Gazette Daily News Podcast, May 10

It is going to be warm again Tuesday, with a slight chance of showers and thunderstorms. According to the National Weather Service it will be partly sunny with a high near 87 degrees in the Cedar Rapids area. There will be a 20 percent chance for showers after 1 p.m. and continuing through Wednesday. The low should be around 68 degrees.

With no news Monday on the disappearance of city employee Erik Spaw, his mother offered a possible explanation of what might have happened, and why his assigned waterworks fleet pickup was found submerged in the Cedar River on Saturday.

Karen Spaw, 88, of Cedar Rapids, told The Gazette on Monday that her 54-year-old son has Type 1 diabetes and may have passed out from low blood sugar and driven into the river.

Her son, she said, had been having a hard time regulating his blood sugar and insulin intake recently and that his blood sugar had dropped dangerously low several times.

Crews continued searching the river for Spaw on Monday, using boats and a K-9 officer. They reported having no updates on day 3 of the search.

Spaw, who has worked for the city for more than 20 years according to his mother, worked a Friday evening shift at the Northwest Water Treatment Plant. The unoccupied water department fleet pickup assigned to Spaw was later found in the river near Ellis Road NW on Saturday.

A Navy seaman from Independence who was killed in the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor will finally be laid to rest in Iowa this Saturday.

David F. Tidball, 20, a seaman first class, was on the USS Oklahoma, which sustained multiple torpedo hits, causing it to capsize. His body was recently identified by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, and he will be buried at 1 p.m. Saturday at the Mount Hope Cemetery in Independence. The graveside service will be open to the public.

When Tidball died, he was survived by his parents and three siblings. Only nieces and nephews remain to commemorate him, according to his obituary.

Tidball was one of 429 USS Oklahoma crewmen who died, all of whom were buried in the Halawa and Nu’uanu cemeteries, according to a news release from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

The remains of the seamen were disinterred in 1947, when the American Graves Registration Service was assigned to recover and identify fallen U.S. military personnel in the Pacific Theater. The bodies were brought to the Central Identification Laboratory, where 35 men from the USS Oklahoma were identified. The rest, including Tidball, were buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. Their remains were classified as non-recoverable.

The Biden administration announced on Monday that 20 internet companies including Mediacom, have agreed to provide discounted service to low-income Americans, a program that could effectively make tens of millions of households eligible for free service through an already existing federal subsidy.

According to the Associated Press, the $1 trillion infrastructure package passed by Congress last year included $14.2 billion funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program, which provides $30 monthly subsidies ($75 in tribal areas) on internet service for millions of lower-income households.

With the new commitment from the internet providers, some 48 million households will be eligible for $30 monthly plans for 100 megabits per second, or higher speed, service — making internet service fully paid for with the government subsidy if they sign up with one of the providers participating in the program.