By By JOHN EBY / Cassopolis Vigilant
CASSOPOLIS -- Cass County Animal Control Director Pat Fetherston of Edwardsburg might want to reconsider his insistence that a bet carried on since 1989 with Cassopolis attorney Peter M. Karlowicz of Niles cease.
His Michigan State Spartans prevailed over Karlowicz's Notre Dame Fighting Irish Saturday in South Bend, Ind., 22-16.
That outcome insures it will be Karlowicz after a one-year reprieve, jogging through the village on the day before the next Notre Dame-MSU football game carrying a green-and-white flag, as Fetherston did Friday with a yellow-and-blue ND banner to atone for last fall's 21-17 loss.
Notre Dame lost throughout the Bob Davie years, 1997-2001, so Fetherston, 52, hasn't had to trot for a while.
He says he's too old and out of shape to continue the run, which ended on the courthouse steps with him waving the enemy flag and intoning with a wince, "Rah! Rah! Notre Dame."
So glad was Karlowicz to mark the end of his annual jog, he organized a media blitz at Fetherston's expense, including television cameras and the Council on Aging's New Frontier Band to serenade him with the Notre Dame fight song.
In addition to the village police car clearing a path for him along the busiest Cassopolis thoroughfares, including State and Broadway, Karlowicz provided another jab by having the Niles Haunted House Scream Park parade hearse watch Fetherston's back.
At high noon Friday, Sept. 19, as bells tolled in the 1899 courthouse tower, Fetherston issued his proclamation:
The original "contract" is in the hands of (Notre Dame fan and Cassopolis Police Chief) Frank Williams.
Fetherston, by the way, attended Northern Michigan University. He said he came by his MSU ardor because his two sisters went to college in East Lansing.
His wife, Lisa Arndt, is from Dowagiac.