You won't be alone if you doubt that David Wise can turn his plans for a long-neglected part of downtown Moline into reality. Plenty of other people have questioned whether he can do it.

"I had a lot of skepticism that I could pull this off," Wise said last week. "I've been hearing that I've made a believer out of some skeptics."

One of those skeptics phrased it even more forcefully.

"He made a liar out of me," said Jim Bowman, executive director of Renew Moline. "I didn't think at first that he could pull it off. ... The odds were overwhelmingly against him to succeed."

Jim Graham, former station manager for KWQC-TV6 and current goodwill ambassador and president emeritus for the station, has been awarded the 2007 Governor's Volunteer Award in Iowa in the category of "individual volunteer's exceptional achievement or contribution to [an] agency/organization." The nomination for Graham, submitted by United Way, included the following excerpt: "Jim exemplifies the meaning behind his station's tagline 'The Station That Cares for You' as a tireless and enthusiastic champion for youth in our community. Through United Way, Jim Graham served as a founding member of the Success by 6 Governing Body, led a record-breaking United Way campaign, and currently serves on the United Way board of directors as a co-chair for the Successful Children & Youth Focus Team - all while serving in leadership roles with Boy Scouts and organizationally leading efforts to support the American Red Cross, Race for the Cure, Gilda's Club, Habitat for Humanity, Toys for Tots, Scott County Kids, and the Student Hunger Drive."

The federal Senate Energy & Water Appropriations Subcommittee approved $1 million for a flood-control project in Davenport in its Fiscal Year 2008 appropriations bill. The legislation is expected to be approved by the full Senate Appropriations Committee by the time you read this. It will then need to be passed by both the House and Senate before it becomes law. The funds will be used to complete pre-construction engineering and design activities and to initiate construction to provide flood protection to a water-treatment facility in Davenport.

Sean O'Harrow, PhD, will become the new executive director of the Figge Art Museum beginning August 20, 2007. O'Harrow, a U.S. citizen currently living in England, has been the development director for Catharine's College at the University of Cambridge, is an art historian with a strong background in business and finance, has taught art history and architecture at American and British universities, and has worked in several museums in the United States. He earned his undergraduate degree in History of Art from Harvard and his doctoral degree in History of Architecture from Cambridge, and his specific area of scholarship is late-15th and early-16th century English and French architecture.