Vegas concert, vow renewal go off without a hitch

They weren’t sure what to expect.

After Anna and Mike Cyr of Leeds won a national contest from “The Talk” TV show for a trip to Las Vegas to see Shania Twain in concert and to renew their vows on 12/12/12, show organizers relayed the barest of details.

Turned out the Cyrs got a limo ride. A beautiful hotel room. They were given flowers and renewed their vows in a Caesars Palace chapel.

“We were actually surprised with how lovely it was,” Anna Cyr said.

Cyr had nominated her husband for the “Still the One” contest this summer. Married 29 years, they’d had only two weekend getaways as a couple and had overcome several challenges: a car accident that had left Mike in a coma, and two daughters born with a rare, grave genetic disease. Through it all, she told the show, he had been her rock.

During the trip they received two goody bags, one with champagne and spa coupons, and one from Twain with a signed program.

“Shania flew in on a motorcycle and then she rode in on two different horses during the show,” Cyr said. “When she did ‘Still the One’ it was on a white horse and I was just a sobbing mess. It was great.”

It was a lot of fun, she said. “Just the fact that we were getting away, just the two of us, and really could just to focus on each other — that was huge no matter where we were.”

— Kathryn Skelton

Bells toll for victims

Shortly before 9:30 a.m. Friday, Androscoggin County Superior Court Justice MaryGay Kennedy poked her head into the clerk’s office on the ground floor of the county building to say she had asked the building’s maintenance crew to ring the tower bell 26 times for the victims of the Newtown, Conn., shooting a week earlier.

County building workers and inhabitants streamed outside onto the landing facing Turner Street to better hear the bells as they began to toll.

But their peals were soon drowned out by the syncopated honking of the horn of a taxi cab as it rolled down Turner Street and slowed to a stop at the curb directly in front of the steps to the county building. A couple emerged from the cab, the father holding a baby carrier. The cab’s horn continued its beeping. The traffic light turned from red to green and the beeps trailed off.

The couple reached the top of the steps as the building’s bells fell silent once again.

Asked why the cabby was honking repeatedly, the man holding the baby carrier said the driver told him he was beeping 26 times for the victims of the shooting in Newtown, Conn.

— Christopher Williams