to develop emergency management courses has grown, the Department of Homeland Security has slashed the budget of the Higher Education Project, as it has for FEMA operations overall. Blanchard said his program budget was about $180,000 before the creation of Homeland Security. He said it is around $35,000 in the current fiscal year and while the next budget is uncertain, he's been told to prepare for working without program funding.

Blanchard said he hoped the hurricane would convince authorities of the importance of the Higher Education Project and of a strong emergency response system as a whole.

"Nine-eleven and Katrina you'd think would have a lasting impact," he said. "But after Hurricane Andrew we thought that too."

–––

On the Net:

FEMA Higher Education Project: http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/edu/

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Doc: 00245041 DB: research–d–2005–4 Date: Mon Nov 21 13:49:24 2005

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A chance to escape, or to be transformed, drives some to enlist

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By MATT SEDENSKY

Associated Press Writer

SEDALIA, Mo. (AP) – Sgt. Jay Key stands in the middle of the car lot, beside a salesman, beneath the shiny metallic streamers, among the neat rows of polished Mitsubishis.

He isn't looking to buy. This is just one in an unending series of stops to make his face familiar and his mission clear.

Key is an Army recruiter, charged with selling the service even as war rages and a death toll mounts, standing shoulder to shoulder with a man who need only trumpet the likes of a clutchless shift and aluminum rims to potential customers.

They are brethren. "It's all the same," Key said. "It's all sales."

It's not an easy sell. For the year ending Sept. 30, the Army was 6,627 recruits below its goal – the largest shortfall in 26 years. The Army National Guard and Reserve did even worse.

Yet here in Sedalia, there is no deficit.

The recruitment station here exceeded its annual goal of 58 soldiers by three. The Army's 5th Battalion, which includes 295 recruiting stations in Missouri and 10 other states in America's vast middle, missed its goal for the year – but was still the top-ranked battalion.

"We hear all the bad stories. We hear recruiting is down," said Key. "But we don't see it here."

There is no single explanation for why Key and his colleagues are so successful. But if you follow them as they make their rounds in Missouri's small towns, if you talk with those who sign up, you'll hear certain refrains: They need the money, they seek an escape from dead-end lives in dead-end towns, they hew to a kind of heartland patriotism.

When 24-year-old Key signed up six years ago, many of the young men at his side were poor, like he was. Now, he says, things are different.

"We got everything from beauty pageant queens, car salesmen, unemployed, college grads, children of doctors," he said. "Everybody joins for their own reason."

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Take U.S. 50 east from here and hang a left just past Syracuse on Missouri 5. You'll hit the tiny town of Bunceton, and 19-year-old Robert Farris says you'll understand why he left.

The railroad left town decades ago, and dreams went with it. Prosperity elsewhere drew many folks away. Those who stayed – 348 at last count – mostly commute to modest-paying factory jobs in surrounding towns. The homes here are unpretentious, the downtown full of crumbling, deserted storefronts.

So when it came time for seniors to turn their tassels at the local high school last May, Farris and three others in his graduating class of 17 decided to join the military.

"We need to do something with our life," Farris said. "And this is the only thing we got going for us."

Farris says he was the "fat kid" at Cooper County R-IV School, an unpopular guy who traveled with the troublemakers. He remembers changing in the locker room on Sept. 11, 2001, after hearing the awful news, and he was so angry. Farris' father is a Vietnam veteran and he has an aunt and a cousin who served in Afghanistan. He always was patriotic, but the terrorist attacks increased his ardor.

As high school came to a close, classmates enlisted, but Farris hoped to go to school for auto collision repair. The program was already full and Farris wasn't willing to wait.

"I said, `Forget it,'" he remembered. "'I'm joining the military.'"

–––

Deanna Griffith is 34 with big blue eyes and soft features beginning to show markings of age. She thinks the military can turn her life around.

Griffith thought about enlisting out of high school, but a war was on in the Persian Gulf and her Army drill sergeant father wasn't keen on the idea.

Life happened. She married an Army man, had two kids and assumed a series of low-paying jobs – gas station attendant, deli supervisor, Wal-Mart stock person. Somehow, that youthful confidence that told her she surely could serve her country had slipped away.

More than anything else, it's that confidence, that pride, that she hopes the military will help her regain.

There is the money, too.

Griffith's husband was injured and left the service and they found their way to Warrensburg, 50-some miles southeast of Kansas City. She eventually took a $9-an-hour job at Whiteman Air Force Base's commissary; her husband found work at a railyard in North Kansas City, then at a commercial battery company.

Five years ago, the couple declared bankruptcy. Last year, they made less than $24,000. They struggled to make their $322 monthly mortgage payment and to feed their children.

They lost their house and car and even had to sell the three Pomeranians they were breeding. The family is now living in a mobile home parked on property owned by Griffith's parents.

"I look at it as an opportunity for me, for my whole family, to change our whole lives," she said before beginning basic training at Fort Leonard Wood.

Griffith's father lifted his family out of poverty. He was one of 14 children raised by Griffith's grandparents on a dirt farm in Tennessee and landed in the Army after some teenage transgressions.

"My mom's said to me many times, 'If it wasn't for the Army, who knows where we would be.' The Army saved my dad's life," Griffith said. "I know it can be done. I know you can change your life."

–––

Ask Jonathan Churchwell about the type of people who sign up to serve and his answer is simple. There are guys like his brother, who lives to defend the country. And there are guys like Jonathan who think, "Hey, I can get money? Cool."

He isn't shy about his motivation. Churchwell is joining the military so he can go to college and make a living in animation. He says his parents are supportive.

"They were like, 'Yeah, join the military because we're not paying for school,'" he said. "My whole family is dirt poor. Most of them are on welfare."

In Warrensburg, Churchwell's home, the poverty rate is about twice the national average. The 19-year-old lives there in a small, white ranch that doesn't look like it could brave much of a storm. Inside, ferrets play in a large cage in the living room, where macrame hangs, fish tanks gurgle and walls are covered with pictures of uniformed men.

He will be up there soon. But he doesn't expect it will change him.

"I'm not going to get a tattoo with an American flag on it like my brother," he said. "But this is my home, it's where I lay my head at night. I'll fight for it, I guess."

–––

It was California, 1998, but the details beyond that are a bit murky. What Tia Bond does remember is exactly how she felt as she watched her brother graduate with his fellow Marines.

"Just watching them – the pride that they had – made me think that's something I might like to do," she said.

She is 20, living a stone's throw from the Army recruitment center in Warrensburg. She and her roommate were renting a movie at Blockbuster one Saturday last spring when a recruiter approached them.

Both decided to enlist.

"I think it'll instill a better sense of pride and self-confidence and that kind of stuff," Bond said.

For joining the reserves, Bond is to receive a $7,000 sign-on bonus and $20,000 in school loan repayment. She said that didn't matter, though.

"They could just pay me minimum wage, whatever, and I'd still go," she said. "It's just like a personal thing that I want to serve my country."

It is a chance to leave, too – a chance she's wanted for a long time.

"I've lived here my whole life. The military will give me the option of at least getting away for a while," she said. "I'm not looking forward to saying goodbye to my family and that's about the only thing I can honestly say I'm not looking forward to."

–––

Pfc. Glenn Stanley leans against a wall at the Military Entrance Process Station in Kansas City, alone, laid-back and calm. Today is the start of his dream. He heads out for basic training, convinced he could save thousands of lives in the Special Forces.

He is patriotic, no doubt – a supporter of the president, offended by those who drive imported cars. But he doesn't deny money has had a role in his decision.

"Finance has been quite a big influence. They really take care of their soldiers," he said. "I see so many people out there with dead-end jobs. They work real hard to make ends meet. I just don't want to do that."

At 17, Stanley has a slight build, very white sneakers and just a bit of hair poking from his chin. He finished high school in Kansas City, Kan., in three years and was too young to enlist without his mother's approval. She cried, but agreed.

He's known for years this is what he wanted to do.

"You'd see people and you'd just want to grow up and be just like them," he said. "You hear of people saving lives and it sounded like the perfect thing to do."

–––

He says he is not as patriotic as perhaps a soldier should be. Jason Brooks is enlisting for adventure.

Brooks admits his life is comfortable in Clinton, a small town due south of Warrensburg. His yellow motorcycle is parked in the driveway of his small beige house, his room equipped with a laptop and electronics, his frame draped with neat preppy clothes. But he wants more.

"In this town, what is there for me?" the 18-year-old asked. "No adventure, no benefits."

Brooks comes from a military family. His father was in the Army; so was his mom. She was serving in Iraq when he broke the news by e-mail that he was considering enlisting.

"I said, `No, no, no, no, no, no,'" recalled his mother, Krista Seiner. "I said, 'You're going to come back in a body bag.'"

But her son is more concerned about what would happen if he didn't join.

"A fear of not succeeding in the real world – that's one of the things I think this will help me with," he said. "My classmates, a lot of them are just not doing anything. They don't really have any plans."

Many of Brooks' friends are headed to college. He considered that, too, but isn't regretful.

"I don't think I'm going to miss anything," he said. "While they're partying, I'm going to be making a career and a life for myself."

–––

Had recruits from Sedalia or Bunceton – or other small towns across the vast swath of middle America that supplies so many of the troops – been brought up elsewhere, under different circumstances, with other opportunities, there's no telling if they'd enlist.

But this is their world. And perhaps most importantly, this is a world that – unlike much of the rest of post-Vietnam America – never disdained the military.

You can see it in the way the 24-year-old recruiter, Jay Key, is received as he goes about his business. He goes to blood drives and graduation parties, shares beers with schoolteachers and chats with mechanics, hangs out at a Masonic lodge and enters pool tournaments – anything to make contact with people who can feed him potential recruits.

"I don't think there's a building in town I haven't been in," he said.

People in town know Key – they seem to know all the uniformed men who call this home. They stop them to chat, offer them food, offer a friendly nod.

And as he rides around, Key says it's so evident why he's found so many young men and women willing to join: "Everybody's pretty proud of us out here."

"Out here," he said, "it's almost like royalty."

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Doc: 00276094 DB: research–d–2006–2 Date: Tue May 30 14:23:25 2006

*** Version history. (* this story, F final, S semifinal) ***

kD8HU8R780 05-30-2006 14:23:25*F BC-KS--Ministry of Hate, Adv04:A sermon of

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BC-KS--Ministry of Hate,Adv04,2979

Adv04

For release in Sunday editions June 4

A sermon of hatred and doom from a Kansas minister eager to preach it

Eds: Note language throughout. A version also is moving on the national features wire.

With BC-KS--Phelps-Bio Box; BC-KS--Phelps-Theology; BC-KS--Phelps-Lingering Effects; BC-KS--Phelps-Free Speech

%photo(AP Photos NY320-331%)

By MATT SEDENSKY

Associated Press Writer

OGDEN, Iowa (AP) – The soldier's flag-draped casket is set on the gymnasium floor, below the unlit scoreboard, before bleachers crowded with mourners.

Sgt. Daniel Sesker, the young man known for an infectious laugh and a wide smile, who traveled across the globe and atop a Humvee for his country, lies dead.

Inside his high school, those who loved him are just beginning to grieve. Outside, near a cornfield awaiting planting, picketers thank God for the death, talk approvingly of the young man's entrance into hell, and mock those who shed tears.

And back home in Kansas, tucked away in an office over Westboro Baptist Church, Pastor Fred Phelps need only think of what he's done and he cracks a smile.

In 15 years of vocal, vehement preaching at curbsides, outside funerals and before state capitols, Phelps and his followers have forced their message on passers-by unlike any other religious group. They have branded this a nation of sinners, of people bound to live eternity in a fiery hell. They have called homosexuals the disgusting face of evil, and fallen American soldiers proof of God's wrath. And they've sneered at every other faith on this earth, deriding beliefs countless millions innately know as fact.

Phelps and his followers are unapologetic in delivering their message and have no hope of convincing you, just as they say there is no hope for this doomed nation. It's simply their duty, they believe, to let it be known.

That God hates you. That you're going to hell. That you're wrong and Fred's right.

–––

Phelps and his followers were seven years into their pickets, in 1998, when they gained large-scale national attention. A 21-year-old University of Wyoming student named Matthew Shepard was lashed to a split-rail post, pistol-whipped, robbed, and left in near-freezing temperatures – all apparently motivated because he was gay. He died five days later and, across the nation, people were horrified by a beating so brutal and a death so sad.

But not Phelps.

He and his followers showed up at the funeral. They carried signs bearing their trademark message: "God Hates Fags." And they chanted "Fags die, God laughs."

There have been thousands of protests since – not only against gays, but others ranging from children's television icon Mister Rogers to the victims of Sept. 11 to those who died in a mine under West Virginia. There have been so many – more than 25,000 by the church's count – that they grew almost routine.

Media coverage faded. And a new idea was born.

Last June, Phelps and his followers began appearing outside funerals of American troops killed in Iraq. They've already attended about 100, and offended communities and lawmakers so thoroughly that 31 state legislatures debated bills to curb such protests, and President Bush signed a bill curbing such pickets at national cemeteries.

It would seem a response so strong and so uniformly horrified could have only been stirred by an army of Phelps followers. But Westboro Baptist has only about 75 members, all but about a dozen of them relatives of the pastor.

"These things that we do are altogether proper," Phelps said, "altogether scriptural."

Westboro's members vow to fight restrictions on their pickets and hope to see it become a First Amendment case that lands before the U.S. Supreme Court. They can't imagine stopping their protests.

"You can't describe it – your adrenaline's going," said the pastor's oldest son, Fred Phelps Jr. "It's almost like you could get hooked."

Those who are members of the Topeka, Kan., church must be willing not only to live an insular life, but to thrive on it. They must give at least 10 percent of their earnings to the church and spend thousands more traveling to spread its message.

They live in modest homes on quiet streets, hold normal jobs and attend city schools. They watch movies and television, have Betty Boop calendars and Kelly Clarkson ringtones, and if not for holding crude signs in towns across the country, would be able to pass through life with little attention.

Attention, however, is exactly what they want.

Their belief in predestination – the idea that God determined at the time of one's creation whether they were bound for heaven or hell – is not unique. It dates back to St. Augustine, was widely preached during John Calvin's 16th century Protestant Reformation, and is at the core of some mainline Christian faiths.

Where Westboro parts ways, of course, is its emphasis on God's hatred and the way it spreads this message. Members believe they are obligated to alert the world's depraved sinners of their fate even though such people have no chance of going to heaven.

They're not doing this to save you. They're doing it to save themselves.

–––

The wood paneling, mauve carpeting and burnt-red cushions on the pews give the small sanctuary at Westboro Baptist a feel that's more 1970s living room than house of worship. The fluorescent lights shine on no crosses or paintings or statues, just a world map and signs including "Thank God for Maimed Soldiers."

Women are tying on head scarves and babies are being passed around when 76-year-old Phelps' lanky frame slips in a side door and sits in the front row.

Two hymns sung in perfect harmony serve as bookends for the service. The centerpiece is a sermon by Phelps marked by sentences delivered in an impassioned crescendo.

In it, as he often does, he fixates on media coverage and lawmakers' attempts to silence him. He talks of God's hatred, calls other Christians filthy, and celebrates the very deadly events so many others mourn.

"We pray for more tornadoes, we pray for more hurricanes, that Katrina's just a tiny little preamble," he says near his closing. "That's what we pray for."

They pray, too, that those who are among God's chosen people who have not yet found Westboro Baptist will hear the call and make their way. And when the last person comes, they believe, Christ will return and the world will end.

–––

Fred was five years old when his aunt came, sat him on a log in his hometown of Meridian, Miss., and delivered the news of his mother.

"Told me she had gone with the angels to be with God in heaven. But it wasn't much of an effect on me that I recall it had," he said in an interview in an office off the Westboro sanctuary. "I don't remember crying."

The death was years before Phelps began his blistering preaching, but his childhood response is indicative of the detached connections he and other Westboro members say they have with others and the way they respond to loss.

Children attend public schools, but friendships rarely – if ever – continue outside the classroom. Adults may exchange niceties with co-workers, but it typically ends there.

Westboro members unflinchingly turn their backs on anyone who parts ways with them – and even to those within the church they no longer feel are among God's elect.

Karl Hockenbarger spent his entire life in Westboro. Last June, at a church meeting, a vote was taken on whether members believed he was still a recipient of God's grace. They did not. He was told he was no longer a member and no longer welcome.

"I never, in my wildest nightmare, thought that it would come to this," the 52-year-old Topeka man said. Hockenbarger has not spoken with his wife or children – all still Westboro members – since he was voted out of the church.

Steve Drain, his wife and children left Florida in 2001 to join Westboro. The decision essentially ended all previous relationships the Drains had with friends and family, but say it has little effect.

"Compared to how you feel about God," Drain said, "you should hate all others."

There is evidence Phelps has been living that message for decades.

Once the pastor finished high school and was on the path to ministry, contact with his father – who he now calls a "wonderful, good old man" – began to wane. The elder Phelps had remarried a woman who was divorced, the very sort of evil his son was beginning to preach against.

"He told me one day, 'You know that you're just making everybody mad, Bubba,'" Phelps recalled. "He says, 'Why don't you just go kick them in the shin and get it over with?'"

It wasn't just Phelps' father who was marginalized from the family. His sister was, too. And his in-laws. And as his 13 children came of age, some of them left, too.

"These doctrines and things you believe have an inherent power and effect of sequestering you from all mankind on a close personal level," Phelps explained.

Shirley Phelps-Roper, a daughter of the pastor who frequently acts as a church spokeswoman, lost one of her sons to the outside world.

"Of course it's heartbreaking, on a level, for a short period of time," she said in one of numerous interviews. "Because what you come to terms with is that the child is going to hell."

–––

It wasn't always this way.

Phelps was raised a Methodist and enjoyed a childhood in which, despite the loss of his mother, he says he was "happy as a duck."

Thetis Hudson, an 85-year-old Meridian woman, lived across the street from Phelps' boyhood home. She remembers his mother playing sweet tunes at the piano and his father working as a railroad detective when it seemed no one else had a good job.

"They were good people. If you were going to pick a typical American family you would have picked them," Hudson said. "There was no hate."

Phelps is eager to tell of his early successes – as a high hurdler and an Eagle Scout, of being chosen for West Point and earning top grades. A medal he received from the American Legion as a high school senior after a vote by teachers and students still hangs on his office wall.

"I know how to make people like me," he said.

Joe Clay Hamilton, a 77-year-old lawyer in Meridian who was friends with Phelps in high school, described the preacher as introverted and innocuous.

"You never really got to know him," Clay Hamilton said. "From day one I pegged him as some sort of strange guy. I don't know how, it's just a feeling you get."

Phelps never went to West Point. As he tells it, he attended a Methodist revival meeting and felt a calling to preach. His wife Margie met him after he delivered a sermon in Arizona.

"I wanted to marry a preacher," she recalled. "And he was one."

The more than 50 years since amount to a life not easily assessed.

Phelps became a voracious civil rights attorney honored by minority groups for his dedication to cases of poor blacks. But he ultimately was disbarred from state courts for improprieties and picketed the funeral of Coretta Scott King.

He ran as a Democrat for mayor, governor and senator who opened his law office to staffers on Al Gore's 1988 presidential bid. But he failed in each campaign and is uniformly derided by politicians on both sides of the aisle.

He raised 13 children, nine whose defense of him is unwavering, and others with stories that are far different.

–––

She stood there terrified. Don't vomit, she thought. Don't soil your pants. If I'm still, 11-year-old Dortha Phelps believed, it will stop.

Fred Phelps' sixth child was about to leave for school that November morning when she remembered. Her barrettes. She had just gotten them for her birthday and thought she had time to run back to the bathroom and snap them in.

The girl's mother was livid. She was trying to haul a dozen kids off to school and slammed the back door repeatedly to express her frustration.

Fred Phelps awoke, his daughter recalled, and he was furious. Dortha claims she was struck 15 times with the handle of a mattock, a garden tool similar to a pickax. When it ended, she says she was covered in bruises, with a goose-egg on her head and a nose dripping with blood.

She went to her room.

"I lay up there in my school clothes hoping it was over," she said. "He went back to bed while my mom proceeded to take everyone else to school. Nothing else happened about that. The storm had passed."

Fourteen more years and numerous other beatings would pass, Dortha says, before she mustered the courage to pack her bags. She would take the surname Bird because she was finally free.

Bird says the barrette incident was part of a pattern of abuse that her mother and all 13 children suffered – typically with the mattock, a maroon belt, or the pastor's bare hands.

The nine children who remain loyal Westboro members say that they were hit, but claim it was carried out as the Bible dictates. They say it never amounted to abuse.

But Bird describes a childhood marked by rampant verbal and physical abuse by a father who wanted control over everything. Her story is corroborated by two brothers – who spoke out 12 years ago but would not respond to interview requests for this article. A fourth estranged child – who is not a Westboro member, but still attends services – also denied interview requests.

Bird and her two brothers who are no longer Westboro members tell of an unstable patriarch driven to fits of rage by nearly anything – from the way a child peeled an apple to forgetting to wipe one's shoes. Everything was personal. Everything, Phelps felt, was meant to hurt him.

"He behaves with a viciousness the likes of which I have never seen," wrote Mark Phelps, the pastor's estranged second child, in a 1993 letter to The Topeka Capital-Journal. "He accepts no genuine accountability in his life and is subject to no one."

–––

Fred Phelps' steps are cautious, his stare vacant, his speech slightly drawled. At a family picnic, when others line up for food, he stays behind. When songs are sung, he just looks on. Conversations are had, but he sits quiet nearly the entire time, holding a 4-month-old great-granddaughter.

His demeanor shifts easily, quickly. He laughs, then looks sullen. Calls a granddaughter "love bug," but is then set off in a brief tirade on Jews.

Even many of Phelps' detractors admit he is brilliant. He has a habit of making it known by belittling those who question him. He makes it clear – there is no room for debate.

"That's one of the luxuries of being 100 percent right, absolutely 100 percent right," he said. "If you can read, you would agree with me."

Phelps' followers take that message to heart.

"They believe that what my dad says is law. He's the shepherd of the flock and he gets his inspiration from the Bible – he's the voice of God on Earth," said Bird. "If their heart isn't right, if they're not right with the Lord, they're in jeopardy of burning in hell forever."

Phelps has no doubt he will go to heaven, as he has no doubt he is the only minister in the world doing what God wants. "Anybody who's going to be preaching the Bible has got to be preaching the way I'm preaching," he said.

Neither the pastor nor his congregants – who believe both he and they are prophets – claim to be without sin, but Phelps is infuriated when asked about their own wrongdoings.

Children have had babies out of wedlock. Some have drifted from Westboro, which they believe to be the only true church on Earth. The Bible's messages – as Phelps preaches them – have, at times, been ignored with this very family.

Why are some sins different? Why can Westboro members be forgiven for what the pastor clearly labels as sin and virtually everyone else in the world be shunned?

Instead of answering the question, Phelps rises from his chair and walks away.

–––

It's an unseasonably cold day in Ogden, Iowa, and the gusting winds have Phelps' followers struggling to hold signs including "Thank God for IEDs" and "God Hates Your Tears."

Shirley Phelps-Roper has an American flag tucked in the waistband of her sweatpants, dragging it on the asphalt as she walks. Family members pose for snapshots like they're at a scenic lookout.

"I enjoy this," Phelps-Roper said. "This makes my day."

The pastor has not shown up. He is at home, sitting in his office near the Westboro Baptist library, where one of his favorite books – John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress" – remains.

Phelps can put himself in the shoes of the allegory's main character, Christian, who arrives in a lush, elevated land known as the Delectable Mountains.

"The fruit on the trees was sweeter and it was so close to heaven that you could, every now and then, imagine that you see people in white clothing," Phelps said. "I've reached the Delectable Mountains."

He will die soon. His lifetime of preaching God's hate, he believes, has earned his place in heaven. And as his spirit ascends, protesters, no doubt, will assemble to celebrate his death.

The thought alone overjoys Phelps. Bring a sign, he implores. Denounce me, defame me, he says. Dance on my grave, spit on my casket, laugh at my passing. He knows the truth, he says. And he won't be able to help but smile.

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Doc: 00276120 DB: research–d–2006–2 Date: Tue May 30 14:28:22 2006

*** Version history. (* this story, F final, S semifinal) ***

kD8HU8THG0 05-30-2006 14:28:22*F BC-KS--Phelps-Theology, Adv04:Some questio

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BC-KS--Phelps-Theology,Adv04,1279

Adv04

For release in Sunday editions June 4

Some questions and answers about the theology of Westboro Baptist Church

With BC-KS--Ministry of Hate

By MATT SEDENSKY

Associated Press Writer

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) – Few who witness a Westboro Baptist Church protest know much about Fred Phelps and his followers, other than that they disdain homosexuals and American soldiers alike. Behind their demonstrations, though, are deep convictions about Bible teachings and some core beliefs that are shared with other religious groups.

Some questions and answers about the theology driving Westboro Baptist:

Q. So what exactly are these protesters trying to prove?

A. Well, to be blunt, that you're probably going to hell. Phelps and his followers believe fates are predetermined, that God decides at the time of one's birth whether a person will go to heaven or hell. They believe only a tiny fragment of humanity will be saved and that there is nothing anyone can do to change that – a belief known as predestination. To ensure their own salvation, however, they believe it's their duty to advise the world's sinners of their fate.

Q. Predestination isn't unique to Westboro, right?

A. Right. Nancy Ammerman, a religion professor at Boston University who has written about religious fundamentalists, says predestination is far from what's setting Westboro Baptist apart. "There are so many people that believe in predestination that you can't possibly see that as an extremist tendency." Predestination has its roots as far back as St. Augustine and was articulated in the 16th century by John Calvin. Westboro Baptist is based on Calvinist doctrines, as are many mainstream churches, including the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church – among the most liberal congregations in the country.

Q. So if nothing can change a person's fate, what's the point of all this?

A. They believe it doesn't matter if a person has no control over their destiny – the message still must be spread. "I see it's a conundrum. It is a thing that our finite minds don't wrap around very well. And the natural man, which is at enmity with God, resists it mightily," explained Shirley Phelps-Roper, a daughter of Phelps who frequently acts as a church spokeswoman.

Q. But if someone's bound for hell anyway, why bother changing?

A. Westboro members believe those who do as God wants will be blessed in their earthly lives and live a long time. But Abi Phelps, the pastor's youngest child, said it all boils down to this: "Every creature has a duty to obey God, regardless of the outcome."

Q. OK, but what about all their signs saying God hates people?

A. That's a centerpiece of the beliefs of Fred Phelps and his followers. "Can you preach the Bible without preaching the hatred of God?" the pastor asks. "The answer is absolutely not. And these preachers that muddle that and use that deliberately ambiguously to prey on the follies and the fallacious notions of their people – that's a great sin." Phelps points to Bible passages like Proverbs 1:25-27, which says: "You have ignored all my advice and have not been willing to let me correct you. So when you get into trouble, I will laugh at you. I will make fun of you when terror strikes – when it comes on you like a storm, bringing fierce winds of trouble, and you are in pain and misery."

Q. That's harsh. Does anyone else believe this?

A. In Judeo-Christian tradition, particularly in examining the Old Testament, there is certainly significant discussion of God's judgment, but among modern religious groups, it is almost always paired with talk of God's mercy.

Q. And they believe God hates homosexuals most?

A. Their signs might lead you to believe otherwise, but they actually believe those who "enable" gays – preachers who say God loves homosexuals, politicians who push for equal rights, etc. – are worse.

Q. Doesn't Phelps recognize God's love, too?

A. It's completely blown out of proportion, if you believe Phelps and his followers. Phelps derides the descriptions of God preached by Billy Graham and every other modern minister. "There's no Bible for any of that, that's maudlin humanism," he said. "God is a sovereign, an absolute sovereign." God's love, Westboro members say, is reserved only for his elect people. The pastor's daughter, Abi Phelps, explains: "But it's not love like what you and I think. It's just as unemotional and detached and objective as the hatred, because God is not a human. It simply means this: that because he felt like it, he determined that these people are going to be saved and these people are not."

Q. But isn't a basic tenet of Christianity sharing Christ's love with others?

A. Yes. But Phelps and his followers believe that's precisely what they're doing. A granddaughter of Phelps and Westboro member, 20-year-old Megan Phelps-Roper, perhaps summed up their beliefs best: "In reality, we're the most kindhearted people you are going to find. Because this is the very definition – what we do is the very definition of loving your neighbor as yourself." The bottom line: Westboro's members look at the Bible unlike anyone else. Even passages most Christians take for granted – like the Sermon on the Mount, in which Christ says God's blessed people include the poor, the hungry, the mourning and the persecuted – are interpreted completely different than most. Westboro's members say acts of charity – like feeding the hungry and clothing the naked – are not God's will, just proper conduct. "When there is a car out here on the street stuck in the snow and you go help them or someone's there asking you for food and you give it to them, I'm saying that's not serving God," explained Shirley Phelps-Roper. Her brother, Timothy Phelps, offered more detail. "Rebuke, reprove, rebuke, exhort," he said. "That's what we're told to do. We're not told to go work at a soup kitchen."

Q. What else sets Westboro apart?

A. The church's core religious beliefs trump all else in terms of its uniqueness. But there are some other things that may be interesting to an outsider. Members do not celebrate Christmas, Easter or nearly any other holiday on the calendar. Women in the church are expected to keep their hair long and cover their heads at services; if the pastor poses a question to the audience, they are to remain quiet.

Q. What religious body is Westboro Baptist affiliated with?

A. None. Phelps believes Westboro is the world's one true church, the only one preaching God's word. Members call themselves "old-school Baptists" but are not linked with any wider organization. The church formerly said it was Primitive Baptist, a group of autonomous Baptist churches, but has since distanced itself from that denomination.

Q. Can anyone join? What happens if a member wants to leave?

A. Anyone can attend services, but not just anyone can become a full-fledged member. To do so, they would have to prove they are filled with grace and are living life in accordance with God's wishes. In part, this means participating in the church's public picketing ministry. There is no formal ceremony granting membership, explains Abi Phelps. "We have no rote rituals – no vision quests, no sweat lodge, no coronations or ordinations." As former members explain it, if someone stops attending Westboro, or if the congregation decides someone no longer exhibits signs of God's grace, a vote is taken, and the person is no longer a part of the church body. They are believed to be bound for hell.

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By MATT SEDENSKY

Associated Press Writer

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) – Some were sent away for being too profane, others for making snide comments at inopportune times. Now the greeting cards that never made it to the stores hang solemnly on a wall at Hallmark Cards Inc.

For employees at Hallmark's Shoebox division who make their living writing humorous greetings, only a small fraction of their work does end up as cards for birthdays, holidays and special occasions. The best of the rest are brought to their final resting place – a giant fabric "NO" along one office wall.

"It could be that it's highly inappropriate. It could be that it feels like too much of an internal joke," said Sarah Tobaben, an editorial director for Shoebox. "We want to write for the mainstream while taking some appropriate risks."

Hallmark introduced its Shoebox line of irreverent cards 20 years ago this spring and says it has sold more than 2 billion since. Most days since the line's inception, card writers have been given an assignment to develop ideas for a specific category. They typically write them on blank 3-inch-by-5-inch index cards, folded to resemble a miniature greeting, and then they're tried out on co-workers in a roundtable read-off.

"I think sometimes the air gets sucked out of the room by something I've written," said Dan Taylor, a Shoebox stylist – the highest title bestowed on card writers. "It's actually beyond silence."

Those that elicit no laughter are eliminated; in all, an estimated 10 percent to 20 percent make the first cut. Editors whittle surviving ideas even further to come up with the line. Bill Gray, another Shoebox stylist, said in his 18 years writing cards he's come up with about 80,000 ideas, of which 13,000 made it past his peers and about 7,000 ultimately became cards.

Those that have earned a chuckle but not a nod to become a card are marked "FBN" for "Funny, But No" – a designation that has become a sort of badge of honor among writers.

"It starts with funny," Taylor said. "That's good."

With rejects roughly outnumbering winners 10 to one, there are plenty of FBNs to go around.

Among the losers is a holiday card that announces on its face, "Christmas just wouldn't be the same without peanut brittle." Then, inside: "Or Jesus."

And the drawing of a couple cuddling on a living room couch with a friendly bearded man, wearing a robe, sandals and a turban. The woman blurts: "Honey, this Afghan your mom gave us is really warm!"

Then there's a questionable get-well card with a big happy face on the front. On the inside, it reads, "Hi! Welcome back from your coma!"

Tobaben said rejecting the ideas doesn't mean they're not funny, it just means editors were skeptical of their selling power. "It comes down to, 'Would I send this?" she said.

Editors say the lines on what is appropriate are continually redrawn. No subjects are deemed completely off-limits, but Hallmark's line provides clues of some boundaries.

Off-color language is seldom used. Politics are typically avoided. And national security has become a more delicate subject since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"Almost everything is offensive to someone," said Rachel Bolton, a company spokeswoman. "But we try not to cross the line into blatantly offensive. That's not what most people want."

Marn Jensen, a creative director at Hallmark who oversees lines including Shoebox, said consumers have shown an interest in humor that is more positive than may have been popular five or 10 years ago, when sarcastic, biting, even mean-spirited messages sold well. She said that shift hasn't been easy for writers.

"It's a little trickier to be funny and positive and happy and light," Jensen said.

Still, Taylor said he and his colleagues put all good-taste restrictions aside and simply brainstorm.

"It's better to just write the funniest thing you can think of," he said.

Sometimes, those ideas banished to the FBN graveyard are resurrected, but it's a rarity. And while writers sometimes have a hard time saying goodbye to a favorite entry, Gray is unsentimental about his fallen friends.

"They're just jokes. If the ones I write today don't make it there's always tomorrow," he said. "I forget them pretty fast once they're done."