TORMENT FATAL TO DANCER CAUGHT BETWEEN TWO CULTURES, GENG NIAN MEI FOUND HER SPIRIT SINKING
China. The word was a lump in the throat, a wistful memory, a seemingly impossible dream. For five years, Geng Nian Mei, 33, had straddled two worlds, her body in America and her soul in China.
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WHERE HAVE THE FLOWERS GONE?
Like a teen-age infatuation, like a daydream you snap out of when the teacher calls your name, the Summer of Love blazed for a moment and then it was over. In the end, Benjamin Braddock's middle-age adviser in The Graduate was right: The future belonged to plastics.
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IN THE FACE OF POVERTY
There is a house in the north side of Akron in which live a single mother and her two children. When judged by their scant material possessions there is no doubt that this is just one of the 1.5 million Ohio families hounded by poverty -- a number that, it was reported last week, has grown by 59,000 in the past year.
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GOOD NIGHT, FRAN
We will never see the likes of her again. She was an Akron original, as unique and as immediately recognizable as the Goodyear blimp. The pronounced limp, the trademark bib overalls, the mop of shocking white hair, the big, hearty laugh, the many eccentricities -- all hid the fact that a giant walked in our midst.
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BREATHING FOR ZEKE
"That's my son. That's Ezekiel Harig." As those words are spoken, the caravan of technicians hurrying a baby into the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Children's Hospital Medical Center of Akron comes to a halt. Joe Harig peers through the bundle of tubes that wind inside the clear plastic Isolette.
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