Nestle USA Honors Ladue Teen for Making a Positive Impact

A $1,000 cash donation will be made to the charity of Miranda's choice.

  This information was provided by Nestle USA. Nestlé USA recently awarded Santiago Beltran Miranda, 18, from Ladue its prestigious Nestlé Very Best In Youth award. Santiago joins 17 other outstanding young leaders from across the country recognized as the 2013 Nestlé Very Best In Youth.   Now in its 16th year, the awards program honors young people for their academic excellence and proven dedication to improving communities and creating a better tomorrow.   A budding entrepreneur and founder of web application service provider, Protser.com, Santiago launched Ladue High School’s U-Tech Club to share his skills with other students. One year later, he founded the Tech Access Project, which takes refurbished computers, installs new software …

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The Baer Facts

An Olympic Preview: From My Living Room

This Patch editor is flipped out over the Olympic movement.

As of Friday night, please don’t ring my phone. That’s because I’ll be glued to the tube (as in television), not London subway to watch the march of the athletes in the 2012 Olympics and the well crafted opening ceremonies. There are just places where the Olympics ought to be, and others, not so. Los Angeles is a natural setting. So too is Paris, Melbourne and now London again. But I don’t know about Rio, Moscow, Mexico City or other places that it has been before. The Olympics are my passion. If I had my life to do over, that’s the one thing I’d want to do--be some kind of Olympic athlete. But 90 pound high schoolers who ran slowly in cross country don’t get a spot on the Olympic team. Lucky for me, I got to cover the 1984 Olympics in LA…

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Ladue's Marsha J. Rusnack: A Woman of Achievement

Recognized As a Cultural Contributor to the Community at Large.

It was at a very tender age when Ladue’s Marsha J. Rusnack first learned the true meaning of altruism. It was back at State University of Pennsylvania (Indiana, PA) where she met her husband Bill, now the two happily married 46 years. Rusnack was one of the women in her sorority who liked to get involved in all kinds of campus activities. “I still remember it well. We had this gigantic garage sale, but we held it indoors to raise money for charity. That’s how I got started,” said Rusnack, wife of an oil industry CEO. Rusnack and her husband have traveled the world in pursuit of his professional career. “I think we’ve lived in 14 different houses, I lost count,” said Rusnack. What she’s done in St. Louis is quite notable. She’s thrown …

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The Baer Facts

Rams, Let Me Help You Load The Moving Vans

I think the St. Louis Rams have blackmailed the City of St. Louis enough already.

A letter to the editor in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch definitely caught my eye. This letter stuck it into the eye of ownership of the St. Louis Rams. The author stated if the Rams are going to demand that St. Louis provides a top tier stadium, then the Rams ought to sign an agreement to provide St. Louis with a top tier football team by 2015. Like fellow fans, I have grown weary of the Rams putting a substandard football team on the field. It seems like ages ago that they brought to town a Super Bowl championship. Back to LA-LA land? This team is no better off (and perhaps substandard) than the Bill Bidwell teams of the 1980s. They draft no better prospects than when George Boone was making a mess of things with the St. Louis Cardinals. …

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Bromancing in the City of Angels

As "bromance" enters the American lexicon, a Ladue High School graduate recalls the rise and demise of a friendship forged while studying acting in Los Angeles.

Reuters (Aug. 25, 2011): US Merriam-Webster dictionary adds “tweet,” “bromance” "bromance" -- a "close, nonsexual friendship between men" Preston was deep into a flirting session with a spandex-clad female trainer when I first noticed him at a 24-Hour Fitness in Los Angeles. Even from across the room, I felt instant attraction — of the straight kind. His swagger spoke of a self-confidence that I badly wanted for myself.  A tall, black man exuding a youthful demeanor, Preston could have been mistaken for Michael Jordan’s younger brother. As I would learn, his wide, muscled shoulders were rivaled only by his broad intellect and sly wit. In him, I saw the qualities I craved: humor, eloquence and the Obama factor — that ability to vibe with …

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