Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 26, 1993 TAG: 9303260400
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From wire reports
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
PEOPLE
Dave Thomas, the folksy pitchman for his Wendy's restaurants, did without a high school diploma until last year.Thomas, 60, passed a high school equivalency test and was graduating Thursday from Coconut Creek High School near his Broward County, Fla., home.
Thomas, a high school dropout who founded the chain in 1969, said he grew interested in earning the equivalency certificate while on a 26-city tour to promote his book "Dave's Way."
He said people on the tour asked about the contradiction between his talks on the importance of education and his lack of a diploma.
"They kept asking me why I say education is so important, yet I never finished school," he said. "I didn't have a good answer, so I decided to get my high school diploma."
A jury verdict in Los Angeles ordering actress Kim Basinger to pay $8.92 million in damages for backing out of a movie at the last minute reverberated through Hollywood on Wednesday as industry insiders pondered the implications for the art of the deal.
Basinger was ordered to pay for the lost revenues suffered by first-time producer Carl Mazzocone, who mortgaged his house to finance the movie "Boxing Helena."
Birthdays and anniversaries didn't work, so Rhonda Starling switched to the death dates of relatives in picking lottery numbers. The 36-year-old Bluefield, Va., woman won $25,000 in the West Virginia Lottery.
"All I can say is, they must have been watching over me," Starling said after matching all six numbers in Friday's drawing for West Virginia's Cash 25 game: 4, 6, 10, 15, 16 and 19. "I've tried using birthdays and anniversaries and everything else. So this time I used the dates of deaths from brothers, sisters-in-law, aunts and my mother."