Without so much as a bark, a tussle is brewing over whether or not Iola will see an off-leash paw park on flood lands in the south part of town.
One neighbor, Howard Ross, is against it, and brought a petition to Iola city commissioners Sept. 22 proclaiming his position.
Another group of Iolans, though, has been working since summer to make the park a reality. Until recently, the city of Iola and Thrive Allen Counnty seemed to be on board as well.
Dog parks are not a new concept. There are nine listed in Kansas on the Web site, dogfriendly.com.
They range in size from one acre in Manhattan to 30 acres in Lawrence. Most are seven acres or more.
Iola’s paw park is proposed to be 1.5 acres at the very south end of Washington street, on land acquired by the city through the Federal Emergency Management Agency process after the flood of 2007. There is one house remaining across the street from the park that is scheduled to be torn down, Ross said.
Off-leash parks have gained popularity throughout the country as a means for pet owners and their companion animals to socialize in a more natural setting. Supporters say that when dogs meet off leash in neutral territory, aggression is reduced. And when busy people come together over a common interest, friendships are promoted, benefiting mental health, studies show.
Typically, dog parks are open for use, like other parks, from dawn to dusk. They are self-patrolled by users, much as playgrounds are monitored by parents of children using them.
The parks are fenced and owners must be present with their dogs.
Dogs that are aggressive towards other dogs or people are not allowed. In most parks, owners are legally responsible for any problems caused by their dogs.
Dogs in heat and young puppies (typically those four months and younger) are not allowed. Dogs must be current on vaccines. To curb potential conflicts, food stuffs are discouraged as well.
And yes, dog owners must pack plastic bags to remove feces. The city had agreed to provide, and empty, trash cans to contain the waste.
Although a dozen people including Ross signed his petition against the park, not all south side neighbors are against the plan.
Wilma Krokstrom has been actively pursuing the park concept since summer. She already walks her dog in the neighborhood, and found the proposed sight to be ideal.
It has trees, shade and is off the beaten path, she noted. It abuts a dead-end street so through traffic is not a consideration. And, because of the flood, there are no neighbors immediately adjacent to the park.
It seemed so certain a location that local civil engineering firm Shafer, Klein and Warren drew up — at no cost to the city — a conceptual site sketch including fences, paths and benches for the park.
In fact, Krokstrom said, most neighbors she talks to while out walking also favor the idea. Until Ross spoke to commissioners, though, she had not considered collecting those names on a petition. Now, she is doing so.
There could be yet another bug in the bonnet. Also at the Sept. 22 commission meeting, the city opted to pay Landworks Studio of Olathe $25,000 to develop a master “vision” for city land. Another $50,000 for that plan is coming from the Kansas Health Foundation, Thrive Allen County Executive Director David Toland, who pushed for the plan, said.
“Vision Iola will include parks and recreation, trails, the downtown area and signage,” Toland said. “The Vision Iola plan will consider all city-owned lands, including FEMA buyout lands.” That includes the paw park site, Toland said.
Citizen-proposed uses for other city properties include community gardens, an arboretum and ball fields, he said. All those ideas, too, may have to wait until the Olathe company does its work, which will not be until summer of 2010, said Toland.
The city has already decided to construct new multi-purpose recreation fields targeting the soccer community on flood lands adjacent to Riverside Park, City Administrator Judy Brigham said previously. The question now is if the city will go on record as selecting the Washington Street site for the paw park, or choose to wait for the Vision Iola plan to be completed.
Toland said Thrive will hold a meeting on Wednesday at 7 p.m. in the meeting room of Communtiy National Bank. He hopes to discourage proponents from considering the park until the Vision Iola plan is complete, he said.
Nonetheless, supporters continue to collect signatures, and plan to pack the meeting. They intend to take their request to city commissioners soon.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Terrified terrier helped home
(Editor’s note: Italicized portions of this article were penned by Donna Valentine and were written from the perspective of her beloved pet, Mego)
BY ANNE KAZMIERCZAK
Register Reporter
On New Year’s night Donna and Marvin Valentine lost their little dog from North Elm Street, a 12-pound rat terrier cross named Mego. The 20-year-old pooch went out to potty and disappeared into the night. For the next three days, the Valentines and their neighbors searched.
Unknown to them, Mego was safe and warm across town with a family that found her nearly frozen in the street.
It is New Year’s night and I am so cold it’s almost over for me. I am old. I am deaf and almost blind.
I went out to relieve myself and disappeared into dark night. I never wandered off before but this time. I lost my way in nothing but white. White yards, white streets — nothing looks familiar.
I’ll go — I don’t know where — I’ll just go. Maybe they will find me.
MARVIN Valentine let Mego out near 8:30 p.m., his wife Donna said. Knowing the dog needed a few moments, he went back inside for his own rest stop.
When he returned, Mego, who had never ventured further than a neighbor’s front steps, was gone.
“From the day we got her, she was trained. She never went across the street. She’d go next door because Dorothy Eccles lived there and we’d go there, but that’s the only place she’d go,” Donna Valentine said.
On Jan. 1, though, the little dog got disoriented.
“She wanders around the house,” Valentine said of the recent behavior. “If dogs have Alzheimer’s, I think she’s got it.”
MEGO is smaller than a dust mop.
For an hour and a half, Marvin Valentine cruised up and down the alleys in his north side neighborhood. Then “the kids across the street heard him calling,” Donna said. “They came out and they started searching,” too, she said. “They called my granddaughter and she and her husband joined in.”
All told, Donna said, six or eight people were seeking Mego in the bitter cold.
Around midnight, Marvin was forced to give up.
About that same time, Dr. Frank Porter was leaving Allen County Hospital, where he had gone to see some patients.
As he drove down First Street, he noticed the tiny ragamuffin dog at the side of the road, his wife Robyn said.
“My husband found her on his way back from the hospital,” she noted.
“She was almost frozen in the road. She had a rough time in the little time she was out,” Robyn Porter said. “She had blood on her snout and back.”
Here I am lying in the middle of the street, I’m so cold I cannot move. Where is my family?
What’s this? A car stopped. Someone is picking me up. I feel the warmth of the car and a gentleman speaking to me.
I’m somewhere warm; I don’t know where.
I hear water running.
A bath, a nice warm bath, it feels so good on my frozen body. These people are so nice.
DR. PORTER took the dog home. He called his wife from their garage so she could sequester their own three dogs. Indoors, the family bathed Mego and trimmed her fur, and determined she had no major wounds.
“My son had decided she was a dignified older lady and he named her Eleanor,” Porter said. Dylan, 24, was home for the holidays from student teaching at the University of Kansas, Porter said.
Because the dog had no collar, all the Porters could do was wait for Monday, when the Register reopened, to run a found ad. Robyn also sent in a Trading Post ad to run Monday morning.
Nobody called, but Monday night, Frank Porter stopped in to see his friends Max and Janet Nichols. When he told them about the lost terrier, Janet, who works in advertising sales at the Register, told him “someone had come into the Register with an ad about a little dog they lost,” Robyn relayed.
The next day, “before the ad could even run,” Porter said, “I heard on Trading Post” the Valentines’ plea. She immediately called the couple.
“Hello, I’m Mrs. Porter. Doctor Porter found a dog we think is yours. I was listening to the Trading Post and I’m sure we have your little lady. Doctor Porter was leaving the hospital about midnight the first of January and found her lying in the street. He picked her up and brought her home. She had spots of blood on her and was almost frozen but seems to be recuperating. I’ll bring her to you.”
“IT WAS a terrible ordeal for them,” Porter said of the Valentines.
“She was found on First Street, which is only one block from our street, but six blocks from us,” Valentine said, still fretting over what her dog must have endured in the cold.
But although she still has sore paws, Mego seems otherwise unscathed.
“She came home just like she had a little vacation,” Valentine said of Mego’s time with the Porters. While there, the Porters bought her a new red sweatshirt.
“I asked ‘Can I at least pay you for the new coat you got her,’” Valentine said. “And they said ‘No, but you can send a check to the new (Allen County) animal rescue facility.’” Valentine said she would.
“Thank you neighbors, family, Iola Police Department, Trading Post and my heroes, Dr. Porter and family,” Valentine said.
And, she urged, “Please: the next time you see an animal, remember, he or she may be lost and fighting for its last breath. At least stop, call the police or lend a helping hand.”
Porter knows there are other dogs out there missing. She’s looking forward to ACARF’s opening.
“Thank God now we’ll have a place” to coordinate messages about lost and found animals, she said.
As for Mego, “I’m carrying her in and out,” Valentine said. “She’s not leaving my side.”
BY ANNE KAZMIERCZAK
Register Reporter
On New Year’s night Donna and Marvin Valentine lost their little dog from North Elm Street, a 12-pound rat terrier cross named Mego. The 20-year-old pooch went out to potty and disappeared into the night. For the next three days, the Valentines and their neighbors searched.
Unknown to them, Mego was safe and warm across town with a family that found her nearly frozen in the street.
It is New Year’s night and I am so cold it’s almost over for me. I am old. I am deaf and almost blind.
I went out to relieve myself and disappeared into dark night. I never wandered off before but this time. I lost my way in nothing but white. White yards, white streets — nothing looks familiar.
I’ll go — I don’t know where — I’ll just go. Maybe they will find me.
MARVIN Valentine let Mego out near 8:30 p.m., his wife Donna said. Knowing the dog needed a few moments, he went back inside for his own rest stop.
When he returned, Mego, who had never ventured further than a neighbor’s front steps, was gone.
“From the day we got her, she was trained. She never went across the street. She’d go next door because Dorothy Eccles lived there and we’d go there, but that’s the only place she’d go,” Donna Valentine said.
On Jan. 1, though, the little dog got disoriented.
“She wanders around the house,” Valentine said of the recent behavior. “If dogs have Alzheimer’s, I think she’s got it.”
MEGO is smaller than a dust mop.
For an hour and a half, Marvin Valentine cruised up and down the alleys in his north side neighborhood. Then “the kids across the street heard him calling,” Donna said. “They came out and they started searching,” too, she said. “They called my granddaughter and she and her husband joined in.”
All told, Donna said, six or eight people were seeking Mego in the bitter cold.
Around midnight, Marvin was forced to give up.
About that same time, Dr. Frank Porter was leaving Allen County Hospital, where he had gone to see some patients.
As he drove down First Street, he noticed the tiny ragamuffin dog at the side of the road, his wife Robyn said.
“My husband found her on his way back from the hospital,” she noted.
“She was almost frozen in the road. She had a rough time in the little time she was out,” Robyn Porter said. “She had blood on her snout and back.”
Here I am lying in the middle of the street, I’m so cold I cannot move. Where is my family?
What’s this? A car stopped. Someone is picking me up. I feel the warmth of the car and a gentleman speaking to me.
I’m somewhere warm; I don’t know where.
I hear water running.
A bath, a nice warm bath, it feels so good on my frozen body. These people are so nice.
DR. PORTER took the dog home. He called his wife from their garage so she could sequester their own three dogs. Indoors, the family bathed Mego and trimmed her fur, and determined she had no major wounds.
“My son had decided she was a dignified older lady and he named her Eleanor,” Porter said. Dylan, 24, was home for the holidays from student teaching at the University of Kansas, Porter said.
Because the dog had no collar, all the Porters could do was wait for Monday, when the Register reopened, to run a found ad. Robyn also sent in a Trading Post ad to run Monday morning.
Nobody called, but Monday night, Frank Porter stopped in to see his friends Max and Janet Nichols. When he told them about the lost terrier, Janet, who works in advertising sales at the Register, told him “someone had come into the Register with an ad about a little dog they lost,” Robyn relayed.
The next day, “before the ad could even run,” Porter said, “I heard on Trading Post” the Valentines’ plea. She immediately called the couple.
“Hello, I’m Mrs. Porter. Doctor Porter found a dog we think is yours. I was listening to the Trading Post and I’m sure we have your little lady. Doctor Porter was leaving the hospital about midnight the first of January and found her lying in the street. He picked her up and brought her home. She had spots of blood on her and was almost frozen but seems to be recuperating. I’ll bring her to you.”
“IT WAS a terrible ordeal for them,” Porter said of the Valentines.
“She was found on First Street, which is only one block from our street, but six blocks from us,” Valentine said, still fretting over what her dog must have endured in the cold.
But although she still has sore paws, Mego seems otherwise unscathed.
“She came home just like she had a little vacation,” Valentine said of Mego’s time with the Porters. While there, the Porters bought her a new red sweatshirt.
“I asked ‘Can I at least pay you for the new coat you got her,’” Valentine said. “And they said ‘No, but you can send a check to the new (Allen County) animal rescue facility.’” Valentine said she would.
“Thank you neighbors, family, Iola Police Department, Trading Post and my heroes, Dr. Porter and family,” Valentine said.
And, she urged, “Please: the next time you see an animal, remember, he or she may be lost and fighting for its last breath. At least stop, call the police or lend a helping hand.”
Porter knows there are other dogs out there missing. She’s looking forward to ACARF’s opening.
“Thank God now we’ll have a place” to coordinate messages about lost and found animals, she said.
As for Mego, “I’m carrying her in and out,” Valentine said. “She’s not leaving my side.”
"Date with Doom" — this one, you can laugh at
We’ve all gone on bad dates — for some, it seems that’s all they’ve had.
That universal premise is the theme behind five one-act plays making up Allen County Community College’s spring offering, “A Date with Doom.”
Never mind that “Doom” is a character’s name, and for that matter, so are Miss Right and Mr. Wrong.
The skits use such simple word play and “we’ve all been there” scenarios to elicit laughter from the audience.
Four of the plays were written by V.B. Leghorn. The titular play was written by former ACCC student Nic Olson.
In it, a jaded reporter, out on her “first date in three years,” waits at a restaurant for the arrival of her blind date. She orders “a martini minus everything but the vodka and the ice, in a much bigger glass.” The waiter politely tells her this is called “vodka on the rocks,” to which she insists “Yeah, but if I order ‘vodka on the rocks’ I don’t get the olive and the girly umbrella.”
Who hasn’t been this persnickety at least once in their life?
Lindsey Jarvis plays the cynical Nora Norris, a reporter for the “Daily Celestial Object.” “The “Daily Planet” was taken,” she said wryly.
She tells the waiter, Paul Minor, her date is “some sort of doctor.” After checking the foyer, he returns insisting she have one more drink.
Turns out her date is a wanna-be super villain.
Dr. Doom is played with a light touch by Paul Vernon. His side-kick, “Neil the henchman,” elicits big laughs when Nora asks him what his special skill is. “I know kung fu!” he states, posing. The audience broke up.
Date with Doom, despite its super-hero context, is filled with realistic characters. Who hasn’t had that bad blind date, or known someone with a weird “side-kick” buddy who always there, just loitering?
Leghorn’s plays were similar.
In “The Sacrifice of Dating,” Nachele Gonsalez plays Leslie, an otherwise happy woman pining for a mate. Debra Francis appears as the whacky fairy-godmother Daria, with plunger instead of wand, and implores Leslie to “Tell me what you want in a man and I’ll deliver.”
As she enters her most desired traits into a dating web site, she quips, “This is great — it’s like ‘Build a Bear,’ only with man parts!”
It’s a hilarious line. Anyone who has lived in a larger city knows, computer dating is de rigueur — and while you might type in your wishes, it’s rarely what you get. But this is theater, and Daria provides Leslie’s perfect man.
After a while, though, the magic wears off. Leslie is disillusioned. “He likes to cuddle,” she complains to her best friend. “And he takes me to dinner every night.”
“McDonald’s?” her friend asks. “No,” Leslie wavers. “Steak and lobster.”
Her friend gives her an appropriate scowl, to which she whines, “But I’ve gained ten pounds!”
“Speed Dating” parodies the popular craze of the five-minute get-to-know-you round-robin style of meeting singles.
One woman queries the man at her table, “If you could be a farm animal, what would you be?”
“How should I know,” he answers, “I’m from Brooklyn.”
“Speed Dating” rapidly shows the obvious differences in some people that make for an incompatible — but funny — match.
“Dating Service” is more about its proprietess, Miss Right, and her inflexibility, than real dating services.
She favors clients who are right-wing, writers, like right whales and Dudley Do-right. When one client writes left-handed, she is booted from the office with the proclamation, “you just can’t be right!’
Soon, however, Miss Right is wooed by Mr. wrong: “Daniel Wrong,” he says, introducing himself.
Mr. Wrong encourages Miss Right to live a little. “You don’t have to be right all the time,” he insists. Like some, though, she insists, “Oh, but I do!”
In “The Dating Game,” a contestant named Lucy walks in off the street. At first confused by the questions she is given to ask, she decides to take matters into her own hands.
“If you could change something about Bachelor No. 1,” she asks, “what would it be?”
“It’s a toss up” replies Bachelor No. 2, “between his looks and his attitude.”
Such zingers fly throughout the plays, and the audience responded with guffaws.
Between each act, the theater bounced with up-tempo “love songs,” if tunes such as the Beatles “Come Together” and Ricky Martin’s “Living la Vida Loca” can be so construed. They mirrored the quirkiness in the plays, reflecting the characters’ somewhat-flawed natures — which of course mirrors the diaspora of personalities found in any community.
If we didn’t relate, we wouldn’t find it funny.
That universal premise is the theme behind five one-act plays making up Allen County Community College’s spring offering, “A Date with Doom.”
Never mind that “Doom” is a character’s name, and for that matter, so are Miss Right and Mr. Wrong.
The skits use such simple word play and “we’ve all been there” scenarios to elicit laughter from the audience.
Four of the plays were written by V.B. Leghorn. The titular play was written by former ACCC student Nic Olson.
In it, a jaded reporter, out on her “first date in three years,” waits at a restaurant for the arrival of her blind date. She orders “a martini minus everything but the vodka and the ice, in a much bigger glass.” The waiter politely tells her this is called “vodka on the rocks,” to which she insists “Yeah, but if I order ‘vodka on the rocks’ I don’t get the olive and the girly umbrella.”
Who hasn’t been this persnickety at least once in their life?
Lindsey Jarvis plays the cynical Nora Norris, a reporter for the “Daily Celestial Object.” “The “Daily Planet” was taken,” she said wryly.
She tells the waiter, Paul Minor, her date is “some sort of doctor.” After checking the foyer, he returns insisting she have one more drink.
Turns out her date is a wanna-be super villain.
Dr. Doom is played with a light touch by Paul Vernon. His side-kick, “Neil the henchman,” elicits big laughs when Nora asks him what his special skill is. “I know kung fu!” he states, posing. The audience broke up.
Date with Doom, despite its super-hero context, is filled with realistic characters. Who hasn’t had that bad blind date, or known someone with a weird “side-kick” buddy who always there, just loitering?
Leghorn’s plays were similar.
In “The Sacrifice of Dating,” Nachele Gonsalez plays Leslie, an otherwise happy woman pining for a mate. Debra Francis appears as the whacky fairy-godmother Daria, with plunger instead of wand, and implores Leslie to “Tell me what you want in a man and I’ll deliver.”
As she enters her most desired traits into a dating web site, she quips, “This is great — it’s like ‘Build a Bear,’ only with man parts!”
It’s a hilarious line. Anyone who has lived in a larger city knows, computer dating is de rigueur — and while you might type in your wishes, it’s rarely what you get. But this is theater, and Daria provides Leslie’s perfect man.
After a while, though, the magic wears off. Leslie is disillusioned. “He likes to cuddle,” she complains to her best friend. “And he takes me to dinner every night.”
“McDonald’s?” her friend asks. “No,” Leslie wavers. “Steak and lobster.”
Her friend gives her an appropriate scowl, to which she whines, “But I’ve gained ten pounds!”
“Speed Dating” parodies the popular craze of the five-minute get-to-know-you round-robin style of meeting singles.
One woman queries the man at her table, “If you could be a farm animal, what would you be?”
“How should I know,” he answers, “I’m from Brooklyn.”
“Speed Dating” rapidly shows the obvious differences in some people that make for an incompatible — but funny — match.
“Dating Service” is more about its proprietess, Miss Right, and her inflexibility, than real dating services.
She favors clients who are right-wing, writers, like right whales and Dudley Do-right. When one client writes left-handed, she is booted from the office with the proclamation, “you just can’t be right!’
Soon, however, Miss Right is wooed by Mr. wrong: “Daniel Wrong,” he says, introducing himself.
Mr. Wrong encourages Miss Right to live a little. “You don’t have to be right all the time,” he insists. Like some, though, she insists, “Oh, but I do!”
In “The Dating Game,” a contestant named Lucy walks in off the street. At first confused by the questions she is given to ask, she decides to take matters into her own hands.
“If you could change something about Bachelor No. 1,” she asks, “what would it be?”
“It’s a toss up” replies Bachelor No. 2, “between his looks and his attitude.”
Such zingers fly throughout the plays, and the audience responded with guffaws.
Between each act, the theater bounced with up-tempo “love songs,” if tunes such as the Beatles “Come Together” and Ricky Martin’s “Living la Vida Loca” can be so construed. They mirrored the quirkiness in the plays, reflecting the characters’ somewhat-flawed natures — which of course mirrors the diaspora of personalities found in any community.
If we didn’t relate, we wouldn’t find it funny.
Gardening a family affair for Culvers
Two years ago, Iola was advertising availability of lands acquired during the 2007 flood buyout. Donna Culver, at the corner of Rock and South Washington, took advantage to attain a lease on a nearby plot that she has used to grow corn, cabbage, squash and more last year and this.
Gardening went so well last year, in fact, that she doubled the size of her plot this year, thanks to the help of friends with a tractor and pull-behind tiller.
Culver also has regular assistance from her son Dan, who on Thursday morning was busy hoeing up weeds, removing maple seedlings and wondering what had gotten into his cucumbers.
“It’s probably a cutworm,” the 51-year-old said.
Leaves were neatly sheared off, but not devoured as would happen if an animal had attacked the plants.
Undaunted, Dan planted one nipped branch, pouring on Miracle Grow to try to get it to root.
Miracle Grow and Sevin are “about the only things we use,” he said.
Other than that, the experienced planters rely on the quality of the soil they found where, before the flood, a mobile home stood.
“I did have it soil-tested,” Donna Culver noted.
“It’s worked out pretty well for having been covered by a house for 100 years,” Dan said.
“It came back as being suitable for vegetable gardening,” Donna added.
Radishes, zucchini, tomatoes, beans — all went into the rich, light soil.
Dan had a water meter and pump installed, at a cost of about $200, he said.
The permit to lease the garden plot is free, Donna noted. “All you had to do was sign a contract for a year agreeing to keep it mowed and not put any permanent structure on it.”
Along with the veggies, Donna Culver planted flowers: canna, iris and sunflowers grow along one edge of the plot.
Dan added touches of his own: old food service-sized vegetable cans, with both ends cut off, that house his tomato plants.
The trick keeps out weeds and more importantly, rabbits, Dan noted. Plus, as the plants grow, he can fertilize and water locally, directing the vital liquid to the root zone and not “all over the place,” he said. Culver waters directly into the can, filling it to the brim for best results, he said.
The cans aren’t as useful on pepper plants, he noted. They may provide too much shade for the heat-loving nightshade. But, he said, one those plants are a little bigger, it won’t matter — rabbits prefer soft, tender growth.
When not helping his mother, “Dan has a big garden out in the country” Donna said.
Dan first began helping her “when I was little,” he said. “We had a pretty big family — we all helped.”
And, he said, they always had a pretty big garden.
Donna Culver grew up on a farm in Yates Center, and has “always had a garden,” she said. “Whether it was just lettuce in the flower bed, I always planted somewhere.”
She and her husband moved to Iola, to a house on South Street, in the 1950s. Dan lives there now, she said.
In 1994, she purchased her current home, but the only space for planting was a thin strip between her and her neighbor’s home.
“The first thing I did when I moved in was spaded it up,” she said of the strip.
Now, fragrant ruby roses mingle with tomatoes and coreopsis blooms sun-gold over bright green lettuce. Her basil, though, she keeps in pots to protect from roaming cats, she said.
The large plot across the street has been a blessing.
“It’s so handy because I can come here at 6 a.m. when it’s cool and weed and pick.”
Culver plans to can beans and tomatoes from the large garden and is already pulling up radishes. She’s also planning fall crops for when the corn is done in July, she said, and will likely move a pumpkin plant that sprouted in her compost heap.
Bountiful growth is everywhere. The only thing that isn’t doing well is the carrots, Culver said.
“We forgot they were there and planted something over them.”
Gardening went so well last year, in fact, that she doubled the size of her plot this year, thanks to the help of friends with a tractor and pull-behind tiller.
Culver also has regular assistance from her son Dan, who on Thursday morning was busy hoeing up weeds, removing maple seedlings and wondering what had gotten into his cucumbers.
“It’s probably a cutworm,” the 51-year-old said.
Leaves were neatly sheared off, but not devoured as would happen if an animal had attacked the plants.
Undaunted, Dan planted one nipped branch, pouring on Miracle Grow to try to get it to root.
Miracle Grow and Sevin are “about the only things we use,” he said.
Other than that, the experienced planters rely on the quality of the soil they found where, before the flood, a mobile home stood.
“I did have it soil-tested,” Donna Culver noted.
“It’s worked out pretty well for having been covered by a house for 100 years,” Dan said.
“It came back as being suitable for vegetable gardening,” Donna added.
Radishes, zucchini, tomatoes, beans — all went into the rich, light soil.
Dan had a water meter and pump installed, at a cost of about $200, he said.
The permit to lease the garden plot is free, Donna noted. “All you had to do was sign a contract for a year agreeing to keep it mowed and not put any permanent structure on it.”
Along with the veggies, Donna Culver planted flowers: canna, iris and sunflowers grow along one edge of the plot.
Dan added touches of his own: old food service-sized vegetable cans, with both ends cut off, that house his tomato plants.
The trick keeps out weeds and more importantly, rabbits, Dan noted. Plus, as the plants grow, he can fertilize and water locally, directing the vital liquid to the root zone and not “all over the place,” he said. Culver waters directly into the can, filling it to the brim for best results, he said.
The cans aren’t as useful on pepper plants, he noted. They may provide too much shade for the heat-loving nightshade. But, he said, one those plants are a little bigger, it won’t matter — rabbits prefer soft, tender growth.
When not helping his mother, “Dan has a big garden out in the country” Donna said.
Dan first began helping her “when I was little,” he said. “We had a pretty big family — we all helped.”
And, he said, they always had a pretty big garden.
Donna Culver grew up on a farm in Yates Center, and has “always had a garden,” she said. “Whether it was just lettuce in the flower bed, I always planted somewhere.”
She and her husband moved to Iola, to a house on South Street, in the 1950s. Dan lives there now, she said.
In 1994, she purchased her current home, but the only space for planting was a thin strip between her and her neighbor’s home.
“The first thing I did when I moved in was spaded it up,” she said of the strip.
Now, fragrant ruby roses mingle with tomatoes and coreopsis blooms sun-gold over bright green lettuce. Her basil, though, she keeps in pots to protect from roaming cats, she said.
The large plot across the street has been a blessing.
“It’s so handy because I can come here at 6 a.m. when it’s cool and weed and pick.”
Culver plans to can beans and tomatoes from the large garden and is already pulling up radishes. She’s also planning fall crops for when the corn is done in July, she said, and will likely move a pumpkin plant that sprouted in her compost heap.
Bountiful growth is everywhere. The only thing that isn’t doing well is the carrots, Culver said.
“We forgot they were there and planted something over them.”
Seaton sees world as abstract color
Kansas painter Callie Allen Seaton has considered herself an artist since she was a child. “As far as I can remember, it was first grade,” she said. Seaton received her earliest art training from her mother, painter and teacher Helen Marie Allen, then from the many classes she took wherever she went. She has earned two bachelor’s degrees in the process.
Seaton, an abstract oil painter, moved to Kansas in late 1973 “Because my husband is from Kansas,” she explained.
Seaton met her husband in Washington, DC, while she was a student and he worked as press secretary for U.S. Senator James B. Pearson. It was there that she developed her abstract style.
“In the 70s, when I was in the Washington, D.C. area, I was lucky enough to get connected to a painter from the Corcoran College of Art and Design who came to the Art League of North Virginia” where she was taking classes.
“I painted on ungessoed canvas — it was called the Washington Color School, or stain painting, because the color would bleed through the canvas. I had three little kids and my husband David took care of them so I could (paint with the group) once a week.
“I did that for 2 years and it was really exciting.”
But when her husband’s job with the senator ended, “we went back to his roots,” Seaton said. David’s family owns Seaton Publishing, and runs newspapers in Kansas, South Dakota, Nebraska and Wyoming, she said.
“We moved to Neodesha at the very end of 1973,” Seaton said. “It was kind of an adventure, but it was isolating. We were hours from Wichita or Tulsa,” Seaton said.
Used to big city life, Seaton did what she could to alleviate small town tedium. “We moved to Winfield five years later,” she said. That was 1978.
“There were 12,000 people in Winfield,” Seaton said, a big town compared to Neodesha. But more importantly, “it’s only 45 minutes to Wichita — There’s a pretty vibrant art community there.” While her husband carried the family banner, Seaton went back to school.
THE ONE constant in Seaton’s art career has been classwork.
“I did it here and there and everywhere. When (my daughter) Elizabeth was one, I took a summer school class. Everywhere I went I tried to take a class,” she said. She continues to do so.
“I took printing classes in college and had stuck with acrylics. I did some rather abstract expressionist pieces at Southwestern College in Winfield, then got back into oils at Wichita State University. I switched (back) to oils because I was told I had to for class,” she laughed.
She has stayed with them since, although her ways of using them have changed.
“I've been evolving,” she said.
Seaton uses “brushes, a palette knife, and a brayer,” which is used in print making to spread the ink. Her paintings tend not to have a particular objective when she begins.
“I don’t start with anything in mind — I just go for it and then I have to rein things in and come to a conclusion. I’m really free with color,” she said.
Seaton also uses a shower squeegee to move her paint, and “plastic putty knives, and really good paper towels.”
Considering her tools, one would believe Seaton applies her paint with a heavy touch. Instead, she says, “I’m not using a heavy coat of paint. I’m doing a lot with transparent colors.” Seaton uses “Liquin,” a special paint thinner. “It’s like using more water in acrylics,” Seaton said. “I don’t use turpentine.”
She will demonstrate all her tools Saturday morning, at a 10 a.m. workshop at the Creitz Recital Hall in the Bowlus Fine Arts Center.
But, Seaton said, “I am not a teacher.”
If anything, she is a perpetual student.
“I love to take classes. I really encourage people to take classes. Would I have thought of using a squeegee? I learned that in my latest class. I really think people should not get too comfortable with what they’re doing and try new things.” she said.
Abiding by her own philosophy, Saturday’s demonstration is a first in Seaton’s career. “I’ve never done this before.”
But it should be all good, as Seaton emphasized “I enjoy getting feedback and being with other students.
“What I love the most about painting is the process. I love doing — not only is it relaxing, I realize I need to communicate. But I don’t want to make things that are pretty — people can not like it.”
So at Saturday’s demonstration, she will not lecture, but do what she knows best: paint.
On Sunday, the 68 year-old will tackle another first. She will give a talk about her work at a reception at 2 p.m. at the Bowlus.
“I’ve not really got up and talked about art and I have to do that at the reception,” she said.
BESIDES PAINTING, Seaton has served on the Kansas Arts Commission and on the board of directors of the Winfield Arts and Humanities Council. She coordinated Winfield’s Art in the Park for six years. She has also engendered a new generation of artist. Her daughter Liz is curator at the Beach Museum of Art at Kansas State University, she said.
Seaton said her daughter had a natural ability in art, and all she did was leave supplies around for her to use.
“The point is to have supplies available, to make it seem important.” That’s what her own mother did for her, she said.
“My mother turned 95 Sunday. She is a remarkable woman. The art comes from her.”
Seaton, an abstract oil painter, moved to Kansas in late 1973 “Because my husband is from Kansas,” she explained.
Seaton met her husband in Washington, DC, while she was a student and he worked as press secretary for U.S. Senator James B. Pearson. It was there that she developed her abstract style.
“In the 70s, when I was in the Washington, D.C. area, I was lucky enough to get connected to a painter from the Corcoran College of Art and Design who came to the Art League of North Virginia” where she was taking classes.
“I painted on ungessoed canvas — it was called the Washington Color School, or stain painting, because the color would bleed through the canvas. I had three little kids and my husband David took care of them so I could (paint with the group) once a week.
“I did that for 2 years and it was really exciting.”
But when her husband’s job with the senator ended, “we went back to his roots,” Seaton said. David’s family owns Seaton Publishing, and runs newspapers in Kansas, South Dakota, Nebraska and Wyoming, she said.
“We moved to Neodesha at the very end of 1973,” Seaton said. “It was kind of an adventure, but it was isolating. We were hours from Wichita or Tulsa,” Seaton said.
Used to big city life, Seaton did what she could to alleviate small town tedium. “We moved to Winfield five years later,” she said. That was 1978.
“There were 12,000 people in Winfield,” Seaton said, a big town compared to Neodesha. But more importantly, “it’s only 45 minutes to Wichita — There’s a pretty vibrant art community there.” While her husband carried the family banner, Seaton went back to school.
THE ONE constant in Seaton’s art career has been classwork.
“I did it here and there and everywhere. When (my daughter) Elizabeth was one, I took a summer school class. Everywhere I went I tried to take a class,” she said. She continues to do so.
“I took printing classes in college and had stuck with acrylics. I did some rather abstract expressionist pieces at Southwestern College in Winfield, then got back into oils at Wichita State University. I switched (back) to oils because I was told I had to for class,” she laughed.
She has stayed with them since, although her ways of using them have changed.
“I've been evolving,” she said.
Seaton uses “brushes, a palette knife, and a brayer,” which is used in print making to spread the ink. Her paintings tend not to have a particular objective when she begins.
“I don’t start with anything in mind — I just go for it and then I have to rein things in and come to a conclusion. I’m really free with color,” she said.
Seaton also uses a shower squeegee to move her paint, and “plastic putty knives, and really good paper towels.”
Considering her tools, one would believe Seaton applies her paint with a heavy touch. Instead, she says, “I’m not using a heavy coat of paint. I’m doing a lot with transparent colors.” Seaton uses “Liquin,” a special paint thinner. “It’s like using more water in acrylics,” Seaton said. “I don’t use turpentine.”
She will demonstrate all her tools Saturday morning, at a 10 a.m. workshop at the Creitz Recital Hall in the Bowlus Fine Arts Center.
But, Seaton said, “I am not a teacher.”
If anything, she is a perpetual student.
“I love to take classes. I really encourage people to take classes. Would I have thought of using a squeegee? I learned that in my latest class. I really think people should not get too comfortable with what they’re doing and try new things.” she said.
Abiding by her own philosophy, Saturday’s demonstration is a first in Seaton’s career. “I’ve never done this before.”
But it should be all good, as Seaton emphasized “I enjoy getting feedback and being with other students.
“What I love the most about painting is the process. I love doing — not only is it relaxing, I realize I need to communicate. But I don’t want to make things that are pretty — people can not like it.”
So at Saturday’s demonstration, she will not lecture, but do what she knows best: paint.
On Sunday, the 68 year-old will tackle another first. She will give a talk about her work at a reception at 2 p.m. at the Bowlus.
“I’ve not really got up and talked about art and I have to do that at the reception,” she said.
BESIDES PAINTING, Seaton has served on the Kansas Arts Commission and on the board of directors of the Winfield Arts and Humanities Council. She coordinated Winfield’s Art in the Park for six years. She has also engendered a new generation of artist. Her daughter Liz is curator at the Beach Museum of Art at Kansas State University, she said.
Seaton said her daughter had a natural ability in art, and all she did was leave supplies around for her to use.
“The point is to have supplies available, to make it seem important.” That’s what her own mother did for her, she said.
“My mother turned 95 Sunday. She is a remarkable woman. The art comes from her.”
Understanding credit rating crucial
It looms over you, an invisible specter controlling your life in ways you may not know. It’s your credit rating, and it’s more important than ever.
“When I first started in banking 25 years ago, they weren’t used much,” said Emprise Bank’s Glenn Buchholz of the numeric designation of a person’s financial credibility. “Now, they’re really important.”
“A lot of different places are starting to use just credit scores” to determine whether an applicant might qualify for a loan, an insurance rate, phone service, a new car... some of them things credit ratings were never before applied to, Buchholz sad.
While maintaining a high credit score is paramount, few people really understand how easily credit scores can be impacted, he said.
“Everybody you borrow from reports to credit bureaus,” he said. “Over time, it scores you based on how you pay creditors,” Buchholz said.
“It tells how much money you have borrowed and how you’ve paid it back,” Buchholz said. Included is whether or not payments were made on time.
Also included in the score, which runs from zero to 800, is how many times you apply for credit, although, Buchholz noted, “it doesn’t tell if you got it or were turned down.”
A credit score can be lowered in seemingly innocuous ways.
That credit application when shopping for a new car? Ding! A missed payment on a Visa bill? Ding! A home loan to take advantage of the government’s tax credit for new home buyers? Ding again. Any time one applies for credit, a credit check is run by the loaning company. Each time that occurs, the score is lowered, Buchholz said.
Other dings come from collection actions.
“Say you were in college and shared a telephone,” Buchholz sad. If your name was on the account, even if you paid your portion of the bill but your roommate didn’t, “That will go to collections if they didn’t pay,” he said.
As a result, your credit score decreases, he said.
“If you’re name is on old debt,” he said, “make arrangements to pay it off. Most people take regular payments,” he said, making pay off manageable even to those on a limited budget.
Current unpaid debt lowers the score, too, Buchholz said. Other impacts to ones credit score include how many payments are owed regularly, including credit cards, auto loans, house payments and other debt. All are factors in determining a credit rating.
The best way to protect your credit rating is to pay off debt in a timely manner, Buchholz said. And “don‘t overuse credit. Only use what you need.”
Having more credit cards than needed — even if they’re never used — lowers a credit rating, Buchholz noted.
“If for years you don’t borrow money, that can affect your credit score negatively,” he said. Effectively, not using credit takes your score back to zero, just as if you had never had it in the first place.
FOR TRADITIONAL loans, banks seek applicants with a credit score of at least 650, Buchholz said.
“Right now, with the economic crunch, they want to focus on people with higher scores who are more likely to pay them back,” he said. So banks are actually filtering out potential borrowers at the 700 level, he said.
“As the economy slows down, banks have more bad loans, so they tighten up,” Buchholz said. Bad loans are those that have not been repaid to the banks, he explained.
“Typically when the economy is going good over a period of time, they loosen standards.” Still, any ranking under 650 is considered poor, he noted.
“There was an old tried and true banking ratio that seems to work for most people,” Buchholz said.
Add all your monthly debt, including rent or house payment, auto loan payment, credit card payment and the like, “and divide that by your gross monthly income,” he said.
Say, for example, you make $3,000 per month, Buchholz said. If you pay $800 a month for housing, $400 for your car and $300 for credit cards each month, divide that total ($1,500) by the $3,000 to find your debt ratio.
“In this case, it’s 50 percent,” he said. “That person is not in good shape.
“If that number is 36 or below, you’re usually in decent financial shape,” he said.
Buchholz advised that individuals “periodically check your own credit report.”
Three major credit agencies, TransUnion, Experian and Equifax, all allow free online checking of credit records. All three reporting agencies can be accessed through annualcreditreport.com, a secure Web site that allows checking each of the three companies.
One free credit report is allowed from each agency every 12 months.
Some people check all three companies at once, to compare reports, while others space perusal to one report every four months, to follow any changes in credit history that arise over the year.
When you check your own report, it does not lower your score, Buchholz said.
“Make sure everything on their is yours,” he said.
“One thing to look at is who ran your credit report. If you applied for a car loan, that’s expected,” he said. But if other, unauthorized agencies have been pulling your report, that could indicate credit fraud or identity theft is occurring, he said.
Credit fraud and identify theft are other ways credit ratings can be lowered.
“People should probably give their credit rating about two years to recover” after a negative impact, Buchholz said.
To build credit in the current economic slow down, live by the old rule: stay within your means and don’t buy what you can’t afford. If you don’t have the cash saved for an item, don’t buy it.
“When I first started in banking 25 years ago, they weren’t used much,” said Emprise Bank’s Glenn Buchholz of the numeric designation of a person’s financial credibility. “Now, they’re really important.”
“A lot of different places are starting to use just credit scores” to determine whether an applicant might qualify for a loan, an insurance rate, phone service, a new car... some of them things credit ratings were never before applied to, Buchholz sad.
While maintaining a high credit score is paramount, few people really understand how easily credit scores can be impacted, he said.
“Everybody you borrow from reports to credit bureaus,” he said. “Over time, it scores you based on how you pay creditors,” Buchholz said.
“It tells how much money you have borrowed and how you’ve paid it back,” Buchholz said. Included is whether or not payments were made on time.
Also included in the score, which runs from zero to 800, is how many times you apply for credit, although, Buchholz noted, “it doesn’t tell if you got it or were turned down.”
A credit score can be lowered in seemingly innocuous ways.
That credit application when shopping for a new car? Ding! A missed payment on a Visa bill? Ding! A home loan to take advantage of the government’s tax credit for new home buyers? Ding again. Any time one applies for credit, a credit check is run by the loaning company. Each time that occurs, the score is lowered, Buchholz said.
Other dings come from collection actions.
“Say you were in college and shared a telephone,” Buchholz sad. If your name was on the account, even if you paid your portion of the bill but your roommate didn’t, “That will go to collections if they didn’t pay,” he said.
As a result, your credit score decreases, he said.
“If you’re name is on old debt,” he said, “make arrangements to pay it off. Most people take regular payments,” he said, making pay off manageable even to those on a limited budget.
Current unpaid debt lowers the score, too, Buchholz said. Other impacts to ones credit score include how many payments are owed regularly, including credit cards, auto loans, house payments and other debt. All are factors in determining a credit rating.
The best way to protect your credit rating is to pay off debt in a timely manner, Buchholz said. And “don‘t overuse credit. Only use what you need.”
Having more credit cards than needed — even if they’re never used — lowers a credit rating, Buchholz noted.
“If for years you don’t borrow money, that can affect your credit score negatively,” he said. Effectively, not using credit takes your score back to zero, just as if you had never had it in the first place.
FOR TRADITIONAL loans, banks seek applicants with a credit score of at least 650, Buchholz said.
“Right now, with the economic crunch, they want to focus on people with higher scores who are more likely to pay them back,” he said. So banks are actually filtering out potential borrowers at the 700 level, he said.
“As the economy slows down, banks have more bad loans, so they tighten up,” Buchholz said. Bad loans are those that have not been repaid to the banks, he explained.
“Typically when the economy is going good over a period of time, they loosen standards.” Still, any ranking under 650 is considered poor, he noted.
“There was an old tried and true banking ratio that seems to work for most people,” Buchholz said.
Add all your monthly debt, including rent or house payment, auto loan payment, credit card payment and the like, “and divide that by your gross monthly income,” he said.
Say, for example, you make $3,000 per month, Buchholz said. If you pay $800 a month for housing, $400 for your car and $300 for credit cards each month, divide that total ($1,500) by the $3,000 to find your debt ratio.
“In this case, it’s 50 percent,” he said. “That person is not in good shape.
“If that number is 36 or below, you’re usually in decent financial shape,” he said.
Buchholz advised that individuals “periodically check your own credit report.”
Three major credit agencies, TransUnion, Experian and Equifax, all allow free online checking of credit records. All three reporting agencies can be accessed through annualcreditreport.com, a secure Web site that allows checking each of the three companies.
One free credit report is allowed from each agency every 12 months.
Some people check all three companies at once, to compare reports, while others space perusal to one report every four months, to follow any changes in credit history that arise over the year.
When you check your own report, it does not lower your score, Buchholz said.
“Make sure everything on their is yours,” he said.
“One thing to look at is who ran your credit report. If you applied for a car loan, that’s expected,” he said. But if other, unauthorized agencies have been pulling your report, that could indicate credit fraud or identity theft is occurring, he said.
Credit fraud and identify theft are other ways credit ratings can be lowered.
“People should probably give their credit rating about two years to recover” after a negative impact, Buchholz said.
To build credit in the current economic slow down, live by the old rule: stay within your means and don’t buy what you can’t afford. If you don’t have the cash saved for an item, don’t buy it.
Chunky Dunkers a team — times three
Like petulant children passing the blame, most of the 21 members of the three Allen County Hospital Chunky Dunkers Meltdown teams pointed at ACH CEO Joyce Heismeyer and said, “Joyce made us join!” when asked what motivated them to participate in the countywide health initiative.
“I invited them to participate,” Heismeyer corrected while the women laughed.
“Joyce challenged us to lose 200 pounds,” said Patty McGuffin, of Chunky Dunkers 3.
“I felt we were a large enough representation of the community that we could do a tenth of a ton,” Heismeyer said, referencing the overall 2,000 pound weight loss goal of the countywide program.
In addition to the Chunky Dunkers, hospital employees are melting down on teams for Curves, the Presbyterian Plowshares, and a dietary department team, Picture us Thin, Heismeyer said.
“It’s good for us as health care people to serve as an example to the community,” she added.
The three Chunky Dunkers teams are separated only becuase of Meltdown team size limits, the women said. Meltdown teams have a limit of 10 memebrs apiece.
“There were 21 of us, so we were forced into breaking ourselves apart,” Heismeyer explained.
Chunky Dunkers are now teams of six, nine and six members — no one seemed sure why they divided that way. But they all remain loosely affiliated, considering themselves part of one giant team.
Still, had they to do it over, they would have done more, said some.
“I wish we would have gotten together more often,” said Marilyn Miller. “If our whole group could have gotten together once a week, even for 15 minuites, it would have helped,” she said. “Now I think, we’ve only got seven more days — we’d better get serious!”
The women reflected on the Meltdown Web site, meant to be a motivatior and connector between participants. “I went on the first two weeks then stopped,” said McGuffin. Logging onto and finding information on the site was difficult, the women said.
Those that did find activities on the site particpated in some of the classes offered. “I went to a cooking presentation one night,” said Johna Lederhouse. “I like that they provided activites like low impact aeorbics,” she said, but like many, she didn’t have time to get to the early-evening classes.
One activity some of the women found fun — but difficult — was the Meltdown’s Zumba class.
“It was hard even for someone in good shape,” said Lederhouse. Even so, many on the team said they stopped going as the summer season heated up and family obligations took precedence.
The teams admitted they lost motivation for a while.
“I forgot we were in this three or four weeks ago because the hype wore off,” said McGuffin.
Lorie Jarred went on vacation and came back less melted down than when she’d left. “But then I got to walking once I got home,” she said, and began the Meltdown again.
The women suggested ways next year’s Meltdown could keep them on task. Required weekly weigh-ins would help, they suggested.
What else would keep them on task?
“If someone were looking over my shoulder at the scale with me,” laughed Heismeyer.
“Just to be accountable,” said Jessie Morrison.
McGuffin suggested Thrive Allen County (the Meltodwn’s primary sponsor) and the stores on the Iola square work in conjunction to have a weigh-in/sale night.
“If Thrive could stay open one evening, you could come weigh in then go shoppiing on the square,” she said. And then eat at local restaurants, the women laughed.
In order to renew their interest now, the Chunky Dunkers joined another hospital weight loss incentive program. Modelled after TV’s “Biggest Loser,” a score of ACH employees signed on to a four week weight loss pool. “We started Monday because we knew this was winding down and some of us needed a push,” said Patty.
“We each put $5 into the pot, so that’s incentive to keep going,” Lisa Griffith said.
For Marcia Holliday, living in Kansas itself is reason to continue on the weight loss path.
“I saw a report on the overall helath of the counties of Kansas,” she said. “Out of 105 counties, Allen County was the 94th worst in overall health.”
Many of the women said they needed look no further than around their own table and their own work place for inspiration, though.
Dawn Montgomery “has been so diligent and committed to the cause,” Stefanie Anderson said of her teammmate. She has lost 40 pounds so far, she said.
Montgomery looked to the kitchen crew. “Gayla Thompson in the kitchen, before all this started, lost a lot of weight just by counting calories.” Others mentioned cook Patty Knavel, who began her weight loss program after nearly dying of complications from unchecked diabetes. Knavel and Thompson are still melting down.
As are the Chunky Dunkers. Together, the three teams have lost about 150 pounds. Chunky Dunkers 2 lost 100 pounds, and teams 1 and 3 have lost approximately 25 pounds each, the women said. And they want to lose more.
After their “Biggest loser” poll ends in mid July, “We’ll do it again,” Griffith said. “That’s the plan.”
“I invited them to participate,” Heismeyer corrected while the women laughed.
“Joyce challenged us to lose 200 pounds,” said Patty McGuffin, of Chunky Dunkers 3.
“I felt we were a large enough representation of the community that we could do a tenth of a ton,” Heismeyer said, referencing the overall 2,000 pound weight loss goal of the countywide program.
In addition to the Chunky Dunkers, hospital employees are melting down on teams for Curves, the Presbyterian Plowshares, and a dietary department team, Picture us Thin, Heismeyer said.
“It’s good for us as health care people to serve as an example to the community,” she added.
The three Chunky Dunkers teams are separated only becuase of Meltdown team size limits, the women said. Meltdown teams have a limit of 10 memebrs apiece.
“There were 21 of us, so we were forced into breaking ourselves apart,” Heismeyer explained.
Chunky Dunkers are now teams of six, nine and six members — no one seemed sure why they divided that way. But they all remain loosely affiliated, considering themselves part of one giant team.
Still, had they to do it over, they would have done more, said some.
“I wish we would have gotten together more often,” said Marilyn Miller. “If our whole group could have gotten together once a week, even for 15 minuites, it would have helped,” she said. “Now I think, we’ve only got seven more days — we’d better get serious!”
The women reflected on the Meltdown Web site, meant to be a motivatior and connector between participants. “I went on the first two weeks then stopped,” said McGuffin. Logging onto and finding information on the site was difficult, the women said.
Those that did find activities on the site particpated in some of the classes offered. “I went to a cooking presentation one night,” said Johna Lederhouse. “I like that they provided activites like low impact aeorbics,” she said, but like many, she didn’t have time to get to the early-evening classes.
One activity some of the women found fun — but difficult — was the Meltdown’s Zumba class.
“It was hard even for someone in good shape,” said Lederhouse. Even so, many on the team said they stopped going as the summer season heated up and family obligations took precedence.
The teams admitted they lost motivation for a while.
“I forgot we were in this three or four weeks ago because the hype wore off,” said McGuffin.
Lorie Jarred went on vacation and came back less melted down than when she’d left. “But then I got to walking once I got home,” she said, and began the Meltdown again.
The women suggested ways next year’s Meltdown could keep them on task. Required weekly weigh-ins would help, they suggested.
What else would keep them on task?
“If someone were looking over my shoulder at the scale with me,” laughed Heismeyer.
“Just to be accountable,” said Jessie Morrison.
McGuffin suggested Thrive Allen County (the Meltodwn’s primary sponsor) and the stores on the Iola square work in conjunction to have a weigh-in/sale night.
“If Thrive could stay open one evening, you could come weigh in then go shoppiing on the square,” she said. And then eat at local restaurants, the women laughed.
In order to renew their interest now, the Chunky Dunkers joined another hospital weight loss incentive program. Modelled after TV’s “Biggest Loser,” a score of ACH employees signed on to a four week weight loss pool. “We started Monday because we knew this was winding down and some of us needed a push,” said Patty.
“We each put $5 into the pot, so that’s incentive to keep going,” Lisa Griffith said.
For Marcia Holliday, living in Kansas itself is reason to continue on the weight loss path.
“I saw a report on the overall helath of the counties of Kansas,” she said. “Out of 105 counties, Allen County was the 94th worst in overall health.”
Many of the women said they needed look no further than around their own table and their own work place for inspiration, though.
Dawn Montgomery “has been so diligent and committed to the cause,” Stefanie Anderson said of her teammmate. She has lost 40 pounds so far, she said.
Montgomery looked to the kitchen crew. “Gayla Thompson in the kitchen, before all this started, lost a lot of weight just by counting calories.” Others mentioned cook Patty Knavel, who began her weight loss program after nearly dying of complications from unchecked diabetes. Knavel and Thompson are still melting down.
As are the Chunky Dunkers. Together, the three teams have lost about 150 pounds. Chunky Dunkers 2 lost 100 pounds, and teams 1 and 3 have lost approximately 25 pounds each, the women said. And they want to lose more.
After their “Biggest loser” poll ends in mid July, “We’ll do it again,” Griffith said. “That’s the plan.”
Community garden plots available
The Elm Creek Community Garden has plots available for budding horticulturalists, kitchen gardeners and canners.
Many plots still remain at the gardens, located at the southernmost end of South First Street in Iola.
“We have the whole block to work with but we’re only using one quarter of it,” said Val McLean, president of the group. Gardeners do not have to be city residents to participate.
Particularly in need this year are volunteers to help paint. The storage building, trim on a new garage and concrete plot markers all need new coats of paint. “Diebolt Lumber donated the overhead door and a man door for the garage,” said Carolyn McLean, along with lumber for the trim, paint and primer.
The group could also use help staking out plots, Val said.
“Just show up at the garden Saturday morning,” he said of those interested in helping.
The community gardens were established in 2005 to provide a means for people to grow their own food. Water, tools and tilling are provided with your $20 plot fee. Most plots are 12’ by 24’, McLean said. A team-work spirit prevails, too.
“My vision is to see everybody working together for the common good.”
Needed this year are a riding lawn mower and a rototiller, along with a volunteer with a rear-mounted rototiller to re-till the plots.
Donations to the water fund are always appreciated, and can be made when a person pays their city utility bills, Carolyn said.
For further information , call the McLeans at 365-5577, or plot coordinator Patty Gardner at 365-8194.
Many plots still remain at the gardens, located at the southernmost end of South First Street in Iola.
“We have the whole block to work with but we’re only using one quarter of it,” said Val McLean, president of the group. Gardeners do not have to be city residents to participate.
Particularly in need this year are volunteers to help paint. The storage building, trim on a new garage and concrete plot markers all need new coats of paint. “Diebolt Lumber donated the overhead door and a man door for the garage,” said Carolyn McLean, along with lumber for the trim, paint and primer.
The group could also use help staking out plots, Val said.
“Just show up at the garden Saturday morning,” he said of those interested in helping.
The community gardens were established in 2005 to provide a means for people to grow their own food. Water, tools and tilling are provided with your $20 plot fee. Most plots are 12’ by 24’, McLean said. A team-work spirit prevails, too.
“My vision is to see everybody working together for the common good.”
Needed this year are a riding lawn mower and a rototiller, along with a volunteer with a rear-mounted rototiller to re-till the plots.
Donations to the water fund are always appreciated, and can be made when a person pays their city utility bills, Carolyn said.
For further information , call the McLeans at 365-5577, or plot coordinator Patty Gardner at 365-8194.
Small town living limits prejudice
Iolan Naomi Clounch was a young woman in an era many remember as divisive. As a black woman, she could have faced personal peril or societal prejudice. Instead, she remembers her youth fondly.
Born in Omaha, Clounch grew up in Iowa, first in Council Bluffs, then Crescent, a small town in a remote area 30 miles north.
All the while, her father worked for Swift Packing in Omaha, joining the family on weekends.
Clounch lived with her mother and siblings out in the country and was educated in a one-room school house that served grades one through eight.
“I was the only black student at that school,” she said. Aside from one incident, she doesn’t recall any mistreatment based on her race.
“Then I went to Missouri Valley, Iowa, to high school. I had to ride the bus,” Clounch said. To catch that bus, “I had to walk three miles into Crescent Town. I was the only black in that whole high school at that time,” she said.
The next nearest high school was Council Bluffs, 30 miles south. Without a car, that option was out.
Again, Clounch was accepted.
“I got along fine with everyone,” she said.
Only once did she hear a disparaging word, and it came from her best friend, Esta.
“I never got to go to the ball games because I lived out in the country,” Clounch said.
“We didn’t have a car and I had no way to get home afterwards.” But she liked hearing about them.
“I remember we took our sack lunches and were eating, and Esta told me, “Naomi, there was a cute nigger on the basketball team last night.” I told her, ”Esta, I’d rather you didn’t use that term.
She never did again.”
Clounch still remains in contact with her former classmates, attending the class reunions they have every five years. The last, held in 2007, celebrated the 55th reunion of the graduating class.
“People treat me like a queen,” she said of those events. “They’re happy to see me.”
Things could have been different.
Clounch stopped her schooling after high school. Career choices were limited.
“There was just domestic work,” Clounch said. “That’s all there was — domestic work.”
“I lived for a while with a family in Pleasanton,” she said. “I cleaned and watched their children and cooked for them. I stayed with them and worked for a while, then I met my boys’ father and we married.”
Clounch continued to do domestic work after her marriage. “I worked in different people’s homes,” she said. Even after having children of her own, she said, “I worked in the evenings cooking for families.”
Clounch moved to Fort Scott, where she continued in domestic work, plus worked at a local restaurant washing dishes.
“There were no machines,” she said, “you had to wash everything by hand.”
“That would have been in 1953 or ‘54,” she said.
Clounch reflected on the irony of working there. “At that time, (blacks) weren’t allowed to come into a restaurant to eat,” she said. “If you wanted a sandwich, you had to come to the back door and order it.”
Clounch didn’t know if patrons minded her working there. After all, she said, “They couldn’t see me there. I was in the back.”
“That is the reason I encouraged my children to go to college, so they could get better jobs,” Clounch said.
“But I really encouraged my daughters,” she said. “Because I really feel a woman needs to be able to take care of herself, whether she’s married or not.”
Three of her children graduated college, with her oldest daughter, Theresa, scheduled to receive her Ph.D. this spring.
Clounch was a single mother when she met her current husband, Eugene, in Fort Scott.
It was his only foray outside of Iola, where he had been born and raised.
The couple fell in love, and Clounch really had no choice, she said — she had to move to Iola if she wanted to be with Eugene.
She arrived in 1962. Not long after, they were married.
“We’ve been married 46 years,” Clounch said.
The couple bought their current home on the corner of Buckeye and Lincoln in 1964.
“You might say it was a fixer-upper,” Clounch said. Eugene worked on the house from April through August of that year, adding a bathroom and doing necessary repairs so the boys could start school at Lincoln School in the fall, Clounch said. In summers they’d play ball all day on the school’s playground. “You’d have to holler at them to come in and eat supper.”
It was her children, Clounch said, who saw more racial bias than she.
“My oldest son worked at the drive in. One night, someone asked the manager why are niggers working here?”
That was about the worst incident, though, Clounch said. More of the time, actions reflected changing times.
“In 1973, our oldest son was elected football king. He was called into the office and congratulated, and told he was deserving of that honor. But he was told that the parents of the queen candidates were all right with their daughters being queen. It wasn’t until later when he realized why he had been told that.”
“Back in those times, interracial dating was not prevalent like it is now,” Clounch said.
“A young lady asked my son to take her to the prom. Her father thought it was all right, but her mother thought it might cause problems, so she was not able to go with him.” Another girl, smitten with the same son, worried her parents with her interest.
“Her mother called and asked what we were going to do about her daughter and my son,” Clounch stated. “I told her we weren’t going to do anything, because my son was going off to college and I didn’t want him serious about any girl.”
“They really didn’t have problems with other kids,” Clounch said. It was the adults who had issues.
Iola had a larger black community in those days, Clounch said.
“There used to be 25 or 30 of us in the (African Methodist Episcopal Church) choir,” she said. The church itself had about 100 members. But “A lot of the young people moved on and became doctors and professional people,” Clounch said. The population dwindled. Now the church has only 14 active members, she said, all of them retired.
Clounch still sings at her church, though. She’ll be singing there tonight, at the Martin Luther King celebration. All are welcome, she said.
Born in Omaha, Clounch grew up in Iowa, first in Council Bluffs, then Crescent, a small town in a remote area 30 miles north.
All the while, her father worked for Swift Packing in Omaha, joining the family on weekends.
Clounch lived with her mother and siblings out in the country and was educated in a one-room school house that served grades one through eight.
“I was the only black student at that school,” she said. Aside from one incident, she doesn’t recall any mistreatment based on her race.
“Then I went to Missouri Valley, Iowa, to high school. I had to ride the bus,” Clounch said. To catch that bus, “I had to walk three miles into Crescent Town. I was the only black in that whole high school at that time,” she said.
The next nearest high school was Council Bluffs, 30 miles south. Without a car, that option was out.
Again, Clounch was accepted.
“I got along fine with everyone,” she said.
Only once did she hear a disparaging word, and it came from her best friend, Esta.
“I never got to go to the ball games because I lived out in the country,” Clounch said.
“We didn’t have a car and I had no way to get home afterwards.” But she liked hearing about them.
“I remember we took our sack lunches and were eating, and Esta told me, “Naomi, there was a cute nigger on the basketball team last night.” I told her, ”Esta, I’d rather you didn’t use that term.
She never did again.”
Clounch still remains in contact with her former classmates, attending the class reunions they have every five years. The last, held in 2007, celebrated the 55th reunion of the graduating class.
“People treat me like a queen,” she said of those events. “They’re happy to see me.”
Things could have been different.
Clounch stopped her schooling after high school. Career choices were limited.
“There was just domestic work,” Clounch said. “That’s all there was — domestic work.”
“I lived for a while with a family in Pleasanton,” she said. “I cleaned and watched their children and cooked for them. I stayed with them and worked for a while, then I met my boys’ father and we married.”
Clounch continued to do domestic work after her marriage. “I worked in different people’s homes,” she said. Even after having children of her own, she said, “I worked in the evenings cooking for families.”
Clounch moved to Fort Scott, where she continued in domestic work, plus worked at a local restaurant washing dishes.
“There were no machines,” she said, “you had to wash everything by hand.”
“That would have been in 1953 or ‘54,” she said.
Clounch reflected on the irony of working there. “At that time, (blacks) weren’t allowed to come into a restaurant to eat,” she said. “If you wanted a sandwich, you had to come to the back door and order it.”
Clounch didn’t know if patrons minded her working there. After all, she said, “They couldn’t see me there. I was in the back.”
“That is the reason I encouraged my children to go to college, so they could get better jobs,” Clounch said.
“But I really encouraged my daughters,” she said. “Because I really feel a woman needs to be able to take care of herself, whether she’s married or not.”
Three of her children graduated college, with her oldest daughter, Theresa, scheduled to receive her Ph.D. this spring.
Clounch was a single mother when she met her current husband, Eugene, in Fort Scott.
It was his only foray outside of Iola, where he had been born and raised.
The couple fell in love, and Clounch really had no choice, she said — she had to move to Iola if she wanted to be with Eugene.
She arrived in 1962. Not long after, they were married.
“We’ve been married 46 years,” Clounch said.
The couple bought their current home on the corner of Buckeye and Lincoln in 1964.
“You might say it was a fixer-upper,” Clounch said. Eugene worked on the house from April through August of that year, adding a bathroom and doing necessary repairs so the boys could start school at Lincoln School in the fall, Clounch said. In summers they’d play ball all day on the school’s playground. “You’d have to holler at them to come in and eat supper.”
It was her children, Clounch said, who saw more racial bias than she.
“My oldest son worked at the drive in. One night, someone asked the manager why are niggers working here?”
That was about the worst incident, though, Clounch said. More of the time, actions reflected changing times.
“In 1973, our oldest son was elected football king. He was called into the office and congratulated, and told he was deserving of that honor. But he was told that the parents of the queen candidates were all right with their daughters being queen. It wasn’t until later when he realized why he had been told that.”
“Back in those times, interracial dating was not prevalent like it is now,” Clounch said.
“A young lady asked my son to take her to the prom. Her father thought it was all right, but her mother thought it might cause problems, so she was not able to go with him.” Another girl, smitten with the same son, worried her parents with her interest.
“Her mother called and asked what we were going to do about her daughter and my son,” Clounch stated. “I told her we weren’t going to do anything, because my son was going off to college and I didn’t want him serious about any girl.”
“They really didn’t have problems with other kids,” Clounch said. It was the adults who had issues.
Iola had a larger black community in those days, Clounch said.
“There used to be 25 or 30 of us in the (African Methodist Episcopal Church) choir,” she said. The church itself had about 100 members. But “A lot of the young people moved on and became doctors and professional people,” Clounch said. The population dwindled. Now the church has only 14 active members, she said, all of them retired.
Clounch still sings at her church, though. She’ll be singing there tonight, at the Martin Luther King celebration. All are welcome, she said.
Saving summer: Iola gardeners can it all
Everything that comes out of Wayne Bratcher’s garden goes into the can — well, the canning pot, that is. Bratcher, his wife, Yolanda, Yolanda’s sister Virginia Robert and other extended family all work together after harvest on the produce he grows, preserving it for winter nights when sunny afternoons on the porch are a mere memory.
Bratcher surveys his small sideyard garden from his perch on the crowded porch. Sometimes he watches his produce take leave.
“Once I saw a boy with a watermelon under his arms. He walked right by me,” Bratcher noted.
Yolanda is diplomatic about such thievery. “If they take it, they must need it,” she said.
Sometimes, the couple invites the practice.
“One year, we had so many zucchini we put up a pile with a sign that said ‘free’,” Yolanda said. They were gone by afternoon.
Bratcher has been gardening near his home at the corner of Spruce and South Jefferson streets for 10 years now. His main plot is across the street, adjacent to sister-in-law Barbara Wood’s home; the lot belongs to her neighbor, who allows Bratcher to use it.
Bratcher has been gardening “all my life, I guess, 50 or 60 years — I’m 75 now.”
He still counts the activity a hobby, raising green beans, salsa veggies, cucumbers, squash, okra and more.
“The okra we pickle,” Bratcher said. Even the squash are canned.
Robert puts those into a type of chunky spaghetti sauce.
The cucumbers become delightfully crunchy bread and butter pickles.
“Last year we canned about 40 or 50 jars of pickles,” Bratcher noted. And, he said, they put up 81 quarts of beans.
Bratcher prefers Derby beans, noting they are the best of all varieties he’s tried.
“They’re solid. They don’t get dry. And you can pick them longer,” Bratcher said of the Derbys, available only from Gurney’s Seeds.
This year, however, he has at least three bean varieties, because so many plantings failed initially.
“I had to plant those things three or four times this year. The ground was cold. I just kept planting them and finally I got a stand,” Bratcher said.
Yolanda plans to try the beans this year on the grill with bacon, a technique she discovered watching Paula Dean. Anaheim chiles will become chili rellenos, she said.
The one thing Bratcher doesn’t grow is corn.
“I just buy my corn off the Mennonites,” he said. “When I grow it, it doesn’t produce much,” he said.
Bratcher said the larger garden is established where a house once stood. “The ground is not very good,” he said. Full of rocks, he has it broken with a tractor in fall and spring to keep it arable.
“I use liquid Miracle Grow (throughout the summer) and regular commercial fertilizer when I first plant,” Bratcher noted. “And I water a lot.”
All told, the extended family puts up about 200 jars each fall, Robert said.
Canning is done at Barbara’s house because “she’s got central air,” Robert noted. The process becomes a party with all involved, the sisters said.
And it keeps the family together.
“When we were younger and raising our families we all scattered,” Robert said. “Then (Wayne) retired and moved here from Washington state, and we moved here (from Oregon).”
Yolanda explained, “We were heading to Oklahoma (where the sisters originally were from) but our kids rented us a place here and said, ‘live here a year, and if you don’t like it, then move.’ Wayne grew a beautiful garden that first year,” she noted. “And we liked it, so we stayed.”
That was in 2000.
Their sister Barbara purchased the home across the street about six years ago, they said.
All are retired, and all enjoy their shared hobby.
“The only thing my husband complains about is that I’m always bringing home jars,” Robert laughed.
Melvin tale retold on tour
A small group of Iolans braved Friday night’s heat to walk in the footsteps of “Mad Bomber” Charley Melvin as part of Allen County Historical Society’s contribution to Iola’s annual Charley Melvin celebration.
Society president Jeff Kluever told a rapid-pace tale of Melvin’s antics, from his institutionalization in Chicago to his easy escape to Missouri after the blast heard as far away as Neosho Falls.
When Melvin struck Iola, it was 1905. About 10,000-15,000 people lived in the city, Kluever noted.
Downtown was bustling. Respectable candy stores, pharmacies, shoe stores and clothiers lined the blocks. Brick buildings were painted bright pastels. On the alley side of some buildings, taverns catered to those with a thirst.
“There’s this underground sort of workers’ lifestyle,” Kluever said.
“It’s pretty proper on one side with the industrialists” — those names that are stalwarts in Iola history — “But really, it’s kind of a rough and tumble town. You have all these workers in the concrete plants” who at the end of the day, Kluever noted, liked to go have a shot of whiskey or a beer to wind down.
Enter Carrie Nation.
Carrie Nation was an ardent prohibitionist who brought her fiery rhetoric about destroying saloons to Iola in 1903.
By most accounts, the talk had little effect.
“Taverns operated openly, but if there were a complaint, police would arrest someone,” usually a saloon owner, “and throw them in jail for the night,” Kluever said. Then, they were released, and business continued as usual.
IN CHICAGO, Ill., Melvin had begun to speak out against saloons in a similar fashion.
Melvin was a dangerous combination — a zealot for the cause of prohibition, coupled with a leaning toward mental instability. By the time he moved to Bassett, just south of Iola, he had already been institutionalized, as well as jailed, over his erratic behavior.
Melvin found work at a local smelter, where his coworkers encouraged the ever-agitated Melvin to soothe his nerves by taking in a pint with them after work.
Drink did not sit well with Melvin, although he must have become a regular downtown.
In a report after the blast, The Iola Register noted “Damage is such that the perpetrator must have been familiar with the layout of the bars,” Kluever quoted.
Kluever took his small crowd through alleys where Melvin laid dynamite, and to the corner of S. Washington and Jackson avenues, where Melvin watched his destructive antics play out.
Walking the route while hearing the tale gave life to the story that sop many are familiar with.
Most interesting, perhaps, were photographs Kluever showed of downtown Iola at the time of the blast.
Whole walls ripped off buildings revealed shattered contents therein. And on undamaged streets, tracks for a marvelous public transportation system — the Iola Electric Railroad — ran straight and true.
Everything, then, was new and shiny. A new courthouse. Bustling businesses. And a chiming clock that was barely three days old when Melvin stopped its bells.
Kluever led the group to the spot where Melvin laid — and lit — a stack of 150 sticks of dynamite, at the base of the Eagle Saloon on the night of July 10.
The building, the Cowan & Ausherman, also held a shoe store, mercantile and land office, Kluever noted.
“Almost every building is like that,” he said.
The Iola Fruit Company, adjacent to the Red Light bar, would lose all its produce to water damage as a result of Melvin’s blasts.
In the timber-framed Blue Front Saloon, the owner was asleep upstairs at the time of the explosion. He escaped with broken ribs “but the loss of his building is probably worse than anything he physically suffers,” Kluever said.
At the base of the Shannon Building, the group imagined Melvin strolling casually down South Washington Avenue before hopping a train to Missouri.
There is a chance Melvin may never have been caught, but letters he sends to local authorities, additional saloon keepers and The Iola Register peg his pride in his actions.
“Consternation increases when the Portland Cement Company reports that 30 boxes (holding 1,500 pounds) of dynamite are missing,” Kluever noted. The letters mention further explosions. Only 500 pounds of the stolen dynamite were accounted for after the July 10 blast.
It takes authorities about three weeks to track down Melvin, Kluever said, but he is found, arrested and returned to Allen County for trial.
In a post-arrest interview, Melvin claims to not have lit the fuse on some of the dynamite found to preserve the lives of families sleeping above the taverns. He meant the piles as a threat, he said.
THE TOUR ended with a visit to the Old Jail Museum, where Melvin was held ever briefly.
Another former inmate was of more interest to tour-goer Richard Culbertson.
Culbertson’s uncle, Earl Hunsaker, had scratched his nickname, “Bub,” into the ceiling of one of the cells.
“He was in here quite a bit,” Culbertson said. “He liked to drink.”
Society president Jeff Kluever told a rapid-pace tale of Melvin’s antics, from his institutionalization in Chicago to his easy escape to Missouri after the blast heard as far away as Neosho Falls.
When Melvin struck Iola, it was 1905. About 10,000-15,000 people lived in the city, Kluever noted.
Downtown was bustling. Respectable candy stores, pharmacies, shoe stores and clothiers lined the blocks. Brick buildings were painted bright pastels. On the alley side of some buildings, taverns catered to those with a thirst.
“There’s this underground sort of workers’ lifestyle,” Kluever said.
“It’s pretty proper on one side with the industrialists” — those names that are stalwarts in Iola history — “But really, it’s kind of a rough and tumble town. You have all these workers in the concrete plants” who at the end of the day, Kluever noted, liked to go have a shot of whiskey or a beer to wind down.
Enter Carrie Nation.
Carrie Nation was an ardent prohibitionist who brought her fiery rhetoric about destroying saloons to Iola in 1903.
By most accounts, the talk had little effect.
“Taverns operated openly, but if there were a complaint, police would arrest someone,” usually a saloon owner, “and throw them in jail for the night,” Kluever said. Then, they were released, and business continued as usual.
IN CHICAGO, Ill., Melvin had begun to speak out against saloons in a similar fashion.
Melvin was a dangerous combination — a zealot for the cause of prohibition, coupled with a leaning toward mental instability. By the time he moved to Bassett, just south of Iola, he had already been institutionalized, as well as jailed, over his erratic behavior.
Melvin found work at a local smelter, where his coworkers encouraged the ever-agitated Melvin to soothe his nerves by taking in a pint with them after work.
Drink did not sit well with Melvin, although he must have become a regular downtown.
In a report after the blast, The Iola Register noted “Damage is such that the perpetrator must have been familiar with the layout of the bars,” Kluever quoted.
Kluever took his small crowd through alleys where Melvin laid dynamite, and to the corner of S. Washington and Jackson avenues, where Melvin watched his destructive antics play out.
Walking the route while hearing the tale gave life to the story that sop many are familiar with.
Most interesting, perhaps, were photographs Kluever showed of downtown Iola at the time of the blast.
Whole walls ripped off buildings revealed shattered contents therein. And on undamaged streets, tracks for a marvelous public transportation system — the Iola Electric Railroad — ran straight and true.
Everything, then, was new and shiny. A new courthouse. Bustling businesses. And a chiming clock that was barely three days old when Melvin stopped its bells.
Kluever led the group to the spot where Melvin laid — and lit — a stack of 150 sticks of dynamite, at the base of the Eagle Saloon on the night of July 10.
The building, the Cowan & Ausherman, also held a shoe store, mercantile and land office, Kluever noted.
“Almost every building is like that,” he said.
The Iola Fruit Company, adjacent to the Red Light bar, would lose all its produce to water damage as a result of Melvin’s blasts.
In the timber-framed Blue Front Saloon, the owner was asleep upstairs at the time of the explosion. He escaped with broken ribs “but the loss of his building is probably worse than anything he physically suffers,” Kluever said.
At the base of the Shannon Building, the group imagined Melvin strolling casually down South Washington Avenue before hopping a train to Missouri.
There is a chance Melvin may never have been caught, but letters he sends to local authorities, additional saloon keepers and The Iola Register peg his pride in his actions.
“Consternation increases when the Portland Cement Company reports that 30 boxes (holding 1,500 pounds) of dynamite are missing,” Kluever noted. The letters mention further explosions. Only 500 pounds of the stolen dynamite were accounted for after the July 10 blast.
It takes authorities about three weeks to track down Melvin, Kluever said, but he is found, arrested and returned to Allen County for trial.
In a post-arrest interview, Melvin claims to not have lit the fuse on some of the dynamite found to preserve the lives of families sleeping above the taverns. He meant the piles as a threat, he said.
THE TOUR ended with a visit to the Old Jail Museum, where Melvin was held ever briefly.
Another former inmate was of more interest to tour-goer Richard Culbertson.
Culbertson’s uncle, Earl Hunsaker, had scratched his nickname, “Bub,” into the ceiling of one of the cells.
“He was in here quite a bit,” Culbertson said. “He liked to drink.”
Students study segregation at Brown v. Board of Education
TOPEKA — While segregation didn’t start in Kansas, the state played a role in ending the discriminatory practice, Iola students learned Thursday on a summer SAFE BASE field trip to the Brown vs. Board of Education National Historic Landmark in Topeka.
A sequence of video displays told the story of 13 parents, “mostly housewives,” who challenged the practice of segregating elementary schools by race in the city.
“Are we to say to the world we are free — except for the Negroes,” asked President John F. Kennedy in one bit of video footage.
Third-grader Abby Roettgen, taking in some of the displays, observed “there was a little girl who only lived a couple blocks from a white school and her dad didn’t get why she couldn’t go to that school rather than ride a bus all the way across town.”
That father, Oliver Brown, would lend his name to the suit that would go from Kansas courts to the United States Supreme Court, ultimately ending — at least legally — the practice of “separate but equal” that had kept the country racially divided since the Emancipation Proclamation had ended slavery.
In a talk by Park Ranger Joan Wilson, students, and the adults that accompanied them, learned that segregation continued unabated in many places in the country, even after the Supreme Court had decided Brown.
“It took until 1974 for some schools in Florida to integrate,” she told them. Worse still was Natchez, Miss., said Park Ranger Linda Rosenblum, who had grown up there.
“We had neighborhood schools but they were largely segregated,” she noted. “They did not consolidate their schools” — merging what were effectively all black and all white schools — “until 1989.”
That was a full 20 years after the Supreme Court had ruled on another case, Holmes County vs. Board of Education, that legally implemented a “one school system,” requiring transportation be provided so that schools could be integrated as required by the 1954 Brown v. Board decision.
Wilson told the students that Topeka had been seen as a test case for both segregation and desegregation.
The state, by law, could allow segregation under the “separate but equal” philosophy.
“The schools here were actually very good,” Wilson said of the segregated system. “They were funded, they hired good teachers.” But for parents like Zelma Henderson, one of the plaintiffs in the original case, good wasn’t good enough.
“I grew up in Western Kansas,” which was not segregated, Henderson said in a video shown to the assembly. “I was used to having equal rights and I went to having half rights, or no rights at all” after moving to Topeka, she said.
“I knew my children would learn from others how to get along with people,” and grading people’s worth by race was not a belief she wanted her children to have, Henderson said.
“It didn’t matter how much education you had,” she said. A long as opportunities were limited based upon race, the system was unfair.
Courts agreed, but Kansas opted not to change the law. It was then that, with the help of the NAACP, five suits challenging boards of education around the country for practices related to segregation were combined in a Supreme Court challenge.
“If they never changed it,” one student asked Wilson, “would it be the same today?”
“It would be worse, I think,” she answered thoughtfully. Wilson pointed out that, under segregation, the SAFE BASE group, sporting children of various races, could not have sat together.
“Relations would be very tense,” she said.
For there to be lasting change, she said, “First you change the law. Then you, hopefully, change the heart.”
TO CAP OFF the day, students were also treated to guided tour of the Topeka Zoo. Former SAFE BASE employee Claire Clark, who had once been a Topeka Zoo volunteer, regaled students with background stories about some of the animals.
“We had to separate the porcupines because they kept quilling the sloths,” she told the group.
As for Prickles the porcupine, Clark said, “his favorite treat is Ritz crackers.”
Clark told the students the best time to view animals at any zoo is early morning, when they have just been let out of their night enclosures.
Sometimes, even the cages can’t keep animals in, she noted.
“One time someone snipped open the eagle exhibit, but they can’t fly,” she said of the regal birds.
All Topeka’s eagles have been injured or crippled in the wild, she noted. The federally protected species can only be kept by permit, Clark said. The zoo is “like a rehabilitation program” for the birds, she said.
The zoo’s bobcat, Johnson, also has had his cage cut, Clark noted. “He used to be a pet,” she said. Confiscated, possibly due to mistreatment, the bobcat is happy at the zoo, she said, and never has left his cage.
Most amazing to the group was the zoo’s rainforest enclosure.
In the large enclosed habitat, animals are uncaged. Fruit bats furled and unfurled wings, looking like large brown cocoons when folded. Bright russet birds chased each other through a maze of children’s legs. And flamingos posed in sunrise-colored splendor as little eyes bugged out at their brilliant plumage.
By the end of the day, the children had learned much about their planet-mates, both human and animal.
A sequence of video displays told the story of 13 parents, “mostly housewives,” who challenged the practice of segregating elementary schools by race in the city.
“Are we to say to the world we are free — except for the Negroes,” asked President John F. Kennedy in one bit of video footage.
Third-grader Abby Roettgen, taking in some of the displays, observed “there was a little girl who only lived a couple blocks from a white school and her dad didn’t get why she couldn’t go to that school rather than ride a bus all the way across town.”
That father, Oliver Brown, would lend his name to the suit that would go from Kansas courts to the United States Supreme Court, ultimately ending — at least legally — the practice of “separate but equal” that had kept the country racially divided since the Emancipation Proclamation had ended slavery.
In a talk by Park Ranger Joan Wilson, students, and the adults that accompanied them, learned that segregation continued unabated in many places in the country, even after the Supreme Court had decided Brown.
“It took until 1974 for some schools in Florida to integrate,” she told them. Worse still was Natchez, Miss., said Park Ranger Linda Rosenblum, who had grown up there.
“We had neighborhood schools but they were largely segregated,” she noted. “They did not consolidate their schools” — merging what were effectively all black and all white schools — “until 1989.”
That was a full 20 years after the Supreme Court had ruled on another case, Holmes County vs. Board of Education, that legally implemented a “one school system,” requiring transportation be provided so that schools could be integrated as required by the 1954 Brown v. Board decision.
Wilson told the students that Topeka had been seen as a test case for both segregation and desegregation.
The state, by law, could allow segregation under the “separate but equal” philosophy.
“The schools here were actually very good,” Wilson said of the segregated system. “They were funded, they hired good teachers.” But for parents like Zelma Henderson, one of the plaintiffs in the original case, good wasn’t good enough.
“I grew up in Western Kansas,” which was not segregated, Henderson said in a video shown to the assembly. “I was used to having equal rights and I went to having half rights, or no rights at all” after moving to Topeka, she said.
“I knew my children would learn from others how to get along with people,” and grading people’s worth by race was not a belief she wanted her children to have, Henderson said.
“It didn’t matter how much education you had,” she said. A long as opportunities were limited based upon race, the system was unfair.
Courts agreed, but Kansas opted not to change the law. It was then that, with the help of the NAACP, five suits challenging boards of education around the country for practices related to segregation were combined in a Supreme Court challenge.
“If they never changed it,” one student asked Wilson, “would it be the same today?”
“It would be worse, I think,” she answered thoughtfully. Wilson pointed out that, under segregation, the SAFE BASE group, sporting children of various races, could not have sat together.
“Relations would be very tense,” she said.
For there to be lasting change, she said, “First you change the law. Then you, hopefully, change the heart.”
TO CAP OFF the day, students were also treated to guided tour of the Topeka Zoo. Former SAFE BASE employee Claire Clark, who had once been a Topeka Zoo volunteer, regaled students with background stories about some of the animals.
“We had to separate the porcupines because they kept quilling the sloths,” she told the group.
As for Prickles the porcupine, Clark said, “his favorite treat is Ritz crackers.”
Clark told the students the best time to view animals at any zoo is early morning, when they have just been let out of their night enclosures.
Sometimes, even the cages can’t keep animals in, she noted.
“One time someone snipped open the eagle exhibit, but they can’t fly,” she said of the regal birds.
All Topeka’s eagles have been injured or crippled in the wild, she noted. The federally protected species can only be kept by permit, Clark said. The zoo is “like a rehabilitation program” for the birds, she said.
The zoo’s bobcat, Johnson, also has had his cage cut, Clark noted. “He used to be a pet,” she said. Confiscated, possibly due to mistreatment, the bobcat is happy at the zoo, she said, and never has left his cage.
Most amazing to the group was the zoo’s rainforest enclosure.
In the large enclosed habitat, animals are uncaged. Fruit bats furled and unfurled wings, looking like large brown cocoons when folded. Bright russet birds chased each other through a maze of children’s legs. And flamingos posed in sunrise-colored splendor as little eyes bugged out at their brilliant plumage.
By the end of the day, the children had learned much about their planet-mates, both human and animal.
Little bugs equal big fun at library
Rick Cowlishaw gets all a-tizzy over the smallest things. And we do mean small.
Cowlishaw, professor of biology at Southwestern College in Winfield, was in Iola Thursday to show a dozen and a half young Iolans a world within a world, peering at single-celled organisms that live in pond water.
“There’s a lot of things that are alive that you can see,” Cowlishaw told the group, “but most of the life around you is microscopic, and most of that is in water.”
Cowlishaw shared his view by projecting images from beneath his microscope on to a large screen at the Flewharty House of Iola Public Library.
Ciliates, daphnia, copepods, rotifers — strange little animals swam about the watery world.
Pond water samples came from Iola and Chanute, he said, and were full of the common critters.
“The creatures you’re going to see basically do the same things we do,” he told the kids. “They move around, look for food and poop and pee, but on a different scale.”
Cowlishaw noted that, to put things in perspective, we should realize a human body is made up of about 10 trillion cells. “That’s a big number, like 12 zeroes after the one,” he noted. Ten trillion needs 13 zeroes.
The pond life on the microscope slide, on the other hand, was made up of one to a few dozen cells.
Ciliates are one-celled, he said, and move by waving small hair-like protrusions of the cell membrane.
Rotifers are multi-celled, but are smaller than ciliates. “They eat all sorts of things, like algae,” he noted.
Gasps and squeals erupted as larger, distinctly multi-celled creatures swam into view on the screen.
Copepods, related to shrimps and crabs, and daphnia, also known as waterfleas, looked more like movie aliens than animals, but both are common, Cowlishaw noted.
Though minute, copepods engage in strategic defense, discerning waves made as predators move toward them by wiggling their antennae, Cowlishaw noted. “A copepod can feel the waves coming and move away,” he said.
After his “slide” show, Cowlishaw put pond water samples at each of a dozen and a half microscopes for the youths to view themselves.
Small, spider-like animals scampered across some screens. And in another, a water scorpion sat like a walking stick with bugged out eyes.
The kids were fascinated.
“Any microscope is fun because it allows you to see things you can’t ordinarily see,” Cowlishaw said.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
chess offers skills for life
More than 100 Iola elementary students got a lesson in strategy Wednesday evening.
At the invitiation of local Lions Club President Virginia Peters, Lions District Governor Terry Welden visited SAFE BASE in Iola to teach the students the basics of the game of chess.
“Each school district in the state has a problem solving model to help children with better decision making,” Welden said. “The game of chess gives them a model where they can try out different strategies without negative consequences.”
Welden beleives that’s a life skill worth learning.
“There’s not too many of us adults that don’t have some decision we’ve made that we’d like to change,” he noted. For youth, Welden said, “Chess is a good model for them, where they can look before they leap.”
Retired one year from a 32 year teaching career, the last 18 in Special Education, Welden believes in giving students tools to help them evaluate crossroads in their lives.
Welden learned to play chess while growing up in Colony, he said. He hosted a chess club during his four years of high school there, too, he noted.
Now he is happy to travel wherever a group will have him, to share his love and knowledge of the game with young learners.
“I’m no great chess player,” Welden said, “but I enjoy working with children.”
Welden has so far visited Humboldt, Yates Center, Burlington and Iola in Lions District S, which covers southeast Kansas.
At the invitiation of local Lions Club President Virginia Peters, Lions District Governor Terry Welden visited SAFE BASE in Iola to teach the students the basics of the game of chess.
“Each school district in the state has a problem solving model to help children with better decision making,” Welden said. “The game of chess gives them a model where they can try out different strategies without negative consequences.”
Welden beleives that’s a life skill worth learning.
“There’s not too many of us adults that don’t have some decision we’ve made that we’d like to change,” he noted. For youth, Welden said, “Chess is a good model for them, where they can look before they leap.”
Retired one year from a 32 year teaching career, the last 18 in Special Education, Welden believes in giving students tools to help them evaluate crossroads in their lives.
Welden learned to play chess while growing up in Colony, he said. He hosted a chess club during his four years of high school there, too, he noted.
Now he is happy to travel wherever a group will have him, to share his love and knowledge of the game with young learners.
“I’m no great chess player,” Welden said, “but I enjoy working with children.”
Welden has so far visited Humboldt, Yates Center, Burlington and Iola in Lions District S, which covers southeast Kansas.
Chanute happy with commission/manager
As Iola ponders just what size it would like its new governing body to be, let alone whether that body is a council or commission, residents can look south to Chanute for an example of a commission/city manager government that seems, by all accounts, to be working just fine, thank you.
Chanute, population 9,411, has had a five-member commission governing with the help of a hired city manager for more than 30 years.
“I think it runs efficiently,” said City Clerk Joan Howard.
Chanute also has a mayor, but that position “is no different than a commissioner — he just runs meetings and signs documents,” Howard said. The mayor is selected each year from sitting commissioners, noted current mayor Ed Cox.
Commissioners hold meetings the second and fourth Monday evening of each month, plus stay in touch with City Manager J.D. Lester via e-mail and phone at other times.
Lester estimated commissioners work about 10 hours per week, for which they receive $3,000 annually, he said. The mayor is paid $3,600; the city manager gets “approximately $90,000 per year,” Lester said.
KANSAS municipalities typically use either of two basic government structures. In the mayor/council form, the mayor holds a non-voting position where his or her vote is cast primarily to break ties. The council sets policy and makes major decisions. There may or may not be a hired city administrator to run daily city operations.
In a commission form of government, the mayor is a voting member of the body. Commissioners are typically elected at-large, whereas councilmen are selected by wards.
Because Iola is ruled by charter ordinances, the governing body has more leeway in establishing itself as it likes. Iola now has a three-man commission with voting mayor and non-voting city administrator.
According to the Kansas League of Municipalities, the commission form of government is declining in popularity and the mayor-council form is “the most prevalent.”
IN CHANUTE’S governing form, the city manager “runs the city, the commission sets policy,” Howard explained. Daily operations include hiring and supervising department heads and determining how resources “are maximized in the community,” Cox said. Simply put, that means establishing budgets for city departments and needs.
Department heads and city staff bring proposed expenses to Lester, who then brings his recommendations to the commission, Cox said. The commission sets the budget. It’s a never-ending process, Cox noted.
“From the time the budget is passed we are looking at future needs and expenses,” he said.
Decisions made independently by Lester include patching potholes, addressing water leaks and prioritizing snow removal, Cox said.
“We’re served better, I think, to have a hired professional deal with those things. If you do a good job hiring a city manager you don’t have to micro-manage,” departments or operations, Cox noted.
Chanute’s commission has been good at picking managers.
“This is my twelfth year as a commissioner and we’ve had two” managers in that time, Cox said. “We have never had any issues with this form of government in my years here,” Cox added.
Every two years, three commissioners are elected. Two hold four year terms, three hold two year terms. All commission members are elected at large. The top two vote-getters in the four-year cycle each receive four-year terms, the third is given a two-year term. At the next election cycle, all three two-year seats are up for grabs.
That the manager is hired and not elected helps stabilize a community, Lester said. With elected officials, “the tides can change from one election to another quite a bit,” he said.
But, Mayor Cox noted, “there isn’t anything in the world that can’t be made political. The key to the whole deal is hiring the right people.” Cox believes, with Lester, Chanute has done just that.
LESTER was hired about a year and a half ago. He holds a business degree — “That’s the acumen I bring to the job,” he said. “I have 10 years experience in municipal utilities management” from Hermann, Mo., Lester said. He views the city as a business and “that’s how I try to run it.”
Lester has consolidated departments and strived for more transparency in government since being hired, he said. He is intent on moving the city forward.
Chanute acts as an Internet service provider for USD 413, Neosho Memorial Regional Medical Center and local non profits, as well as business that need faster Internet speeds than those available commercially, Lester said.
To further transparency, he hosts a radio show the day after commission meetings. He answers questions sent by the public via e-mail, videotapes and archives the broadcasts online for public perusal. Commission meetings are broadcast live on cable TV, then made available for Web viewing afterward.
“You get rid of the hearsay,” with such boradcasts, Lester said. “If someone has a question about something someone said, they can watch it for themselves. I wanted to get ahead of the coffee shop talk. Transparency, transparency, transparency,” is his motto.
Cox agreed such openess is important.
“It’s imperative for the community to employ someone whom the public feels they have access to,” he said. “The key here is communication.”
Communication must also be open between the city manger and the commission, Cox said. The state’s current financial stress “really taxes communities, regardless of their governance,” Cox noted.
“Government at the local level is, to me, the last stand of true democracy,” Cox said. “Heaven forbid there’s not enough people running for election.”
Chanute, population 9,411, has had a five-member commission governing with the help of a hired city manager for more than 30 years.
“I think it runs efficiently,” said City Clerk Joan Howard.
Chanute also has a mayor, but that position “is no different than a commissioner — he just runs meetings and signs documents,” Howard said. The mayor is selected each year from sitting commissioners, noted current mayor Ed Cox.
Commissioners hold meetings the second and fourth Monday evening of each month, plus stay in touch with City Manager J.D. Lester via e-mail and phone at other times.
Lester estimated commissioners work about 10 hours per week, for which they receive $3,000 annually, he said. The mayor is paid $3,600; the city manager gets “approximately $90,000 per year,” Lester said.
KANSAS municipalities typically use either of two basic government structures. In the mayor/council form, the mayor holds a non-voting position where his or her vote is cast primarily to break ties. The council sets policy and makes major decisions. There may or may not be a hired city administrator to run daily city operations.
In a commission form of government, the mayor is a voting member of the body. Commissioners are typically elected at-large, whereas councilmen are selected by wards.
Because Iola is ruled by charter ordinances, the governing body has more leeway in establishing itself as it likes. Iola now has a three-man commission with voting mayor and non-voting city administrator.
According to the Kansas League of Municipalities, the commission form of government is declining in popularity and the mayor-council form is “the most prevalent.”
IN CHANUTE’S governing form, the city manager “runs the city, the commission sets policy,” Howard explained. Daily operations include hiring and supervising department heads and determining how resources “are maximized in the community,” Cox said. Simply put, that means establishing budgets for city departments and needs.
Department heads and city staff bring proposed expenses to Lester, who then brings his recommendations to the commission, Cox said. The commission sets the budget. It’s a never-ending process, Cox noted.
“From the time the budget is passed we are looking at future needs and expenses,” he said.
Decisions made independently by Lester include patching potholes, addressing water leaks and prioritizing snow removal, Cox said.
“We’re served better, I think, to have a hired professional deal with those things. If you do a good job hiring a city manager you don’t have to micro-manage,” departments or operations, Cox noted.
Chanute’s commission has been good at picking managers.
“This is my twelfth year as a commissioner and we’ve had two” managers in that time, Cox said. “We have never had any issues with this form of government in my years here,” Cox added.
Every two years, three commissioners are elected. Two hold four year terms, three hold two year terms. All commission members are elected at large. The top two vote-getters in the four-year cycle each receive four-year terms, the third is given a two-year term. At the next election cycle, all three two-year seats are up for grabs.
That the manager is hired and not elected helps stabilize a community, Lester said. With elected officials, “the tides can change from one election to another quite a bit,” he said.
But, Mayor Cox noted, “there isn’t anything in the world that can’t be made political. The key to the whole deal is hiring the right people.” Cox believes, with Lester, Chanute has done just that.
LESTER was hired about a year and a half ago. He holds a business degree — “That’s the acumen I bring to the job,” he said. “I have 10 years experience in municipal utilities management” from Hermann, Mo., Lester said. He views the city as a business and “that’s how I try to run it.”
Lester has consolidated departments and strived for more transparency in government since being hired, he said. He is intent on moving the city forward.
Chanute acts as an Internet service provider for USD 413, Neosho Memorial Regional Medical Center and local non profits, as well as business that need faster Internet speeds than those available commercially, Lester said.
To further transparency, he hosts a radio show the day after commission meetings. He answers questions sent by the public via e-mail, videotapes and archives the broadcasts online for public perusal. Commission meetings are broadcast live on cable TV, then made available for Web viewing afterward.
“You get rid of the hearsay,” with such boradcasts, Lester said. “If someone has a question about something someone said, they can watch it for themselves. I wanted to get ahead of the coffee shop talk. Transparency, transparency, transparency,” is his motto.
Cox agreed such openess is important.
“It’s imperative for the community to employ someone whom the public feels they have access to,” he said. “The key here is communication.”
Communication must also be open between the city manger and the commission, Cox said. The state’s current financial stress “really taxes communities, regardless of their governance,” Cox noted.
“Government at the local level is, to me, the last stand of true democracy,” Cox said. “Heaven forbid there’s not enough people running for election.”
Cedarbrook on schedule
At 400 linear feet per day, work is right on schedule to complete the infrastructure at the new 30-unit Cedarbrook housing development at Iola’s north edge.
A crew from Burlington Construction is on the scene, working rain or shine.
“We’ve been doing a lot of covering and uncovering during the rain and pouring between rains,” said Jeremy Hugunin, crew foreman. Burlington is doing the concrete work on the project, both streets and curbing.
“They’re doing a great job,” said Jeff Bauer, Iola’s code enforcement officer.
“We’re meeting our quota every day,” said Hugunin.
The eight-man crew frames up, smoothes out and adds stress-relieving saw cuts to the concrete curbing by hand each day.
“It’s a pretty good feat, really, to pour 400 feet by hand,” said Burlington Construction owner Tom Hugunin.
Altogether, the crew will have laid 9,000 linear feet of curbing by the time the project is done.
“We will concrete the street as well,” Tom Hugunin said.
After slicking the cement to a surprisingly smooth surface, the crews coat the curbs with a sealant that both cures the concrete and prohibits its drying too quickly.
“On residential work, it’s not done a lot,” said Tom Hugunin, but the treatment helps strengthen the curbs by creating a better bonded product. “We have 12, 55-gallon drums of sealant” for the project, he said.
Much of the work the crews are doing is invisible to the untrained eye.
Hugunin explained it’s part of the physics of concrete: “Concrete cracks, so you have to give it a place to do it.”
“Every 12 inches there’s a saw cut through the curb and the street,” he said. That provides room for the concrete to expand when hot and contract from when cold, without stressing the overall structure.
Every 30 inches along the curbing, there is a 1/2 inch piece of L-shaped rebar, acting as a frame to hold the street to the curbing. In addition, beneath the street surface are an array of “dowel baskets:” metal rebar frames that acts as a floating bed for the concrete. These structures weave the street together, also prohibiting cracks.
The end result is streets meant to last many, many years, said Hugunin.
Grading of the housing lots should start in June, as soon as the curb work is done, said Bauer.
The houses are scheduled to be built beginning in fall, Bauer said, and should be ready for occupancy by the end of the year.
A crew from Burlington Construction is on the scene, working rain or shine.
“We’ve been doing a lot of covering and uncovering during the rain and pouring between rains,” said Jeremy Hugunin, crew foreman. Burlington is doing the concrete work on the project, both streets and curbing.
“They’re doing a great job,” said Jeff Bauer, Iola’s code enforcement officer.
“We’re meeting our quota every day,” said Hugunin.
The eight-man crew frames up, smoothes out and adds stress-relieving saw cuts to the concrete curbing by hand each day.
“It’s a pretty good feat, really, to pour 400 feet by hand,” said Burlington Construction owner Tom Hugunin.
Altogether, the crew will have laid 9,000 linear feet of curbing by the time the project is done.
“We will concrete the street as well,” Tom Hugunin said.
After slicking the cement to a surprisingly smooth surface, the crews coat the curbs with a sealant that both cures the concrete and prohibits its drying too quickly.
“On residential work, it’s not done a lot,” said Tom Hugunin, but the treatment helps strengthen the curbs by creating a better bonded product. “We have 12, 55-gallon drums of sealant” for the project, he said.
Much of the work the crews are doing is invisible to the untrained eye.
Hugunin explained it’s part of the physics of concrete: “Concrete cracks, so you have to give it a place to do it.”
“Every 12 inches there’s a saw cut through the curb and the street,” he said. That provides room for the concrete to expand when hot and contract from when cold, without stressing the overall structure.
Every 30 inches along the curbing, there is a 1/2 inch piece of L-shaped rebar, acting as a frame to hold the street to the curbing. In addition, beneath the street surface are an array of “dowel baskets:” metal rebar frames that acts as a floating bed for the concrete. These structures weave the street together, also prohibiting cracks.
The end result is streets meant to last many, many years, said Hugunin.
Grading of the housing lots should start in June, as soon as the curb work is done, said Bauer.
The houses are scheduled to be built beginning in fall, Bauer said, and should be ready for occupancy by the end of the year.
Drug court feasibility to be studied
Judge Dale Creitz of the 31st Judicial District and Ruth St. Clair of Thrive Allen County asked County Commissioners Tuesday for their blessing in pursuing a grant to establish a drug court in Allen County.
The grant, which Thrive will apply for through the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City, would pay for a consultant to research the viability of establishing such a court here.
“We need to make sure we have the caseloads to support that,” St. Clair said.
There are 11 drug courts in Kansas, Creitz said. The smallest is in Gary County, which has 30,000 residents, he said.
“The advantage of drug courts is it creates a big structure,” Creitz told commissioners.
Drug courts offer a “very structured, intensive set of rules with set responsibilities” for offenders, Creitz said.
“It’s basically a contract” between the offender and the court, Creitz explained. “They have certain things they need to do, and if they don’t” they face incarceration, Creitz said.
Creitz envisioned the court meeting twice each month in the large courtroom in Iola.
It would be open only to non violent offenders facing misdemeanors and low level felonies, St. Clair said.
Creitz said he thinks Allen County has the caseloads to warrant such a court.
“Is this study also going to look into who’s going to implement it and how much it’s going to cost,” asked Commissioner Dick Works.
“Exactly,” St. Clair replied. “We understand the county is strapped and funding has to come form outside,” she said.
In fact, St. Clair said, the county’s portion of matching funds necessary for the grant can come in the form of staff time through the judge’s office, she said, and not require an out of pocket expense.
“It doesn’t cost anything to see if it’s feasible,” Creitz noted.
St. Clair said that Allen County Sheriff Tom Williams supports the court.
“This was his idea, actually,” she said.
The study could take up to 12 months, St. Clair said.
The grant, which Thrive will apply for through the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City, would pay for a consultant to research the viability of establishing such a court here.
“We need to make sure we have the caseloads to support that,” St. Clair said.
There are 11 drug courts in Kansas, Creitz said. The smallest is in Gary County, which has 30,000 residents, he said.
“The advantage of drug courts is it creates a big structure,” Creitz told commissioners.
Drug courts offer a “very structured, intensive set of rules with set responsibilities” for offenders, Creitz said.
“It’s basically a contract” between the offender and the court, Creitz explained. “They have certain things they need to do, and if they don’t” they face incarceration, Creitz said.
Creitz envisioned the court meeting twice each month in the large courtroom in Iola.
It would be open only to non violent offenders facing misdemeanors and low level felonies, St. Clair said.
Creitz said he thinks Allen County has the caseloads to warrant such a court.
“Is this study also going to look into who’s going to implement it and how much it’s going to cost,” asked Commissioner Dick Works.
“Exactly,” St. Clair replied. “We understand the county is strapped and funding has to come form outside,” she said.
In fact, St. Clair said, the county’s portion of matching funds necessary for the grant can come in the form of staff time through the judge’s office, she said, and not require an out of pocket expense.
“It doesn’t cost anything to see if it’s feasible,” Creitz noted.
St. Clair said that Allen County Sheriff Tom Williams supports the court.
“This was his idea, actually,” she said.
The study could take up to 12 months, St. Clair said.
Leaky roof plagues 911 center
There are problems with the roof at 410 N. State St., 911 Director Angela Murphy told commissioners Tuesday. The southeast corner of the roof has been leaking into the electrical system of the building, affecting lighting, she said. Commissioners approved emergency repair work.
Most of the $181,000 AT&T bill associated with upgrading communication equipment at the Center will be reimbursed through a Governor’s grant, Murphy noted. The county will only pay $12,200 of the total.
The work was mandated through Phase 2 911 service “whether we relocated or not,” Murphy said. “When we updated our 911 system, we had to update our computer system,” Murphy said. “We didn’t have a choice in the matter.”
AT&T will also reimburse the county $25,890 annually for tower fees, Murphy said. Currently, the fees were paid out of the 911 fund.
Murphy informed commissioners that tests have proven the capabilities of the new system to locate mobile phone users.
“Being able to see the exact location of a cell phone — we’ve never had that before,” she said.
The next technological update, ng911, will allow the Center to accept text and picture messages from mobile devices.
A contract with R&S Digital Service, Inc. was pre-approved by commissioners pending review by County Counselor Alan Weber.
The contract, for Geographic Information System mapping, is for a lower cost than originally approved.
Commissioners agreed with Weber that all subcontractors working on remodeling the building at 412 N. State St. into a county ambulance barn need to sign off on the contract.
Weber reminded commissioners that a performance bond was required when the job was advertised. A fine of $100 a day would be assesssed if work isn’t being done on schedule, he said.
The county ambulance stationed in Humboldt will be out of commission for the week while a rear seal is repaired, said Allen County Emergency Medical Services Director Jason Nelson. Another ambulance has a broken windshield, he told Commissioners.
Ambulance runs are averaging 22 more than this time last year, he said.
Commissioners went into executive session to discuss a paramedic who has given notice to leave.
Nelson mentioned that Governor Mark Parkinson signed Monday Senate Bill 262 which will require EMS personnel to have 200 hours of training over the course of two years.
Under the new law, Nelson can receive training off site, then pass that knowledge on to staff through training within the county.
The additional training — or lack thereof — will impact pay scales, Nelson noted.
A COOLING tower on top of the county courthouse is rusting and needs to be replaced — but not quite yet, commissioners decided.
The item will be budgeted for next year. Until then, the unit, placed on the roof in April, 1963, should last the season. It had an expected life of 25 years. Replacement cost will be about $47,000.
Noise and pollution levels are being checked at the Allen County Quarry by the Mine Safety and Health Administration.
“We want to keep our people safe out there,” said Public Works Director Bill King. “If something is wrong, we want to fix it.”
The check is done at least annually by MSHA, King said.
A Federal Aviation Adminsitration 95/5 grant is pending for about $.5 million of apron work at the Allen County Airport. Commissioners will open bids but take no action until the funding is finalized, King said.
Flashing cross arms will be added later in the year to a railroad crossing at Utah and 59 Highway, King said. The project, a joint venture of Kansas Department of Transportation and Union Pacific Railroad, will add a barrier to what is now a busy — but unguarded — crossing.
“People don’t realize it, but about every 15 to 20 minutes there’s a train on that track,” King said.
The county will work with SAFE BASE to plant flowers or trees around the courthouse square.
The only bid received for interest on the county’s idle funds was for a rate of .60 percent for 183 days, County Treasurer Sharon Utley said. The county receives .70 percent interest on funds in its checking account, she noted.
The rate offered was the lowest in three years.
Bill Hough was approved as Allen County noxious weed director. He was also appointed to Kansas Department of Agriculture, Plant Protection and Weed Control as county weed supervisor.
Commissioners will meet May 13 with the Association of County Commissioners and Highway Officials of Southeast Kansas in Chanute.
Most of the $181,000 AT&T bill associated with upgrading communication equipment at the Center will be reimbursed through a Governor’s grant, Murphy noted. The county will only pay $12,200 of the total.
The work was mandated through Phase 2 911 service “whether we relocated or not,” Murphy said. “When we updated our 911 system, we had to update our computer system,” Murphy said. “We didn’t have a choice in the matter.”
AT&T will also reimburse the county $25,890 annually for tower fees, Murphy said. Currently, the fees were paid out of the 911 fund.
Murphy informed commissioners that tests have proven the capabilities of the new system to locate mobile phone users.
“Being able to see the exact location of a cell phone — we’ve never had that before,” she said.
The next technological update, ng911, will allow the Center to accept text and picture messages from mobile devices.
A contract with R&S Digital Service, Inc. was pre-approved by commissioners pending review by County Counselor Alan Weber.
The contract, for Geographic Information System mapping, is for a lower cost than originally approved.
Commissioners agreed with Weber that all subcontractors working on remodeling the building at 412 N. State St. into a county ambulance barn need to sign off on the contract.
Weber reminded commissioners that a performance bond was required when the job was advertised. A fine of $100 a day would be assesssed if work isn’t being done on schedule, he said.
The county ambulance stationed in Humboldt will be out of commission for the week while a rear seal is repaired, said Allen County Emergency Medical Services Director Jason Nelson. Another ambulance has a broken windshield, he told Commissioners.
Ambulance runs are averaging 22 more than this time last year, he said.
Commissioners went into executive session to discuss a paramedic who has given notice to leave.
Nelson mentioned that Governor Mark Parkinson signed Monday Senate Bill 262 which will require EMS personnel to have 200 hours of training over the course of two years.
Under the new law, Nelson can receive training off site, then pass that knowledge on to staff through training within the county.
The additional training — or lack thereof — will impact pay scales, Nelson noted.
A COOLING tower on top of the county courthouse is rusting and needs to be replaced — but not quite yet, commissioners decided.
The item will be budgeted for next year. Until then, the unit, placed on the roof in April, 1963, should last the season. It had an expected life of 25 years. Replacement cost will be about $47,000.
Noise and pollution levels are being checked at the Allen County Quarry by the Mine Safety and Health Administration.
“We want to keep our people safe out there,” said Public Works Director Bill King. “If something is wrong, we want to fix it.”
The check is done at least annually by MSHA, King said.
A Federal Aviation Adminsitration 95/5 grant is pending for about $.5 million of apron work at the Allen County Airport. Commissioners will open bids but take no action until the funding is finalized, King said.
Flashing cross arms will be added later in the year to a railroad crossing at Utah and 59 Highway, King said. The project, a joint venture of Kansas Department of Transportation and Union Pacific Railroad, will add a barrier to what is now a busy — but unguarded — crossing.
“People don’t realize it, but about every 15 to 20 minutes there’s a train on that track,” King said.
The county will work with SAFE BASE to plant flowers or trees around the courthouse square.
The only bid received for interest on the county’s idle funds was for a rate of .60 percent for 183 days, County Treasurer Sharon Utley said. The county receives .70 percent interest on funds in its checking account, she noted.
The rate offered was the lowest in three years.
Bill Hough was approved as Allen County noxious weed director. He was also appointed to Kansas Department of Agriculture, Plant Protection and Weed Control as county weed supervisor.
Commissioners will meet May 13 with the Association of County Commissioners and Highway Officials of Southeast Kansas in Chanute.
CASA's cases grow
HUMBOLDT — Court Appointed Special Advocates for Children were recognized recently for their dedication and work on behalf of children involved in the court system.
CASA volunteers have worked in the 31st Judicial District, of which Allen County is a part, since 2004. Local CASA advocates also cover Woodson, Neosho and Wilson counties. At present, 39 cases are under CASA’s care in the four counties.
At least 15 new volunteers are needed, said board member Bob Heigele.
“CASA volunteers are appointed by judges to watch over and advocate for abused and neglected children, to make sure they don’t get lost in the overburdened legal and social service system or languish in an inappropriate group or foster home,” the CASA Web site notes.
“They stay with each case until it is closed and the child is placed in a safe, permanent home. For many abused children, their CASA volunteer is one constant adult presence” who watches out for their well-being.
Local volunteers typically spend six to 12 hours per week on cases, Heigele said. But the time commitment isn’t fixed. “That depends on number of clients and severity of the cases,” he noted.
Volunteers are given complete training before they can work with cases. Background checks and a willingness to travel 60 miles locally are required.
“Last year, more than 68,000 CASA volunteers served more than 240,000 abused and neglected children through 1,018 program offices. CASA volunteers have helped more than 2 million abused children since the first program was established in 1977,” their site notes.
Training for new volunteers will begin next week. Call CASA Director Aimee Daniels at 365-1448, or e-mail casadirector31@yahoo.com for more information or to sign up.
IN HUMBOLDT on Jan. 27, 11 advocates were recognized at an awards banquet in the Humboldt High School commons.
First year advocates recognized were: Bobbie Gilpin, Karen Lee, Mickey Hicks, Iola, and Marie Jordan, Chanute. Second year were: Cathy Lynch, Iola, Aimee Daniels, Chanute, and Donald Sewell, Fredonia.
Third year advocates were: Janice Parker, Moran, Tina Knight and Debra Brown, Erie, and Betty Ritz, Fredonia.
Cindy Adams was thanked for her service as outgoing board president, and Bob Heigele as retiring board member.
Newly installed board members are: president, Ken McGuffin, Rusty Arnold, president-elect, Mark Lair, treasurer, and Shelia Lampe, secretary.
CASA volunteers have worked in the 31st Judicial District, of which Allen County is a part, since 2004. Local CASA advocates also cover Woodson, Neosho and Wilson counties. At present, 39 cases are under CASA’s care in the four counties.
At least 15 new volunteers are needed, said board member Bob Heigele.
“CASA volunteers are appointed by judges to watch over and advocate for abused and neglected children, to make sure they don’t get lost in the overburdened legal and social service system or languish in an inappropriate group or foster home,” the CASA Web site notes.
“They stay with each case until it is closed and the child is placed in a safe, permanent home. For many abused children, their CASA volunteer is one constant adult presence” who watches out for their well-being.
Local volunteers typically spend six to 12 hours per week on cases, Heigele said. But the time commitment isn’t fixed. “That depends on number of clients and severity of the cases,” he noted.
Volunteers are given complete training before they can work with cases. Background checks and a willingness to travel 60 miles locally are required.
“Last year, more than 68,000 CASA volunteers served more than 240,000 abused and neglected children through 1,018 program offices. CASA volunteers have helped more than 2 million abused children since the first program was established in 1977,” their site notes.
Training for new volunteers will begin next week. Call CASA Director Aimee Daniels at 365-1448, or e-mail casadirector31@yahoo.com for more information or to sign up.
IN HUMBOLDT on Jan. 27, 11 advocates were recognized at an awards banquet in the Humboldt High School commons.
First year advocates recognized were: Bobbie Gilpin, Karen Lee, Mickey Hicks, Iola, and Marie Jordan, Chanute. Second year were: Cathy Lynch, Iola, Aimee Daniels, Chanute, and Donald Sewell, Fredonia.
Third year advocates were: Janice Parker, Moran, Tina Knight and Debra Brown, Erie, and Betty Ritz, Fredonia.
Cindy Adams was thanked for her service as outgoing board president, and Bob Heigele as retiring board member.
Newly installed board members are: president, Ken McGuffin, Rusty Arnold, president-elect, Mark Lair, treasurer, and Shelia Lampe, secretary.
'Atherton' author entertains
Patrick Carman, author of this year’s Iola Reads young adult selection, “Atherton, the House of Power,” regaled Iola schools’ fourth and fifth graders Thursday afternoon with tales of his own childhood shenanigans. He had the audience laughing uproariously at antics such as placing a toy under his mother’s backing-up car while a friend wailed like a run-over cat. “You should have seen her face,” he said. “Crazy-haired Gary and I just laughed and laughed and laughed. Of course, we stopped laughing when my mom’s face peered over the hedge.”
Then he and Gary cut open a goo-filled toy — “let me tell, you, that stuff tasted terrible. It didn’t taste like something you should be eating.” The children — and adults — laughed along, knowing they’d most likely try the same thing.
Carman continued talking to the students about the beauty of reading, how each person’s imagination creates unique pictures in their mind.
“The coolest thing about reading,” he told them, “is you’re the director of your own story. Everything you think or sense about that book is all you. Even if a million other people heave read it before you, when you read it, it’s brand new.”
And, he told them, “not everyone is captivated by the same thing. When you see something that’s interesting to you, write it down, or take a picture of it.”
Carman admitted to being oriented more toward visuals than to the written word. Nonetheless, he encouraged students to keep journals. He said when he first started keeping his own, it was all “words, words, words, words, words, words, words. Sigh. Words, words, words, words, words.” So he changed that, and began drawing on the pages.
“I don’t think I’m an amazing artist,” he told the students, “but I like to draw.”
His trick, he said, was to “put little arrows that say what I think I see in the picture.” A sketch of simple lines becomes “ a dragon. It’s wings are blue. Another arrow points to a line and says, it has huge claws that are going to tear you up.”
In pictures, Carman said, “the big ideas are all right there.”
IT WAS FROM a single sketch, and thinking about the way the earth’s environment is changing, that the idea for the Atherton series was born, he said.
On a plane, talking to someone he met about his ideas for the multi-level world, Carman said the man took out a photograph and said “you’ve got to see this.” It was a picture of a plateau in Greece, where people living at the top use a basket system to receive their goods.
“A lot of (Atherton) started to take shape because I saw this one picture,” he told the students.
Carman told students that Atherton was an anagram about the story. Its moral evolves from the fact that Atherton is a created world.
“In a sense, this guy is playing God, and because he does he creates a lot of problems,” Carman said.
The Atherton books are a cautionary tale about taking care of the earth, Carman said. “I’m actually scared about what’s happening to the earth,” he told them.
BECAUSE people are reading less and less, and because Carman himself enjoys video games and the cyber world, he said, his latest books involve a merging of the two media.
“Ghost in the Machine” has interruptions in the text that require logging on to a Web site and watching segments of the story, he said. Another series, “39 Clues,” is a video game/book combination written by 10 authors, of which Carman is one. Readers log on to the Web-based game and play as a character in the story. “You find one clue in each book, but you have to find 29 online, “ he told the audience.
Despite the blurring between reality and video that seems to be occurring these days, Carman reminded students that books and movies are fiction. “The first thing you have to remember is, I made the whole thing up. The second thing is, its not theat scary.”
In answering questions from students, Carman said all three of his series, Elyon, Atherton and Skeleton Creek, have been optioned as movies. “Studios have bought the rights to make these into movies, but I don’t know if it will happen,” he told them.
Carman told the classes he wrote his first series “for my own kids. I just wanted a good story to tell.” He said, as a child, his first favorite book was “Where the Wild things are.” His second was “The Lorax,” the environmental tale by Dr. Seusss.
“When I got a little older, there weren’t that many books for kids,” he told the students. “Learn to love reading now, while the getting’s good,” he said.
Carman urged students to enjoy reading now, while they had time and attention to do so. And he said, when selecting books to read, find some “just for fun.”
“When you get older, you’ll be surprised how few adults read.”
Then he and Gary cut open a goo-filled toy — “let me tell, you, that stuff tasted terrible. It didn’t taste like something you should be eating.” The children — and adults — laughed along, knowing they’d most likely try the same thing.
Carman continued talking to the students about the beauty of reading, how each person’s imagination creates unique pictures in their mind.
“The coolest thing about reading,” he told them, “is you’re the director of your own story. Everything you think or sense about that book is all you. Even if a million other people heave read it before you, when you read it, it’s brand new.”
And, he told them, “not everyone is captivated by the same thing. When you see something that’s interesting to you, write it down, or take a picture of it.”
Carman admitted to being oriented more toward visuals than to the written word. Nonetheless, he encouraged students to keep journals. He said when he first started keeping his own, it was all “words, words, words, words, words, words, words. Sigh. Words, words, words, words, words.” So he changed that, and began drawing on the pages.
“I don’t think I’m an amazing artist,” he told the students, “but I like to draw.”
His trick, he said, was to “put little arrows that say what I think I see in the picture.” A sketch of simple lines becomes “ a dragon. It’s wings are blue. Another arrow points to a line and says, it has huge claws that are going to tear you up.”
In pictures, Carman said, “the big ideas are all right there.”
IT WAS FROM a single sketch, and thinking about the way the earth’s environment is changing, that the idea for the Atherton series was born, he said.
On a plane, talking to someone he met about his ideas for the multi-level world, Carman said the man took out a photograph and said “you’ve got to see this.” It was a picture of a plateau in Greece, where people living at the top use a basket system to receive their goods.
“A lot of (Atherton) started to take shape because I saw this one picture,” he told the students.
Carman told students that Atherton was an anagram about the story. Its moral evolves from the fact that Atherton is a created world.
“In a sense, this guy is playing God, and because he does he creates a lot of problems,” Carman said.
The Atherton books are a cautionary tale about taking care of the earth, Carman said. “I’m actually scared about what’s happening to the earth,” he told them.
BECAUSE people are reading less and less, and because Carman himself enjoys video games and the cyber world, he said, his latest books involve a merging of the two media.
“Ghost in the Machine” has interruptions in the text that require logging on to a Web site and watching segments of the story, he said. Another series, “39 Clues,” is a video game/book combination written by 10 authors, of which Carman is one. Readers log on to the Web-based game and play as a character in the story. “You find one clue in each book, but you have to find 29 online, “ he told the audience.
Despite the blurring between reality and video that seems to be occurring these days, Carman reminded students that books and movies are fiction. “The first thing you have to remember is, I made the whole thing up. The second thing is, its not theat scary.”
In answering questions from students, Carman said all three of his series, Elyon, Atherton and Skeleton Creek, have been optioned as movies. “Studios have bought the rights to make these into movies, but I don’t know if it will happen,” he told them.
Carman told the classes he wrote his first series “for my own kids. I just wanted a good story to tell.” He said, as a child, his first favorite book was “Where the Wild things are.” His second was “The Lorax,” the environmental tale by Dr. Seusss.
“When I got a little older, there weren’t that many books for kids,” he told the students. “Learn to love reading now, while the getting’s good,” he said.
Carman urged students to enjoy reading now, while they had time and attention to do so. And he said, when selecting books to read, find some “just for fun.”
“When you get older, you’ll be surprised how few adults read.”
Beauty of bugs lures young entomologists
Ask any participant in the 4-H entomology project why they collect bugs, and they’ll all say: it’s fun.
Somehow, there’s nothing like a giant dobson fly with its angry-looking pincers or a saucer-sized cecropia moth to get a child excited.
“They’re interesting and I can tell my friends what they are so they’re not scared of them,” Klair Vogel said of the bugs in her collection.
And, they’re convenient.
“We can’t do cattle and stuff because we don’t live on a farm,” Tyler Holloway said. Bugs, obviously, require less space.
Entomology project classes are determined by a 4-H’er’s age and level of experience. The number of specimens that need to be collected varies with each class.
Participants must identify the insects, mount them according to standards and record the location and month of collection.
That’s not as easy as it sounds, if bugs are collected year round.
“My freezer is always full of bugs,” said 4-H mom Laura Vogel.
Wade Vogel relayed how one giant moth the family collected was ruined because his son was a little eager in taking the ice cream out. Veteran collectors Ethan and Tyler Holloway avoid such mishaps.
“We don’t have food in the freezer where we keep our bugs,” Tyler said. Still, that doesn’t help them remember when or where they caught them, Tyler said. Or prevent other mishaps.
“The biggest bug we got, we broke it when we were trying to mount it,” Tyler said. “It was a polyphemus moth — it was probably eight inches long.”
Each budding scientist has a favorite bug.
For Ethan Holloway, it’s a giant stag beetle he found at church camp in Ottawa. For Tyler, it’s the strikingly handsome olive and black pandorus sphinx moth. Tyler spent a year searching until he found — and collected — one.
Klair’s favorite is her cecropia moth, or maybe the cicada she caught by hand. Isaac Heskett has a dobson fly.
Most of the kids collect specimens around their homes or on family trips. The Holloways got their walking sticks from their garage wall. The Vogels chase insets in their yard.
“Everything we do is a family project,” Wade said. Proving the point, Klair’s sister Shannon grabs their collecting jar and heads to the field, while Klair waves a long butterfly net after a large blue dragonfly. Wade helps secure the captured insects.
Shannon’s catch, a giant wasp called a cicada killer, can give quite a sting, Wade says, quickly capping the jar.
Mom Laura types up the labels for the collection, she said.
Each family has a preferred method to kill their catch. The Vogels freeze their prey. The Holloways use an alcohol-filled “killing jar.”
Big bugs seem preferred over small.
“You start getting little bitty bugs you have to identify them with a magnifying glass,” Wade said.
This year, only the common name, rather than the Latin name for specimens, is required for the fair displays.
“I think we should stick to the scientific name,” Tyler said. “It’s not that hard to find,” he said.
The kids all use the bug bible, “Insects in Kansas” put out by Kansas Dept. of Agriculture. They also use the Internet. And, they network.
“We’ve been at it a few years and we talk with people,” Ethan said.
The young scientists learn a lot in researching their catches, too.
The Vogels have been researching habitats, to make a natural looking display to teach people where to find certain insects.
Ethan learned that female luna moths are translucent, while males are opaque.
And Tyler has an eyed click beetle.
“The eyes are to scare people off so they don’t eat them because they’re kind of a delicacy,” he said. “It’s one of my favorite bugs,” he added.
Tyler said the idea if eating bugs isn’t so weird.
“We ate popcorn flavored beetles at the San Diego zoo last year,” he said.
“They tasted really good.”
Somehow, there’s nothing like a giant dobson fly with its angry-looking pincers or a saucer-sized cecropia moth to get a child excited.
“They’re interesting and I can tell my friends what they are so they’re not scared of them,” Klair Vogel said of the bugs in her collection.
And, they’re convenient.
“We can’t do cattle and stuff because we don’t live on a farm,” Tyler Holloway said. Bugs, obviously, require less space.
Entomology project classes are determined by a 4-H’er’s age and level of experience. The number of specimens that need to be collected varies with each class.
Participants must identify the insects, mount them according to standards and record the location and month of collection.
That’s not as easy as it sounds, if bugs are collected year round.
“My freezer is always full of bugs,” said 4-H mom Laura Vogel.
Wade Vogel relayed how one giant moth the family collected was ruined because his son was a little eager in taking the ice cream out. Veteran collectors Ethan and Tyler Holloway avoid such mishaps.
“We don’t have food in the freezer where we keep our bugs,” Tyler said. Still, that doesn’t help them remember when or where they caught them, Tyler said. Or prevent other mishaps.
“The biggest bug we got, we broke it when we were trying to mount it,” Tyler said. “It was a polyphemus moth — it was probably eight inches long.”
Each budding scientist has a favorite bug.
For Ethan Holloway, it’s a giant stag beetle he found at church camp in Ottawa. For Tyler, it’s the strikingly handsome olive and black pandorus sphinx moth. Tyler spent a year searching until he found — and collected — one.
Klair’s favorite is her cecropia moth, or maybe the cicada she caught by hand. Isaac Heskett has a dobson fly.
Most of the kids collect specimens around their homes or on family trips. The Holloways got their walking sticks from their garage wall. The Vogels chase insets in their yard.
“Everything we do is a family project,” Wade said. Proving the point, Klair’s sister Shannon grabs their collecting jar and heads to the field, while Klair waves a long butterfly net after a large blue dragonfly. Wade helps secure the captured insects.
Shannon’s catch, a giant wasp called a cicada killer, can give quite a sting, Wade says, quickly capping the jar.
Mom Laura types up the labels for the collection, she said.
Each family has a preferred method to kill their catch. The Vogels freeze their prey. The Holloways use an alcohol-filled “killing jar.”
Big bugs seem preferred over small.
“You start getting little bitty bugs you have to identify them with a magnifying glass,” Wade said.
This year, only the common name, rather than the Latin name for specimens, is required for the fair displays.
“I think we should stick to the scientific name,” Tyler said. “It’s not that hard to find,” he said.
The kids all use the bug bible, “Insects in Kansas” put out by Kansas Dept. of Agriculture. They also use the Internet. And, they network.
“We’ve been at it a few years and we talk with people,” Ethan said.
The young scientists learn a lot in researching their catches, too.
The Vogels have been researching habitats, to make a natural looking display to teach people where to find certain insects.
Ethan learned that female luna moths are translucent, while males are opaque.
And Tyler has an eyed click beetle.
“The eyes are to scare people off so they don’t eat them because they’re kind of a delicacy,” he said. “It’s one of my favorite bugs,” he added.
Tyler said the idea if eating bugs isn’t so weird.
“We ate popcorn flavored beetles at the San Diego zoo last year,” he said.
“They tasted really good.”
New views at Center
Some behind the scenes as well as up-front changes have taken place at the Bowlus Fine Arts Center over the summer.
Although the changes are apparent, the sources are not. Most of the improvements are courtesy of anonymous donors, said Bowlus Director Susan Raines.
A new sign in front of the Center provides updated information on programming and events. The scrolling text LED sign was purchased through a combination of $13,000 in private funds and a $9,000 grant from the Friends of the Bowlus Foundation, Raines said.
Inside, a storeroom has been converted to a functional kitchen.
“And we have an ice machine, that’s my favorite part,” Raines said.
Raines previously hauled ice for events and receptions in her car from Iola High School. In addition, there was no water supply to that level of the Bowlus, “so when we made punch or coffee we had to go up and down the stairs with it,” said volunteer coordinator Judy Cochran.
The new kitchen, complete with maple cabinets, ice maker, granite-look countertops and sink are all thanks to donations. Mary Kay and Dave Heard of Western Auto provided a heavy duty industrial microwave oven.
Still more changes are on the way for the Center.
“We have a person — who wants to remain anonymous — who offered to redo all the frames for all the student art work over the course of the next year, Raines said.
“He’s making all the frames himself. We had a donation to pay for the materials and this person is providing the labor,” she said.
Outdoors, a greenscape renewal project may be the only work with definite names attached to it.
The landscaping has been a labor of love by a group of local Master Gardener students, Raines said.
“It started with Don Hillbrandt,” she said. Then the project was picked up by Kansas State University Extension Master Gardener students as the community service portion of their class, Raines said.
The group, Patti Boyd, Nancy Maier, David Lee, Ellery Robertson, Loraine Shirley and Debbie Bearden, provided labor over the past three years, Raines said. Plants were bought with doantions; mulch was a donation of Stinette Timbers, LLC, in Kincaid.
Boyd and Maier still volunteer their time on the plantings, with Boyd regularly bringing her husband Mark and daughters Emily and Clara to help weed, Raines said.
Lobby tiles ruined in recent rain storms and pitted metal doorjambs are two needs of the Center yet to be addressed, Raines said.
Although the changes are apparent, the sources are not. Most of the improvements are courtesy of anonymous donors, said Bowlus Director Susan Raines.
A new sign in front of the Center provides updated information on programming and events. The scrolling text LED sign was purchased through a combination of $13,000 in private funds and a $9,000 grant from the Friends of the Bowlus Foundation, Raines said.
Inside, a storeroom has been converted to a functional kitchen.
“And we have an ice machine, that’s my favorite part,” Raines said.
Raines previously hauled ice for events and receptions in her car from Iola High School. In addition, there was no water supply to that level of the Bowlus, “so when we made punch or coffee we had to go up and down the stairs with it,” said volunteer coordinator Judy Cochran.
The new kitchen, complete with maple cabinets, ice maker, granite-look countertops and sink are all thanks to donations. Mary Kay and Dave Heard of Western Auto provided a heavy duty industrial microwave oven.
Still more changes are on the way for the Center.
“We have a person — who wants to remain anonymous — who offered to redo all the frames for all the student art work over the course of the next year, Raines said.
“He’s making all the frames himself. We had a donation to pay for the materials and this person is providing the labor,” she said.
Outdoors, a greenscape renewal project may be the only work with definite names attached to it.
The landscaping has been a labor of love by a group of local Master Gardener students, Raines said.
“It started with Don Hillbrandt,” she said. Then the project was picked up by Kansas State University Extension Master Gardener students as the community service portion of their class, Raines said.
The group, Patti Boyd, Nancy Maier, David Lee, Ellery Robertson, Loraine Shirley and Debbie Bearden, provided labor over the past three years, Raines said. Plants were bought with doantions; mulch was a donation of Stinette Timbers, LLC, in Kincaid.
Boyd and Maier still volunteer their time on the plantings, with Boyd regularly bringing her husband Mark and daughters Emily and Clara to help weed, Raines said.
Lobby tiles ruined in recent rain storms and pitted metal doorjambs are two needs of the Center yet to be addressed, Raines said.
Far flung worlds fill pages
Iola Reads will broach both fantasy and reality this academic year.
First up, in September, is book one of the “Atherton” trilogy, “House of Power.”
The young adult fantasy is by Patrick Carman, an acclaimed children’s author. It was a 2008 E.B. White Award nominee, and is a nominee for the 2009-2010 Truman award, said USD 257 Curriculum Director gail Dunbar, who coordinates Iola Reads.
In addition, the book was chosen in Kansas as a William Allen White award nominee. Because the selection of W.A. White books is done by state librarians and young readers, Dunbar said she felt the book would be well-received locally.
The world of Atherton has three dimensions: inhospitable highland cliffs, fertile tabletop lands where the agrarian population dwells, and the mysterious and well-guarded flatlands. An orphan living in the tabletop, Edgar, recognizes the realms are collapsing into each other.
“On Atherton, water is the most valuable source of life,” writes Sally Tibbetts on kidsread.com. The water “is controlled by the House of Power.” Below, in the flatlands, live the “dangerous, always hungry beasts known as the Cleaners.” Edgar ventures into their realm seeking a way to save his planet.
Edgar discovers “a book wedged behind some of the rocks leading up to the Highlands. He immediately knows this is part of the puzzle of his life and the mysteries surrounding Atherton,” writes Tibbetts.
Patrick Carman developed the Atherton series through drawings and journal entries he kept while on a “100-day journey,” he notes on the book’s official Web site. Atherton, he says, “became my home away from home, ... the characters my friends.”
“For me Atherton became a real place,” Carman said, “an escape from the road into a world gone wild.”
Dunbar was excited by the book’s interactive Web site that allows readers to play games and learn more about the mysterious planet.
“This is the first science fiction book we’ve done,” Dunbar said, noting the genre is very popular with young adult readers. It should also help reach Iola Reads young adult target population.
“Our main focus is youngt males,” Dunbar said. “We really want to bring that population in. They tend to stop reading when they hit middle school.”
Amazingly, while Carman canceled most of his fall speaking engagements after being named to a national conference in Washington, D.C., he rescheduled his date in Iola.
“On October 15, he’ll be here all day,” said Dunbar.
“He’ll do a presentation with the middle school students in the morning, and an evening presentation for the community,” she said.
Additional activities are still in the planning stage, Dunbar said.
Come spring, “Three Cups of Tea,” by Nobel Peace Prize nominee Greg Mortenson will be featured book of Iola Reads.
“There’s three versions of the book,” — for adults, young adults and a children’s edition based on the story, Dunbar said. That will allow fo ra nice twist on the Raed, books for all reading levels.
“This is the first time we’ve done a family read,” Dunbar said, noting the differing reading levels will allow for fuller community involvement in the program.
“Three Cuips of Tea” is the true story of a man who,a fter climibing “Pakistan’s K2, the world’s second highest mountain”
First up, in September, is book one of the “Atherton” trilogy, “House of Power.”
The young adult fantasy is by Patrick Carman, an acclaimed children’s author. It was a 2008 E.B. White Award nominee, and is a nominee for the 2009-2010 Truman award, said USD 257 Curriculum Director gail Dunbar, who coordinates Iola Reads.
In addition, the book was chosen in Kansas as a William Allen White award nominee. Because the selection of W.A. White books is done by state librarians and young readers, Dunbar said she felt the book would be well-received locally.
The world of Atherton has three dimensions: inhospitable highland cliffs, fertile tabletop lands where the agrarian population dwells, and the mysterious and well-guarded flatlands. An orphan living in the tabletop, Edgar, recognizes the realms are collapsing into each other.
“On Atherton, water is the most valuable source of life,” writes Sally Tibbetts on kidsread.com. The water “is controlled by the House of Power.” Below, in the flatlands, live the “dangerous, always hungry beasts known as the Cleaners.” Edgar ventures into their realm seeking a way to save his planet.
Edgar discovers “a book wedged behind some of the rocks leading up to the Highlands. He immediately knows this is part of the puzzle of his life and the mysteries surrounding Atherton,” writes Tibbetts.
Patrick Carman developed the Atherton series through drawings and journal entries he kept while on a “100-day journey,” he notes on the book’s official Web site. Atherton, he says, “became my home away from home, ... the characters my friends.”
“For me Atherton became a real place,” Carman said, “an escape from the road into a world gone wild.”
Dunbar was excited by the book’s interactive Web site that allows readers to play games and learn more about the mysterious planet.
“This is the first science fiction book we’ve done,” Dunbar said, noting the genre is very popular with young adult readers. It should also help reach Iola Reads young adult target population.
“Our main focus is youngt males,” Dunbar said. “We really want to bring that population in. They tend to stop reading when they hit middle school.”
Amazingly, while Carman canceled most of his fall speaking engagements after being named to a national conference in Washington, D.C., he rescheduled his date in Iola.
“On October 15, he’ll be here all day,” said Dunbar.
“He’ll do a presentation with the middle school students in the morning, and an evening presentation for the community,” she said.
Additional activities are still in the planning stage, Dunbar said.
Come spring, “Three Cups of Tea,” by Nobel Peace Prize nominee Greg Mortenson will be featured book of Iola Reads.
“There’s three versions of the book,” — for adults, young adults and a children’s edition based on the story, Dunbar said. That will allow fo ra nice twist on the Raed, books for all reading levels.
“This is the first time we’ve done a family read,” Dunbar said, noting the differing reading levels will allow for fuller community involvement in the program.
“Three Cuips of Tea” is the true story of a man who,a fter climibing “Pakistan’s K2, the world’s second highest mountain”
Iolans Get Fit at boot camp
When Roger Campbell named his business Get Fit, he meant it.
Campbell teaches a fitness “boot camp” every January to meet the resolutions of Iolans wanting to lose weight, tone up and otherwise improve their cardiovascular health. His aerobic workout isn’t for the faint-hearted.
Frantic hip hop tunes set the pace for the class. At 124 to 130 beats per minute, the workout doesn’t let up.
“I’ve already lost nine pounds of fat,” says Gerald Chester. Chester and his wife, Debbie, both joined the boot camp this January. As a retiree who likes to cook and eat, Chester admits “I got ahead on my eating.” He jokes that his wife dragged him in, but he seems to enjoy the non-stop activity. For her part, Debbie, a Gates Manufacturing employee, said she joined to lose weight, too. And she said, the exercise has been helpful in eliminating cravings for cigarettes — she quit January 1.
“Gates is going smoke free in 2010,” she said, “so some of the girls and I decided to get a head start.”
“Getting in on a regular basis allows them to make it an integral part of their lifestyle,” he said.
“It’s a way for people to get involved in their own fitness and health.” Plus, “having a group to work out with lets them share the pain,” he joked.
But some participants said just that.
“I just wanted to work out with a group,” said Saundra Upshaw, a fit and trim senior who joined the club 16 years ago.
“I live right next door so I don’t have a reason not to come,” she said. Having a group to work out with motivates her more than solo work, she said. “You can’t quit when people are watching you.”
Campbell’s boot camp attracts a cross section of Iola. There are college students and retirees. Some, like Upshaw, take the class “to keep in shape. I’m close to 70” she said. But you wouldn’t guess that.
Others, like Lauralee McDermeit, do it for their lifestyle.
“I used to live in Colorado,” she said. “I’d climb a mountain five miles straight up. I skied when it was still affordable.” In Kansas, mountains and skiing are scarce, so when the weather’s inclement and she can’t get on the Rail Trail, McDermeit takes to the gym.
“We do a total body workout every day,” Campbell said. Incorporating aerobic dance, medicine balls, ab work, exercise bands, mat work, weight resistance and stretching, Campbell keeps it fresh.
“It’s a different workout every night,” he said. And there’s a reason for that.
Campbell opened the center in 1993. He taught athletic training before that. He’s discovered through the years that “If you do the same workout every day, your body gets used to it and you plateau: you stop losing weight.”
“If you do something different every day,” he said, “your body never gets used to it. You continue to burn calories and build muscle.”
“We have one gentleman who, since May, has lost 91 pounds,” Campbell said. “People are dropping weight, people are dropping inches.”
McDermeit has lost 34 pounds since last year, but the foremost reason she comes is to get rid of stress, she said. In fact, most of the class participants tout reduced stress levels as a bonus they’ve achieved through regular exercise.
The classes, offered four times each day, run only half an hour. If 30 minutes doesn’t seem long enough for an exercise class, the brevity is made up for by the intensity of the workout.
Curls, crunches, abdominal thrusts, leg lifts, shoulder shrugs, bicep curls, Pilates bridges and weight lifts: the accelerated pace logs a movement every second.
“It’s a hard half hour,” said Sandra Drake, another boot camp regular. She’s been coming to the group for four years now.
By the end of the class, muscles get stiff, so the class winds down with some stretching. Everyone is smiling, and a few women even stick around for the next class.
Joshua Campbell, Roger’s 19-year-old great-nephew, moved here from California. He summed up his reasons for attending. “I just wanted a change in my life,” he said. Hoping to lose weight, he recognizes “You have to actually do it. Just talking doesn’t do anything for you.”
Campbell teaches a fitness “boot camp” every January to meet the resolutions of Iolans wanting to lose weight, tone up and otherwise improve their cardiovascular health. His aerobic workout isn’t for the faint-hearted.
Frantic hip hop tunes set the pace for the class. At 124 to 130 beats per minute, the workout doesn’t let up.
“I’ve already lost nine pounds of fat,” says Gerald Chester. Chester and his wife, Debbie, both joined the boot camp this January. As a retiree who likes to cook and eat, Chester admits “I got ahead on my eating.” He jokes that his wife dragged him in, but he seems to enjoy the non-stop activity. For her part, Debbie, a Gates Manufacturing employee, said she joined to lose weight, too. And she said, the exercise has been helpful in eliminating cravings for cigarettes — she quit January 1.
“Gates is going smoke free in 2010,” she said, “so some of the girls and I decided to get a head start.”
“Getting in on a regular basis allows them to make it an integral part of their lifestyle,” he said.
“It’s a way for people to get involved in their own fitness and health.” Plus, “having a group to work out with lets them share the pain,” he joked.
But some participants said just that.
“I just wanted to work out with a group,” said Saundra Upshaw, a fit and trim senior who joined the club 16 years ago.
“I live right next door so I don’t have a reason not to come,” she said. Having a group to work out with motivates her more than solo work, she said. “You can’t quit when people are watching you.”
Campbell’s boot camp attracts a cross section of Iola. There are college students and retirees. Some, like Upshaw, take the class “to keep in shape. I’m close to 70” she said. But you wouldn’t guess that.
Others, like Lauralee McDermeit, do it for their lifestyle.
“I used to live in Colorado,” she said. “I’d climb a mountain five miles straight up. I skied when it was still affordable.” In Kansas, mountains and skiing are scarce, so when the weather’s inclement and she can’t get on the Rail Trail, McDermeit takes to the gym.
“We do a total body workout every day,” Campbell said. Incorporating aerobic dance, medicine balls, ab work, exercise bands, mat work, weight resistance and stretching, Campbell keeps it fresh.
“It’s a different workout every night,” he said. And there’s a reason for that.
Campbell opened the center in 1993. He taught athletic training before that. He’s discovered through the years that “If you do the same workout every day, your body gets used to it and you plateau: you stop losing weight.”
“If you do something different every day,” he said, “your body never gets used to it. You continue to burn calories and build muscle.”
“We have one gentleman who, since May, has lost 91 pounds,” Campbell said. “People are dropping weight, people are dropping inches.”
McDermeit has lost 34 pounds since last year, but the foremost reason she comes is to get rid of stress, she said. In fact, most of the class participants tout reduced stress levels as a bonus they’ve achieved through regular exercise.
The classes, offered four times each day, run only half an hour. If 30 minutes doesn’t seem long enough for an exercise class, the brevity is made up for by the intensity of the workout.
Curls, crunches, abdominal thrusts, leg lifts, shoulder shrugs, bicep curls, Pilates bridges and weight lifts: the accelerated pace logs a movement every second.
“It’s a hard half hour,” said Sandra Drake, another boot camp regular. She’s been coming to the group for four years now.
By the end of the class, muscles get stiff, so the class winds down with some stretching. Everyone is smiling, and a few women even stick around for the next class.
Joshua Campbell, Roger’s 19-year-old great-nephew, moved here from California. He summed up his reasons for attending. “I just wanted a change in my life,” he said. Hoping to lose weight, he recognizes “You have to actually do it. Just talking doesn’t do anything for you.”
Veteran recalls segregation
Bob Lane is a regular visitor in Bill Shirley’s American History class at Allen County Community College.
Thursday marked his annual visit to reminisce about life in pre-1950s Iola and the U.S. Army, where Lane, who is black, faced institutional discrimination.
Lane graduated from Iola High School in 1938, and from Allen County Junior College two years later, Shirley told his class of 19.
Of 118 graduating JuCo students, only five were black, Lane said.
Due to segregation, even athletic opportunities were limited, Shirley said. “Here in Iola, blacks could only participate in track,” Shirley said. Lane ran the 100 yard dash in 10 seconds. “The fastest man in Kansas,” Shirley said.
After college, Lane worked at Sleeper Furniture Store, where he was taught to lay carpet, linoleum and ceramic tile.
“I made good money off that stuff, but it wasn’t long before I had to go to the service,” Lane said.
Lane was drafted into the Army, where he quickly reached the rank of sergeant.
The vagaries of segregation were apparent from the moment he stepped aboard the troop train, Lane said.
“There was a black curtain across the aisle. All the blacks coming out of the south were on the other side of that.”
When the train arrived at Fort Leavenworth, the black men “were told to unload a boxcar of shoes,” Lane said. The men were promised three day passes for their effort.
“We separated them into sizes — it took us all night. The next morning, we asked for our passes,” Lane said. They were laughed at by the officers who told them they weren’t even soldiers yet, and were told to go to the intake tent.
There, Lane said the men underwent physical exams and target practice to determine placement. Sent to the Washington, D.C., vicinity, the men marched five miles a day in red clay to get in shape, Lane said.
Appointed sergeant, Lane was in command of about 70 men.
Over them was one officer “who did not like blacks, period,” Lane said. He had a habit of intimidating and threatening the men, Lane said.
“My men said, ‘Sergeant Lane, he scares us,’ so I said I would talk to him.”
That night, Lane took over guard duty.
Black soldiers at that time were allowed only two bullets in their clips, Lane said. He had five.
“Around midnight, here he comes,” Lane said.
“I said, ‘Halt! Who goes there?’ but he wouldn’t answer,” Lane said. “He just kept strutting.”
Lane fired a shot. Then another.
He told the officer, “You take another step and you’ll never smile again.”
Unperturbed, the man took a step.
“Boom!” Lane said, saying he took a third shot near the man’s feet. “He started shaking.”
Lane told him the derogatory behavior toward his men was unacceptable, and best be stopped. After reporting the officer’s harassment to his captain the following morning, Lane said, “they got him away from there and got another man in.”
Lane said his captain, who was from Vermont, trusted his judgment.
When Lane sent his troops home for the holidays before they were to be sent to Europe, his captain asked him what he would do if they didn’t return.
“I said, don’t worry, they’ll be back.”
And certain as rain, the week before they were to ship out, all the men returned.
His ability to read and command the men merited Lane an offer to undergo commissioned officer’s training.
At the time, all Army officers, except the chaplain, were white, Lane said.
Nonetheless, he declined the opportunity in favor of sticking with the troops he had come to know.
AFTER leading a battalion of aviation engineers in North Africa, Lane returned to Iola. It was 1946. The war had ended, but segregation still ruled Kansas.
Despite his distinguished service, “I couldn’t get into the National Guard,” Lane said. He was denied entry because he was black. Lane tired joining units in other area towns, also to no avail.
Had he been admitted, Lane would have been eligible to collect a military pension when he retired. As it is, he said, “I don’t get 15 cents.”
Lane also attempted to join the American Legion, and was again denied because of his color. Eventually, he helped found an all-black Veterans of Foreign Wars post, VFW Post 9623.
Lane again worked laying carpet, linoleum and tile for Sleeper Furniture. It was an uncommon trade for a man of color, he said.
His multiple jobs included 31 years as custodian of Presbyterian Church, 31 years at Matt Cole Oil Company, 27 years at Sleeper Furniture and nine years as a custodian for the City of Iola. Lane also freelanced as a carpet and tile layer, he said.
Lane did have some good times in his 90 years, he said. He spent 59 years with the love of his life, his wife Maribelle, who died in 2005. His only child, Stephen, retired from Goodyear and lives in Topeka.
Lane said though many changes have been made since the days of segregation, there is room for improvement.
“There’s confusion all over the world yet, because we can’t get together,” and get past the color issue, he said.
Thursday marked his annual visit to reminisce about life in pre-1950s Iola and the U.S. Army, where Lane, who is black, faced institutional discrimination.
Lane graduated from Iola High School in 1938, and from Allen County Junior College two years later, Shirley told his class of 19.
Of 118 graduating JuCo students, only five were black, Lane said.
Due to segregation, even athletic opportunities were limited, Shirley said. “Here in Iola, blacks could only participate in track,” Shirley said. Lane ran the 100 yard dash in 10 seconds. “The fastest man in Kansas,” Shirley said.
After college, Lane worked at Sleeper Furniture Store, where he was taught to lay carpet, linoleum and ceramic tile.
“I made good money off that stuff, but it wasn’t long before I had to go to the service,” Lane said.
Lane was drafted into the Army, where he quickly reached the rank of sergeant.
The vagaries of segregation were apparent from the moment he stepped aboard the troop train, Lane said.
“There was a black curtain across the aisle. All the blacks coming out of the south were on the other side of that.”
When the train arrived at Fort Leavenworth, the black men “were told to unload a boxcar of shoes,” Lane said. The men were promised three day passes for their effort.
“We separated them into sizes — it took us all night. The next morning, we asked for our passes,” Lane said. They were laughed at by the officers who told them they weren’t even soldiers yet, and were told to go to the intake tent.
There, Lane said the men underwent physical exams and target practice to determine placement. Sent to the Washington, D.C., vicinity, the men marched five miles a day in red clay to get in shape, Lane said.
Appointed sergeant, Lane was in command of about 70 men.
Over them was one officer “who did not like blacks, period,” Lane said. He had a habit of intimidating and threatening the men, Lane said.
“My men said, ‘Sergeant Lane, he scares us,’ so I said I would talk to him.”
That night, Lane took over guard duty.
Black soldiers at that time were allowed only two bullets in their clips, Lane said. He had five.
“Around midnight, here he comes,” Lane said.
“I said, ‘Halt! Who goes there?’ but he wouldn’t answer,” Lane said. “He just kept strutting.”
Lane fired a shot. Then another.
He told the officer, “You take another step and you’ll never smile again.”
Unperturbed, the man took a step.
“Boom!” Lane said, saying he took a third shot near the man’s feet. “He started shaking.”
Lane told him the derogatory behavior toward his men was unacceptable, and best be stopped. After reporting the officer’s harassment to his captain the following morning, Lane said, “they got him away from there and got another man in.”
Lane said his captain, who was from Vermont, trusted his judgment.
When Lane sent his troops home for the holidays before they were to be sent to Europe, his captain asked him what he would do if they didn’t return.
“I said, don’t worry, they’ll be back.”
And certain as rain, the week before they were to ship out, all the men returned.
His ability to read and command the men merited Lane an offer to undergo commissioned officer’s training.
At the time, all Army officers, except the chaplain, were white, Lane said.
Nonetheless, he declined the opportunity in favor of sticking with the troops he had come to know.
AFTER leading a battalion of aviation engineers in North Africa, Lane returned to Iola. It was 1946. The war had ended, but segregation still ruled Kansas.
Despite his distinguished service, “I couldn’t get into the National Guard,” Lane said. He was denied entry because he was black. Lane tired joining units in other area towns, also to no avail.
Had he been admitted, Lane would have been eligible to collect a military pension when he retired. As it is, he said, “I don’t get 15 cents.”
Lane also attempted to join the American Legion, and was again denied because of his color. Eventually, he helped found an all-black Veterans of Foreign Wars post, VFW Post 9623.
Lane again worked laying carpet, linoleum and tile for Sleeper Furniture. It was an uncommon trade for a man of color, he said.
His multiple jobs included 31 years as custodian of Presbyterian Church, 31 years at Matt Cole Oil Company, 27 years at Sleeper Furniture and nine years as a custodian for the City of Iola. Lane also freelanced as a carpet and tile layer, he said.
Lane did have some good times in his 90 years, he said. He spent 59 years with the love of his life, his wife Maribelle, who died in 2005. His only child, Stephen, retired from Goodyear and lives in Topeka.
Lane said though many changes have been made since the days of segregation, there is room for improvement.
“There’s confusion all over the world yet, because we can’t get together,” and get past the color issue, he said.
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