Profiles
Hanging up the whistle
It all started early in the winter of 1973. Virgil Freeman received a phone call from two experienced basketball officials with a request. They wanted Freeman to help officiate a junior varsity game at North Platte High School. He would work the first half with one of the experienced officials and the second half with…
Read MoreAfter 31 years, Petersen hanging up whistle
After a career that spanned 31 years serving in Missouri public schools as a teacher, principal and coach, current Nodaway-Holt R-VII secondary principal Terry Petersen is retiring. “I’m not sure retiring is a good term,” Petersen said. “I need to be doing something, and it won’t be handyman projects around the house, because my wife does not allow me to have power tools.”
Read MoreDean West honored for military service
Lt. Col. Lowell Dean West was honored Wednesday at Nodaway Nursing Home, where he is a resident, for his 32 years of military service. Air Force Master Sgt. Michael Reeves, representing AseraCare Hospice, conducted the ceremony. “Dean enlisted in the Air Force in 1955, as soon as he graduated from high school,” said Linda West, West’s wife. “After 10 years of service in the Air Force, he enlisted in the Army in 1965 and served for 22 years. “Most veterans of one branch of the military don’t finish their enlistment and immediately reenlist in a different branch of the military, but Dean felt it was easier to attain rank in the Army than it was in the Air Force at that time, so he enlisted in the Army.”
Read MoreMagazine offered GI view of a world at war
Local military collector Ed Hurayt recently acquired an artifact that provides a U.S. enlisted man’s-eye view into the closing days and immediate aftermath of World War II. On a recent trip to see his uncle, Bob Brown, a WWII veteran who lives in South Carolina, Hurayt was given one of the final editions printed of…
Read MorePastor follows call to prison ministry
The Rev. David Oddi is mostly known as the pastor of Hope Evangelical Lutheran Church on South Main Street, where he has served for nearly five years after graduating in 2007 from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis then working as an associate pastor in the southeast Missouri city of Farmington. But aside from his flock…
Read MoreKellerstrass brothers living out dream at Maryville High School
The Kellerstrass brothers are living a dream. A dream hatched more than seven years ago when they were both still wrestling at Cameron High School. Connor, a year Kemper’s senior, was hired as the Maryville head wrestling coach back in May after serving as the assistant coach for two years under Joe Drake. It didn’t…
Read MoreFish tale: The ones that didn’t get away
Maryville businessman Cliff McNair, owner of Best Brands Plus at 2605 S. Main, lived a fisherman’s dream this fall during a three-day excursion to Cancun, Mexico, the popular Yucatan Peninsula resort city on the coast of the Caribbean Sea. During the trip, which McNair and his wife, Virginia, took with about 20 other NuvoH2O water…
Read MoreTaking their faith to the street
It’s a familiar sight in Maryville — a familiar sight, in fact, in thousands of towns and cities all across the United States — two lanky, clean-cut young men in dress slacks, collared shirts and neckties walk down a residential street carrying satchels, occasionally stopping to ring someone’s doorbell. In a blue-jean and T-shirt world,…
Read MoreThird graders donate water bottles to community
Ainsley Watkins always knew she wanted to make a difference. In fact, all she’s ever wanted to do involves helping others. That’s why she decided to dedicate her Girl Scout savings to the community. A third grader at Eugene Field Elementary School, Watkins and her troop had an over abundance of funds from selling cookies…
Read MoreCart specialist calls it quits at 86
Since 1999, golfers at Mozingo Lake Recreation Park could be assured their carts were in top running condition, carefully maintained and repaired by Bob Horn.
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