A short in a high-voltage power line was the cause of Monday’s grass fire in the 1300 block of 220th Avenue, which was reported at around 10:30 a.m., according to Ellis County Rural Fire Director Dick Klaus.
Klaus said sparks from the short ignited very dry grass and rapidly burned through 50 acres.
Crews were dealing with high winds but extinguished the flames “fairly quickly,” he said.
“On windy days like that, you never want to hear there’s a grass fire,” Klaus said.
Seven Rural Fire companies worked the fire.
A few crews remained on scene for 3 1/2 hours to ensure the fire didn’t reignite.
GREAT BEND –Law enforcement authorities in Great Bend are investigating a drug case and have four suspects into custody.
According to a release from Great Bend Police, on Monday afternoon detectives executed a narcotic search warrant in the 1600 Block of Morton Street and another in the 2400 Block of 18th Street.
On Morton Street, an adult man and woman were taken into custody for possession of methamphetamine with intent to sell within 1,000 feet of a school. Both were booked into the Barton County Jail.
On18th Street, another adult man and woman were taken into custody for possession of methamphetamine. They were booked into the Barton County Jail.
The investigation continues at this time. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Great Bend Police Department Detective Division or Crime Stoppers at 620-792-1300.
NEW YORK (AP) – Willie Nelson is ready to spill the dirt on the ups and downs of his life. His autobiography will be called “It’s A Long Story: My Life” and it comes out May 5. He will cover growing up in the Great Depression, the meanings behind his songs and stories about friends like Kris Kristofferson, Ray Charles, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash.
Continued development of residential and business areas in north Hays will be examined by Hays City Commissioners during their Thursday night work session.
Information will be reviewed for a replat in the North Hays Addition east of Carrico Implement; the final plat and rezoning of Clubhouse Gardens II adjacent to the Smoky Hill Country Club; and for establishing a benefit district as well as an engineering services agreement in King’s Gate Addition Phase II on the north side of 41st Street.
Commissioners will also hear about special assessments for two Special Improvement Districts within the city which are ready to be finalized and assessed to the property owners. The SIDs are 46th Street Second Addition and Golden Belt Estates Fifth Addition for water, sanitary sewer, storm sewer and streets.
The work session is Thursday, March 19, at 6:30 p.m. in Hays City Hall.
NEW YORK (AP) — Starbucks is joining the national conversation about race in the latest sign that corporations are trying to tie their brands to big social issues.
The coffee chain known for its Frappuccinos says it will elaborate on the plans at its annual shareholder meeting Wednesday in Seattle. Already, workers at its U.S. stores have been told to write “Race Together” on cups and the company plans to start publishing “conversation guides” on the topic.
The decision has sparked a backlash on social media, with people saying it’s opportunistic for a coffee chain to try and inject itself into such an important issue. But it comes as corporate executives say customers are drawn to companies that project some sort of feel-good image or embrace positions on social causes.
At the annual meeting for Yum Brands Inc., the company that owns KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, CEO Greg Creed said in December that fast-food chains must to evolve from being perceived as “impersonal and industrial” to being able to “demonstrate that we do care.”
Laura Ries, a branding consultant based in Atlanta, said that addressing big important, issues of the day has also become a way for companies to make themselves a part of the conversation. Otherwise, nobody is sitting around on Twitter discussing brands, she said.
Dove soap has generated widespread praise for its campaign celebrating “Real Beauty” by featuring women who don’t look like the typical models. Always, which makes products for women, also got praise for an ad that ran during the Super Bowl seeking to empower young girls. But those were messages that had ties to the products.
People, however, don’t associate their morning coffee with race.
“There’s nothing wrong with talking about race relations,” Ries said. “But is it something people naturally associate with Starbucks? It’s not.”
Inserting itself into national issues is not new territory for Starbucks. In late 2012, the chain asked workers to write “Come together” on cups to send a message to lawmakers about stalled budget negotiations.
And in 2013, the chain placed newspaper ads saying that firearms were not welcome in its cafes after they became the site of gun rallies. But the company stopped short of an outright ban.
CEO Howard Schultz said at the time that Starbucks was neither for nor against guns, underscoring that even a company that wants a voice in national conversations, it must avoid alienating customers, regardless of their political or social views.
The House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday adopted budget provisos to extend a mental health advocacy group’s funding for at least another year, put $2 million back into the Kansas Endowment for Youth Fund and provide level funding for the state’s Parents as Teachers program.
The provisos were added to the committee’s so-called mega budget bill and forwarded to the House for debate later this week.
Rep. Will Carpenter, a Republican from El Dorado and chairman of the House Social Services Budget Committee, proposed:
Rescinding an earlier plan to cut $200,000 from the state-funded portion of the Parents as Teachers program’s $7.2 million budget while shifting $200,000 into the Court Appointed Special Advocates program.
Restoring $2 million of the $14.5 million that Gov. Sam Brownback proposed sweeping from the Kansas Endowment for Youth Fund, a repository for revenue generated by the state’s tobacco master settlement agreement.
Directing the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services to set aside $150,000 for the Kansas chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
“The $150,000 for NAMI will be coming out of the KDADS budget in (fiscal) 2016 and 2017,” Carpenter said after the committee meeting. “It’s a good program, it provides a safety net for a lot of people and it’s a great organization with a lot of volunteers.”
Last month, KDADS officials announced the agency’s intent not to renew its grants with several advocacy organizations as part of an effort to break down some of the “compartmentalization” that now separates some of its grantees and to possibly draw down additional federal dollars.
Carpenter said he supported KDADS’ intent but had come to question the propriety of eliminating the grants without knowing what would take their place.
“To do away with these grants so abruptly without having studied the ramifications just didn’t seem like the way to go,” he said. “So with this proviso they can go ahead with the restructuring they want to do, we’ll leave NAMI at $150,000 and we’ll study it for a year to see if it’s a wise use of our money. At this point in time, I believe it is.”
Rick Cagan, who runs the NAMI office in Kansas, welcomed the committee’s support for the proviso.
“We’ve been working our members as hard as we can, getting them to contact their legislators,” he said. “The point has been made, I think, that in the scheme of things we’re talking about a small amount of money that leverages a lot of volunteers who, all across the state, are saving a lot of heartache for individuals, for family members and, ultimately, for the state of Kansas.”
The proviso did not provide funding for the other programs affected by the KDADS grant decision: Kansas Family Partnership, Families Together, Self Advocate Coalition of Kansas and Keys for Networking.
Collectively, the programs provide an array of services for emotionally disturbed children and people with mental illness, developmental disabilities or addiction issues.
Mary Ellen Conlee, a lobbyist who’s also president of the Keys for Networking governing board, said the provisos took her by surprise.
“We didn’t know this was coming,” Conlee said. “We hadn’t asked for a proviso because we were under the impression this would be dealt with during omnibus,” a reference to session-ending budget deliberations between the House and Senate.
“This is my fault,” she said. “I take responsibility for this.”
Headquartered in Topeka, Keys for Networking provides counseling throughout the state for families with children who have severe emotional disturbances.
The committee also shelved a plan for taking $3 million from the Parents as Teachers budget, most of which is funded with tobacco master settlement revenues, and replacing it with $3 million from state’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families block grant. The shift in funding would have made $3 million in tobacco monies available for a reading program aimed at elementary school-age students.
“We couldn’t do that with TANF so, essentially, we left Parents as Teachers with what they started out with,” Carpenter said.
Dave Ranney is a reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.
Andrea Rackaway, Cate, Maddie, Will and Chapman Rackaway
FHSU University Relations
The impact that scholarships have on students’ lives is extraordinary. Knowing that, Dr. Chapman Rackaway and his wife, Andrea, of Hays, have decided to give back to students at Fort Hays State University by creating two scholarship funds.
Due to meaningful individual experiences, the Rackaways have established scholarships aimed at bettering the lives of those who share similar experiences. The Chapman and Andrea Rackaway World Ready Adoption Scholarship will benefit students who were adopted. A GPA of 2.75 or higher is required, with preference given to students studying political science who show an interest in campaign politics.
The Chapman and Andrea Rackaway World Ready Elementary Education Scholarship will provide support to a non-traditional student majoring in elementary education who is completing the student teaching requirement. Preference for this scholarship will be given to those with a GPA of 3.2 or higher who are residents of Ellis or Russell County.
Chapman is a professor of political science at FHSU.
The Rackaways, who have two adopted children of their own, said, “Both scholarships truly are a reflection of who we are and what we’ve been through. Even though the stories are ours, I know they are not unique. There are many students wanting to make their lives better through education, and every little bit can help.”
Chapman’s desire to help others was mainly inspired by his own parents.
“I’m adopted, and it shaped my entire life,” he said. “My adoptive parents were wonderful folks, and I could not have wanted a better family. They taught me the importance of family and how it is a foundation built on love and not biology. It doesn’t matter that I have no biological connection to my parents. They will always be my parents.”
He said that what inspired him to establish a scholarship fund at FHSU was the recently established World Ready Fund, a contribution made by recent graduates Jessica and Tyler Thompson.
“Tyler was in my American government class a long time back, and he was the Student Government Association president while I was president of Faculty Senate,” he said. “I saw what he and Jess did with their World Ready scholarship, and I thought it was a wonderful thing to do for FHSU.”
It wasn’t until after completing his Ph.D. that Rackaway came to Hays. While he remembers how he had never been farther west than Lawrence at the time, the job he was seeking at FHSU seemed like it was custom made for him. He has now been a part of the Fort Hays State family for 12 years and says he has found a home on the plains of western Kansas.
Andrea is a Hays native who found a love for learning at an early age, as education and service to others were always stressed in her home. She was inspired by her great grandfather, John Schlyer, a state representative who played a key role in acquiring the land that Fort Hays State sits on today. Her mother was also a great inspiration. She returned to school later in life to obtain her teaching degree, showing Andrea that it was never too late to find your place in the world.
Graduating from FHSU in 2005, Andrea later returned to the university to pursue a second degree. She graduated with Bachelor of Science in Education in 2012 and has since been working as a fifth-grade teacher in Russell. Her plans include pursuing a Master of Science in Education as a reading specialist.
She went back to school while raising her children. “I was a non-traditional student returning for a second degree. I was married and had children that relied on me. I know that student teaching is a full-time job, and I know how it is a stretch for some families to make it all happen.”
The Rackaways, who met on the Fort Hays State campus, wanted to customize their scholarship funds according to their own preferences and individual interests. However, they wish they hadn’t waited so long to do so.
“I imagine some people think that setting scholarships up would be a big task, but we went from idea to signatures in less than a week,” said Chapman.
Andrea agreed. “The process of setting up our scholarship funds has been much easier than we ever expected,” she said. “I wish we had known that and started the ball rolling earlier. One night we decided to send an email off to the FHSU Foundation with our ideas, and within two days we had a draft of what our scholarships would look like. It was a simple yet exciting process.”
Information on how to set up a scholarship fund at FHSU is available from the Fort Hays State University Foundation, by phone at (785) 628-5620 or by email to [email protected]. To learn more about the FHSU Foundation, visit https://foundation.fhsu.edu.
The smell and sight of spring burning on the Flint Hills evoked this childhood memory.
It started with a spark on a rail that jumped into the dry, spring prairie and ignited. Within seconds the southerly wind whipped the fire across the pasture toward our small, rural school.
The culprit was an old black steam engine from the Union Pacific railway that lurched and pulled boxcars filled with wheat across the flat short-grass prairie. It was one of those giant puffing behemoths complete with pistons and huge driving wheels.
The year was 1959. The place – Seguin, Kan., population 50 counting three dogs and two cats.
I attended grade school in that two-room structure and while I enjoyed class as much as any of my schoolmates, these prairie fires were legendary. Such an event provided us the opportunity to miss class, abandon our schoolhouse and watch the approaching fire under God’s grandest cathedral – the big-sky country of northwestern Kansas.
Inside our school, Sister Helena Marie lined us up to march onto the road and away from the fire. Outside, we could hear the crackling fire as it licked up the tinderbox-dry grass. The flames raced along the ground a good foot tall. The smoke trailed into the blue sky, and looked like it might block out the sun.
As the hypnotic orange flames raced toward school, we all talked about how close the fire might come, would it burn our school down and where would we go then?
For our dads, fighting these fires was something completely different. Such fires threatened to burn a neighbor’s home to the ground, destroy a farmstead or even take a life.
Our small rural community did not have a fire department, fire truck or any other fire fighting equipment. When prairie fires occurred, my dad and his farmer neighbors jumped off their tractors and into their pickups and headed for the smoke. One of them always had a water tank in the back; others brought gunny sacks that they soaked with water. Then they ran out onto the prairie to fight the fire.
This wasn’t the first time dad and his farmer neighbors wielded their makeshift fighting tools. Steam engines, dry buffalo grass and strong winds often provided the possibility of such prairie fires. These western Kansas farmers had plenty of experience fighting the flames.
None of my friends or I had a watch at the time, but I figure it took our dads close to an hour to finally beat every last flame into submission.
As they walked back to their pickups, their gait was slow. Soot covered their faces, hands and clothing. They all wore smiles.
They’d stopped the fire. This battle went to the farmers.
We all cheered and like newborn spring calves, threatened to run to our parents. Sister Helena Marie would not hear of it.
“Back into the school house,” she ordered.
As I recall this happened about midafternoon and until the brass school bell rang dismissing us for the day, I spent the rest of that day fighting the fire in my mind. Most of my classmates did the same.
After we bounded down the steps and hit the ground outside the school, Albert Rall, my brother, Steve, and I ran to the edge of the burned prairie southwest of the building.
Here we surveyed the burned pasture stretching nearly a half-mile in front of us. As we walked our shoes turned black as burnt grass crunched under our feet. A couple of the posts that supported the barbed wire fence bordering the school property were charred and cracked.
Our nostrils filled with the smoky particles covering the blackened landscape. The three of us walked back toward the schoolhouse. Once we came to the edge of the fire burn, we all three stepped off the distance from there to school.
The distance was approximately 40 yards or about 55 steps for an 11-year-old. The fire had come so close this time. If our dads had arrived a few minutes later, our school might have burnt to the ground.
We all breathed a sigh of relief. We were thankful, but no one said a word.
Laughing, we raced around the school and bolted back up the stairs to our desks. Once seated, each of us took out our books and started writing inside the front covers, “In case of fire, throw this in.” That was directly under the already written words, “In God we trust. In school we rust.”
John Schlageck, a Hoxie native, is a leading commentator on agriculture and rural Kansas.
Rachelle “Chelly” Schmidt, 49, Omaha, died Sunday, March 15, 2015 after fighting a courageous battle with cancer, at Immanuel Medical Center in Omaha.
She was born January 20, 1966 in Hays the daughter of Adolph and DeAnn (Leiker) Schmidt. She was a graduate of Thomas More Prep-Marian High School in 1984 and graduated from Fort Hays State University with a degree in Marketing in 1987. She was Divisional Merchandise Manager for Hayneedle in Omaha, NE. Previously she was General Merchandise Manager at The Golf Warehouse, Wichita, KS. She was a member of St. Vincent de Paul Parish in Omaha.
Survivors include her parents, Hays, her partner Tom Tongue of Omaha and his daughter Megan Tongue of Columbia, MO, one brother Andrew Schmidt and wife Marie of Olathe, one sister Joylene Kindel and husband John of Shawnee, KS, two nephews Daniel Kindel and Samuel Schmidt, and three nieces Zoe Schmidt, Sophie Schmidt, and Meghan Kindel.
She was preceded in death by an infant sister, Katie, and her grandparents Henry and Regina Leiker and Adolph and Anna Schmidt.
Funeral services will be at 11:00 am on Thursday, March 19, 2015 at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church, 500 E. 19th Street.
Cremation will take place after the services and inurnment will be at 1:00 pm on Friday in the St. Joseph Cemetery.
Visitation will be from 5:00 until 8:00 pm on Wednesday and from 9:30 am until 10:45 on Thursday, all at the Hays Memorial Chapel, 1906 Pine.
A Daughters of Isabella rosary will be at 6:00 followed by a parish vigil service at 6:30, both on Wednesday at the funeral home.
Memorials are suggested to Catholic Charities, the St. Thomas More Society, or to Image Recovery Foundation (Alegent Health) of Omaha, NE, in care of the funeral home.
Condolences may be left for the family at www.haysmemorial.com
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A House committee authorized issuing up to $60 million in bonds to renovate Kansas State University’s College of Architecture.
The project approved Tuesday is the only capital improvement project sought by six state universities to be funded in the House budget proposal.
The Lawrence Journal-World reports the university is running its College of Architecture, Planning and Design in dilapidated buildings, parts of which were built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Rep. Mark Hutton of Wichita says he made the motion to include the project in the budget because Kansas State waited for years while major projects were funded at other universities.
The bonds would be issued in fiscal year 2016, with the first $3.7 million payment in 2017 coming from the state Educational Building Fund.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Topeka has no more legal obstacles to issuing bonds to buy Heartland Park.
City attorney Chad Sublet said Tuesday that the city can legally issue the bonds since the Kansas Court of Appeals found a petition to force a public vote on the bonds was invalid.
However, City Manager Jim Colson said a new council seated after the April election will consider the issue and public meetings could be held before the bond sales are authorized.
The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that in recent months, lawyers for the city and the racetrack operator said the track could close soon if a petition drive to stop the sale went to a public vote.
By KARI BLURTON
