Two arrested in Fort Scott robbery

FORT SCOTT — Two people were arrested following a reported robbery at Fort Scott’s Walmart Monday evening.

According to fortscottbiz.com, Fort Scott police officers  were called to the store at about 11:30 p.m., after an employee was injured.

Witnesses gave officers a description of the suspects, their vehicle and direction of travel.

The information was forwarded to the Pittsburg Police Department, which arrested the two suspects at about 2:30 a.m. Tuesday.

Dominick S. Gomes was booked into the Bourbon County Jail on one count of aggravated robbery. Belenda S. Camren was booked into jail for suspicion of aggravated robbery and one count of aggravated battery.

UMW embraces season of giving

Giving was the central theme to the Dec. 12 United Methodist Women’s meeting in Iola.

Members gave a year-end donation to Hope Unlimited, while district and conference gave donations to the Five Rivers District UMW and to United Methodist Church Mission Shares.

Joann Maxwell shared from the Prayer Calendar about a United Methodist mission in Africa. Gerry Uphoff will pray for missions and missionaries listed each day until the group’s next meeting Jan. 23.

In giving the Response Moment, Donna Grigsby shared an article “4-Footed Ministry,” about therapy dogs ministering in hospitals and other caregiving facilities.

Pastor  Jocelyn Tupper shared a CNN article, awarding Freweini Mebrahtu the CNN Hero of the Year Award for her work to remove the cultural stigma in developing countries around the world about the menstrual cycle. Mebrahtu and her team produces reusable pads in a factory in Ethiopia, similar to those the Iola unit have made.

President Linda Johnson gave the program by sharing four versions of the symbolism behind the Christmas wreath. She gave each member a wreath ornament, with a short message attached.

Linda ended her program by reading a children’s story as told by the animals as they discovered what they contributed to Baby Jesus.

Regina Woodworth, secretary, shared thank-you notes from college students JaLea Horning and Chassis Hoepker for “We-Care” boxes unit members assembled. Thirty such boxes were distributed locally to those associated with the church.

Gerry passed out the new unit handbooks for 2020.

The meeting ended with a secret sister gift exchange. New names were drawn for next year.

The Jan. 23 meeting begins at 10 a.m. at  Calvary United Methodist Church. Gerry will have the program; Marty Meadows will host.

‘Red’ Sutherland

Donald Dean “Red” Sutherland of Le Roy, died Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2019, at his home. He was 83.

Red was born Feb. 2, 1936, at Neosho Falls to T. N. “Ted” and Marjorie Wright Sutherland.

He grew up on the farm, attending Le Roy schools. He participated in football, basketball, choir, and held the office of class president, graduating in 1953. Red attended Neosho County Community College, then joined the Kansas Army National Guard in 1956. On May 31, 1959, he was awarded the Marksmanship Badge, and later in 1961 he was honorably discharged.

Red married Joyce Dearinger. To this union three children were born, David, Sally, and Betsy. In 1979 he married Helen Knoblock who was killed in a car wreck on Nov. 20, 1980. He has been married to Marjorie Clem Sutherland  for the past 37 years.

After working in the oil fields he returned to Le Roy area and farmed. He was very progressive in his farming practices. He was one of the first farmers to use no-till practices in the early 1970s, which earned him awards. Upon his father’s retirement he took over the business, Sutherland Farm Equipment. After its closing he continued to farm until his retirement. Red had many hobbies including hunting, fishing, teaching his knowledge to those interested in learning farming, beekeeping, gardening, and witching for water, oil, etc.

Red was preceded in death by his parents, brother Larry, grandson Aaron, dogs Murphy, Specht, and John.

He is survived by his wife, Marjorie, of the home; daughters, Sally Bowman of Washington and Betsy Ettenhofer of Washington; son David Sutherland of Le Roy; brother Gene Sutherland of rural Le Roy; seven grandchildren; eight great-grandchildren; two special girls that he and Marjorie claimed as their own, and his four-legged companion, Lucky.

Funeral services will be at 11 a.m. Monday at First Christian Church in Le Roy. Visitation is from 6 to 7 p.m. Sunday at the church. Burial will be in Le Roy Cemetery. Memorials to the Honor Flight may be sent to Van Arsdale Funeral Home, P.O. Box 8, Le Roy KS 66857.

Secret Santa makes traffic stops joyful in community

SHAWNEE, Kan. (AP) — Getting stopped by police was joyful for residents of one Kansas City suburb.

KMBC-TV reports  that Officer Ryanne Stevens was among the elves dolling out $100 bills on Wednesday in Shawnee.

After pulling over a van for a minor traffic infraction, she learned that the driver’s wife has multiple sclerosis. She explained that a Secret Santa had donated cash and that she thought the man “might be a good recipient of that money.”

Another unsuspecting driver hugged Stevens, telling her, “Thank you so much, God bless you.”

This is the fifth year the Secret Santa has donated $10,000 for Shawnee police to hand out.

“I think it’s awesome,” Stevens said. “I think we have a really good community that we live in that’s very supportive of us and what we do.”

Federer’s legacy not at risk with decline

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Roger Federer arrives for his interview at the precise appointed time, steering his white sedan into a parking spot in an industrial area dotted by art galleries about 15 minutes from his luxury apartment in this home-away-from-home.

After obliging a selfie request from someone on the street, Federer makes his way up to a second-story loft area and sits. He crosses his legs, kneads his right calf and winces.

“Just started training. I’m surprised I could walk the stairs as good as I have,” Federer says with a laugh. “My calves are, like, killing me. Just getting back into it. The shock on the body is, I don’t want to say ‘immense,’ every time, but I’ve been on vacation for two weeks. The shock just hits you hard.”

Ah, the ravages of age.

Federer, who won the first of his men’s-record 20 Grand Slam titles when he was 21 and now is 38, explains to The Associated Press that he must “go back to the drawing board” after “just missing out on The Big One,” a reference to his fifth-set tiebreaker loss to Novak Djokovic in the Wimbledon final in July. So all of just two days into Federer’s preparation for next season —he flies to Melbourne on Jan. 9, a week before the Australian Open draw — he is taking a 48-hour break, sitting out his two-a-day fitness sessions and not lifting a racket.

No one this old has won a Grand Slam title in the professional era.

As a younger man, Federer says, he didn’t allow himself such a respite, working six or eight days in a row to get going. But now? The “waves,” he calls them, making an undulating motion with his famous right arm — time on, then time off — offer his body a chance to recover. They also let him “go through the wall” on the day before a rest period, because “otherwise, you maybe would hold back just ever so slightly, because you just don’t know how you’re going to feel the next day.”

Federer recognizes that continuing to play tennis at a high level long past the age when many greats of the past were done (his idol, Pete Sampras, competed for the final time at 31) means he repeatedly faces questions — from fans, from the media, from those around him — about how long he will continue on tour.

And while he can’t provide a definitive answer — because, quite simply, he says he doesn’t have one — Federer is willing to discuss this aspect of the subject: He does not consider it important to walk away at the top of his game and the top of his sport.

When he’s told about a newspaper opinion piece from way back in 2013 — 2013! — that posited he should quit then to avoid ruining his legacy, Federer just smiles and waves his hand. He knows, of course, that he’s managed to reach another seven Grand Slam finals since the start of 2014, winning three.

But he also says the notion that an older athlete could harm his or her status by hanging around too long is nonsense, no matter what the decline looks like.

“I don’t think the exit needs to be that perfect, that you have to win something huge … and you go, ‘OK. I did it all.’ It can be completed a different way, as long as you enjoy it and that’s what matters to you,” Federer says. “People, I don’t think, anyway, remember what were the last matches of a John McEnroe, what were the last matches of a Stefan Edberg. Nobody knows. They remember that they won Wimbledon, that they won this and that, they were world No. 1. I don’t think the end, per se, is that important.”

That doesn’t mean, of course, that he isn’t as competitive as ever or doesn’t want to win a 21st major championship — above all, No. 9 at Wimbledon, after it slipped away despite two match points in 2019 — or his first Olympic singles gold at the Tokyo Games next year.

Or win any tournaments, for that matter, which would push him closer to Jimmy Connors’ professional era record of 109 trophies (Federer has 103).

He’s still good enough, after all, to be ranked No. 3 — having spent a record 310 weeks at No. 1, he is currently behind No. 1 Rafael Nadal and No. 2 Djokovic — and to go 53-10 with four titles this season.

If it seems as though the rest of the world is insisting it needs to know when and how retirement will arrive, Federer says it’s not something on which he expends a lot of energy.

Not anymore, anyway.

“I mean, I don’t think about it much, to be honest,” Federer says. “It’s a bit different (now) that I know I’m at the back end of my career. But I feel like I’ve been toward ‘the back end of my career’ for a long, long time.”

So much so that when he got sick while on a skiing trip in January 2008 with what eventually was diagnosed as mononucleosis, he vowed to stay off the slopes, a decision he stuck to, although not without some regret. His children — twin daughters, 10, and twin sons, 5 — all ski, and he and his wife, Mirka, have a home in a resort in his native Switzerland.

Yet Federer sticks to his role as “the chief ‘getting the kids ski-ready’ operator guy.”

“I was like, ‘OK, you know what? That’s a sign. I’m going to stop skiing, because I don’t want to get hurt at the back end of my career. Maybe I have another four good years left in me. This was (12) years ago now. So it shows you how long ago I’ve been thinking: ‘Maybe I have another four years. Maybe I have another three years. Maybe I have another two years.’ … I’ve been on this sort of train for long enough for me not to actually think about it a whole lot,” he says. “But sure, sometimes with family planning, discussions with my wife, we talk a little bit sometimes. But never like, ‘What if?’ Or, ‘What are we going to do?’ Because I always think, like, we have time for that and then we’ll figure it out when that moment comes.”

Grinch takes Christmas tree

BERLIN (AP) — Police in western Germany say thieves have made off with a town fire department’s Christmas tree, lights and all.

Mayen police said today that sometime in the early morning hours of Wednesday, thieves cut the cables to the lights and carted away the 13-foot fir tree from outside the fire department in nearby Bell.

Given the size of the tree, police believe several people were likely involved in the theft.

Bell is a town of about 1,500 people that is 20 miles west of Koblenz.

Police are asking for any witnesses to come forward.

Theft: Stuffed shrimp

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) — A thief stuffed a total of 30 bags of frozen shrimp down his pants in back-to-back burglaries of a Southern California grocery store, police said Wednesday.

The man took the shrimp from a Vons market in the city of Riverside by entering the store three times in a span of 15 minutes on Dec. 14.

Each time he went to the frozen food section and concealed the shrimp in his pants, Riverside police said in a statement.

The stolen food had a retail value of more than $500.

Security video of the suspect in the market was posted on the Police Department’s Facebook page.

Russia plans to file appeal against Olympic ban

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia has signaled it will file an appeal against its four-year Olympic ban due to World Anti-Doping Agency sanctions which President Vladimir Putin today branded “unfair.”

The Russian anti-doping agency’s supervisory board voted today to file an arbitration case with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Switzerland. WADA last week ruled Russia had manipulated doping laboratory data to cover up past offenses.

Putin said it was not fair to threaten Russia with more doping-related punishment, and that any sanctions should be on an individual basis. “I think it is not just unfair but not corresponding to common sense and law,” Putin said.

The case will likely be referred to CAS within the next 10-15 days, supervisory board chairman Alexander Ivlev said. After a panel of three CAS arbitrators is chosen, a verdict will be issued within three months.

“The ball will be in WADA’s court and the issue will be discussed in a legal context,” Ivlev said. “We consider the argumentation to be fairly strong and we will see how the issue develops.”

Today’s decision must be approved by another panel of Russian sports and anti-doping figures, but that seems a formality. Most of the panel’s members, including the Russian Olympic Committee and Russian Paralympic Committee, have said they want an appeal.

Senior political figures including Putin had signaled they wanted an appeal filed.

“We need to wait calmly for the relevant rulings, including the arbitration court ruling and we’ll know what position we’re in,” Putin said Thursday. “Russian athletes have been training and will keep training for all competitions.”

The WADA sanctions, announced last week, ban the use of the Russian team name, flag or anthem at a range of major sports competitions over the next four years, including next year’s Olympics and the 2022 soccer World Cup.

However, Russian athletes will be allowed to compete as neutrals if they pass a vetting process which examines their history of drug testing, and possible involvement in cover-ups at the lab.

That has prompted anger from some Western athletes and organizations like the United States Anti-Doping Agency, which wanted a blanket ban on Russian athletes.

Putin added WADA’s recommended four-year ban on Russia hosting major sports competitions would have little effect, pointing to the 2022 men’s volleyball world championships as an event Russia intends to keep. WADA demands events are moved unless it’s “legally or practically impossible” to do so.

That ban already doesn’t apply to next year’s European Championship soccer games in St. Petersburg or the 2021 Champions League final, both of which are exempt because they’re continental, not world, championships

Russia handed over the lab’s doping data archive in January in return for having earlier sanctions lifted in 2018. WADA investigators found evidence that Russia was intensively editing the data in the weeks before the handover to remove signs of failed drug tests.

WADA said it found fake messages spliced into chat logs in an apparent attempt to smear former lab director Grigory Rodchenkov, who’s become a key witness for WADA since leaving Russia.

Russia has produced its own report arguing that any editing was the result of illicit changes made from abroad, or the instability of the lab software.

An avalanche of creativity

HUMBOLDT ? There must have been some magic in those old steel plates they found.

Or the post office packages, recycled tires, beer packages, or even the wooden spools designed to hold cable.

Regardless of the medium, Humboldt residents have been treated this month to a good, old-fashioned dose of imagination-fueled holiday spirit, courtesy of a snowman contest.

More than 30 businesses took part, crafting their snowmen through November and December.

Judging was completed Friday, with the Humboldt Pharmacy?s entry ? a hand-cut flat snowman that accentuates its elemental snowflake design, complete with a scarf, a heart, and even a Humboldt Pharmacy prescription bottle ? coming out on top.

 

Ashley Pharmacy employees receiving an award as part of Humboldt?s snowman contest are, from left, Christy Seufert, Beverly Headley and Sara Gutierrez. COURTESY PHOTO

 

Pharmacy employees received a framed certificate, a snowglobe, cookies ? and perhaps most importantly ? bragging rights from what became a highly competitive contest.

The genesis for the snowman contest came from Humboldt city office workers Staci Johnson and Dana Peters, who noticed several businesses had adorned their storefronts with fall decorations earlier this year.

?We just thought we needed to do something like that for the holidays,? Johnson said.

Humboldt?s Chamber of Commerce quickly embraced the idea and became the contest?s sponsor.

Contest rules were kept simple, stating entries could be made of any materials and that only eyes, a mouth and nose were required of each snowmen.

 

A snowman decorates the Humboldt post office. REGISTER/RICHARD LUKEN

 

The rest was up to the creativity of those designing the pieces.

Ray and Donna Salzwedel and Iolan Donna Houser were tapped as judges.

The group spent several hours Thursday evening and Friday afternoon reviewing the displays. Two trips were necessary, they noted, because some snowmen were better viewed at night; others in broad daylight.

They were judged on appearance and creativity.

That?s what made the judging so difficult, Houser said.

The Humboldt post office, for example, crafted its snowman entirely of packaging, while Freedom Liquors made its out of stacks of beer boxes. 

Loop & Knot Quality Apparel used cable spools, adorned with denim, as its snowman body. Ashley Clinic?s entry utilized a stack of old tires.

The entries were so diverse, and imaginative, Houser said afterward she had only one regret: that there could only be one winner.

 

B&W Trailer Hitches employees took about a month to craft this 12-foot, 580-pound metal snowman. COURTESY PHOTO

 

AND THEN there?s the B&W Trailer Hitches entry, a 12-foot, 580-pound steel behemoth.

The B&W snowman was the brainchild of Dirk Sorenson, chief designer for Bison Woodworking, and Jermey Moyer, who works in B&W?s engineering department.

They came up with the idea to weld steel plates together in a soccer ball pattern to create the snowman?s body, with snowflakes cut out of each panel. (The nose is a patented ball hitch.)

Assisting the pair were B&W employees Rick Ross and Rick Crawford and plant manager Mike Mueller.

?B&W is blessed with so much talent, it really didn?t take them long,? noted Sally Manbeck, B&W?s administrative assistant.

Once complete, the snowman was coated with vinegar to give it a rusted appearance, and its obvious nickname, Rusty the Snowman.

Spectators are encouraged to check out Rusty at day and night. A daytime viewing shows the intricate designs, utilizing 75 bends and 150 weld seams. Going by at night, however, better shows off the snowflakes, made visible by Christmas lights adorning the snowman?s interior.

 

This snowman outside Ashley Clinic in Humboldt is made of old tires. REGISTER/RICHARD LUKEN

 

PARTICIPATING in the snowman contest were Humboldt City Hall, the USD 258 Board of Education, Humboldt post office, Freedom Liquor, Ashley Pharmacy, Ashley Clinic, Emprise Bank, USD 258 Virtual School, Everything Fitz, Estrellita?s, Bajaranch Team LLC, Humboldt Union, Hometown Floral and Gifts, Waggin Tails, Jae & Co., Loop & Knot Quality Apparel, Stacy Cakes, Wayne Carson, H&H Grill, Community National Bank, Heavenly Kneads & Thread, Humboldt Senior Center, ANW Special Education Cooperative, J&J Accounting, Atlas Day School, Dr. Sean McReynolds DDS, Personal Service Insurance, Humboldt Police Department, Humboldt Housing Authority, Southeast Kansas Mental Health Center, Monarch Cement Co., Pump N? Petes (South), Bulk/Johnson Shop, Dollar General, Hofer & Hofer, B&W Trailer Hitches and the Humboldt Fitness Center.

 

 

 

A look back in time

30 Years Ago

December 1989

NEOSHO FALLS — Chuck Edwards planted 700 Scotch pine trees on his father’s farm seven years ago. Since then he has planted more on that property and on his own and plans to plant 1,000 more a year until there is no more room. Edwards his wife, Sue, are offering Christmas trees for sale this year for the first time.

*****

The temperature fell to 18 degrees below zero on Dec. 22, setting a record for December and coming within 2 degrees of the all-time low temperature for  Iola.

*****

Larry Macha has reached agreement to purchase the old Tyson Poultry property at the east edge of Iola. Macha said he had no immediate plans for the property, other than “we’re going to clean it up as soon as the weather permits so that it won’t be so much of an eyesore.”