Too Long in the Wind

January 2012

Remembering Glennis (Lamb) McNett

[January 31]   This arrived from Dalton Keener:

Leon, I was just catching up with local news and happened upon the obit for Glennis McNett. You may not remember her but she went to school in Pawnee Rock for several years. She and her brother Danny LambÊwere in my class. My wife worked with her at CKMC for some time and we would visit on occasion. Sort of puts a different perspective on our lives and how fragile we are. Hope you are well and all your family too. Dalton

(Here is Glennis' obituary)

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Thaine Carpenter, about Mrs. Schmidt

[January 30]   Thaine Carpenter, who grew up in Pawnee Rock and graduated from PRHS in 1952, writes with a memory of Shiela Sutton Schmidt, who died last week.

Leon, you probably do not know me, but I am J.D. and Melissa Carpenter's youngest son Thaine. I know your Father did many, many jobs for my parents in their later years and was a godsend for Mother after Dad passed.

I check your website quite often and really enjoy reading about Pawnee Rock, its people and its history. Last week I read about Miss Sutton. She was my music teacher also, and had much to do with me getting a degree in music education from Kansas State. I was so pleased to learn that she was alive and where lived that I sat down and wrote her a letter, thanking her for all she did for me. Alas, this week, I read that she passed away last Thursday and I doubt that she got the letter. Over the years, I wondered about her and where she was because I wished I could thank her for her being such a fine teacher. Due to you, I finally found out about her, but I expect it was too late to get my message to her.

Never the less, thank you for your website. You do a great job and I can tell, it is a labor of love.

Sincerely, Thaine Carpenter. Pawnee Rock Chief, Class of 1952

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Widows, orphans sought for Praise Ranch

[January 30]   Praise Ranch, the name of the operation that bought the Pawnee Rock school building, is the subject of a story in Sunday's Great Bend Tribune. (Story)

Ted De Tello, who with wife Anita owns it, says in Karen LaPierre's story that the remodeled building will be used to house widows, special-needs children, and orphans.

The story also says: "The widows living here will be in service," said Anita. "We'll all be a part of one big family."

A couple of Pawnee Rock people, however, do not see the Praise Ranch as a good thing. In the comment section of the story, one reader finds fault with Praise Ranch's no-trespassing effort, and another reader says Ted De Tello goes too far with his videotaping.

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Shiela Sutton Schmidt has died

[January 27]   Shiela Sutton Schmidt, long of Pawnee Rock, has died in South Dakota. She had recently celebrated her 100th birthday.

She died Thursday at a nursing home in Howard, in the east-central part of the state.

Dale Unruh, who with Berny had recently been up to see Mrs. Schmidt, passed along the news.

Mrs. Schmidt's funeral will be Tuesday morning, January 31, in Madison, S.D. (Death notice)

She will be buried at 10:30 a.m. February 2 in the Pawnee Rock Cemetery.

I'll post a link to a complete obit when it is published. In the meantime, we'd all like to read your memories of Mrs. Schmidt.

Shiela Sutton Schmidt embodied everything that was good about Pawnee Rock. I'm sure we all have many memories of Mrs. Schmidt cajoling us to sing pretty -- or at least not badly -- and to act better than we wanted to.

She taught music in the Pawnee Rock schools for decades, starting in the dark-brick school in the block east of the most recent school. She led, with intensity, the choir in the Bergthal Mennonite Church. She wrote a history of Pawnee Rock State Park. She and her husband, Harold, farmed northeast of town in the sandstone Rock House, where Dale and Berny now live.

Here are a few mentions of Mrs. Schmidt on PawneeRock.org.

• Music teacher
• The time of three lives
• We hear what we need to hear
• An Incident at Pawnee Rock
• The Way of the Cross
• Theatrics on the Pawnee Rock stage

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Cattle-pen tag

This is a photo I made of east Pawnee Rock in 1974. It shows the cattle-pen area that Carl Munger writes about -- the cluster of trees in the middle foreground on the right, between the tracks and Janell Avenue.

[January 18]   Carl Munger sent this note yesterday about a Pawnee Rock landmark that now exists only in memory:

Seeing a picture of the Wilhites' home in the recent PR.org brought back another memory . . . Cattle Pen Tag.

The cattle pen was located adjacent to the southside of the railroad track, across from the station, for northbound trains to K.C. I suppose for processing. It sat vacant for years when I was a kid. Anyway, as summers grow long and boring and before parents did whatever they could to entertain (guide) their children, kids were pretty much left to figure out how to entertain themselves. Don't know who started it but a group of kids would show up at the cattle pen and get a game of tag going.

The rules were pretty simple . . . someone was "it" and he would chase the others around the top of the pen until he tagged someone else. No one could touch the ground. You ran on the top board along the sides of the pen, cling to a gate or the loading shoot, unlatch the clasp and push off with your feet against the side and swing to the other side and escape. Or if you were being chased, you would swing out on an open gate, get to the other side and push the gate back to spoil the chance of being tagged. Or if someone got close and there wasn't a gate to swing out and away on, you climbed down the side of the pen and raced parallel to the ground to try and escape around the person that was "it."

Don't recall how many summers the game of cattle pen tag went on but it was several until someone, cannot remember who, fell from the top rail and either broke a leg/arm. Well, that did it. The good parents of the injured party rallied support and the folks of Pawnee Rock declared the pen a nusiance and it was torn down. Had to be around 1959 or so . . .

Carl

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Theatrics on the Pawnee Rock stage

[January 6]   A couple of weeks ago, our good friend Barb Schmidt e-mailed this report about high school theater, and I'm just now posting it. Thanks, Barb, for a fun look that could have been presented only by someone who was there.

Here's what Barb wrote:

Last night I took a stroll through my PR school yearbooks (1965-69), certain I would find photos of the many Christmas pageants staged at the school. But I didn't find a single Christmas pageant photo. Am I nuts? Am I just daydreaming that we put on Christmas pageants in grade school? I swear I remember Shiela Sutton Schmidt working her little heart out year after year to help the K-8th graders put on a Christmas pageant. I hope someone can assure me that I am not nuts (well, at least, not about this . . .).

While on this little treasure hunt through old PR yearbooks, it struck me how many plays our high school produced, year after year.

As just one example (chosen entirely at random), attached is a cast photo from the 1966 senior class production of "Off the Track." The caption identifies the students as: "STANDING: Joyce Bradley, Glenn Dirks, Gloria Schneider, Mrs. [Maxlyn] Schmidt, Judy Hagerman, Wilda Moore, Ann Schmidt, Ed Crosby, Phil Bowman, Charles White, Thaine Dirks and Larry Hixon. SEATED: Gary French, Frances Deckert, Lola Loving, Jerry Hixon and Esther Deckert." The play was directed by Guy Burgess (math teacher) and Calvin Vogelgesang (superintendent).

I wonder how many readers remember some of the other productions in the 1965-69 era, which included:

1964-65 - "Physical Threat" (seniors)
1964-65 - "Overnight Guests" (seniors)
1964-65 - "Pickadilly" (juniors)
1965-66 - "The Elbow Club" (speech class)
1965-66 - "The Mystery of Mouldy Manor" (juniors)
1965-66 - "Gone About Girls" (juniors)
1966-67 - "The Day After Forever" (speech class)
1966-67 - "Room No. 13" (juniors)
1967-68 - "He Was a Gay Senorita" (juniors)
1967-68 - "Too Many Andersons" (seniors)
1967-68 - "A Petal in the Dust" (speech class)
1967-68 - "A Stone in the Road" (speech class)
1967-68 - "Next of Kin" (speech class)
1967-68 - "Once in a Blue Moon" (speech class)
1968-69 - "Desperate Ambrose" (juniors)

Those speech class plays were directed by Maxlyn Schmidt, who also taught many of us how to type (and gave each of us the final assignment of typing up our teenage autobiographies -- too bad the school didn't keep a complete collection of them as they would be such a hoot to read today).

Other directors included John Rodriguez (Spanish/journalism teacher), Tom Verner (English teacher & basketball coach) and Bess Kirby (home economics teacher).

The yearbooks don't list all the plays. For example, I remember "Box and Cox," a one-act farce staged in spring 1969. I probably would have forgotten it years ago but have a recurring dream (nightmare, actually) about it. I had a bit part as a maid with only about 3 lines to say. I had to stand offstage listening for my cues before walking onstage. Seared into my subconscious (and still popping out in 2 a.m. flashdreams) is then-bashful me, full of stagefright, standing off to the side behind the french doors (remember the french doors that appeared in so many PR productions?), straining to hear my cue, scared to death I would forget the few words ("Yes, Mr. Cox!") I had to say on stage. I squeaked through my "two seconds of fame" ok and permanently retired from the stage that night. But my psyche has never recovered!

Despite failed actors like me, the "Pawnee Rock Players" had a very long and fruitful theatrical tradition. I possess only one other PR yearbook, from 1928 (my dad's junior year). That year, the junior play was "Cyclone Sally," a popular play produced by many high schools across the country in the late 1920s, and which PRHS reportedly put on "in great style." The 1928 seniors staged "Never Touched Me" and "[h]undreds of people came to see it and every one was satisfied," according to the yearbook.

Just think about it -- over the many decades, thousands of people saw PR school plays. And I think it's safe to say that every one of those plays was probably more entertaining than 90% of what is on television today. Bravo!

It's just too bad we can no longer shout, "Encore!"

Best wishes, Barb

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Plans for a dreamy shopping center

[January 4]   I bet we all had big dreams when we lived in Pawnee Rock. We'd create the next big explosive, or dig a canal to the Arkansas River, or hie our 8-year-old selves out to the farm and harvest 40 acres of wheat all by ourselves.

Leon Miller dreamed bigger than that, which is appropriate for a guy who became an architect. Leon was the son of Maurice "Cobb" and Elsie Miller and lived a couple of houses from the south end of Centre Street. Now he is retired and living in Dallas.

Here's what he wrote:

The subject about construction going on in Pawnee Rock reminded me of a dream I had many years ago (sometime in the late '60s or '70s) after I'd started my own architectural practice here in Dallas. The dream was I'd designed this large shopping center in Pawnee Rock between the Ben C. Unruh home and the Rock. I was taking my mother (who died of cancer in 1958 when I was a student at KU) on a personal tour of the place for which I was quite proud.

The grave marker of Cobb and Elsie Miller in the Pawnee Rock Cemetery.

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Nick Stremel dies

[January 4]   Nick Stremel, who owned Stremel Oilfield Service and lived in Albert, died January 2 at home. Many of us may remember seeing his company trucks. He was 58 years old and had served in the Air Force during the Vietnam War. His survivors include Nikki Stevens of Pawnee Rock and her husband, Josh. (Full obituary)

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Happy 100th Birthday to Shiela Schmidt

[January 2]   Dale Unruh sent this message while we were all out celebrating the week between Christmas and New Year's. It's my fault that you're not reading it until now:

Boy am I ever behind on this one. Shiela Sutton Schmidt's 100th birthday is tomorrow December 28th. It would be nice if any of her former students, colleagues, and others could send her a birthday card. The address I have for her is:

Howard Good Samaritan Center
300 W Hazel Ave
Howard, SD 57349

Dale sent another message later after he and Berny visited Mrs. Schmidt in South Dakota.

They had a small celebration for Shiela with her two grandchildren and their families there along with some residents and a few friends from Madison, where she lived for the past years until recently.

It was a good time of visiting. It has been long enough since we have seen her that she did not recognize us at first but before we left it appeared that some memory of us was coming back.

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Construction downtown?

[January 2]   My cousin Brenda Jones sent this message. Can anyway pass along to us what's happening with the greater Santa Fe Mercantile site?

We went to through Pawnee Rock after we went out to the cemeteries to put flowers for Christmas on Christmas Day and I saw that there was construction going on next to the Santa Fe Mercantile on the area that had burnt several years ago. We tried to take a picture of it but it didn't come out to well. Do you know what they are building? Or are the owners of the Santa Fe Mercantile rebuilding?

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Sell it

Advertise here to an audience that's already interested in Pawnee Rock:

Or tell someone happy birthday.