The clear, crisp notes of “The First Noel” echoed across the square Friday afternoon as the Iola High School Brass Choir went caroling with their trumpets, French horns and tubas. Shown in a photograph, playing in their shirtsleeves, are Kathy Braker, Don Bain, Jr., Nolan Hodges, band director David Boyd, Melody Webb, Bryan Summers, Jay Herder, Danny Creitz, Craig Sarver and Doug Strickler. The 10 also went caroling to the elementary schools.
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GAS — Beginning in April, residents here will have to haul their own trash to the dump, as the city council voted to suspend the city’s trash collection agreement with C&E Trash Hauling.
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Avery Wilmoth, a retired farmer, part-time bus driver and lifelong Iolan, has spent the last few weeks pruning trees, clearing out brush, and righting fallen headstones in the old Carlyle Cemetery. The cemetery is tucked away in a five-acre grove of cedar trees behind a farmhouse belonging to Mrs. Frank Lenski, Sr., 6.3 miles north of Iola on U.S. 169. Wilmoth lives several miles south of there and has no relatives buried at the site, but worked to spruce up the graveyard because as he said, “We owe the pioneers buried there, some over 100 years, respect.”
