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THE JEWISH NEWS

8 AV 5 755/AUGU S T 4, 1 9 9 5

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The Night They
Rated Wronski's

Consumer Reports visits Menorah House.

RUTH LITTMANN STAFF WRITER

Story on page 30

re bad nursing homes here to stay?
Trudy Lieberman, senior inves-
tigative editor with Consumer Reports,
asks that question in the magazine's
August edition, which sparked concern
locally for its scathing review of
IMenorah House, a Federation-en-
dorsed facility in Southfield.
"I was using Menorah House to describe a pat-
tern of poor compliance and poor enforcement by
the state and the federal government," says Ms.
Lieberman, a former Detroit Free Press writer. "I
was not using Menorah House to describe the worst
nursing home in the world."
During the course of a year-long assignment,
Ms. Lieberman visited 53 nursing homes nation-
wide. Posing as someone in search of a place for
her aged mother, she spent about one hour last
February at Menorah House. She did not speak
with family members of residents.
Among her observations:
"(At Menorah House) we saw residents who A Consumer Reports
were poorly groomed; some had sores on their bod- reporter spent one hour at tide, he sent a letter of reassurance to families of residents.
ies. Trash was everywhere. Electric wires poked Menorah House in rating He also wrote Consumer Reports,
like facilities all over the
charging Ms. Lieberman
out of a light switch box. One resident was us- country.
with ignoring the whole story.
ing her fingers to scoop up leftover coleslaw from
`When your undercover reporter visited Menorah House
a food cart, which hadn't been cleared away some two hours af- ... she reported seeing wires hanging out of a light switch box and
ter lunch."
debris lying around," he said.
When Menorah House owner Frank Wronski learned of the ar- CONSUMER REPORTS page 8

Boxing Becomes A Hit

What do Cindy Crawford, Mike Tyson and an Oak Park native named Ken Levy
have in common? They're all part of the latest craze: boxing.

Walled Lake Families
Defend Their Schools

ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM ASSOCIATE EDITOR

They plan to stay put, despite bond defeat.

R

ound One.

Everybody wants a piece of the action.
There was a time when Ken Levy had a
lot in common with that little guy in the
Charles Atlas ads.
"Stop kicking sand in our faces!" the man yells as
a bully runs by.
And his date is right there. Mortifying.
Fortunately, the wimpy fellow eventually dis-
covers Charles Atlas, the man of a
thousand biceps.
Ken Levy works
Ken Levy discovered boxing.
with Abby
Mr. Levy, 35, is head of Ken Levy's
Foon: Watch
Executive Boxing Club in Royal Oak.
out, Mike
It's in an airy upstairs studio, offer-
Tyson.
ing lessons in "the newest and hottest
workout sweeping the nation."
are coming every day.
The figures are a knockout. Within seven months,
The lure is threefold, Mr. Levy says. Boxing and
230 members — men, women, children, seniors, the kick-boxing offer the chance to improve one's confi-
physically challenged — have signed up, and more
BOXING page 10

JULIE EDGAR STAFF WRITER

W

alled Lake schools are
doing a fine job edu-
cating children, said
at least a dozen people
who responded — many of them
angrily — to a front-page arti-
cle last week in The Jewish
News.
Callers and letter writers, in-
cluding one of the mothers in-
terviewed, took issue with the
story, which discussed families
leaving the Walled Lake
Consolidated School District for
the nearby West Bloomfield
School District.
"I can tell you about many
people who 'puddle-jumped'
from Walled Lake to Walled

Lake," said Shellie Achtman,
who moved from one house to
another in the Walled Lake
Consolidated School District
last year. Mrs. Achtman was
referring to the "Puddle
Jumpers" headline of the July
28 article.
Two of her four children at-
tend Maple Elementary School.
The families interviewed for
the July 28 story said they
moved, in one case a matter of
blocks, to be in the West
Bloomfield School District.
Their decision came after
Walled Lake voters defeated
bond proposals that would have
WALLED LAKE page 19