A man suspected of stealing a vehicle and striking a Council Bluffs Police officer last month was apprehended Thursday afternoon, in Omaha. According to the Council Bluffs NonPareil, 24-year old Andrew M. Brown was taken into custody following a pursuit that reached speeds of up to 80-miles per hour. He was arrested after being found under a porch and a short scuffle with police, following the chase. An unidentified 22-year old female passenger in the vehicle was also apprehended.

The incident involving the injured Council Bluffs officer began on June 25th. Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s deputies were pursuing a vehicle Brown allegedly stole out of Omaha. As he entered the Council Bluffs city limits, Council Bluffs police officers were in the area and attempted to disable the vehicle with stop sticks. Officials say Brown directed the vehicle toward several officers before striking one. The officer was flipped in the air and against a utility pole before landing in a ditch. He was taken to a local hospital for treatment of minor injuries and released.  Brown then abandoned the vehicle and fled on foot.

Council Bluffs Police Department had obtained and issued warrants for Brown. He faces attempted murder, assault on a peace officer and first-degree theft charges.

The vanishing Midwestern tradition of supper clubs is the subject of a new book that features stories and photos of the remaining relics across the region.

The Supper Club Book

Author Dave Hoekstra says supper clubs were much more than just restaurants. Giving a clear definition of one is a bit challenging, but he says it starts with a great view in a typically rural location. “It would always have linen napkins, relish trays — that’s a good sign of a supper club, Friday night fish fry and prime rib on Saturdays,” Hoekstra says. “Clumsy furniture, like old orange naugahyde chairs and things like that.” 

Hoekstra, who’s a writer for the Chicago Sun-Times, spent three summers visiting the aging establishments from Iowa to Ohio to create “The Supper Club Book.” Some remaining supper clubs have been given new life with new owners, up-scale menus and more “farm to table-style” cooking, but most still have the look and feel of T-V’s “Mad Men,” somewhat lost in a by-gone decade. “Back in the day, people would go to a supper club at suppertime, around 4 or 5 o’clock,” Hoekstra says. “You’d have a couple of Old Fashioneds, a couple of drinks, sometimes there’d be live music, you’d go sit down have a nice, leisurely dinner, take their time, look out at that beautiful view, then come back and adjourn to the bar, have a couple more drinks and listen to the music. It would be a six- or seven-hour evening.”

 Today’s fast-paced lifestyle helped to doom many of the region’s supper clubs, he says, as well as stricter laws about drinking and driving. Some of the clubs have their roots in the 1930s and began as speak-easies and Prohibition-era roadhouses, complete with gambling. Hoekstra says many were, and still are, dimly lit. “The dim lighting and just the escape, that you’re going somewhere different, exotic, you’re taking a little trip in a short while,” Hoekstra says. “The definition of a supper club, it just seems like you’re going out for this really enchanting evening and the dim light plays into that.” 

The book contains more than a hundred pictures and interviews with club owners and patrons. Hoekstra calls it a combination travel guide and social history.

(Radio Iowa)

Police in Red Oak report one person was arrested this (Thursday) afternoon, for trespassing on railroad property. 20-year old Kyle Robert Danick, of Red Oak, was taken into custody at around 3:05-p.m. in the vicinity of Marsden Avenue and Coolbaugh Street. He was being held at the Montgomery County Law Enforcement Center in $300 bond.

There are thousands of rare diseases and it can be a frustrating, expensive challenge for people to get the proper diagnosis and treatment, especially in rural states like Iowa. Nicole Boice is the founder of Global Genes, an advocacy group for people with rare illnesses. Boice says their new survey finds many patients are usually sent from one doctor to the next. “It takes, on average, seven years for a patient to actually receive a proper diagnosis,” Boice says. “While they’re on that seven-year journey, they typically see up to eight different physicians and they are misdiagnosed two to three times.” 

She says some Iowans who live in remote areas have to travel long distances to see a specialist to get the tests or the treatment they need. “You’re tested, you’re re-tested, it’s very trying financially for these families,” Boice says. “From this survey, we’ve seen that about 40% of the patients have had to borrow money from family or friends to pay for their health care and over half have had to dip into their savings. There’s a tremendous amount of medical bankruptcy within the rare disease community.” 

Rare diseases affect about one in ten Americans so Boice says it’s likely everyone knows someone suffering from such an illness. Some of the diseases are more well-known, like cystic fibrosis or muscular dystrophy. The report also shows 92-percent of physicians report they find it difficult to address the needs of rare disease patients in a typical office visit. 

More than seven-thousand distinct rare diseases exist and about 80-percent are caused by faulty genes. The National Institutes of Health estimates 50-percent of people affected by rare diseases are children, making rare diseases one of the most deadly and debilitating for children worldwide.

(Radio Iowa)