The helmet-to-helmet shot knocked Tony Dorsett out cold in the second quarter of a 1984 Cowboys-Eagles game, the hardest hit he ever took during his Hall of Fame NFL career.

"It was like a freight train hitting a Volkswagen," Dorsett says now.

"Did they know it was a concussion?" he asks rhetorically during an interview with The Associated Press. "They thought I was half-dead."

And yet, he says, after being examined in the locker room — a light shined in his eyes; queries such as who sat next to him on the Cowboys' bus ride to the stadium — Dorsett returned to the field and gained 99 yards in the second half. Mainly, he says, by running plays the wrong way, because he couldn't remember what he was supposed to do.

"That ain't the first time I was knocked out or been dazed over the course of my career, and now I'm suffering for it," the 57-year-old former tailback says. "And the NFL is trying to deny it."

Dorsett traces several health problems to concussions during a career that lasted from 1977-88, and he has joined more than 300 former players — including three other members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and at least 32 first- or second-team All-Pro selections — in suing the NFL, its teams and, in some cases, helmet maker Riddell. More should have been done in the past to warn about the dangers of concussions, their lawyers argue, and more can be done now and in the future to help retired players deal with mental and physical problems they attribute to their days in the NFL.

In interviews conducted by the AP over the past two months with a dozen plaintiffs, what emerged was, at best, a depiction of a culture of indifference on the part of the league and its teams toward concussions and other injuries. At worst, there was a strong sense of a willful disregard for players' well-being.

"It's not about whether players understood you could get a concussion playing football. It's about the negligence of care, post-concussion, that occurred," says Kyle Turley, an offensive lineman for the Saints, Rams and Chiefs who was the No. 7 overall pick in the 1998 draft and an All-Pro in 2000.

Players complain that they carried owners to their profits, in an industry that now has more than $9 billion in annual revenues, without the safety nets of guaranteed contracts or lifetime medical insurance.

"Yeah, I understand you paid me to do this, but still yet, I put my life on the line for you, I put my health on the line," Dorsett says. "And yet when the time comes, you turn your back on me? That's not right. That's not the American way."

Head injuries are a major topic of conversation every day of the NFL season. With the Super Bowl as a global stage, the NFL will air a one-minute TV commercial during Sunday's game highlighting rules changes through the years that have made the sport safer.

The owners of the teams playing for the Lombardi Trophy in Indianapolis — Bob Kraft of the New England Patriots and John Mara of the New York Giants — acknowledge the issue's significance.

"There's more of a focus on it now, without question, and I think that's a good thing, and I think it'll continue to be a focus. Because none of us want to put players in perilous situations like that," Mara says. "I don't want to see guys that are on this team, 20 years from now, with debilitating injuries, no matter what they are."

Says Kraft: "We know this is a physical game, and when people play the game, they know it comes with certain risks. We have tried to stay ahead of it."

The most accomplished and best-known plaintiff in the flurry of lawsuits — a star for the Cowboys after winning the 1976 Heisman Trophy at Pittsburgh — Dorsett agreed to two interviews with the AP, one over the telephone and one at his suburban Dallas home.

"I don't want to get to the point where it turns into dementia, Alzheimer's. I don't want that," says Dorsett, who ran for 12,739 yards, the eighth-highest total in league history. He is, in that moment, sad and deflated — in others, pumped up and angry, fists flying to punctuate his words. "There's no doubt in my mind that ... what I went through as a football player is taking an effect on me today. There's no ifs ands or buts about that. I'm just hoping and praying I can find a way to cut it off at the pass."

He spreads two pages' worth of brain scans on his coffee table and says doctors told him that red regions in the color-coded scan mean he is not getting enough oxygen in the left lobe of his brain, the part associated with organization and memory. He already forgets people's names or why he walked into a room or where he's heading while driving on the highway, and fears his memory issues are getting worse.

Dorsett's had surgery on both his knees, and problems with his left arm and right wrist. He says then-Cowboys coach Tom Landry once told him he could play despite a broken bone in his back. Not even the flak jacket Dorsett says he wore beneath his jersey could bring relief, the injury so painful that "tears would just start flowing out of my eyes, profusely and uncontrollably" during practices.

"They would see me and just point to the training room. `Go to the training room, get some ice and heat and come on back out here,'" Dorsett says.

And during games?

"They were hitting me, and I'd be squealing like a pig," Dorsett says, imitating the guttural sound. "It was so bad that the other team was telling our coaches, `Get him out of the game.' You know that something's wrong then. And like a fool, I stayed as long as I could. They're going to our sideline, telling our coaches, `Get him out of the game!' ... You know it's bad when the opposition feels sorry for you."

"I try not to take medicine. I don't want to be a zombie," Duper adds. "What little left I've got in my brain, I want to keep it normal."

Dorsett describes making the trek to the annual Hall of Fame induction ceremony and being saddened by once-hearty men deteriorating before his eyes.

"Bodies that were just mangled, just beat up. Twisted up. Hit with arthritis and the knuckles and the bones, the twisted bones. It's `Wow!' It's very enlightening to see that," he says, wincing at the images he describes. "And then when you hear that these guys don't have insurance, that the league won't give them insurance, that the league is saying that it didn't happen on their clock. That's bull."

Citing the pending litigation, NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said the league would not comment on players' specific allegations and referred to a written statement initially released in December: "The NFL has long made player safety a priority and continues to do so. Any allegation that the NFL intentionally sought to mislead players has no merit. It stands in contrast to the league's actions to better protect players and advance the science and medical understanding of the management and treatment of concussions."

Jack Yeo, who works at a public relations firm representing Riddell, said the equipment company does not comment on legal matters.

As public as the plight of current players is, former players say their stories aren't widely known.

"Fans don't know. They have no clue. And you think the NFL is going to tell them? No," says Ronnie Lippett, a Patriots cornerback from 1983-91. "I'm just so happy that the senators and congressmen and congresswomen took notice of how they have been cheating us. And that's the only reason (players are) getting the help that we're getting now. And it's only been in the last two years that anything has started to change."

Louisiana Tech running back Tyrone Duplessis has been found dead at his off-campus apartment.

Hazel Woods, the chief investigator for the Lincoln Parish coroner's office, says the cause of death is not yet known and an autopsy is pending.

The 21-year-old Duplessis, whose body was found Thursday morning, recently completed his sophomore season of eligibility. Louisiana Tech spokesman Patrick Walsh says coach Sonny Dykes has informed the team, which was expected to have a meeting later Thursday. The university has also made grief counselors available to the team.

Duplessis, who is from New Orleans, played in two games last season as he sought to come back from a knee injury that sidelined him in 2010. As a true freshman in 2009, he had 70 carries for 277 yards.

The State Bar of Texas Board of Directors has approved the nomination of attorney E. Steve Bolden II of Dallas, along with Lisa Tatum of San Antonio, as candidates for president-elect. Texas attorneys will cast their votes during an election this spring. Election results will be announced May 1. The president-elect will serve as president of the State Bar of Texas from June 2013 until June 2014.

Bolden is a shareholder at Mahomes Bolden PC in Dallas where he focuses on a variety of corporate and securities matters, including mergers and acquisitions of publicly traded and privately held companies, public securities offerings, private equity transactions and bond transactions. Prior to joining Mahomes Bolden, he practiced at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP and Jackson Walker LLP.

Bolden has served on the State Bar of Texas Board of Directors, Nominations and Elections Subcommittee, Policy Manual Subcommittee and chaired the Section Representatives to the Board Committee. He has served on the Dallas Bar Association Board of Directors. He serves on the Business Law Section Council and chaired the African American Lawyers Section. He is a recipient of a J.L. Turner Legal Association Presidential Citation and a Dallas Bar Association Presidential Citation. He served as president of the J.L. Turner Legal Association in 2008 and under his administration the organization received recognition as Region V Affiliate Chapter of the Year.

There’s a steadfast cheeriness to Christina Swarns as she talks rapid fire about the contours of her day. There are the rigors of her end-to-end Manhattan commute, how rarely she dresses like a grown-up and the usual challenges of the professional working mom.

But that changes when the conversation turns to the role of race in the criminal justice system. Then the Howard University grad becomes all authority and passion. She cites case law, death-penalty statistics and the history of Southern lynchings.She talks without pause, punctuating her words with hand gestures, even as her favorite portobello sandwich goes untouched in front of her.

As director of the criminal justice unit at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Swarns, 43, is one of the most prominent capital-defense lawyers in the country — the rare black woman in a community whose public face is most often white and male. Over the course of her career, she’s gotten seven convicted murderers off death row; one was exonerated, three had their convictions overturned and three had their death sentences vacated. But it is her most recent victory that is by far the most high-profile.

In December prosecutors in Philadelphia declined to seek another death sentence against Mumia Abu-Jamal, a decision that took him off death row for the first time in 30 years and rewarded years of effort Swarns — and many others — had put into the case. In 1982, Abu-Jamal was convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer and his decades-long court battles gained him a national and international following. There have been hip-hop tributes, “Free Mumia” T-shirts and a street named for him in France. When it was announced that he would no longer face the death penalty, famed writer Alice Walker wrote him a poem, activist and Princeton University professor Cornel West led a rally at the Philadelphia Constitution Center and the former South African archbishop Desmond Tutu called for his immediate release.

Abu-Jamal is Swarns’s biggest case, and she’s thrilled for the renewed attention it has received. But what she really wants is more scrutiny on an entire system she says is unfair and unjust.

Finding her passion

“Welcome to death row,” Swarns jokes outside her office. Behind her desk, a Halloween picture of her 3-year-old daughter, Amina, whom Swarns adopted as an infant from Ethi­o­pia, shares space with a 1970s picture of a Ku Klux Klansman in full regalia holding a handwritten sign: “We support the Death Penalty.”

Growing up on Staten Island, Swarns never imagined she’d be in this place. Swarns is the middle of three girls (her younger sister, Jessica, is an elementary school teacher in Woodbridge, and her older sister, Rachel, a New York Times reporter). Her father is a real estate broker, her mother an educator who retired as a superintendent for the New York City Department of Education. At her mother’s insistence, during breaks from Howard, Swarns interned at the office of a neighbor who was a prosecutor and decided she hated criminal law.


“I was the only black person in a nonclerical capacity and all the people being prosecuted were black,” she says. It was a mill. “Nobody talked about how on Earth is this happening?”

But the law remained compelling, and at the University of Pennsylvania law school, she dabbled in public service law, worked on an AIDS project and taught at-risk kids at a community center. Nothing stuck. For six months after graduating, she grilled other lawyers about their jobs but remained “overwhelmingly confused.” One day she simply called the Legal Defense Fund to ask if she could volunteer. Absolutely, she was told, and she was immediately sent to the capital-crimes division.

She started on a Monday. A fellow lawyer had a client scheduled to die that week. He got a last-minute stay. Swarns says it was “the first time I felt I saw criminal law in its full capacity and power.” The first time she saw a place for herself.

Swarns gained courtroom experience at the Legal Aid Society in Manhattan and began doing full-time death-penalty work with the capital unit of the Philadelphia Federal Community Defender’s Office in the mid-1990s. In 2003 she was offered the position with the Legal Defense Fund. One of the first things she did was meet with Abu-Jamal. In late 2010, Jamal asked her and the LDF to take his case.

Swarns didn’t know if they could. Her daughter was 2. Her schedule was tight. As a single mom, she had to leave the office by 4:30 and already sometimes felt like a part-timer, rushing back and forth daily from her Washington Heights home to her office in TriBeCa. Dating was nonexistent. She came to terms with all that, then talked to her boss.

“This is that Mumia,” she told him, “with all the followers.”

Abu-Jamal was a former Black Panther, and his 1982 conviction for killing patrolman Daniel Faulkner came during a time of deep racial unrest. The U.S. Department of Justice had just sued the Philadelphia Police Department for federal civil rights violations. In 1978, a police officer had been killed during a raid on the black liberation sect MOVE. During and after the trial, Abu-Jamal supporters alleged the prosecution was corrupt. Prosecutors and Faulkner’s family called him a cop killer.

By the time Swarns took over Abu-Jamal’s case, it was decades old and still politically explosive. But Swarns believed Abu-Jamal was innocent — and moreover that the death penalty is racist. It’s a belief that animates her life and makes it impossible for her to have casual conversations about capital punishment. At the same time, she gets that victims’ families and death-penalty proponents believe just as strongly that the punishment must fit the crime, that convicted killers deserve to be killed.

“I don’t support murder. I don’t want people to be killed; that’s horrible. To a case, a family has lost someone for no good reason in an unnatural way,” she says. “My point is whether this person got what the American justice system guarantees. Is this the right person, and was justice done?”

Don Cornelius -- who famously created "Soul Train" was found dead in his Sherman Oaks, CA home this morning ... and law enforcement sources tell us it appears he committed suicide.

We're told cops discovered the body at around 4 AM PT. Law enforcement sources tell us ... Cornelius died from a gunshot wound to the head and officials believe the wound was self-inflicted.

We're told Cornelius was taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.

"Soul Train" changed the landscape of television when it debuted in 1971 and ran until 2006.

Officials have notified Don's family.

Cornelius was 75.

During Don's bitter divorce proceedings in 2009, he told an L.A. judge he was suffering from "significant health issues" and wanted to "finalize this divorce before I die."

The divorce was granted later that year.

Story developing...

The president of Florida A&M University said the college is canceling its summer band camp program and suspending all clubs as the school continues to deal with the fallout from the suspected hazing death of a marching band student.

"Our top priority is the health, safety and well being of students," said FAMU President James Ammons on Tuesday. "We are convening a panel of experts and outstanding thinkers to provide advice and recommendations on the operation of student organizations. Before we enter into a new student intake process, we should have the benefit of the work coming from the committees and the investigations."

The move comes weeks after four members of the university's fabled Marching 100 band were arrested on hazing-related charges.

Those charges are unrelated to the November hazing death of drum major Robert Champion.

FAMU police arrested three of the students on January 16; the fourth turned himself in the next morning, said Sharon Saunders, the FAMU spokeswoman.

The students -- Hakeem Birch, Brandon Benson, Anthony Mingo and Denise Bailey -- are accused of hazing five Marching 100 band members who wanted to join a group in the clarinet section known as the "Clones."

The five told police they were made to line up according to height at the start of each meeting. Then they were punched, slapped and paddled, according to the arrest warrant.

One of the students, who quit the pledging process after the first meeting, took a digital photo of the bruising on her body.

Champion's death prompted FAMU's board of trustees to approve a three-part plan to tackle the issue of hazing on campus. The plan includes an independent blue-ribbon panel of experts to investigate.

Champion, 26, collapsed in Orlando on a bus carrying members of the band after a November football game that included a halftime performance by the group.

Christopher Chestnut, a lawyer for Champion's family, has charged that Champion died after receiving "some dramatic blows, perhaps (having an) elevated heart rate" tied to "a hazing ritual" that took place on the bus.

Some band members have said Champion died after taking part in a rite of passage called "crossing Bus C." One member, who spoke on condition of anonymity, explained that students "walk from the front of the bus to the back of the bus backward while the bus is full of other band members, and you get beaten until you get to the back."

No one has been charged in Champion's death; the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Orange County Sheriff's Office are investigating the case.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement also launched a separate investigation into band employees, who were allegedly engaged in financial fraud.

The medical examiner's office has said Champion "collapsed and died within an hour of a hazing incident during which he suffered multiple blunt trauma blows to his body."

Ammons said in the Tuesday statement that he suspended the summer band camp because of the ongoing investigation into Champion's death and other band related hazing incidents.

"I totally support this effort," said Breyon Love, president of FAMU Student Government Association. "This issue of hazing has had a far-reaching impact on the university and I believe that we need to pause for a moment to make sure that all of our students are ready to seriously move in a direction which will result in a complete culture change."

After five years at the helm, Robert M. Franklin is stepping down as president of Morehouse College.

In a press release issued by the Atlanta school, Franklin will remain at the college until the end of the 2012 academic year. Then he will take a sabbatical as a Scholar in Residence at Stanford University's Martin Luther King Jr. Institute.

"I look forward to a sabbatical during which I intend to travel, write, speak and interview leaders about the condition of boys and men in the U.S. and around the globe, research that I began years ago in my book, ‘Crisis in the Village,'" said Franklin.

A 1975 graduate of the all male school, Franklin plans to return after his stint at Stanford.

Morehouse’s board of trustees named him President Emeritus and Distinguished Professor, the college’s highest honor.

"I am grateful to the board of trustees for the invitation ... and the opportunity to continue supporting the mission of Morehouse in a different way,” Franklin said.

Under Franklin's leadership, he helped increase alumni giving from 17% to 36%, three times the national average, according to the school's press release. Franklin also helped generated more than $60 million in federal grants and contracts and $33 million in support of the college's comprehensive campaign, during its quiet phase, from corporations, foundations and individual donors.

"Dr. Franklin has served an integral role leading the renaissance of Morehouse, and his dedication is greatly appreciated," said Robert Davidson, chairman of the Morehouse College Board of Trustees. "In addition to his years of service, Robert has led by example, dedicating a substantial portion of his time to community service, which is one of the core values that Morehouse seeks to instill in each and every one of its students. We will miss him as the Board endeavors to find a successor who will help to usher the college into a new era."

Davidson said the trustees have already started “a rigorous search to identify a successor and Franklin is committed to a smooth and seamless transition.”

If a new President has not been selected by July 1, Franklin has agreed to stay on board until Dec. 31.

The top attorney for Atlanta Public Schools has been restricted from dealing with matters related to the cheating investigation because of her connection to former Superintendent Beverly Hall.

Sharron Pitts (left), then-chief of staff for Atlanta Public Schools, tries to clear a path through the news media for then-Superintendent Beverly Hall at APS headquarters last year.

Sharron Pitts was the chief of staff for Hall for about 10 years before being appointed interim general counsel by current Superintendent Erroll Davis. She was not implicated by state investigators in the 400-plus page report on cheating released in July.

But Pitts is expected to be called as a witness by criminal prosecutors who are investigating whether to press charges against Hall and dozens of other educators named in the report, according to an internal memo obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution through an open records request.

In the memo, which was addressed to school board members, principals and APS officials, Superintendent Davis instructs employees to “avoid all communication, directly or indirectly, with Ms. Pitts on anything related to [cheating] cases” in order to protect the integrity of future testimony.

Instead, employees are to direct cheating matters to Glenn Brock, a well-known education law attorney who is working on a contract basis with the district. Brock also worked with the school board on accreditation issues. So far, he has been paid almost $59,000 by APS for work related to cheating cases, according to school officials.

In July, a special investigation concluded that cheating occurred in 44 schools, involving more than 178 educators, including 38 principals. The investigation came after a series of articles in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution raised questions about unlikely test gains throughout the district.

The school district is spending about $600,000 per month to pay the salaries of some 120 educators named in the report who did not resign or retire.

Pitts, who earns $211,000 annually, said she has plenty to do without overseeing legal issues related to the cheating scandal. General counsel handles legal matters ranging from real estate transactions to vendor contracts to everyday employment dealings. She flatly denied any involvement or knowledge of cheating, and said she’s been fully cooperative with investigators.

“I was with the district before Dr. Hall came,” said Pitts, who joined APS in 1996. “This is my career, and I saw no reason not to stay on. I feel like I still have a lot to contribute to the organization.”

As chief of staff Pitts’ served as the liaison between the school board and the district. She also managed communication, charter schools, community affairs and legislative affairs and government relations.

Several of Hall’s high-ranking lieutenants not named in the report still work in the school district. But many others — particularly those who worked on the academic side — left or were suspended when Davis took over in July 2011.

“I don’t want to hold it against Ms. Pitts that she had connections with a previous administration. In fact, those connections have been beneficial to me, because she’s been able to explain why things were done and the motivation behind them,” he said.

One of Hall’s last actions as superintendent was to sign a contract for Pitts to serve another year as chief of staff, according to district documents. Pitts was also appointed to serve as interim general counsel and given a $35,000 salary increase for the double duty, which expired with Hall’s term.

Pitts expressed an interest in moving back to the legal side, where she started her career with APS. Davis said there were openings in legal, but added he would have “moved her to wherever she wanted to go.”

Davis said he asked special investigators who authored the APS cheating report about Pitts. They told him she was forthright and cooperative, he said.

Former state Attorney General Mike Bowers, a special investigator who worked on the probe, said if there had been evidence Pitts cheated or knew about cheating, it would have been included in the report.

“If we thought she had done something, or if we thought there was evidence she was culpable, we would have named her,” he said.

Former U.S. Attorney Kent Alexander, who now serves as general counsel for the humanitarian organization CARE, said the school district made the right decision by restricting Pitts’ access to the cheating case.

“Part of being general counsel is providing objective advice, and when you’re part of the matter in question that becomes difficult to do,” he said. “Also, even if she knows nothing about this, the public perception might be otherwise, so stepping aside makes sense.”

A federal prosecutor Monday afternoon portrayed former New Orleans homicide detective Gerard Dugue as an integral cog in a broad conspiracy to hide what happened on the Danziger Bridge in September 2005 as the trial of the last New Orleans police officer accused in the cover-up got under way. For the second time in less than a year, prosecutor Barbara "Bobbi" Bernstein stood before a federal jury and described the shootings by New Orleans police, which left two men dead and four people wounded days after Hurricane Katrina.

She described the gunfire from officers' shotguns and assault rifle, and said no evidence was ever produced to show the civilians were anything but innocent.

"There was no justification for that shooting, but for almost six years the officers got away with it," Bernstein said in her opening statement. "And that's why we are here. Because the officers almost got away with it because of this man, Gerard Dugue."

Bernstein noted that Dugue was an experienced and respected homicide detective who took over the NOPD's internal probe of the case six weeks after the storm. But instead of doing a proper investigation, he purposefully ignored information he knew to be nonsensical, she said.

Not only did he ignore the obvious inconsistencies of the NOPD officers involved in the shootings, but Dugue eventually wrote and submitted an official police report that framed two innocent men who were fired upon that day, Bernstein said.

Bernstein and Dugue's attorney, Claude Kelly, both told jurors, who were selected earlier in the day, that five other officers have already stood trial for the shooting and alleged cover-up.

All five officers were convicted, Kelly noted. Five other officers pleaded guilty and helped prosecutors build their case.

Kelly put the emphasis on those 10 officers, who, he said, began a cover-up of the shooting moments after the firing stopped. They were all members of the NOPD's eastern New Orleans 7th District, which he described as the "7th District clique." They worked together to build the conspiracy, he said.

Dugue, on the other hand, spent the days after Katrina at the Superdome. He didn't take over the case for weeks, after which time the lies of the other officers were already well put together, Kelly said.

While Bernstein lambasted Dugue's efforts as an investigator, Kelly said the work that Dugue did actually helped the federal case. His client was the first NOPD officer to order the collection of the physical evidence left at the bridge, mostly bullet casings that were eventually linked to the NOPD officers' weapons. It was Dugue who ordered that the bullets be tested, Kelly said.


Later, after the NOPD's official report on the case was turned into the Orleans Parish district attorney's office, Dugue continued to interview witnesses, including a State Police trooper who became an important prosecution witness during the first Danziger trial this past summer, Kelly emphasized.

That's "not the kind of action by someone covering it up," Kelly said.

Dugue is charged in six of the counts of the sprawling indictment handed up in 2010 by a federal grand jury. He is accused of conspiracy to obstruct justice and conspiracy to violate the civil rights of two men by writing a false police report.

The indictment also accuses Dugue of lying to the FBI in January 2009 about the case when he said he had no reason to be concerned about the shooting. Those statements were later retracted in a meeting nine months later with FBI agents, Bernstein said, during which Dugue said he found many aspects of officers' initial story to be "fishy."

But Kelly said his client never lied to the FBI, emphasizing that he voluntarily submitted to interviews with federal agents while other cops obtained lawyers.

Much of what jurors will hear over the next two weeks will be testimony first revealed during the summer trial. Kelly asked jurors to keep an open mind as they hear admittedly emotional testimony about the shootings.

That point was underscored with the prosecution's first witness. In a replay of the first witness from the first trial, prosecutors called Susan Bartholomew, a mother of three whose arm was blown off by a high-powered rifle during the explosions of gunfire.

Bartholomew, a slight woman who had been walking across the bridge with her teenage children and husband, tearfully recounted the family's terror as they were ambushed by gunfire. At first, they had no idea who was shooting at them. Later, they figured it out it was police, she said.

Eventually, the Bartholomew family was taken to the hospital by ambulances. In the coming days, police investigators showed up at the hospital at least twice, she said. The second time, they took an intimidating posture and Bartholomew said she felt threatened.

On cross-examination, Bartholomew acknowledged that Dugue was not one of the officers who came to see her. After she was released from the hospital, her family moved out of state.

Around 1929, two cemeteries dating to the 1800s that hold the remains of enslaved African-Americans and their close descendants, were plowed over to make way for the Bonnet Carre Spillway flood control structure in St. Charles Parish. Now those sites, which have earned a place on the National Register of Historic Places, will be commemorated with markers and other proper designation as burial sites.

Exactly what shape the memorial and signage will take has yet to be determined, and Army Corps of Engineers officials want to hear ideas from community members and those who may have relatives buried in the Kugler and Kenner cemeteries, said Christopher Brantley, project manager for the Bonnet Carre Spillway.

Plans to manage the cemeteries will be discussed by the corps at a public hearing on Feb. 8 at Destrehan Plantation.

The Kenner and Kugler cemeteries are now grass-covered fields, Brantley said. The road to the Kenner cemetery is unpaved and does not have parking. The Kugler cemetery, located off SC12 or Spillway Road, is paved, but it does not have parking, he said.

Part of the plan includes adding signs near the sites, and adding markers, trees and landscaping. The corps also would pave the roads leading to each cemetery and build a parking lot.

The Kugler and Kenner cemeteries, named for the property owners and located about a mile apart in the Bonnet Carre Spillway on land purchased by the federal government, were rediscovered in 1986.

The Army Corps of Engineers created the spillway after the 1927 Mississippi River flood, which killed hundreds of people in New Orleans and surrounding communities. With two levees, the corps enclosed 7,600 acres and built a control structure to divert high river water away from the city.

Corps officials have estimated that 250 to 300 African-Americans, many of whom were enslaved on nearby plantations, were interred in grassy plots in the spillway from the late 19th century until about 1929.

Margie Richard of Destrehan, who grew up in Norco, said her paternal and maternal grandmothers and great-grandparents were buried in the cemeteries. She said the corps project is “long overdue.”

“I think it’s good,’’ she said. “The corps should do something rather than just let it stay there. We are looking at a part of history that would die. I think it’s been overlooked too long.”

With a consultant’s help, the corps has tracked down 130 known descendants, officials said, who have been sent postcards informing them about the public hearing.

“The corps intends to preserve and interpret these historic properties as well as improve public access to the sites,” Brantley said. “This public meeting will provide a venue for open communication between the corps and key stakeholders, including the descendants of those buried in the cemeteries.”

The corps’ long-term plans call for the reburial of remains that were disinterred from Kenner Cemetery during a spillway opening in 1975, officials said.

Always contentious hearings on whether to close failing Chicago schools have taken a bizarre twist this year with charges that cash-strapped residents were hired as “rent-a-protesters” and given pre-made signs and pre-crafted scripts to support school shakeups.

Two men told the Chicago Sun-Times they showed up to apply for financial help with their energy bills at the Englewood office of the HOPE Organization headed by Rev. Roosevelt Watkins III, only to be offered money to attend school-related “rallies” held Jan. 6. Watkins denies they were paid to protest, saying money paid was for training.

Both protesters said they didn’t realize until the last minute that they were supposed to support school closings. One said he was promised $50 to speak at a rally “for schools,” but was stiffed $25 after Watkins complained he had publicly revealed at the hearing he was “compensated” for speaking.

“I don’t want the $25 he owes me,” Thaddeus Scott, 35, told the Sun-Times. “He can keep his dirty money. You can quote that.

“Why am I speaking out? Because I am in support of Crane [the high school whose closure he says he was supposed to support]. . . .

“They thought for a few dollars they could get us to say whatever they want. . . . We were preyed upon.”

Stipends for ‘training’

Watkins, pastor of Bethlehem Star M.B. Church and founder of Pastors United for Change, acknowledged he organized busloads of people to attend the Jan. 6 school closing hearings.

Yellow buses delivered people from 69th and Halsted, where HOPE’s Englewood office is, to at least three closing hearings on that date. The hearings concerned Crane High, Guggenheim Elementary and Reed Elementary, hearing participants told the Sun-Times.

Scott said he was offered $50 to speak at a hearing from what turned out to be scripted remarks.

But Watkins said protesters were supposed to be paid to attend “training” first on “community organizing” and how “to be aware of what’s taking place in the community.”

“What we do — so you can hear it from the horse’s mouth — we provide training because we engage community activists to participate in things such as health care, affordable housing, education, safety. Those things. So we do training on community organizing,” Watkins said.

A “small stipend” helps “offset their car fare” or “babysitting,” Watkins said.

Of the Jan. 6 protesters, Watkins said, “Those that did not receive the training should not have received a stipend.”

A day after the Sun-Times asked Watkins about the payments, at least one protester said he received a call from organizers asking him to attend a meeting first if he wanted to attend the next rally.

Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jesse Sharkey called the busloads of hearing participants “rent-a-protesters.” He likened them to “paid stooges” who “make a mockery of what public participation is about.”

Said Sharkey: “It’s a new low.”

Cash-filled envelopes

Scott and a second man, a Guggenheim Elementary alum, said they were paid after the Jan. 6 hearings at the HOPE Englewood office by a woman who pulled envelopes holding $25 in cash from a container full of envelopes. Scott said Watkins was in the room when the woman told him he had done them a “disservice” and handed him half the promised amount, but Watkins insisted he was not there. Watkins also denied he ever chided anyone for using the word “compensated” at the hearings.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “There are people saying we pay them. We provide training. We’ve always done this. And they receive a stipend for their time.”

Watkins said he used neither church nor HOPE funds for the stipends. The money came from a “coalition of clergy” who have “money set aside for outreach

A military veteran in need of a kidney transplant had $14.3 million sitting on a table in his house and didn't know it.

Military vet Napolean Elvord, left, poses at the Madison, Wis. Mobil station where he purchased the lottery ticket worth $14.3 million.

For three days after it was announced that the winning Megabucks ticket from the Jan. 14 drawing had been sold at a Wisconsin Mobil station, Napolean Elvord had no idea a life-changing sum of money was right at his fingertips. The clerks at the Madison store that Elvord visits daily asked him if he was the one who bought the winning ticket. But he said it wasn’t him — and as the days passed, no one came forward to claim the prize.

Then the store manager, Corky Wunderlin, asked him again, and it dawned on Elvord: He had mixed up the drawing days that produced the Megabucks winner. Elvord still didn’t believe it when he found the winning $1 ticket sitting on a table at home, so he took it to the Wisconsin Lottery office, which validated that he was about to become a multi-millionaire. He got a lump-sum payment of $10.2 million, which computes to $6.87 million after taxes, overcoming one in seven million odds.

“It’s still going through my head,’’ Elvord told the Wisconsin State Journal.

Elvord, who is in his late 50s, had the state lottery officials scratching their heads when he came forward with his ticket. Most people who come to redeem their prize already know they have the winning ticket, whereas Elvord still wasn’t sure, lottery director Michael Edmonds told the paper.

“The first thing they asked me was, ‘Did you make up the ticket?’’’ Elvord said.

Elvord comes to the Mobil station multiple times per day to buy coffee and lottery tickets, and on the day he won, he let another customer go ahead of him before playing the winning numbers. His picks — 17, 26, 27, 28, 37 and 42 — were computer-generated, and the fact that he bought the ticket at all may have been an accident.

“I think it was a mistake because I was trying to play the Powerball,’’ he told the Wisconsin State Journal.

Elvord’s windfall was also a jackpot for the Mobil station, as the owners earned a $100,000 commission from the lottery for selling the winning ticket.

A semi-retired construction worker, Elvord plans on returning to his native Texas and putting the money toward health insurance. He has received regular kidney dialysis for the last five years.

"I hadn't really made any plans yet, but I do look at the economy and think about the people that have lost homes that had homes and had jobs," he told NBC 15 in Madison. "And I'm into construction. I like remodeling, fixing up things, and I'm looking at possibly doing something in that area to re-sell homes and bring people back into their housing area."

Elvord is the 71st Megabucks winner since the game began in 1992 and the first since a woman won $3.1 million in October 2010. The game is played only in Wisconsin.

The federal government now says a 101-year-old Detroit woman it promised could move back into her foreclosed home four months ago can't return because the building's unsanitary and unsafe.

Texana Hollis was evicted Sept. 12 and her belongings placed outside after her 65-year-old son failed to pay property taxes linked to a reverse mortgage, The Detroit News reported Sunday. Two days later, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said she could return.

But now, HUD said it won't let Hollis move back in because of the house's condition. She had lived there about 60 years.

"Here I am, 100 years old, and don't have a home," Hollis said, rounding off her age. "Oh Lord, help me."

Department spokesman Brian Sullivan told The Detroit News that an inspection determined the house "was completely unsuitable for a person to live in."

"We can't allow someone to live in that (atmosphere) now that we are essentially the owners of the property," Sullivan said. "The home isn't safe; it's not sanitary. It's certainly not suitable for anyone to live in, especially not a 101-year-old mother."

HUD doesn't want to pay to fix up the house, but Sullivan said the department's seeking other agencies that might help with the work and get Hollis back into her home.

"We're not giving up," Sullivan said. "We're talking with anybody and everybody about solutions to this situation, but the condition of the property is a challenge."

After hearing about her longtime friend's eviction, Pollian Cheeks, 68, offered Hollis a room at her home within a mile of Hollis' house. Hollis, who once taught Cheeks in Sunday school at St. Philip's Lutheran Church, agreed to the invitation and has been staying at Cheeks' house in the meantime.

"Polly's just as nice to me as anybody could be. She goes out of her way to help me," Hollis said, holding back tears. "It's just like living at home, but it's not my home."