The moment ranks high on Utah center Lo Falemaka's list of potentially life-altering events, although not necessarily at the top. As the Utes concluded a session of spring football practice in late March, offensive line coach Jim Harding gathered his players and told them the news they all wanted to hear: The NCAA granted Falemaka's waiver for a sixth season of eligibility in 2018.

Otherwise, he would have become a pro football player the very next day.

The Utes were staging the annual Pro Day for NFL scouts. Falemaka would have joined his former teammates in the evaluations, if not for the favorable ruling that concluded a process he labeled “definitely nerve-wracking.”

The extension of Falemaka’s college career — most athletes are allowed four seasons of competition in a five-year period — stemmed from a 2015 incident. It is the hidden explanation in the year-by-year account of Falemaka’s Ute career in the media guide, outlining how he “played in the first two games against Michigan and Utah State before missing the rest of the [2015] season with an injury.”

The Utes beat USU on a Friday. The next night, Falemaka and former teammate Marcel Manola (then known as Marcel Brooks-Brown) were shot during a house party near the campus. Manola’s account in The Salt Lake Tribune a few months later described Falemaka as trying to help a woman deter the suspects from joining the party, intended mainly for Ute athletes.

Falemaka was hospitalized for more than a week; a bullet that ricocheted inside of him ended up near his left hip, where it remains.

That’s about the only detail of the incident he willingly discusses, three years later. “All I know is I’m alive and I’m blessed to be here,” Falemaka said during the Pac-12 Media Day in Hollywood, Calif.

The shooting, the reality of what may have happened to him and everything involved in his recovery are not thoughts that occur to him every day. “Only when people bring it up,” he said. “I don’t think about it, just because it happened in the past. I’ve got to focus on what’s going on in my life right now — just forget about it. It doesn’t do anybody any good.”

That's just one of the setbacks the Cottonwood High School graduate has experienced with the Utes. Replacing injured starter J.J. Dielman in a 2016 game at California, Falemaka also got hurt, costing him a big chunk of the season. Injuries to both knees and an appendectomy have “definitely tested my patience,” he said.

Yet he played all 13 games of last season as the Utes' starting center, and returns as a leader who's likely to be voted a co-captain this month. He's the anchor of the offensive line, in multiple ways.

“Lo's been here a lot of years and he's got a lot of wisdom, so I learn a lot from him,” lineman Johnny Capra said. “Absolutely, he's gone through a lot and he can teach us all a lot, and he's a hell of a player, so I'm glad to be working with him.”

Harding became the Utes' offensive line coach in 2014, when Falemaka was a scout-team player. Harding has watched him evolve into a major figure in in the program, especially among the linemen who look up to him.

“From day one to now is kind of light-years different,” Harding said. “He's done a phenomenal job of rallying the troops and keeping the spirits up.”

Isaac Asiata, a former Ute lineman now with the Miami Dolphins, once marveled about his teammates' recovery from the gunshots and said, “I can't wait to see what kind of careers they have here. I'm excited to find out.”

Manalo’s Ute tenure was short; he left the team in October 2016. Falemaka keeps in touch with him via web-based video gaming, and they still consider themselves “blood brothers” after their shared experience.

Falemaka has made more of an impact in Utah's program than Asiata ever could have pictured. He has gone from a walk-on and scout-team player to a scholarship athlete and starter, now a candidate for All-Pac-12 awards.

His NFL audition will come soon enough, next March. As one of eight children who grew up in West Valley City, Falemaka is eager to provide help with his potential earnings in pro football. “All that bread,” he said, “is going straight to my family.”

This Pat Bagley cartoon appears in The Salt Lake Tribune on Tuesday, Aug. 7 2018. You can check out the past 10 Bagley editorial cartoons below:

• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2018/08/03/bagley-cartoon-orrins/" target=_blank><u>Orrin’s Outrage</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2018/08/02/bagley-cartoon-enemy" target=_blank><u>Enemy of the People</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2018/08/01/bagley-cartoon-bringing/" target=_blank><u>Bringing Copiers to a Gun Fight</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2018/07/31/bagley-cartoon-smoke-gets/" target=_blank><u>Smoke Gets in Your Eyes</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2018/07/31/bagley-cartoon-wilderness/" target=_blank><u>Wilderness Trafficking</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2018/07/27/bagley-cartoon-physics/" target=_blank><u>Physics for Dummies</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2018/07/26/bagley-cartoon-toting/" target=_blank><u>2A Toting Tots</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2018/07/25/bagley-cartoon-monumental/" target=_blank><u>Monumental Bull</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2018/07/23/bagley-cartoon-pioneer/" target=_blank><u>Pioneer Parade is for the Birds</u></a>
• <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2018/07/21/bagley-cartoon-spy-who/" target=_blank><u>The Spy Who Did(n’t) Love Me</u></a>

Want more Bagley? Become a fan on Facebook.

Standing beneath the cast aluminum statue of Lady Justice in the Department of Justice’s Great Hall, Attorney General Jeff Sessions made a bold statement last week: “Many Americans have felt that their freedom to practice their faith has been under attack.”

He spoke of Catholic nuns being forced to buy contraceptives. (Actually, the Affordable Care Act required the nuns to cover the costs of contraceptives in their employees’ health plans.) He cited judicial nominees questioned about their faith.

And, in a nod to Jack Phillips, the Colorado baker who won a Supreme Court case after refusing to bake a cake for a gay couple’s wedding, Sessions said, “We’ve all seen the ordeal faced so bravely by Jack Phillips,” who was seated nearby.

An increasing number of Americans appear to agree with Sessions.

A new poll by Public Religion Research Institute shows a modest but statistically significant uptick in the percentage of Americans who believe that owners of wedding-based businesses, such as caterers, florists and bakers, should be allowed to refuse to serve same-sex couples if doing so violates their religious beliefs.

The poll, conducted last month from among 2,008 Americans, found that 46 percent thought small businesses should be exempted from having to serve LGBTQ couples — a 5 percentage-point increase from last year, when 41 percent of Americans said the same.

The shift was most noted among Republicans, with 73 percent of respondents saying wedding vendors should be permitted to refuse services based on religious belief. Only 27 percent of Democrats said vendors should be permitted to do as much.

During a panel discussion that followed Sessions’ speech announcing a special religious liberty task force last week, Phillips gave his testimony.

The owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, outside of Denver, Phillips relayed how early in his career he and his wife agreed to uphold certain Christian principles such as not baking cakes for Halloween, a holiday with pagan roots, and closing for business on Sunday, the Christian Sabbath.

He also said he was happy to serve all people — including LGBTQ people — as long as he doesn’t have to create same-sex wedding cakes, which he regards as artistic expression.

“Every American should now be able to live and work freely according to their conscience,” Phillips said, “without fear of punishment from the government.”

Service refusals are a relative newcomer to the religious liberty realm. It used to be that religious people asked for exemptions: Jews might ask to be excused from school on their High Holy Days; Seventh-day Adventists might ask to be exempt from having to work on Saturday, which they consider their Sabbath.

Today’s legal cases involve businesses owned by religious families refusing to provide services because they conflict with their beliefs. The most notable of those cases was brought by Hobby Lobby, the craft store chain founded by the evangelical David Green and owned by the Green family, whose religious beliefs, it was argued, prohibited them from providing health coverage for emergency contraceptive drugs as mandated in the Affordable Care Act. In 2014, the Supreme Court sided with Hobby Lobby.

Faith-based adoption agencies that receive government funds are now the latest service providers that claim their Christian faith prohibits them from placing children with same-sex couples.

Last month, a federal judge in Philadelphia ruled that Catholic Social Services had violated the Philadelphia Fair Practices Ordinance, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, because it denied adoptions to same-sex couples.

Anticipating such problems, at least seven states have already passed laws that would allow such agencies to deny adoptions to gay or lesbian couples on religious liberty grounds.

LGBTQ advocates and many secular Americans have vehemently protested such laws, often pointing out that religious freedom claims were also made to defend segregation in the civil rights era.

“There were places that did not want to accommodate mixed-race couples, for example,” said David Niose, legal director at the American Humanist Association. “They claimed that mixing the races was offensive to their religious views. But those claims were struck down and rightly so.”

Recently, anti-discrimination activists have fought back. A campaign titled Open to All recently persuaded several big-name companies, including Airbnb, Lyft and Levi Strauss, to vow publicly to serve customers from all backgrounds.

Some evangelicals counter that their motive is not to slight LGBTQ people but rather to live up to their Christian faith.

“Most people in the religious community do not want the LGBT community to ever feel like they’re second-class citizens, or for someone to be denied service in an illegal way,” said Jeff Hunt, director of the Centennial Institute, a think tank at Colorado Christian University. “We need to work through this. We’re at a watershed moment where these two rights are facing off with each other.”

Hunt said evangelicals are concerned that secular Americans and some advocacy groups, particularly the Southern Poverty Law Center, are stridently anti-religious and appear to be motivated by religious animus.

Now the Trump administration and the Department of Justice appear to agree with Hunt’s assessment. At his religious freedom summit, Sessions announced the creation of a religious liberty task force that will direct agencies to protect religious liberty.

“This Department of Justice is going to court across America to defend the rights of people of faith,” he said.

Complicating the picture is the fact that Americans are becoming ever more accepting of LGBT rights as well as same-sex marriage. Overall, 64 percent of Americans support same-sex marriage and 71 percent of Americans say they favor laws that would protect LGBT people against discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations, the PRRI poll found.

That leads researchers at PRRI to suspect that although more people say they support service refusals to LGBT people, that support may be fleeting and could be a reaction to the Supreme Court ruling in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

“There’s a reason I think it might be a momentary shift and not a trend,” said Daniel Cox, research director at PRRI. “It may be a short-term reaction to the political environment than a long-term shift in opinion on this issue.”

The PRRI poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.

Eliseo Hernandez had just watched two of his daughters raise their right hand, recite an oath and become naturalized U.S. citizens. What did he think? He had a hard time putting it into words.

“What can I say,” the father, who immigrated here from Mexico nine years ago, told The Salt Lake Tribune. “I don’t know, I don’t know what to say. Well, I’m just happy for them that they are citizens and that they are going to be OK, you know? In the future, here.”

Ximena and Paulina Hernandez, 16 and 13, were among the 21 young people who took the citizenship oath at West Jordan’s Viridian Event Center on Monday.

Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams, who was there to congratulate the nearly two dozen young immigrants, ages 4 to 22, told them that “Utah welcomes you all, each and every one of you.”

McAdams brought up Pioneer Day and said the holiday “doesn’t just celebrate something that happens in 1847 when the Mormon pioneers came here seeking a place to practice their religion.” Rather, the mayor said, “it is an ongoing part of our heritage. And you are a part of that. You are today’s pioneers.”

Ximena Hernandez, who has lived in the U.S. since she was 7, described “just feeling really happy” that she and her sister are finally able to call themselves American citizens. “I’m grateful for my parents,” she added.

Biruk Mekonnen, 20, who moved to Utah from Kenya five years ago, said he was thankful for his uncle who helped him work through a “difficult” citizenship process. “Everything happened because of him,” Mekonnen said. “The process has been hard, it was difficult to get [citizenship].”

What about the citizenship process was difficult? All of the paperwork, required identification, and the anxiety of “whether you will get it or not,” he said. “So it was a little bit scary, too.”

Abdalla Dadiri, also from Kenya, said he was just excited to be a citizen. “[I’ve] been here my whole life,” said Dadiri, who is 16. “I came here around 2 [years old].”

It’s a similar story for 17-year-old Anthony Alania, who is originally from Peru but has lived in the U.S. since he was 4. He said he may vote this year, to “try it out.”

According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, there were about 5,800 people in Utah who were naturalized as U.S. citizens in 2017 and more than 716,000 people nationally. The Tribune reported last week that Utah has an “alarming backlog” of legal immigrants who are waiting for approval of their citizenship applications. McAdams, along with Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski, joined a group of 45 mayors and county executives nationally to ask federal officials to “take aggressive steps to reduce the waiting time,” which can reach up to 20 months.

On Friday, 110 adult immigrants from 41 countries were naturalized as citizens and honored at the state Capitol. McAdams’ opponent in the race for Utah’s 4th congressional district seat, incumbent Rep. Mia Love, gave a speech at Friday’s naturalization ceremony.

St. George • American Tejay van Garderen was the fastest man in St. George, leading the BMC Racing Team to a podium sweep in Monday’s Prologue at the 2018 Tour of Utah.

In broiling heat, van Garderen won the 5.3-kilometer tour opener in a time of 6 minutes, 27 seconds. Reigning U.S. Pro Individual Time Trial champion Joe Rosskopf finished four seconds back in second place. Switzerland’s Tom Bohli, who sat in the hot seat for most of the day, finished in third, six seconds off the pace.

“I love Utah, I have a long history here. This was my first professional victory in 2011 in the [Time Trial] at the Tour of Utah,” said van Garderen, who comes off one rest week after racing the Tour de France. He will wear the yellow jersey on Tuesday.

He added: “I just came here to have some fun, keep the body rolling. I told myself if there is a chance for a result, I’ll take it, and today was a great opportunity for that.”

In 2011, van Garderen finished fourth in the opening Prologue, which was held in Park City. Later that week he won the ITT on Stage 3 in Tooele, Utah.

A total of 36 riders are now separated by 20 seconds at the top of the standings going into Tuesday’s opening stage, in Cedar City.

St. Louis • Before he hits a single shot at the PGA Championship, Zach Johnson already has made a name for himself.

Yes, THAT Zach Johnson.

And that other Zach Johnson, too.

No, golf fans, you are not seeing double. There are two of them roaming the grounds at Bellerive Country Club this week.

One needs no introduction. That would be the two-time major winner, Zach Johnson of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a 12-time winner on the PGA Tour who has racked up more than $44 million in winnings.

The other? Well, he’s not quite a household name. He’s Zach Johnson of Farmington, Utah, who works as the assistant pro at Davis Park Golf Course in the suburbs of Salt Lake City. He’s one of 20 club pros who qualified into the 156-man field, and will be, for at least two days, on the same playing field with Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson and, yes, Zach Johnson.

Tournament organizers called the club pro recently and asked him if it was OK for him to go by “Zach J. Johnson” for the week to eliminate confusion.

“I don’t think they called and asked him first,” Zach J. said of his namesake. “It was more like: ‘Here’s what you’re going by. Hopefully you’ll like it.’”

The J, by the way, stands for, well, J. When Johnson was born, his parents wanted to pick out a J name for his middle name. Unable to decide, they put J on the birth certificate and left the choice for later. Turns out, “J” sounded pretty good, so they stuck with that.

And if Zach H. Johnson (The H stands for Harrison, his mother’s maiden name) hadn’t won the Masters (2007) and British Open (2015), would he be going by “Zach H” this week?

“I doubt it,” he said. “Maybe I’d be ‘Z.’”

Imagine Zach J. Johnson’s surprise back in 2009 when a package arrived at the golf shop in Utah, addressed to Zach Johnson. Return address: PGA Tour headquarters in Ponte Vedra, Florida.

“I thought, ‘Why would I be getting something from the PGA Tour?’” he said. “I tore it open with a box cutter. Nicked the plaque cutting it open.”

The plaque was made using four of Iowa Zach Johnson’s scorecards. The package included a letter from then-commissioner Tim Finchem congratulating him on his great play in winning the Sony Open the week before.

Pictures were taken. The guys at the club had a few laughs. Back in the mail it went.

Nearly a decade later, the 35-year-old Johnson will come face to face with his better-known namesake. And really, Johnson’s journey to the big time stretches back farther than that.

A graduate of Southern Utah — the only college that offered him a chance to play golf — Johnson spent his first few years after college playing on mini-tours in the area, and tried Q school from 2006-09.

It wasn’t clicking, Johnson said, “and I figured out that if I wanted to have a family and get on with life, that being a touring pro wasn’t going to be for me.”

He had a good friend, Pete Stone, on the mini-tours, and Pete’s dad was the head pro at Davis Park.

“I’d always ask him, ‘When’s your dad going to give me a job?’” Johnson said.

Eventually, Brad Stone hired Johnson to a four-days-a-week gig as the starter, working the early shift.

“I’m not an early riser,” said Johnson, whose tee time Thursday is set for a sleep-as-late-as-you-like 2:05 p.m.

He worked his way up the ladder, and became an assistant pro — one of the thousands of taken-for-granted grinders who keep golf shops running across America each day.

“Good professionals, they wear a lot of hats,” Brad Stone said. “It’s everything from running tournaments to public relations, to playing and teaching and all those things. You’re judged on all that, and sometimes all the hours our assistants work, there’s a lot of sacrifice, especially if you’re going to play a lot.”

But Stone wants his assistants to play, and now, Johnson is part of a special tradition: The Masters lets its past champions tee it up; the U.S. and British Opens are open to qualifiers; the PGA Championship reserves spots for the men who sell the shirts and give the lessons.

This week, Johnson will undoubtedly get a chance to meet his favorite PGA Tour pros: Woods and Sergio Garcia. And, of course, plans are in the works for a photo op with the other Zach Johnson.

That Zach Johnson was watching the PGA pro qualifying tournament back in June, pulling for a buddy, fellow Iowan Sean McCarty, who finished second and will also be at Bellerive.

Suddenly, Johnson saw his own name pop up on the leaderboard.

And that’s how this tale of Johnson & Johnson began.

“I tweeted out something about Sean, and then I plugged Zach Johnson, as well,” Iowa’s Zach Johnson said, before pausing for a second to consider what had just come out of his mouth. “’Zach Johnson.’ It’s weird to say that.”

Surely, the other Zach Johnson would second that.

Utah running back Devonta’e Henry-Cole will miss the 2018 season with what coach Kyle Whittingham described as a “pre-existing arm injury.”

Henry-Cole can redshirt in 2018, with two years of eligibility remaining. He carried the ball only once in 2016 while using a year’s eligibility, but got 55 carries for 279 yards last season. Henry-Cole was likely to be the Utes' No. 3 running back, behind Zack Moss and Armand Shyne.

In his absence, redshirt freshman TJ Green and freshman Devin Brumfield will compete for carries, and receiver Derrick Vickers will be used as a running back in some packages, offensive coordinator Troy Taylor said.

Other personnel updates:

• Redshirt freshman Nick Ford has earned a first-team spot on the offensive line in the early stages of preseason camp, Whittingham said after Monday’s practice.

Kyle Whittingham informs the media scrum that RB Devonta’e Henry-Cole (arm) is out for the year. Whitt also discusses the arrival of LB Bryant Pirtle. pic.twitter.com/wybqlhqMuY

— Salt Lake Tribune Sports (@sltribsports) August 6, 2018

Whittingham had not planned to announce any updates to the depth chart until Aug. 27. But when asked about the line, he listed Ford and senior Jordan Agasiva as the first-team guards, with senior Jackson Barton and junior Darrin Paulo at tackle and senior Lo Falemaka at center.

The preseason depth chart had Ford as a backup to Paulo, with junior Johnny Capra as a starting guard. Coaches have cited the versatility of players such as Ford and Capra as a benefit, in their effort to put the best five linemen on the field.

• Bryant Pirtle, a linebacker from Pima Community College in Arizona, is scheduled to practice in pads Tuesday after completing an acclimation period.

Pirtle, who signed with the Utes in February, reported to the team this past weekend after completing academic requirements. He faces a battle for playing time on Utah’s defense that includes Chase Hansen and Cody Barton as starting linebackers and Devin Lloyd and Donavan Thompson as capable backups.

Whittingham has not updated the status of former BYU linebacker Francis Bernard, regarding his potential transfer.

• Whittingham spoke of some degree of separation in the competition between Jack Tuttle and Jason Shelley for the No. 3 quarterback job, but he added, “I won’t say which way.”

The coaches hope to declare a No. 2 QB fairly soon, to give him more practice time behind starter Tyler Huntley.

• The Utes have added Jaxson McBride, a freshman defensive end from Woods Cross High School, to the 110-player camp roster.

BYU thawing out its relationship with the schools it left behind when it departed the Mountain West Conference for football independence continues.

BYU and UNLV announced Monday that they have agreed to another two-game series. The teams will meet Nov. 4, 2023 at LaVell Edwards Stadium in Provo and Nov. 2, 2024 at Las Vegas Stadium (currently under construction) in Las Vegas.

BYU also announced it will host North Alabama at LES on Nov. 21, 2020. The addition of the Lions completes the Cougars’ 2020 schedule and comes between games against San Diego State and Stanford.

North Alabama is an FCS independent, but will join the Big South Conference in 2019 and is transitioning to the FBS.

The Cougars and Rebels have met twice since BYU left the Mountain West, so Monday’s news that the two schools want to continue to play each other isn’t surprising. The Cougars won 42-23 in Provo in 2014 and 31-21 last season in Las Vegas.

BYU is scheduled to play in Las Vegas on Sept. 4, 2021 against Arizona in a game that quite likely will be played in the new stadium being built for the Oakland Raiders’ move to Las Vegas. There is also speculation that BYU and Notre Dame are working on a plan to play at the stadium shortly after it opens, a game that might fulfill the Irish’s contract to return a game to BYU for the two played in South Bend, Ind., in 2012 and 2013.

BYU holds a 17-3 advantage in its all-time series with UNLV and was 15-3 against the Rebels when the schools were members of the Mountain West and Western Athletic conferences.

Provo • BYU defensive coordinator Ilaisa Tuiaki’s style is understated and reserved. Rarely does the former Oregon State, Utah and Utah State assistant coach gush over players, or add to the hype when asked about a specific player’s talent and capability.

So it was more noteworthy than usual when the third-year DC, who is also BYU’s defensive line coach, raved about the potential of sophomore defensive tackle Khyiris Tonga after Friday’s preseason training camp practice.

“Khyiris is a really good player,” Tuiaki said. “If he can get his weight down, he will be even better. Right now he is a little bit heavy. If we can get him to where he needs to be and he stays there, he is a game-changer. I think he is a difference-maker.”

Tonga is listed at 6-foot-4, 340 pounds on the preseason camp roster. A late addition to the 2017 roster after serving a church mission in Kansas, Tonga made an immediate impact in 2017 and was arguably the second-best defensive player on the team behind Fred Warner.

Tonga appeared in 13 games and made 19 tackles, including four for losses. He had two sacks. The Granger High product should be a mainstay on BYU’s defensive line this season.

It is a defensive line that is “looking good” at camp, Tuiaki said. But he reserved more judgement until he sees what it can do with pads on. The Cougars were padded up Saturday, but the practice was not open to the media.

“Right now, it’s fake football,” Tuiaki said.

It is a fairly experienced unit that lost just three players from 2017. Interior linemen Handsome Tanielu and Kesni Tausinga exhausted their eligibility and Solomone Wolfgramm left the program.

Led by starters Tonga, Corbin Kaufusi and Trajan Pili, seven letter winners return on the defensive line. An eighth, sophomore Langi Tuifua, is experiencing difficulties with his back and is not participating in preseason camp.

The other returners who made an impact in 2017 are Bracken El Bakri, Tevita Mo’unga, Merrill Taliauli and Uriah Leiataua.

They are joined by Lorenzo Fauatea, who was granted a medical hardship and is still classified as a freshman. West Jordan product Alden Tofa and Keanu Saleapaga of Lakewood, Calif., both redshirted last year and should add depth.

“We have a depth chart that we roll through, and it will be changing, at least through the first two weeks of camp,” Tuiaki said, declining to name starters this early in workouts. “A lot of younger guys took the majority of the reps [Friday]. We held some guys out just so we could get some of the young guys caught up.”

Other defensive linemen on the preseason camp roster include sophomore Zac Dawe, redshirt freshmen Earl Tuioti-Mariner and Motekiai Langi, freshmen Michael Bruno, Devin Kaufusi and Atunaisa Mahe and redshirt sophomore Wayne Tei-Kirby.

It is early, but Leiataua and Saleapaga are having strong camps. Both have made disruptive plays in the open portions of practices. Leiataua is pushing Pili for the starting outside edge rusher position and Saleapaga is among three or four defensive tackles who are vying to line up beside Tonga. The others are Fauatea, Tei-Kirby and Mo’unga, although Mo’unga is not participating in camp yet.

Allen Park, Mich. • Ziggy Ansah is back from the PUP list — and has little to say about his contract situation.

The Lions removed the defensive end from the active/physically unable to perform list Monday, and he spoke to reporters for a bit. But Ansah didn’t shed much light on how negotiations went with the team. Detroit ended up bringing him back this season on the franchise tag .

“I’m just excited that I get to play here again in Detroit for this year. The future will just take care of itself,” Ansah said. “Right now, I’m just focused on this year.”

The Lions have not said what injury caused Ansah to go on the PUP list. He hasn’t played a full 16 games since the 2015 season.

Ansah played in 14 games last season and finished with 12 sacks, including three each against the Giants, Bengals and Packers. Detroit drafted him in the first round in 2013.

The Lions begin joint workouts in California on Tuesday with the Oakland Raiders. Ansah said it will be up to the coaches how much he does this week.

Detroit plays its preseason opener at Oakland on Friday.

“Real good opportunity for us to go out and just see somebody else. Different scheme, different players, different strengths and weaknesses from that standpoint,” Lions coach Matt Patricia said. “Getting a good evaluation of our guys, and also as you go through the course of the preseason, the preseason games are good and you’re trying to evaluate the talent and the ability.”

Patricia is entering his first season as Detroit’s coach, but Ansah didn’t sound too concerned about changes in the defensive system.

“Every coach has his system. As a player, you’ve just got to be able to adapt,” Ansah said. “I think we are doing a pretty good job.”

Ansah has 44 sacks through five seasons. He had a career-high 14 1/2 in 2015 before slipping to only two sacks the following season. He then rebounded with a dozen sacks in 2017.

Detroit drafted Ansah No. 5 overall in 2013 out of BYU. It remains to be seen how much longer he’ll be with the Lions, and he wouldn’t say how close the sides were to reaching a long-term deal.

“This is, like, over with. I’m just happy to be here. That’s what’s most important,” he said.

As Robert Redford — actor, filmmaker and founder of the Utah-based Sundance Institute — announces his retirement from acting, here’s a look back at his career, and some of his most iconic movie moments:

August 18, 1936 • Charles Robert Redford Jr. is born in Santa Monica, Calif.

1958 • Married Lola Van Wagenen, from Provo, Utah.

1959-63 • Acting in New York, on stage and TV. Highlights included a production of “The Iceman Cometh,” a role in the final episode of “Playhouse 90,” and playing Death in a “Twilight Zone” episode.

1962 • Appears in his first movie, the Korean War drama ”War Hunt."

1963 • Cast by Mike Nichols in the lead of Neil Simon’s comedy ”Barefoot in the Park" on Broadway.

1966 • Wins a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer (male) for “Inside Daisy Clover.”

1967 • Stars in the movie version of “Barefoot in the Park,” with Jane Fonda.

1969 • Stars in his career-making role in the Western ”Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” alongside Paul Newman. Buys the Timp Haven ski resort in Provo Canyon, and renames it Sundance. Stars in and produces “Downhill Racer,” and the studio’s poor reception inspires Redford to seek ways to foster independent film.

1972 • Stars in the campaign drama ”The Candidate," using his acting to comment on politics.

1973 • Reteams with Newman in “The Sting,” a Best Picture Oscar winner; receives his only Oscar nomination for acting.

1976 • Plays reporter Bob Woodward in the Watergate thriller ”All the President’s Men," a movie he also produced.

1980 • Directs his first film, the dysfunctional family drama ”Ordinary People." The movie wins four Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director.

1981 • Creates the Sundance Institute to support independent film.

1985 • Stars with Meryl Streep in “Out of Africa,” another Best Picture Oscar winner. Sundance Institute takes over operations of the U.S. Film Festival in Park City (renaming it the Sundance Film Festival in 1991). Divorces Lola Van Wagenen.

1988 • Directs "The Milagro Beanfield War,” a comedy-drama about a David-vs.-Goliath water dispute.

1989 • Sundance launches catalog business.

1992 • Directs and narrates “A River Runs Through It,” adapting Norman Maclean’s short story about two brothers who bond through fishing.

1993 • Receives a Razzie nomination for worst actor for “Indecent Proposal.”

1994 • Directs ”Quiz Show," chronicling ‘50s game-show scandals; receives Oscar nominations for director and Best Picture.

1996 • Partners with Showtime and NBCUniversal to launch the Sundance Channel. (Showtime and NBCUniversal sold its share to Rainbow Media, now AMC Networks, in 2008. It was renamed SundanceTV in 2014.)

1998 • Directs and stars in modern Western romance ”The Horse Whisperer."

2000 • Directs golf drama ”The Legend of Bagger Vance."

2002 • Receives an honorary Oscar for his work as an actor, producer, director and founder of Sundance.

2004 • Stars in the hostage drama “The Clearing,” the first time he appears in a movie that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival.

2005 • Chosen for Kennedy Center Honors. Launches The Redford Center, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that encourages filmmakers to spotlight environmental and social issues.

2007 • Directs and co-stars in the modern war drama “Lions For Lambs.”

2009 • Marries his longtime girlfriend, German-born artist Sibylle Szaggars.

2010 • Directs post-Civil War courtroom drama “The Conspirator.”

2012 • Directs and stars in fugitive thriller “The Company You Keep.”

2013 • Garners acclaim and a Golden Globe nomination for his one-man performance in the shipwreck drama “All Is Lost.”

2014 • Plays a villain for the first time in a movie, in Marvel’s “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.”

2015 • Plays anchorman Dan Rather in the drama “Truth.” Plays author Bill Bryson in comedy “A Walk in the Woods.”

2016 • Co-stars in Disney’s remake of “Pete’s Dragon.” Receives Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian medal, from President Barack Obama. Announces he will retire from acting in 2017, to focus on directing.

2017 • Co-stars in science-fiction romance “The Discovery,” which premieres at the Sundance Film Festival. Films the romance “Our Souls at Night” with Jane Fonda, and the heist drama “The Old Man and the Gun.”

2018 • Confirms his retirement from acting, with “The Old Man and the Gun” (opening Sept. 28 in select theaters) as his last movie performance.

London • Thousands of Christian churches across the world are now using portable card readers or apps to take donations as people increasingly stop carrying cash on them.

The Church of England says 16,000 religious sites now have access to portable card readers. In the U.S., hundreds of churches have installed kiosks where the faithful can swipe a card to donate. Others are popularizing smartphone apps in which money can be sent over at any time.

“How we pay for things is changing fast, especially for younger churchgoers, who no longer carry cash, and we want all generations to be able to make the most of their place of worship,” said John Preston, the Church of England’s national stewardship officer.

The technologies vary from donations via website to apps and physical screens set up at the church. The contactless card reader, which can be passed around the pews like the traditional offerings plate, is a newer evolution that the Church of England in particular has been adopting.

It struck a deal with contactless payment companies iZettle and SumUp to create a system that all its religious sites can install. It takes Apple Pay and Google Pay but can also be used with a PIN code if needed.

The innovation seems to be yielding good results.

A startup that makes donation apps for churches in France says that the average contribution is two to six times higher than cash donations. Obole Digitale’s smartphone app is used by 34 dioceses that represent over 5,000 churches in the country.

That may also be due to the fact that electronic donations tend to be worth more than the small change people carry in their pockets.

St. John’s church in London has a contactless card reader with preset donation sums ranging from 5 to 50 pounds ($6.50 to $65.50).

Graham Hunter, the vicar for St. John’s, says about a quarter of all voluntary donations are now via contactless payments.

He adopted the new technology after noticing open-air market traders in London using contactless readers for payments.

“In everyday life, people go into cafes and into supermarkets and they’re used to paying with contactless all the time,” he said.

His congregation includes 23-year-old Zoe Mathias, who rarely carries cash, unless she’s lost her debit card.

“I’m very glad that our church has entered into the 21st century with contactless payment,” she said.

The money raised is used on building upkeep, children’s activities and to stage events for the local community.

Hunter said the church realized it had to make up for a drop in cash donations and that technology is helping to do that.

He hopes embracing innovations like contactless card payments will show churches can be modern, forward-thinking places. St. John’s once installed a free public Wi-Fi zone in its garden, so passersby could surf the web while on their lunch break.

“The Bible describes god as the chief technical officer, the CTO, a chief technician, an architect of all that is to come,” Hunter said. “So, God is creative and produces new technologies and so should we.”

Los Angeles • UCLA has landed forward Shareef O’Neal.

The son of retired NBA great Shaquille O’Neal signed a grant-in-aid to attend UCLA this fall. He will enroll in summer school this month.

The 6-foot-10, 220-pounder from Los Angeles played the last two seasons at Crossroads High in nearby Santa Monica. As a senior last season, O’Neal helped the school win the CIF Division II state title for the first time since 1997. He had 29 points, 17 rebounds and five blocks in the title game. O’Neal averaged 27 points as a senior while Crossroads finished with a 25-9 record.

UCLA coach Steve Alford says O’Neal brings a “terrific combination of size, skill and athleticism.”

O’Neal joins fellow freshmen Jules Bernard, Moses Brown, Tyger Campbell, Kenneth Nwuba and David Singleton in UCLA’s incoming class.

Shaquille O’Neal starred at LSU before going on to the NBA, where he won four championships including three with the Los Angeles Lakers.

Provo • With Beau Hoge having been moved to running back last week, most of the praise and attention in the BYU starting quarterback derby of 2018 has been focused on senior Tanner Mangum and sophomore Joe Critchlow.

Those two have the most college football experience playing the position, by far.

Mangum was the only quarterback made available at Media Day in June and was lauded by quarterbacks coach Aaron Roderick and offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes for the way he dropped more than 20 pounds and earned the respect of his teammates with his efforts to come back from an Achilles injury. Critchlow is the odds-on favorite to start on Sept. 1 against Arizona, according to an offshore sports book, and assistant coach Ed Lamb called him the next all-time great QB at BYU while speaking to alumni in Cedar City a week before camp opened.

But don’t be fooled. It is looking more and more like the two main candidates for the starting spot are Mangum and the true freshman, Zach Wilson.

“We are still not [willing] to say anything right now [regarding the quarterback derby],” head coach Kalani Sitake said after Monday’s practice.

However, in the media viewing portion of practice Monday, Mangum, Wilson and supposed fourth-stringer Jaren Hall were the only quarterbacks who took snaps in the team (11 on 11) drills. Critchlow did not get any reps.

Critchlow was not his usual smiling self when he left the practice field a few minutes before the other QBs stopped working for the day. Let the speculating begin.

Asked if anything could be deduced from Critchlow getting no reps in the day’s final team session, Grimes shook his head.

“No, you can’t read anything into that,” he said. “We are putting different guys with different groups at different times and on different days. Like one day, somebody might be going with the first group at right tackle, or at slot receiver. And next day it may be somebody else. So we are just working on a rotation.”

Critchlow did get his share of throws in the 7-on-7 work later in the practice.

Wilson, who graduated early from Corner Canyon High in Draper so he could participate in spring ball, has sparkled in the portions of the camp that have been open to reporters, and has also looked sharp in other drills, according to observers who have seen all or most of every practice. He was made available for interviews Monday for the first time in preseason camp.

Arriving for spring camp “was the best decision I have ever made,” Wilson said. “Coming in here, I learned the offense the same time as everybody else.”

Friday, Wilson threw three straight outstanding passes to Moroni Laulu-Pututau, Neil Pau’u and Matt Bushman. Monday, he connected with Talon Shumway and threw nice balls that were dropped by Bushman and running back Riley Burt before nice tosses to Kyle Griffits, Dylan Collie and Inoke Lotulelei.

Asked where he sits on the depth chart, Wilson just smiled and shook his head.

“When [coach] says go in, you go in,” he said. “You take the plays you get and do as well as you can.”

Wilson also shook his head when asked if coaches have told the candidates the timetable to name the starter.

“I just focus on myself. I really don’t have much to lose,” he said. “I am 18 years old. I just come out and do me, don’t worry about anyone else. Just stick with the offense. Don’t try to do more than I am capable of doing and just let the coaches decide.”

Grimes said he still hopes to have some separation in the near future.“We are only a few days into practice right now,” he said. “So it is still too early to say. Ideally, we would like to be there at the end of two weeks. If we can be there sooner, great. If it takes a little bit longer, it takes a little bit longer. But naming the right guy is more important than doing it at a specific time.”

For the time being, it appears the Cougars have found their two right guys.

The Pro Football Hall of Fame induction ceremony was Saturday night, and Terrell Owens wasn’t there, choosing to hold an induction ceremony of his very own in Chattanooga, Tenn. It was, he said, an act of protest: In Owens’s eyes, the Hall of Fame’s voters kept him out of Canton for three years after his initial eligibility because of his character, which goes against the Hall’s rules that state only on-field accomplishments must be considered. So he inducted himself during a speech at his college gymnasium.

"I'm not going to do a dog-and-pony show and smile in people's faces and be fake," Owens told reporters afterward. "I had to harbor all these feelings all these years. And this is the way I needed to do it. Chattanooga gave me an opportunity to do it my way."

But according to Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio, the Hall of Fame is considering a rule change that would make Owens's protest a one-time-only affair, at least in theory: Florio cited sources who suggested the Hall may force future candidates for enshrinement to commit to show up for the induction ceremony before the final vote is taken.

"The plan, as another source put it, would consist of having the 25 semifinalists sign an agreement that they would show up if selected," Florio wrote. "It's currently believed that he adjustment to the procedures is virtually certain to happen."

Florio’s sources told him that Owens’s protest was not well received by other Hall of Famers who were in attendance for the festivities this past weekend, with “most if not all” agreeing that they had to stop it before it became a trend. Left undecided, however, is what will happen if the new rule is enacted and a candidate either declines to sign the agreement or declines to show up after he’s voted in.

Peter King of NBC Sports, one of the Hall's 48 voters, seemed to back up Florio's sources in his Monday morning column, gently taking Owens to task for his boycott.

"It's brave to get elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame and not show up? It's not brave. It's a choice," he wrote. "I might think it's ridiculous that he skipped the induction in Canton, but it's his choice; Owens shouldn't be forever beaten up over this. But absolutely he shouldn't be celebrated or feted for doing something gutsy either. Listening to his speech in Chattanooga, I could hear the anger against the 48-member board of selectors, of which I am one, and of which 46 are members of the news media. I do not understand how boycotting the ceremony - because of his anger against 46 people who are not his family, who are not peers, who are not his teammates, who not his new teammates in the Hall of Fame - does anything for Owens other than making him appear forever small and vindictive, and vindictive against people who mean so little in his world."

(Although King also wrote that "absolutely, unequivocally" candidates should not have to commit to showing up in Canton to be selected for the Hall.)

Owens, in any case, has a point: A player who ranks second in NFL history in receiving yards, third in receiving touchdowns and eighth in receptions should be a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Randy Moss ranks below Owens in two of those categories - and finished his career with just three more touchdown catches - and he got in on the first ballot. Save for Jerry Rice, Owens' numbers are better than the other modern-era wideouts who got in on their first attempt (the full list: Rice, Moss, Lance Alworth, Raymond Berry, Steve Largent and Paul Warfield). It’s fairly inconceivable that Owens did not join that list.

An Enoch police corporal told investigators he had “mentally purchased” the idea that he would have to shoot Ivonne Casimiro when he first arrived at the Parowan truck stop where she was suspected of breaking into cars.

But Corporal Jeremy Dunn was not justified in shooting her as she held a screwdriver and argued with officers June 28, Iron County prosecutors ruled Monday.

Casimiro is not the first person Dunn has shot — and in video of the confrontation, he can be heard asking another officer: “Do you want me to take her out like last time?”

However, Iron County Attorney Scott Garrett wrote in a letter to Enoch Police, “It cannot be objectively stated that the officers or anyone else were in danger of death or serious bodily injury.”

When Dunn arrived at the TA Travel Center, where multiple people were reported to be breaking into cars, he had learned that another officer already had one of the suspects at gunpoint, Garrett wrote.

Parowan Police Sgt. Mike Berg said that a woman — Casimiro — had swiped at him twice with a screwdriver she was carrying. Berg wasn’t hit, and he backed away while lowering his gun and talking with Casimiro, who was “not making a lot of sense,” Garrett wrote.

In the video, Dunn walks toward Berg, who is no longer holding Casimiro at gunpoint but standing near the open door of a pickup truck and looking inside of it. Two suspects, one of them Casimiro, are standing a few yards away from Berg. Dunn pulls out his gun as he approaches.

Dunn orders the man with Casimiro to step away from her and Casimiro objects, turning to talk to the man. Dunn raises his gun toward Casimiro, who steps toward Dunn and tells him to “go ahead and blow.”

“You come [at] me with that knife,” Dunn tells Casimiro, possibly referring to the screwdriver, "I guarantee I’ll smoke you. I guarantee it.”

As Casimiro continues to talk angrily, Dunn says to Berg, “I can take her out like last time. Do you want me to take her out like last time?”

In 2012, Dunn shot and wounded George Osborn Lafayette Fletcher, who was reported to be fighting with his mother while he was holding a knife. Fletcher moved toward officers “in a threatening manner” and Dunn shot him in the leg, police wrote at the time. Berg also was at the scene of that shooting, which was ruled as justified.

Berg urged Dunn to fire a Taser at Casimiro, but the Taser failed.

“Did it work? Did it work? I don’t think so,” Casimiro says as the Taser clicks repeatedly.

“Didn’t work, did it?” Dunn says calmly. “OK, that’s all I got for Taser.”

Five seconds later, he sighs and steps forward.

Casimiro, holding the screwdriver, looks at him and says “What’s up?” when Dunn fires three shots at Casimiro’s legs.

Firing at a person’s extremities goes against police training, in which officers are instructed to aim at a person’s “center mass.”

“However, [Dunn] felt that he was skilled enough to make this shot, as he had done it before,” Garrett wrote.

Two of the shots struck Casimiro. Her injuries were not life threatening, investigators have said.

After the shooting, Corporal Dunn said “he had 'mentally purchased' the idea that he would have to shoot Casimiro when he first arrived on scene as he had been informed that she was armed and combative and had taken a swipe with a screwdriver at Sergeant Berg," Garrett wrote.

But at the moment of the shooting, Casimiro posed no threat, Garrett wrote.

“Casimiro was not fleeing, had not made any verbal threats towards officers and there was sufficient distance between Casimiro and any bystander to remove any imminent threat of harm,” Garrett wrote. “It appears that the situation was manageable at the time Corporal Dunn arrived and it would have seemed reasonable for officers to continue de-escalation tactics until the situation could be more fully contained. Corporal Dunn was only on scene for three minutes before firing shots.”

Although Garrett found the shooting to be unjustified, Dunn will not be charged because “the State would not be able to prove the requisite criminal intent,” Garrett wrote.

Dunn’s future with Enoch Police is unclear. Chief Jackson Ames said he was releasing a news statement on Garrett’s finding on Tuesday and would not comment on whether Dunn would remain employed.

Hundreds of people were forced to evacuate Monday in Sanpete County, where a wildfire burned several homes.

The fire started at the Black Hawk Subdivision near Indianola, then spread to the town of Milburn, according to Fox13.

“Everything we've ever grown up with is burning. We've grown up here all of our lives and to see it burn like this is really heartbreaking,” resident Jessica Arnoldson told Fox13. Arnoldson lives a quarter mile from the fire.

Several communities are evacuating and even more are on standby, and the flames appeared to have torn through several structures Monday evening.

Garry Ferre was helping his son evacuate.

“They got a whole bunch of homes they've already burned up, a couple of them up there on the hill,” Ferre told Fox13.

The fire had spread 500 acres as of Monday night, fire crews estimated; smoky air made precise measurements impossible.

See more at FOX 13.

Editor’s note: The Salt Lake Tribune and FOX 13 are content-sharing partners.

Hordes of headbangers amassed in Germany for the world’s largest heavy metal festival — among them, two elderly men who apparently left their retirement home to rock out, police said.

Authorities said the pair went missing from their retirement home in Dithmarscher, a rural district in Schleswig-Holstein, and were found to have traveled about 25 miles to Wacken Open Air, a days-long festival not far from Hamburg.

Peter Berndt, a spokesman for the Itzehoe police department, said the two men were thought to have made their way to the festival by foot and public transport, though it is unclear when exactly they arrived in Wacken and how much time they spent at the festival.

Authorities told the Deutsche Welle that retirement home personnel had alerted police that the two men were missing.

The men — who were not identified by authorities — were located “disoriented and dazed” at the Wacken at 3 a.m. Saturday, police said.

“They were then taken to the medical tent on the festival site and were sent back by taxi at around 6:30 a.m.,” Berndt told The Washington Post on Monday. “We had to explain to them why they had to go home — but in the end, they went back voluntarily.”

Wacken Open Air — which bills itself as “the Metal Mecca” — draws about 75,000 metalheads from all over the world each year, according to the festival’s Facebook page. Among this year’s scheduled performers: Walking Dead on Broadway, Judas Priest, Arch Enemy, Cannibal Corpse and Die from Sorrow.

Police said in a press release that officers in a patrol car spotted the men, “who were apparently intrigued with the metal festival.”

"Of course, their disappearance was noticed at the nursing home and their swift return there was organized after police picked them up," the statement said.

But the authorities added that the men "were reluctant to go home, so a patrol car accompanied the contracted taxi as a precaution."

A photo showing other elderly people rocking out at the festival was posted on Twitter.

Betreutes Wacken.... keine Diskriminierung von Senioren 🤘🏼🤘🏼🎶🎶😀 pic.twitter.com/wkPu1cCdCV

— Verena (@VerenaVoegeler) August 4, 2018

Wacken Open Air responded: "Seriously? How cool is that, please?"

Then, the festival added in English: “You’re never too old too rock.”

Emmett Till's black, broken body was plucked from the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi days after his killing in Aug. 1955, a heavy cotton gin fan tied on his neck with barbed wire.

It took 19 days for two white men, Roy Bryant and his brother-in-law J.W. Milam, to be acquitted of murder by an all-white jury, which deliberated for less than an hour.

Then it took 52 years for historical markers to be erected at locations related to the teenager's death, which galvanized the civil rights movement after the acquittal.

And now, it just took 35 days for someone to shoot at the sign marking where Till's body was pulled from the river. Again.

Till was lynched, shot and tortured before his death, and a grim trail of his final moments is marked by signs installed by the Emmett Till Interpretive Center, a museum supported by Tallahatchie County.

But the sign — the third iteration after the first was stolen and the second was destroyed by gunfire — apparently was pierced by four bullets on July 26, five weeks after it was dedicated, center co-founder Patrick Weems said.

The marker has drawn visitors to the site outside Glendora, Mississippi, the final stop on a civil rights movement driving tour across the Mississippi Delta.

It has also become a beacon for racist expressions of violence, and a signal that work toward justice and equality remains unfinished, Weems told The Washington Post on Sunday.

"We didn't deal with the root reasons in 1955. And we're still having to deal with that," Weems said. "The same systems that allowed these signs to be vandalized are the same systems that allowed Emmett Till to be murdered."

Till, a 14-year-old visiting from Chicago, was killed after he was accused of whistling at and making sexual advances toward a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, during an interaction at Bryant's grocery store in Money, Mississippi. She recanted her story decades later. No one was ever jailed for his death.

Till's mother, Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mobley, decided to hold an open-casket funeral, and photos of Till's mangled face published in Jet magazine sparked outrage and mobilization in black communities nationwide.

The moment was so pivotal to the civil rights movement that Till's casket is displayed at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington.

What is left outside museums are the sites that bear the legacy of Till's gruesome death. He was lynched in a barn, which still stands, Weems said, but it's unmarked. Even many locals do not know its significance.

That makes the signs important. The county adopted a 2007 resolution to put up the signs, and in 2008, the riverside sign was stolen. Tire tracks leading from the site led authorities to conclude that it probably had been thrown into the water, as Till had been. It was never recovered.

In 2016, a photo of the sign covered in a rash of bullet holes went viral. It is now on display at the interpretive center.

The riverside sign has been a frequent target because of its isolation, Weems thinks. It's 10 minutes outside town and two miles down a gravel road.

Vandalizing the sign, then, is not some spontaneous act. One has to really want to shoot it, Weems said.

It is not clear who is responsible for the years of vandalism. A spokesperson for the Tallahatchie County Sheriff's Office could not be reached.

The interpretive center is seeking a replacement sign made of reinforced metal, he said. There is also an interactive app and website being developed that will populate a map with the sites, so people learning about Till's legacy could visit them even if all the signs were destroyed.

But replacing the sign is beside the point, and the vandalism itself tells a story about Till, said Dave Tell, a communications professor at the University of Kansas and the author of the forthcoming book, "Remembering Emmett Till."

The sign has been a target since it was dedicated, and people in the community have widely interpreted the act as evidence of persistent racism and avoidance of Till's brutal killing and its legacy, he told The Post.

"That has been an issue in the Delta since [the killing]. People were afraid to talk about him then," Tell said. Some have ascribed the vandalism to teenagers, but the persistence and routine of the destruction points to deeper social issues, he added.

Tell gives talks about Till nationwide, and said a photo of the sign struck with dozens of bullets "is as powerful as an image I have."

It moves people, he said.

"It's not just a 1955 story. It's still something that matters in the present. Replacing it means erasing the material evidence of the way the story still grips us."

If it were up to him, Tell said, he would leave the sign up. Bullet holes and all.

Like the open casket, it forces us to look.

Richard Davis might reconsider his idea that the anonymity of a woman and her spiritual leaders involved in a breastfeeding controversy is either “grandstanding” or “obfuscation.” Neither does anonymity equate with a lack of “the courage of her convictions.”

It is clear from the articles that she concealed everyone’s identity because she is seeking understanding, solutions and reconciliation rather than retribution. That merciful approach is taught by Scripture that her faith and mine hold in common. 1 Peter 4:8: “And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.” She courageously sought to educate people and find a remedy while at the same time covering identities so as to shield others from adverse publicity. In order to do so, she also had to remain anonymous.

This takes courage and holds risk. Without publicizing identities, she could be defenseless against retaliation. I know. A prestigious institution I served for 20 years asked me to do something illegal. I refused and was systematically harassed. If I spoke up, they would lose essential certification, leading to job loss among low-paid employees and hardship for their care receivers. I tried to address the problem quietly to prevent this. As a result, I suffered four years of extreme harassment aimed at forcing me out. Finally, they trumped up an accusation and fired me.

I could not defend myself unless I named names to a government agency. If I did so, innocent people would be hurt. My primary goal was the well-being of co-workers and care receivers. Hers is reconciliation and growth in her church. Both are sometimes better served by anonymity. Please don’t be so quick to condemn that.

Julia C.S. Vernon, Grantsville

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