Carson High School graduate helps Romanians

Carson City native Sara Bierman Blattler is continuing her volunteer work in the Romanian village of Berceni south of Bucharest.

"Our daughter started a nonprofit organization to help a village in Romania," said longtime Carson City resident Shirley Bierman. "Last year we raised $20,000 to renovate schools, so they are nicer to attend. We sent over coats and clothes and renovated five elementary schools."

Shirley called me last week to say Sara is working on a new project this year.

"This year we need to raise the same amount of money with hopes of building a senior center and adding indoor plumbing at the village middle school," Shirley said. "The seniors are absolutely destitute and they have no place to go. The middle school has 350 youngsters and only an outdoor bathroom facility. There is no indoor plumbing."

Sara was a Rotary Exchange student when she went to Carson High School. She graduated from Carson High in 1987. After school she attended University of California, Berkeley, where she graduated with a degree in international studies.

Shirley said she received an e-mail from Sara on Wednesday in which her daughter described the projects she hopes to accomplish this year.

"The seniors in the village have no place to meet and socialize," Sara wrote. "We want to help them establish a center for activities, a place where they enjoy coming together."

Besides the middle school bathroom project, Sara also hopes to come up with a plan to help feed the villagers.

"There is such widespread hunger, our 'economic development' plan for the villagers is to grow potatoes and raise rabbits."

Shirley said every penny that goes to the Romanian Families Fund Inc. will be spent to help the residents.

She has even received letters from some of the people who've been helped.

Sara is living in Romania with her husband, Christophe, and her 3-year-old daughter, Andrea.

Christophe works for British American Tobacco.

To donate, contact Shirley at 882-2507 or write Romania Families Fund Inc., care of Shirley and Doug Bierman, 811 Weininger Drive, Carson City, NV, 89703.

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Judy Fisher Crowley of the Northern Nevada Railway Foundation was pretty pumped up when she called me on Wednesday.

And why shouldn't she be? By the end of February, the foundation will be bringing the railroad bridge north from Las Vegas for the V&T Railroad crossing of Highway 50.

When I first heard about the bridge, I thought it was the one that crossed Interstate 15 north of Las Vegas on the way to St. George and Cedar City. I was wrong. Judy has a picture of the bridge on her Web site www.steamtrain.org, and it is located right next to the Las Vegas Strip.

The site says the bridge has no historical significance, but it has always been kind of an unofficial gateway to Las Vegas on the freeway. I've passed under it many times on my way to visit family in Los Angeles or return home on leave from the U.S. Navy.

I look forward to passing under it again when it begins its life for the V&T.

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The Elks honored Past Exalted Ruler Elza Turkington on Saturday. Elza died in Mesquite on Jan. 11.

Elza lived in Minden for many years before moving to Mesquite. He was active in Carson Valley politics and I believe he ran for Douglas County commissioner, but lost in the primary.

Elza was a retired homicide detective and a member of the Footprinters before he moved down south.

It shouldn't have been a surprise to me to learn he hadn't given up politics when he moved. There is a Review-Journal story on the Web quoting him about his run last spring for Mesquite City Council in support of the town's controversial mayor.

Kurt Hildebrand is city editor at the Nevada Appeal. Reach him at hildebrand@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1215.