COWLEY COUNTY —Law enforcement authorities are investigating a suspect for alleged assault after pointing a hand gun during a dispute.
Donlay photo Cowley Co.
On October 11, police were dispatched for a disturbance involving a handgun at Casey’s General Store, 601 S. Summit Street in Arkansas City, according to a media release.
An officer arrived and contacted the victim, a 38-year-old Wichita man. Both the victim and several store employees reported witnessing a suspect identified as 67-year-old Dale Anthony Donlay brandish and point a pistol at the victim, according to police. Donlay later came to the police department and stated there had been a verbal altercation.
The Arkansas City Police Department arrested him on suspicion of one felony count of aggravated assault. He remains jailed on a $20,000 bond, according to online jail records.
RUSSELL – The TMP-Marian volleyball team rolled to their 18th straight win Tuesday, sweeping Russell. After a challenge in the first set in which the Monarchs won 25-17, they rolled 25-7 and 25-8 in the final two sets.
The Monarchs are now 27-5 entering the Mid-Continent League Tournament.
Laurin “Stub” Herl, age 85 of Plainville, passed away Tuesday morning, October 15, 2019 at his home in Plainville. He was born in Hays, Kansas on July 15, 1934, to Bernard “Barney” and Ida (Ruder) Herl. Stub grew up in Hays where he graduated from St. Joseph Military Academy.
He was united in marriage to the love of his life, Elaine Kuhn on October 5, 1953 where they made their home in Plainville, Kansas. They were blessed with five children: Stan, Pam, Brenda, Marla, and Dale “Barney”.
Stub worked in the oilfields until he retired. However, his passion was working with his hands, especially with wood. One of his most profound projects was adding an addition onto the house; he took the existing two-story house and converted it into a one-story by building a new roof under the existing roof before it was removed. Over the years he has built and crafted beautiful furniture such as end tables, a cedar chest, and three desks (one of which was a roll top), but the projects he was most proud of were the grandfather clocks he made for each of his children. There was nothing he could not do.
Stub is survived by his children, Stan Herl of Edmond, OK., Pam Arrambidez of Roanoke, TX., Brenda Miller (Harley) of Stockton, KS., Marla Plante (John) of Plainville, KS., and Dale “Barney” Herl (Ronda) of Grapevine, TX.; brother, Tom Herl of Dallas, TX.; sisters, Frances Diehl and Lila Staab of Hays, KS.; 10 grandchildren, David Herl, Elizabeth Becker, Jacob Herl, Matt Arrambidez, Austin Miller, Colby Miller, Lindsey Plante, Adam Plante, Zachary Herl, Tanner Herl; and 9 great-grandchildren.
Stub was preceded in death by his parents Bernard “Barney” and Ida Herl; wife, Elaine Herl; brothers, Larry “Gene” Herl and Leander Herl; sister, Orie Haas; and grandchildren, Andrew Miller and Jennifer Benedick.
A memorial service will be held on Friday, October 18, 2019 at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Plainville starting at 2:00 PM. A book signing will be held at Plumer Overlease Funeral Home on Thursday, October 17, 2019 from 1:00 PM until 5:00 PM. Family will be receiving friends at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church from 5:00 PM until 7:00 PM with a parish vigil starting at 7:00PM.
Memorials are suggested to the Sacred Heart Catholic Church or Hays Hospice and may be sent in care of Plumer Overlease Funeral Home, 320 SW 2nd St, Plainville, KS 67663.
PLAINVILLE – The city of Plainville will host the “Remembering Our Fallen” national tribute to post-9/11 military this weekend in Andreson Memorial Park.
Remembering Our Fallen is a photographic war memorial that honors our country’s military Fallen from The War on Terror (9/11/2001 – Present). Unlike brick and mortar memorials, Remembering Our Fallen is designed to travel and includes both military and personal photos. Its legacy will be that these men and women will be remembered and their names will be spoken, while helping to lessen the grief of their families.
The tribute towers will be escorted into Plainville Thursday afternoon by the Hays American Legion Riders. The towers will assembled and remain up and illuminated through Sunday afternoon.
Opening ceremony is at 10:30 a.m. Fri., Oct. 18 with a welcome by Mayor Quentin Meyers.
Guest speakers include Brigadier General David Weishaar, Kansas National Guard, Col. Thomas O’Connor, Jr., Fort Riley, and Gold Star Mom Noala Fritz.
Also participating in the ceremony will be the Fort Riley First Infantry Division Color Guard and Band.
Rooks County students will perform “America the Beautiful.”
Following the playing of “Taps,” roll call of the names of 5,000 fallen heroes depicted on the towers will be read by Plainville USD 270 high school students and other volunteers.
Gold Star families will meet with their pen pal classes from Rooks County and enjoy a luncheon with Fort Riley leadership, Brigadier General Weishaar and other dignitaries.
Guided or self-viewing of the towers begins at 11:30 a.m.
On Friday, the Kansas National Guard will have a static display.
A concert will be held in the park at 2 p.m. Saturday with Roger Cooper followed by The Three Jacks.
The closing ceremony is at 4 p.m. Sunday.
There will be parking by the schools along Cardinal Ave. and Auction City Limits on the south edge of town with a shuttle service.
The event is sponsored by the Plainville Ambassador Club with the support of citizens in Rooks County and northwest Kansas.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas’ most influential anti-abortion group launched an effort Tuesday to block two candidates for a state Supreme Court vacancy even before a state commission selects finalists for Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, an abortion rights supporter, to consider.
The unusually vocal and public move by Kansans for Life comes as conservatives are trying to overturn a Supreme Court ruling that protects abortion rights and are pushing to require state Senate confirmation of the high court’s justices. Both changes would require a change in the state constitution, and legislators are expected to consider putting the proposals on the ballot next year.
The group announced it is opposing Kansas Court of Appeals Judge Melissa Taylor Standridge and Shawnee County District Judge Evelyn Wilson. It objects to Standridge because she was part of a 2016 appeals court ruling favoring abortion rights and to Wilson because of her husband’s past political contributions to Kelly and other candidates supporting abortion rights.
Standridge and Wilson are among 20 candidates for a Supreme Court vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Lee Johnson last month. A nine-member state nominating commission led by lawyers plans to interview the candidates Thursday and Friday and name three finalists. Kelly’s appointee will then take a seat on the high court, with no review by legislators.
The anti-abortion group called on the nominating commission to reject Standridge and Wilson as finalists. The commission’s interviews are public.
“Both of these applicants are extreme and out of step with Kansas values,” said Kansans for Life lobbyist Jeanne Gawdun. “Their selection by the Nominating Commission would be biased towards extreme abortion causes.”
Standridge declined to comment through an appeals-court spokeswoman. Wilson’s husband, Michael, said she would not comment because she has made a point of avoiding politics since becoming a judge.
“Evelyn doesn’t get involved in politics,” he said. “She and I don’t always agree on politics.”
Standridge has been an appeals court judge since 2008 and Wilson, a trial court judge since 2004. Both were appointed by former Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, another abortion rights supporter. Johnson also was appointed to the Supreme Court by Sebelius, in 2007.
Abortion opponents are mobilizing to change the state constitution because the Supreme Court ruled in April that the constitution’s Bill of Rights grants a fundamental right to “personal autonomy” that includes a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy. Abortion opponents fear that restrictions already in place could be successfully challenged in state courts.
Before the lawsuit raising that question reached the Supreme Court, all 14 judges on the Court of Appeals reviewed it, and the state’s second-highest court split 7-7 over whether the Kansas Constitution protects abortion rights. Standridge joined the judges who concluded it does.
Michael Wilson’s past political contributions include $3,000 to Kelly’s campaign for governor and another $3,000 to Kelly’s state Senate campaigns in 2016 and 2012, online campaign finance records show. But he noted that he’s given to Republicans and was elected as a GOP precinct committee member last year.
Conservatives have long argued that the high court is too liberal and have sought to push it to the right. Kansans for Life was a key part of unsuccessful election campaign efforts in 2014 and 2016 to oust six of the seven justices. Conservatives argue that requiring Senate confirmation of the justices would make the selection process more transparent and accountable to voters.
But Jeffrey Jackson, a Washburn University law professor, said the current process allows groups to weigh in because the names of Supreme Court candidates are public. He said it’s more typical that candidates’ supporters write letters on their behalf but said Kansans for Life’s public opposition is “certainly within the bounds of what we want the system to look like.”
“I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already, more often,” Jackson said. “I think especially in contentious times, you’re going to see this more.”
LAWRENCE — The nearly 1,800 new oil and natural gas fields named in Kansas between 2009 and early 2019 are now featured — along with more than 6,000 fields discovered earlier — on an updated series of maps available from the Kansas Geological Survey.
The series includes 12 regional maps, each covering about 90-by-55 miles and named for cities within its perimeters, including Wichita, Dodge City, Goodland, and Lawrence. Oil and gas field locations and names as well as geographic names and boundaries are shown on the maps. All 7,818 field locations also appear on a revised wall-sized map of the entire state.
“These maps show, at a glance, where oil and gas has been discovered and produced in Kansas and where it hasn’t,” said Mike Dealy, manager of the KGS office in Wichita. “They provide useful information for the oil and gas industry, landowners, mineral-right owners, researchers and the public.”
Kansas became a significant oil-producing state with the discovery of the El Dorado field northeast of Wichita in 1915. The maps illustrate that a bulk of the subsequent oil-producing fields stretch from south-central Kansas to northwest of Hays along the Central Kansas Uplift, a subsurface geologic structure. Ellis County, which includes Hays, has been the state’s top producing county in all but three of the last 52 years.
Since the maps were last revised in 2009, much of the new oil and gas activity has been along the Oklahoma border, mainly in Harper and Sumner counties. In 2013, increased drilling activity from a subsurface group of petroleum-bearing rocks known as the Mississippian Limestone play crossed the state line into Kansas.
“During the boom in south-central Kansas, more than 700 wells were drilled in a tier of counties just north of the Oklahoma state line between 2013 and 2015,” said Dave Newell, KGS geologist. “Both oil and natural gas production in the area escalated rapidly.”
Production in the south-central region has since slowed significantly due to the geologic characteristics of the Mississippian Limestone play.
The greatest concentration of natural gas production on the maps is in southwest Kansas in the Hugoton Gas Area, once the largest natural gas field in North America. Production there peaked in 1970 before declining, largely due to depletion.
“Unlike the 2009 map, which did not differentiate between the Hugoton Gas Area and the deeper Panoma Gas Area, the 2019 map shows the boundaries of each,” said KGS cartographer John Dunham.
Underlying much of southwest Kansas, the Hugoton and Panoma produce from different formations at different depths.
The newly revised maps also now include the boundaries of two large coalbed gas areas in eastern Kansas, where natural gas is produced from shallow coalbeds. In the early 2000s gas production in those areas increased as natural gas prices rose. After prices peaked in 2008, production there declined.
The Kansas Geological Survey is a research and service division of the University of Kansas. Its main headquarters, in Lawrence, is the repository for the more than 450,000 oil and gas records submitted or donated to the state. The KGS Wichita office maintains geologic samples from more than 144,000 oil, gas and exploratory wells drilled in Kansas. Data for fields and individual wells are available through an online interactive oil and gas map at http://maps.kgs.ku.edu/oilgas/index.cfm.
The new regional oil and gas fields maps and statewide map are available from the Kansas Geological Survey, 1930 Constant Ave., Lawrence, KS 66047-3724 (phone 785-864-3965) and at 4150 W. Monroe St., Wichita, KS 67209-2640 (phone 316-943-2343).
Cost is $10 per regional map and $20 for the statewide map, plus shipping and handling. Inquire about shipping and handling charges and, for Kansas residents, sales tax.
Westview Church’s youth group, also known as R3, is putting on a dodgeball tournament to help raise money for a church lock-in that is coming up on Dec. 27.
“The goal for R3 is to connect students into godly relationships in their everyday lives. We all know the importance of hanging with the right friends will help lead to a more balanced life and R3 is set out to help teenagers with their relationship with Jesus and their walk-in life,” said R3 youth pastor Tim Nunnery.
The dodgeball tournament will be from 6:30 to 9 p.m. Oct. 30 at Hays Middle School . All teams must have four boys and four girls making it an eight-person team. All teams must sign up before Oct. 27. There is a $40 entry fee, $45 if signing up after the deadline.
Teams are allowed to choose a team name, but it must be appropriate. There will be a middle school and high school division so any one from grades 6-12 are eligible to create a team.
Spectator admission is $3 or $2 with a canned food item
“This is part of the reason why we are having a dodgeball tournament. First, it’s to help raise funds for our lock-in December 27th which is free for all teens grade 6-12 that want to come. Second, it’s where they can come together and worship God, hang with friends and enjoy a powerful message from our speaker and students that help,” Nunnery said.
There will be free food, and games all night.
“Over the past years we have had teens make new friends, and better yet memories that they will be talking about for a long time,” Nunnery said. “For all the parents that are looking for something their teens can do over Christmas break. This is it!”
Download the “My Church” app and search for Westview Church. After downloading the app, click on the “Teens” tab to make a team and pay. Other ways you could sign up are come to R3 every Wednesday night at 7 p.m. or find Mrs. Dale at Hays Middle School, Mrs. Rough at Hays High School or members of the R3 youth group.
By KIM BALDWIN McPherson County farmer and rancher
The temperatures have dropped, and it’s truly beginning to feel like fall on the farm. The air feels crisper, the sky seems brighter and everything seems a bit fresher now that the summer heat has left. It’s as if the plants, animals and people have all perked up after they’ve had to conserve their energy, seek shade and retreat from August and September.
But it’s now October, where the true magic happens.
I may be a bit biased about my affection for October. After all, it’s my birthday month. It’s also the month where I brought both of my babies home to the farm. I will always have in my mind the feelings of anxious anticipation as my belly reached maximum capacity while wondering how many acres of soybeans would be harvested or how many fields of wheat would be sowed before having to make our way to the hospital.
I always will have in my mind the image of my tiny daughter, wearing a petite bow on her head, snuggled peacefully in her car seat while a combine roared past harvesting soybeans.
I always will have in my mind the image of my tiny son warmly snuggled in my arms while sitting in the bleachers at the sale barn listening to the auctioneer introduce our lot of good looking, healthy weaned calves as they entered the ring.
I always will have in my mind the image of my kids straddling their bikes on our dirt road waving goodbye to a trailer load of our cattle headed to another pasture where they’d spend the winter months away from our home.
Yes, some of my best memories are from October.
If I could, I’d gather October in a Mason jar. Just like canning the bounties from a summer garden, I’d place this season on my pantry shelves and enjoy servings throughout the year.
And while tasty, it’s not the pumpkin spice that I’d truly want. It’s the cool, crisp air in the mornings that sends shivers through one’s body that isn’t quite ready to wear a heavy coat yet. It’s the beautiful evenings with a pink and orange painted sky that you can enjoy while watching children ride their bikes around the farmyard. It’s the time in the combine sitting next to my husband harvesting rows of soybeans. It’s the consideration of turning on the heater or waiting a few more days. It’s the sound of honking birds above that are beginning to make their trek south. It’s the clear night sky, and a bright full moon, and the sounds of farmers toiling in nearby fields that carries just a bit more into one’s senses.
I tend to catch myself taking deep breaths when I walk outside as if I know this season is only here for a limited time before we begin seeking refuge from the cold. Try as I might, I can’t quite breathe in enough of this beautiful month.
Just as Anne reveled in the world of color about her in the children’s novel “Anne of Green Gables,” I, too, am so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.
“Insight” is a weekly column published by Kansas Farm Bureau, the state’s largest farm organization whose mission is to strengthen agriculture and the lives of Kansans through advocacy, education and service.
The Department of Music and Theatre at Fort Hays State University will present the “New Music Festival: An Evening of the Music of Daniel Bukvich” at 7:30 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 2, in the Beach/Schmidt Performing Arts Center.
Bukvich, professor of music theory at the University of Idaho’s Lionel Hampton School of Music, travels across the world as a guest composer, conductor and percussionist in concerts with professional, college, high school and grade school bands, orchestras, choirs, honor and all-state groups.
As part of the New Music Festival, Bukvich will give a lecture at 2:30 p.m., Friday, Nov. 1, in Malloy Hall Room 115.
The lecture is free and open to the public.
The evening concert will feature the world premiere of “Lost Chord Mysticanza,” commissioned by the Fort Hays State New Music Ensemble, an ensemble of FHSU faculty with a shared passion for the music of living composers.
Members slated to perform “Lost Chord Mysticanza” are Brian Buckstead, violin; Irena Ravitskaya, piano; Hilary Shepard, flute; Kristin Pisano, clarinet; James Pisano, alto saxophone/bass clarinet; Brandon Jones, percussion; and Terry Crull, narration and singing voice.
Other works in the program: “Four Phases from Psalm 91,” performed by the FHSU Smoky Hill Chorale with Kay Werth, English horn, under the direction of Crull; and “Five Fantasies on the Tones A and G” for brass quintet.
“One aim of the annual FHSU New Music Festival is to engage, educate and inform our community about new music,” Pisano said.
Admission is free. Tickets will be available in the Beach/Schmidt lobby 30 minutes prior to the concert or in advance at the Hays Convention and Visitors Bureau.
KANSAS CITY (AP) — A Kansas City area man has been charged with fatally shooting another man after fighting over a family dog.
Twenty-nine-year-old Ebe Nelson was charged Tuesday with first-degree murder and armed criminal action in the killing of 63-year-old Frankie Gilmore. No attorney is listed for Nelson in online court records.
Court records say Nelson was forbidden from entering his mother’s Raytown home because of a history of breaking things. Upon showing up there Sunday, Gilmore told Nelson to leave and not to take the family’s dog, whom he had a history of mistreating.
The records say that after Nelson departed, Gilmore prepared to leave with the dog to dissuade Nelson from returning. But Nelson came back, wounded Gilmore, retrieved a rifle from a truck and shot him several more times, killing him.
The series includes 12 regional maps, each covering about 90-by-55 miles and named for cities within its perimeters, including Wichita, Dodge City, Goodland, and Lawrence. Oil and gas field locations and names as well as geographic names and boundaries are shown on the maps. All 7,818 field locations also appear on a revised wall-sized map of the entire state.
Kansas became a significant oil-producing state with the discovery of the El Dorado field northeast of Wichita in 1915. The maps illustrate that a bulk of the subsequent oil-producing fields stretch from south-central Kansas to northwest of Hays along the Central Kansas Uplift, a subsurface geologic structure. Ellis County, which includes Hays, has been the state’s top producing county in all but three of the last 52 years.
“During the boom in south-central Kansas, more than 700 wells were drilled in a tier of counties just north of the Oklahoma state line between 2013 and 2015,” said Dave Newell, KGS geologist. “Both oil and natural gas production in the area escalated rapidly.”
