Inseparable Pair Gain Privacy

--Gena Willis, 87, won’t have to holler anymore for his wife, Marie, 86, to climb into his single bed in the nursing home room he shares with three other men--they are going to get a private room. “We are going to have a place fixed for them and they are going to sleep together and we are going to make them just as happy as the rest of our little patients,” said Dillie Myrick, administrator of the Community Nursing Home in Jackson, Miss. “We are pushing the beds together and they will sleep together like they have all their married life.” Myrick had said earlier that, unless the Willises, who moved into the home just after Christmas, slept apart they would have to leave because there were no facilities for married couples. But bureaucracy has a heart. By shifting other patients, the nursing home operators will be able to provide a small private room. The Willises have been lodged in dormitories in the nursing home of 47 patients. “Every night he hollered for her to come to his bed,” Myrick said, and she walked across the hall and climbed into bed with him. “The patients in the room couldn’t get any rest,” Myrick said. The administrator added: “I love human beings and little elderly people. I certainly wouldn’t kick them out. My mother lives in a nursing home.”

--Placido Domingo is out of the hospital in Barcelona, Spain, after a double hernia operation. “I feel great and now I am going to get my abdominal muscles in shape so I can start singing as soon as possible,” he said. “In about 15 days, I hope I’ll be able to open my mouth to start voice exercises.”

--Imposing fines on traffic violators is not enough for Justice of the Peace Walter Mathews--he wants blood. Mathews is offering a special deal today that allows offenders to donate blood at the courthouse in Angleton, Tex., in exchange for having one traffic ticket dismissed. “It’ll give them a chance to have their traffic tickets dismissed without charge,” said Mathews, 68, a justice for six years. This is the second time Mathews has made the one-day offer. Last August, 13 traffic violators gave blood in exchange for leniency. “A few people thought it was crazy,” Mathews said, “but they went up to the third floor and paid up.” Several people already have signed up to take advantage of the judge’s offer, which can save them from $34 to $213, depending on their traffic offense, said aide Sheri Moody. In addition, donors and their immediate families become eligible to receive blood free of charge for one year. “There are a lot of different ways to get out of paying tickets,” Moody said. “This is just one way. The judge is making them an offer that’s hard to refuse.”