1999 Profiles

Kansas Cowboy Arena
If you were looking for a Kansas cowboy, where do you think you would find him? One logical answer might be, out on the range.
Today we=ll meet a Kansas cowboy, and it is out on the range, alright. But I=m not talking about an individual rider here. You see, 'Kansas Cowboy= is the name of a new livestock arena. It=s been built out on the range. The result is a positive development for horsemen and rural Kansas alike. Stay tuned, it=s today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Don Hafenstein. Don and his partners Geff and Dawn Dawson are co-owners of this newly opened facility called the Kansas Cowboy Arena.
Don explains, AI=ve been in the horse business all my life. And, I=ve always wanted an indoor arena.@ Don hooked up with a young cowboy named Geff Dawson and they formed a corporation with an eye toward building a good quality indoor arena. Such an arena could hold a variety of horse shows and livestock events.
Don says, AWe knocked on a million doors for financing,@ with no luck. Finally, through Eastern Kansas Economic Development and the Rural Electric Cooperatives, Don and Geff found financing and moved forward.
But where would they build? Don found open pasture just off an interchange from Interstate 70 in the scenic Flint Hills of eastern Kansas. They bought the pasture and built the arena out in the country.
Today the complex includes a 37,000 square foot indoor arena for horse shows and rodeos, the Cowboy Café, which is open 6 a.m.to 10 p.m. daily, and a campground with ample parking. The café features homestyle cooking, breakfast any time of day, and steak dinners, as you might expect.
So where exactly is the Kansas Cowboy Arena? Its mailing address is Alma, Kansas, population 872 people. Now, that=s rural. But this isn=t even in town. The arena is located in the country, just seconds from Interstate 70 on exit 324 north.
By being located out in the country, this facility has a unique attraction: Space. There is lots of room to park. There are RV camper hookups and spacious restrooms with showers. There is no urban congestion. And there is room to pasture or stable animals overnight.
It=s the best of both worlds: room in the country, but easy access to the interstate highway.
The arena itself seems huge. It is 150 by 250 feet in size, which makes it bigger than the National Finals Rodeo arena, and it is clear span construction. Geff Dawson says, AThe ropers really like the room.@
The offices, café, restrooms, gift shop, and arena are all under a single roof. Within the arena, temporary panels provide maximum flexibility for whatever type of livestock event might be held there.
The Kansas Cowboy Arena has hosted team ropings, barrel racings, horse sales, tack sales, and more. The facility can host other events such as monthly, one-day trail rides complete with a campfire dinner, or birthday parties for the kids.
Because the arena is fully insulated, it can be used year-round. Don says, APeople like bringing their horses in here during the bad weather months so the horse can get some good exercise in the winter.@
In November, there was a bucking bull auction. That=s where some of the top rodeo bull prospects will be demonstrated and sold. When they say the bull will be demonstrated, I think that means they=ll demonstrate his rodeo skills -- in other words, he=ll try to buck a cowboy off. That=s a little more entertaining than watching a salesman demonstrate his new vacuum cleaner, for example...
Riders have come from as far away as Kansas City and Wichita to participate in equine events at the new facility. They are attracted by the spacious arena and the quick and easy access to I-70. Don Hafenstein says, APeople can come for a weekend horse event and they don=t have to worry about the safety of the kids or having things stolen from their car.@
If you were looking for a Kansas cowboy, where do you think you=d find him? Out on the range, would be a logical answer. And sure enough, out on the range is where we find the Kansas Cowboy Arena. We salute Don Hafenstein, Geff Dawson, and the other people of the Kansas Cowboy Arena for making a difference through hard work and cowboy ingenuity.

Tammy Carlson - Happy Hollow designs
Today let=s tune in to Home Shopping Network on television. They seem to have lots of neat things to sell. There=s one on TV right now, for example. It=s a craft kit which a person can use to make two little scarecrow figures. They are rustic, cute, and colorful. Boy, my wife would like those.
And where do you suppose those craft items came from? They are appearing on national television, but they came from rural Kansas. Stay tuned, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Tammy Carlson. Tammy designed this item which appeared on Home Shopping Network. She is founder and owner of the business which produces these products which are now selling coast to coast and internationally.
Our story begins in Rush County in west central Kansas. Tammy=s grandfather had a family farm there. Tammy=s father attended a one room schoolhouse there are called Happy Hollow School. So, her family named their farm Happy Hollow Farm -- remember that name. Tammy grew up at Great Bend.
Tammy is a creative person. She studied graphic design in Salina, worked for two years, and decided to go back to college at Fort Hays State.
As she was looking for housing, her grandfather became ill and asked her to stay in his house on the farm and look after things. Happy Hollow Farm was within commuting distance of Hays, so she could live at the farm while going to college. Tammy did so, and she stayed on in the house after her grandfather passed away.
Tammy was looking for extra income but needing flexible hours, and she wondered what she should do. Her mother said, AWhy don=t you sew?@ Tammy=s mom had trained and encouraged her to do lots of sewing and handcrafts as a child.
So, on the side, Tammy started to design and produce craft items which she could sell at local fairs. The products were well-received. Meanwhile, Tammy completed her degree and became art director for a manufacturing company.
In 1991, Tammy decided to take her artistic talents out on her own. She set up a home-based business to design and produce these craft and sewing items for sale to mom and pop craft stores or quilt and sewing shops. But what should the company be named?
She finally decided to name her company for the family farm on which it is located: Happy Hollow Designs. Tammy put her design skills to use, and the business began to take off. Tammy also got married. She and her husband live on the farmstead.
Now what exactly is it that Tammy=s company sells? It sells a host of craft and sewing patterns, finished items, supplies, and accessories. These are things like patterns and buttons and fabric and stuffing and the odds and ends you need to do a craft project. My wife would love these things.
Tammy=s business doesn=t usually sell directly to consumers, however. She markets these products wholesale to the retail stores who sell them to the public.
And boy does she sell them. Sales have grown to 22 times the volume of the first year. The company has grown to eight employees and six divisions. These include Happy Hollow Designs, which offers patterns; Ozsome Accents, which offers sewing and craft accessories and supplies; Ruby Slipper Press, which can print on items in odd sizes and unusual shapes, from a walnut shell to a pen; Poppy Field Dreams, offering custom design of products on contract for other companies; 50 Yard Line products, which offers items for high school to NFL; and American Distributors, which sells products from other companies.
Today, Tammy=s customers are such companies as Hobby Lobby, Hancock Fabric, and Ben Franklin. Tammy has accounts from coast to coast, and in Canada, Mexico, London, France, Belgium, Australia, Denmark, and Saudi Arabia.
Yet the business remains based on the family farm in Rush County near the town of Bison, population 239 people. Now, that=s rural.
Tammy says, AWith the fax and the computer, we can do business anywhere. Yet our products have a country flavor. We like it here, and this is where we want to be.@
It=s time to turn off the Home Shopping Network, but it=s exciting to see such a national network advertising products from rural Kansas. We salute Tammy Carlson and the people of Happy Hollow Designs, for making a difference through creativity and entrepreneurship. And I=m sure her grandfather would be pleased, because the hollow is happy again.

Vornado Air
Today, we=ll hear a story that will make you a fan. No, I don=t mean a sports fan. I literally mean a fan B a device which moves air. This is a story of a company which, quite literally, makes fans. But these are no ordinary fans. These are top-of-the-line air circulators, and they are manufactured in small-town Kansas.
Stay tuned. This is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Michael Coup. Michael is Founder and President of Vornado Air Circulation Systems, Inc. in Andover, Kansas. This is the story of this remarkable company.
Let=s begin our story during World War II, when a man named O.A. Sutton came to Wichita to work in the aviation industry during the war.
In 1943, Mr. Sutton purchased several airplane-related patents from a research engineer, but the one that interested him the most as a possible post-war business was a new type of electric fan designed on the principles of aerodynamic flow.
He set up a company to produce these fans and sell them under the name AVornadofan.@ That word Vornado is a cross between Vortex and Tornado. The new aerodynamic design made the fans very effective, and sales skyrocketed. In less than ten years, one of every three fans sold in the U.S. was made by Vornado.
But by the late 1950s, the company had fallen into hard times and it closed. Vornado fans remained something of a keepsake, however. One man who collected these fans as a hobby was Michael Coup.
Michael Coup is a mathematician and physicist. From a physics standpoint, he was interested in why these old fans worked so well. He restored the old fans for a hobby, but it seemed that many people were wanting more of them. So he began to wonder: What if he could give new life to the old product, or redesign it into a new configuration?
After a lot of research, the new Vornado company was incorporated in August of 1987. It sold an improved version of the original aerodynamic design of electric fans. Craig Plank joined the company in 1988. He says, AI was hired as national sales manager, and sales were zero.@
But listen to this: Today this company employs 100 people and sales are up to 25 million dollars nationwide. How could this happen?
Craig Plank, who is now Vornado=s director of marketing, says, AThe key has been that we always put a good product first. We knew we had a better thing, we believed people would pay for it, and we were right.@
The Vornado fans, or air circulators, have a distinctive design and several features which make them a market leader. Today, the model line includes more than 25 models across five comfort categories: air circulators, fans, heaters, humidifiers, and air cleaners. Innovative products include whole room heaters, evaporative style humidifiers, room air filters, retro-styled oscillating fans, and the world=s first automatic fan, which adjusts to room temperature.
Through it all is a strong commitment to innovative design, high quality, and unique styling. Vornado=s products are sold coast to coast, through such national retailers as Dillards, Target, QVC, and Builders Square. Vornado=s products are even retailed extensively in Japan. Yet the company remains based in the town of Andover, Kansas, population 4,991 people. Now, that=s rural.
Actually, while the town is small, it is close to Wichita, so it has benefits of the urban population too. But the point is that this homegrown Kansas company has grown from nothing to a multimillion dollar, international business in little more than a decade.
What are the keys to such growth? Vornado says it is four cultural attributes. First is the passionate pursuit of product excellence. Second is a clear, shared vision, which breeds teamwork. Third is detailed analysis of the facts, whether product, market, or consumer-related. And fourth is empowerment of the people at Vornado. The commitment to quality remains paramount at Vornado. Michael Coup says, AIf we can=t do it better, we don=t do it.@
This is a story that will make you a fan. No, not a sports fan. This story makes me a fan of a company which makes fans. We salute Michael Coup, Craig Plank, and the other people of Vornado Air Circulation Systems, Inc. for making a difference with vision, entrepreneurship, and a passion for excellence.
All in all, it=s fan-tastic.

ElectroRally - KEURP
AIt=s race day, and the cars are gathered at the starting line. The drivers are buckled in and the cars are ready. The crowd is cheering as they await the starter=s signal. And listen to the deafening roar of the engines as they.....Wait a minute, I don=t hear any deafening roar. In fact, I don=t hear any engine sound at all. What kind of race is this?@
You=ve just experienced a remarkable event called the ElectroRally. It=s a race of electric cars, with high school students as designers and drivers.
This event has helped to promote the use of environmentally-friendly electric cars, and involved students from both urban and rural Kansas. Stay tuned, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Jerry Lonergan. Jerry is Executive Director of the Kansas Electric Utilities Research Program. That organization is a cooperative venture among several electric utility companies. It does applied research on technologies that can enhance the value of electric service to its members, utility customers, and the state of Kansas.
Of course, one possible use for electricity is in electric cars. So a few years ago, someone had the idea to advance the concept by holding an electric car race for students. In 1997, the first ElectroRally was held in Kansas. The response was so positive it is becoming an annual event.
An organization called Electrathon America provided rules and guidelines for the event. Then high school students in schools across the state were invited to participate. They did so in classes ranging from physics to automotive technology. They raised funds necessary for the car material, designed, and built the vehicles.
The rules say that these cars are to be Asingle person, lightweight, aerodynamic, high efficiency electric vehicles with three or four wheels of a least 16 inch diameter. The cars are powered by deep cycle lead acid battery packs not exceeding 64 pounds.@ Other than a few guidelines and some professional help through Jerry Lonergan=s organization, the students have flexibility to design their own vehicle.
Then came race day. The object was to complete as many laps as possible in one-hour. Trophies went to the winners, and every participant received a medal.
It sounds to me kind of like a boxcar derby with a battery. It has turned out to be an excellent educational opportunity for lots of students.
Eleven schools were involved in the project the first year, and 22 schools were involved in the second. The winner in the first year was Paola High School. An interesting side note was that an all-girl team competed representing Pretty Prairie High School. It wasn=t an all-girl team because of some sexist rule, it just happened that there no boys in the Pretty Prairie physics class that year. The girls did well, by the way, winning the ElectroRally school spirit award.
One of the things I like is the broad geographic region represented by participants in the two races. They came from as far east as Shawnee Mission and Olathe, and as far west as Ulysses and Scott City. There were big city schools represented, but also such towns as Medicine Lodge, population 2,224; Clearwater, population 1,996; Sterling, population 1,853; and Hanston, population 294. Now, that=s rural.
Jerry Lonergan says, AThe breadth of involvement included both boys and girls, athletes, theater participants, and scholars B it is an event in which any student willing to invest the time and effort can participate.@
Since we=re talking about electricity here, it=s tempting to say that this initiative sparked a lot of interest, or generated lots of enthusiasm. At least we can say that it got the students charged up to do a lot of work. Okay, I=ll switch off my attempts at electricity humor...
The point is that this opportunity stimulated students to do a lot of learning, and that=s what is important. This year=s race will involve more than 30 schools. It is scheduled for Saturday, May 8 in Wichita.
For more information, contact Jerry Lonergan at 785-354-1821, or your local electric utility.
It=s race day, and the cars are gathered at the starting line. But there is no roar of engines, for these are electric cars. Who will win? I predict the true winners will be the students and teachers and future citizens of Kansas, who benefit from this educational opportunity. We commend Jerry Lonergan and the supporters of the ElectroRally for making a difference with this creative way to stimulate learning among our students.
And with that, we've crossed the finish line.

Florence Metcalf - Hugoton - part 1
If you can dream it, you can do it. Have you ever heard those encouraging words from a speaker, or maybe from a friend? They are inspiring, encouraging words.
Today we=ll meet someone who has made those words B if you can dream it, you can do it B a central part of her legacy to her children. She has also lived those words, and provided an outstanding example to many, many students in rural Kansas.
Stay tuned, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Florence Metcalf. Florence is a rural leader in southwest Kansas. She grew up on the family farm in Stevens County in southwest Kansas. And that is truly southwest. Stevens County borders Oklahoma to the south, and is just one county from Colorado to the west. In fact, it is only about 50 miles from the state of Texas.
Florence was an active 4-Her growing up, and that marked a lifelong interest in people and education. She graduated from Southwestern College and married her high-school sweetheart. They were living in Topeka and starting a family when the time came to make a decision about their future.
Florence says, AWe made an intentional choice to come back to the community that we had come from. We wanted to raise our children in a small town environment.@ And, as she would later tell her children, if you can dream it, you can do it.
So Florence and her husband moved back to Stevens County to fulfill their dream of being involved in the family farm and in their community. Florence became a teacher at the school in Hugoton, the county seat. Hugoton is a town of 3,240 people. Now, that=s rural.
From this rural setting, Florence has truly been a leader. She is a family and consumer science instructor at Hugoton Middle School, where she has served more than 20 years. She also completed a master=s degree from K-State by taking classes over Telenet, the distance education network.
Florence had an interest in getting public television in southwest Kansas. She got involved and worked to make it happen. Today, station KSWK serves the southwest part of the state. Florence became a member of the Public Broadcasting Commission for five years. Her friends credit her with leading the effort to bring public television to southwest Kansas.
Florence became involved with other educational efforts also. She was a board member for the Kansas Agriculture and Rural Leadership program. She served as chair of the county extension board and on several program development committees.
Her involvement took her to the state and national levels, and beyond. She served on the state extension advisory committee, represented Kansas at the National lay leader seminar in Washington DC, and in 1994 attended the U.S.-Russia joint conference on education which was held in Moscow. Wow.
Meanwhile, Florence and her husband had a son and a daughter. Florence says, AWe always told them, if you can dream it, you can do it.@ Their son went to Southwestern College and got a law degree from KU. He is an attorney in Kansas City.
Their daughter had challenges also. Because of a birth accident, their daughter lost 90 percent of the use of her right arm. But she had many skills. That daughter came to K-State and graduated in mechanical engineering. In spite of her handicap, she was able to do her drafting and design with the aid of a computer. She worked for NASA in Houston for three years and then returned to get married. Her husband is a K-State mechanical engineer also.
One day she told Florence, AI don=t think I=m doing what I want to do for the rest of my life.@ Florence encouraged her to go back to school and to follow her dreams. Today, Florence=s daughter is studying industrial engineering at Wichita State University and helping design adaptations for workplaces for people with physical handicaps.
If you can dream it, you can do it. That=s good advice. These are words of wisdom which Florence Metcalf shared with her children, and they are words that she has lived by. We salute Florence Metcalf and her family for making a difference in rural Kansas.
And there=s more. Florence is a strong believer in using the tools of technology to benefit education in rural Kansas. So beam us up for that topic on our next program.

Kathy Dale - Hugoton - part 2
Recently I found myself sitting at a high-tech console in a studio. In front of me were four television monitors, a digital video mixer, a computer, a sound mixer control, tape players and recorders. It was an impressive collection of technology. I didn=t dare touch a button!
So, you might ask, what television station was I visiting? The answer is, it wasn=t just a television station at all. It was a part of a classroom at an innovative school in rural Kansas.
Stay tuned, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Dr. Kathy Dale. Kathy is the superintendent of the school district at Hugoton, Kansas. Hugoton is in Stevens County in southwest Kansas. On our last program, we met Florence Metcalf who teaches in that school system. Today, we=ll take a closer look at the outstanding ways in which technology is being used in these schools.
Kathy Dale says, AOur district is heavily committed to technology.@
Kathy herself has a bachelor=s degree in education from Florida Atlantic University, a master=s from Fort Hays, and a doctorate from Kansas State University. She was curriculum technology coordinator before becoming superintendent in 1995.
How is Kathy=s district using this technology? Let=s start with that impressive console where I sat during my visit there. It is used by the broadcasting and video editing class of a teacher named Ross Davis. They do a variety of projects. On the day I was there, they were editing a videotape of the school play. One of their regular projects is for the students to actually prepare and present a television news program which is broadcast on the local cable TV channel.
Think for a minute about what this means to the students. They love the technology, so they are highly motivated to learn. And in the process, they are learning the subject matter, serving the community, and becoming invested in their hometown. It is a win-win-win deal. And that=s just the beginning.
Joyce Schobert is the school librarian. She estimates that there are 120 Internet-connected computers in this high school of 300 students. The Internet is used for research, for group classwork, and for teacher instruction. There are radio-operated wireless connections among all the rooms in the high school. There are two instructional computer labs and two student computer labs.
When I was there, Joyce said that two classes had just been using the Internet for research in the library. One class was researching a social issues paper. Another class had the assignment to do a comparison of automobile values. This requires them to use the computer to access computer information, do the math, and then practice decision-making in coming to a recommendation. That means a lot of useful skills are being integrated.
Then there is the ITV, or interactive television, classroom. From this classroom, students can participate electronically in classes from other schools without having to travel, and vice versa. For example, Hugoton students have shared classes with students in the nearby towns of Rolla, population 379, and Moscow, population 262. Now, that=s rural.
Today, rural students don't need to feel isolated. They can use technology to bridge the distances we find in rural America.
Joyce Schobert says the French 3 class at Hugoton actually did a program which connected them with fellow students halfway around the world in Paris, France. Wow, talk about an incentive to learn your French.
Teacher Florence Metcalf says, AThe technology can give our students the world at their fingertips. With the computers and the Internet, they can access the world from here in Hugoton.@
Superintendent Kathy Dale says, AWe expect to use technology to allow our students to reach beyond our extremely rural borders.@
It's time to say goodbye to the high-tech console where I=ve been visiting, which is part of an innovative classroom. It=s a school where technology helps the teaching. We salute Dr. Kathy Dale and the students and teachers of the school district at Hugoton for making a difference with technology and education.
But I still don't dare touch the buttons.

Agenda
Let=s have lunch at the local café. Here=s my order. I=ll have the cheeseburger special, a glass of iced tea, and a roll of postage stamps to go...
Uh, what was that last one? That=s right, I said a roll of postage stamps to go. Now what in the world do postage stamps have to do with my lunch? In this case, they represent the ability of rural people to innovate and adapt. Stay tuned, I=ll explain on today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Virginia and Dave Pettit. Virginia is the manager of the Agenda Café in Agenda, Kansas. I recently came to Agenda while traveling across Republic County in north central Kansas. What a great name for a town: Agenda.
I told my assistant about this, and she said since it=s not on a major highway, it might be called a hidden agenda. Hey, don=t blame me, it was her joke - not mine.
The Agenda Café has the things you expect to find in a small town restaurant: good food and friendly people. Virginia and Dave Pettit showed me a printed history of the town. A local farmer named Steve Anderson told me that his parents had owned the grocery store in Agenda for thirty years. Steve=s wife is now postmaster in the nearby town of Cuba, and their oldest daughter is a student at K-State.
The town has an interesting history. The original name of the town was Neva. It was a railroad town. But then it was found that there was already a town named Neva along the same railroad line, so it had to be renamed.
The story goes that the city council met to consider the topic. Someone said, the next item on the agenda is to rename the town. Someone else said, well, if that=s the next item on the agenda, let=s just name the town Agenda. And so they did, and it has stood for a hundred years.
An old copy of a local newspaper describes Agenda as Athe thriving new town on the C. K. & N.@ But as with many rural towns, it began to gradually lose population.
Steve Anderson says, AAgenda used to have two cafes, a grocery store, a lumberyard, a hardware store, two filling stations, two garages, a bank, a blacksmith shop, and a hotel.@ Now the only businesses that remain are the grain elevator, one filling station, Dale=s Repair, and the Agenda Café.
The café is located in what used to be a bank, and it is now a community owned cafe. Virginia Pettit has managed it for seven years.
The population of Agenda, according to the census bureau, is down to 76 people. Now, that=s rural.
How does a town that size maintain essential services? The answer is, by finding a better way to do things. In 1995, the Agenda post office was under study for closure. Suddenly one night, their was a fire in the post office. It closed permanently. What was to be done?
The answer was that a contract postal unit was opened in the café. Postal equipment and post office boxes are located there. Residents get their mail by rural route, but if they want stamps or other services, they can come to the café B instead of having to drive miles to somewhere else.
Virgina Pettit says, AWe can do anything here except money orders. And the people really enjoy it.@ I like this idea. It maintains services in a cost-effective way, and offers even more hours open than the post office. It=s not every day you go into a restaurant and see a postage scale between the cash register and the kitchen. And of course, the postal funds are kept separate from the cafe.
It all reminds me that rural people are resilient, and they find a common sense way to adapt and make things work.
I=ll have the cheeseburger special, a glass of iced tea, and a roll of postage stamps to go. Betcha can=t do that at your city drive-thru. But in Agenda, Kansas, you can handle your mail while getting your meal. We salute Virginia and Dave Pettit, Steve Anderson, and the other people of Agenda for their community efforts.
It=s an example that=s high on my agenda.

Konza Writings
Last December we went to the Alamo Bowl in Texas. As I walked by the Alumni association table at the pre-game meal, I spotted a fancy flier promoting a K-State sports book. I thought to myself, AThere they go again. Here=s another publishing chain from some big city trying to get in on the popularity of K-State sports.@
But imagine my surprise when I took a closer look at the flier and saw the address of the publisher. This publisher wasn=t in Wichita, Kansas City, or part of some out-of-state chain. In fact, the address of this publisher was the north central Kansas town of Delphos, population 488 people. Now, that=s rural.
How did a town that size come to be home to a publisher? Stay tuned, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Neal Rolph. Neal is the owner and operator of Konza Writings in Delphos, Kansas. Delphos is located 32 miles north of Salina in Ottawa County.
In talking with Neal, it is obvious that there are certain things which he enjoys. One is his family. Another is the great outdoors. A third is the farm and the rural lifestyle. He also enjoys writing, and he especially enjoys K-State football. This is his story.
Neal was born and raised at Delphos. He graduated from K-State with a degree in biology. After that, he says, AI was a professional boy scout.@ That means he worked on the staff of the Boy Scouts of America.
His next move was to come back to the family farm near Delphos. As I said, he liked to write, so he was doing some writing on the side. He operated his publishing enterprise under the name Konza Writings.
Neal and his wife started a game bird farm, which operated until one dark day when it was struck by a tornado. Neal went on raising more traditional crops and livestock, working part-time on various jobs, and continuing to write on the side. Neal now has written three novels.
He then took a full-time writing assignment for the Outdoor Kansas publication as a camping columnist. His writing gave him the flexibility to operate the farm.
And why the love of K-State football? He says, AI was at K-State when football was good before. I graduated in '71 with Lynn Dickey and those guys.@
Those were good years for K-State football, but even then they didn=t rise to the heights of the K-State football team today. So Neal had the idea to write and sell a book complete with full-color pictures chronicling the 1998 K-State football season.
What a season it would turn out to be. It was the first season ever in which the Wildcat football team earned a number one national ranking, and a season in which the Cats beat Nebraska and topped Colorado and Missouri on the road B finishing the regular season with a perfect, unbeaten record for the first time in school history. The book describes this and more, including two hard-fought defeats in post-season. The book is appropriately titled Season of Excellence.
So why publish such a book from Delphos? Neal Rolph says, AThis is a fantastic place to raise kids. I can let my kids go downtown and not worry about them.@ His son and daughter are now grown and living in small towns.
Neal says, AI was on a boat with a corporate executive on the east coast one time, and he asked where I was from. I said, >Kansas.= He said, >We=ll hire you.= He said that they like to hire young people from the midwest, because they are more adaptable and need less training time. Our kids grow up with a work ethic and more creativity. It=s a good, clean, wholesome place to live.@
Last December, we went to the Alamo Bowl. There in Texas we found a flier for a new book about K-State football, and to my delight, it is being written in small-town Kansas. Neal Rolph says, AWe=re just chasing a dream out here.@
If you would like to order the book Season of Excellence, call Konza Writings at 1-877-710-8299. That number again is 1-877-710-8299.
We salute Neal Rolph for making a difference through entrepreneurship and creativity. His writing makes for a season of excellence in rural Kansas.

Matt McClain
Today let=s meet an entrepreneur who has started his own business, who is offering his services in several states, and who has won a national award for his entrepreneurship. Pretty good career, wouldn=t you say? There are a lot of people who work for decades and don=t accomplish this much. But there=s one other thing you should know about this particular entrepreneur: he=s only 18 years old.
If that makes you feel sheepish, we=ve only just begun. Stay tuned for a wild ride, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Matt McClain. Matt is the young entrepreneur of whom I=ve been speaking. And when I talk about feeling sheepish and having a wild ride, I mean that literally. This young man has built a business out of letting kids ride sheep, and thus experience the life of a rodeo rider. It=s a kind of kids entertainment which is called mutton busting, or as a cowboy would say, mutton bustin=.
Mutton bustin= has been around for years. It=s sort of like a rodeo event for juniors.
You probably know that there=s an event in grown-up rodeo called bull riding. Mutton bustin= is like bull riding for kids, except instead of riding mean bulls with horns, they ride sheep with wool. That gives them the feel of a rodeo event, without so much risk. Also, mutton bustin= is for fun and learning, not for money. It is usually not a competitive event. Matt McClain says, AIt=s like t-ball for bull ridin=.@
Matt himself did some mutton bustin= when he was a kid. It was natural for him, as he grew up on a farm just north of the Kansas line. Matt and his parents raise wheat, corn, cattle, and sheep. Matt=s address is Republican City, Nebraska, but he went to school at the Phillips County, Kansas town of Agra, population 366 people. Now, that=s rural.
In this rural setting, rodeo is a popular event. There is a big rodeo in Phillipsburg each summer, and in 1994 the rodeo planning committee asked Matt=s family to provide sheep for the mutton bustin=. The McClains did so for two years, and recognized there was market demand for this type of activity.
So Matt organized a business which could take mutton bustin= to other communities. He contacted the family lawyer, designed brochures, and took a display to the Kansas and Nebraska fair conventions.
In his first year, he got 10 contracts to provide the mutton bustin= for fairs or rodeos. In the second year, he got 30 contracts. And so far, he already has 45 contracts for the third year.
Matt set up this business as part of his agricultural experience program for his high school agriculture classes. He took agriculture and joined FFA at Kensington High School. In November 1998, Matt won the National FFA Agri-Entrepreneurship Award.
Today Matt and his family have two pickups and rigs to cover the many events in which they participate. They carefully select the sheep to participate in the mutton bustin=. Kids who participate must wear a helmet and sign a release form. At the signal, the sheep will come out of the chute or the trailer with the kid astride the animal, just like the bull riders at a real rodeo. Unlike the real rodeo, however, Matt will run alongside, if the kids are scared, to hold them and keep them from falling. And Matt also provides clown acts, just like a rodeo, to keep the event fun. Usually every kid who participates gets a prize. And Matt also gives every kid a photo of him in his rodeo clown outfit.
The result is success. During the past year, Matt drove more than 12,000 miles to 49 rodeos and fairs from South Dakota to Oklahoma. But success can take other forms as well.
Matt says, AWe had a handicapped kid ride a sheep at Eskridge, Kansas. He had no use of one arm. I ran alongside to help him. And when he got off, he was all smiles.@ Now that=s a special kind of success.
It=s time to bid farewell to this entrepreneur. He has built his own business, operates in several states, and has claimed a national award in entrepreneurship....yet he still plays on his school basketball team. We salute young Matt McClain and his family for making a difference through entrepreneurship.

Gerald Moore - Combine to Canvas
Today let=s visit the home of NASCAR champion auto racer Jeff Gordon. Look, hanging on the wall is a beautiful print of a racetrack. It is really well done. What artist would have created such a colorful and realistic work of art?
Would you believe me if I told you it was a farmer from rural Kansas? Stay tuned, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Gerald Moore. Gerald is the farmer and artist of whom we are speaking.
Gerald is a farmer in Republic County in north central Kansas. His address is a rural route from the town of Munden, population 137 people. Now, that=s rural.
How in the world did someone from Munden create an artwork that could end up in the office of a national racing champion? The answer is, the artist simply used his God-given talents.
Gerald Moore has been a farmer for years. He says that he always liked to draw.
One winter he was laid up with a bad back, which limited his activity. He tried various things to keep his mind active. Gerald did a lot of line drawings. Then he got down some old paints and tried to do some painting.
He decided to try to paint a picture of an old Ford 8-N tractor. As an amateur, however, he says he didn=t even know how to mix paint for artwork.
One day he went down to the Scandia Art Gallery and asked the worker there for some red paint to paint an old Ford tractor. The lady just looked at him and said, AI don=t think it=ll stick.@ Gerald said, ANo, no. I don=t mean to put the paint on the tractor, I just want to paint a picture of it.@
Apparently the lady wasn=t expecting this farmer to be an artist. It was not an auspicious beginning. But the director of the art gallery overheard, and she encouraged Gerald=s interest in painting. She asked if he wanted to take some classes, and great things started to happen.
Now, I must say, if you=re into abstract art, that=s not what this is. His paintings are so realistic that more than one observer has said that they look like photographs.
Gerald says, AI paint what I=m familiar with. That means no mountains or oceans.@ So he has painted many scenes of rural Kansas, which I think are just fabulous. He does families and farms and local scenes around his home county. That happens to include the High Banks oval auto racetrack at Belleville.
His racetrack scenes are so good that they have been made into prints. Several prints have gone to leading racecar drivers, such as Jeff Gordon, and another belongs to the former head of truck sales for General Motors.
When I asked his favorite painting, Gerald said that one of his favorites is the scene of the county fair. If you=ve ever been to a small town fair, this picture will hit home with you immediately. It is absolutely true to life, and accurate in the smallest detail.
One of my favorites is the scene of some hunters walking across a field in the early morning. The early morning frost on the grass looks so real it will give you a cold. And then there are his fascinating scenes of families and people.
Gerald Moore says, AI like doing people. Each face is like a landscape.@
Gerald continues to paint. About half of his paintings are done on commission, and the others he initiates himself. But his painting comes to a stop in summertime, when wheat harvest rolls around.
Now here=s some good news: Gerald Moore=s art is coming to a location near you. A statewide tour is being organized to display his work. It started with a showing in the statehouse for Kansas Day. The exhibit will then go to the communities of Burlington, Courtland, Concordia, Marysville, Oberlin, Goodland, Scott City, Elkhart, Satanta, Pratt, Winfield, Phillipsburg, Independence, Lindsborg, Ottawa, and in September, to the State Fair in Hutchinson. In April 2000, the tour will culminate at the Ag Hall of Fame in Bonner Springs.
If you would like more information, contact Gerald Moore at 785-987-5521. That number again is 785-987-5521.
It=s time to bid farewell to the home of a national racing champion where we found a print of artwork by a rural Kansan. We salute Gerald Moore for his artistry and for making a difference by sharing his gift.

Carmen Sherwood - Graphix Plus
Today I have a business card to show you. Watch carefully, I=ll hold it up very close to the microphone. Oh, I guess you still can=t see it. Well, then let me describe it.
It=s a simple and straightforward business card, with the person=s name and address printed on it. And note the town printed on the card: this man=s address is listed in a town in California.
Now where do you suppose that a man in California would have his business cards designed? As a wild guess B how about California? Oh, that would be logical. But in this case, this man had his business card designed and printed by a business in rural Kansas.
How did this happen? Stay tuned. This is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Carmen Sherwood. Carmen is owner of the business which designed this business card for a part-time Californian. Her business is named Graphix Plus B that=s Graphix spelled with an X on the end to make it extra catchy.
Graphix Plus is located in Carmen=s hometown, the Morris County town of Council Grove, population 2,278 people. Now, that=s rural.
How in the world did a company in Council Grove come to do a business card for someone in California? Well, it turns out that this was actually done for a local citizen in Council Grove who spends his winters in California. This new business card is a handy way to let his friends, family, and neighbors know where they can find him. So the business card designed by Carmen Sherwood is a big plus for him.
Carmen grew up at Council Grove. She went to K-State and studied agricultural journalism. Her academic advisor at K-State turned out to have been a classmate of her father=s. Hmm, sounds like a sweetheart deal to me...
After finishing her degree, Carmen worked for her dad until the business moved to San Antonio, Texas and then as an interim editor for the K-State Extension Service. She also found time to get married.
In May 1998, Carmen went into business on her own. She opened Graphix Plus, a desktop publishing and copying service. The slogan of the business is AQuality design from start to finish.@
So what exactly does this business do? For one thing, it offers copy services like the big city stores. That means, AGive me twenty copies of this ASAP,@ but it also means finishing (such as binding, hole punching, stapling, and folding), plus laminating, scanning of text or graphics, and sending faxes. Graphix Plus can even rent you a computer.
The desktop publishing is where Carmen Sherwood can use her creative skills. She can layout ads, brochures, catalog labels, forms, resumes, letterhead, newsletters, decals, sale bills, invitations, programs, certificates....you get the idea.
Carmen also offers publishing services, such as manuscript editing, media coordination, press release writing, logo development, resume= writing, and photo scanning.
Since this is a start-up business, Carmen is working at another job also. She went to work at a convenience store, but on the first night she worked by herself, the store was robbed. Wow, talk about an inauspicious beginning. Now, she is working at the Cottage House, which is an historic hotel and bed & breakfast there in Council Grove.
What are some good things about being in small town Kansas? Carmen Sherwood says, AI grew up here. You get to know people. It=s easy to work one-on-one. I can make changes on a project and get it done. And I like the atmosphere. It=s a nice, close bunch of people.@
Today I have a business card to show you. Look right into your radio. Still can=t see it? Well, take my word for it. It=s a nicely designed card with an address in California, but it was designed right here in rural Kansas. We salute Carmen Sherwood for having the vision and entrepreneurial spirit to open a desktop publishing and copying business. That type of entrepreneurial spirit can make a difference in rural Kansas.

Ag in the Classroom
Imagine driving down a Kansas roadway and seeing a sign that says, AThis field of wheat has been adopted by Mrs. Dater=s third grade class.@ Wait a minute. I=ve seen highways adopted before, but never a wheat field.
How and why would a class of schoolkids come to adopt a wheat field? The answer is, it=s part of a strategy by a creative teacher to help her students learn more about the basic industry of agriculture.
Better understanding of agriculture is the goal of a national program called Ag in the Classroom. Ag in the Classroom seeks to help schoolchildren and their families know more about agriculture, which is so fundamental to our economy.
And how do we reach schoolchildren? That=s right, through their teachers. Ag in the Classroom is designed to better inform teachers and then help them inform their students.
Meet Sandy Kramer. Sandy is the administrator of the Kansas Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom, which carries out these programs. The Ag in the Classroom office is privately funded, and is housed in the College of Education at K-State.
This program offers teachers three hours of free graduate credit from a Regents university on the topic of AIntegrating agriculture into the classroom.@ It is provided through a two week summer course, offered at Hays, Wichita, Manhattan, and Kansas City.
Class participants go through various learning activities and tours. They may bake bread as a group, for example, while they mix butter in a jar. Just think: you could honestly say, the dog ate my homework. Students are required to produce a teaching unit involving agriculture for use in the classroom.
Since 1985, 900 teachers across the state have gone through the program. As many as 600 teaching units are current, which is a tremendous resource to schools and teachers.
What does this really mean? Can a teacher really integrate agriculture?
Well, here=s some examples which Sandy showed me of how wheat can be integrated in the classroom. Students can do math, such as measuring the size of an acre, graphing wheat prices from the newspaper, comparing volume of dough versus baked bread, and even calculating fractions and percents by estimating the ratio of raisins to flakes in your cereal bowl. Then there=s science, where students might learn about photosynthesis or the water cycle. There are language arts, such as reading a poem or writing a paper about grain. There is social studies research, on such topics as how wheat came to this country. And there=s physical education, where students calculate caloric intake from wheat foods and design an exercise program.
There was even a music teacher in the Kansas City area who came to the first session and thought he should drop the class. They encouraged him to give it a try, and he ended up making a band with containers filled with grain and loving it.
All different types of agriculture are included. The Foundation for Ag in the Classroom also recognizes outstanding teachers each year. One was Mrs. Dater at Sedgwick, whose class adopted that wheatfield. The students came out and measured it, followed the growth of the wheat plants, and learned a lot.
1997's outstanding teacher was Marilyn Kirk from the school at Admire, population 193 people. Now, that=s rural.
Sandy Kramer says, ATeachers from all over need this, both urban and rural. Too many fourth graders think that milk comes from the grocery store and garden soil comes in a bag from K-Mart. If we better understand the big picture, maybe the future will be brighter for our rural communities.@
The Foundation for Ag in the Classroom is now producing an educational AgMag called Kansas Kids Connection, which goes free to 9,000 kids across the state. Sandy says, AWe hope they take it home to mom & dad, so we can touch quite a few lives.@
Imagine seeing a wheatfield adopted by a class of gradeschoolers. That=s a win-win deal, where the students have a place to apply some of their lessons and learn about agriculture in the process. We salute Sandy Kramer and the teachers who have participated in Ag in the Classroom, thus making a difference by building understanding of food and fiber in our daily lives.
It=s an idea worth adopting.

Derald Caudle - Phoenix Group
Imagine we are at a crime scene in Massachusetts. A break-in and burglary has been committed. The police detectives are on the scene gathering evidence, yet they find only one small part of a fingerprint. Looks like a tough case to solve. But then they go to a new resource which they have just purchased: a software and computer system which automatically searches a huge database of fingerprints and in a matter of minutes, finds a match. And thanks to this new computer resource, the criminal is found.
And where do you suppose this new computer program was produced? Would you believe me if I said in rural Kansas? Stay tuned, cops and robbers, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Derald Caudle. Derald is President of the Phoenix Group, a company which makes high-tech fingerprint matching equipment. If I told you this was used in fighting crime and it is based in Pittsburg, you might assume I was referring to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania B a city of half-a-million people. Instead, the Phoenix Group is based in Pittsburg, Kansas B population 18,483 people. Now, that=s rural.
Derald Caudle came to Pittsburg to go to college at Pittsburg State. He says, AThis was supposed to be a temporary stop. Now I=ve lived here longer than I have anywhere else.@
In 1989, Derald founded a business which developed computer software for fingerprint identification systems. This started as one-to-one fingerprint verification. If a company wanted only authorized users to have access to a door or a certain computer, for example, they could set up a high tech system which reads user=s fingerprints. Only after the fingerprint image is scanned and verified by the computer could authorized users enter the area.
It sounds a little like Star Trek to me, but the technology is already here. Derald foresees the day in the near future when all new computers will come with a small scanner as standard equipment.
The next application of this technology was in matching fingerprints on a one-to-many basis. That means a fingerprint from a crime scene could be collected, for example, and automatically matched with those in a data base.
That=s the newest product which the Phoenix Group is marketing. It=s called the AFIX Tracker. AFIX stands for Automated Fingerprint Identification eXpanded. This remarkable technology enables a police officer to find a match to a fingerprint in a matter of minutes, instead of a matter of days or months. The system doesn=t require a point-of-center to find a match, and it automatically rotates the image 360 degrees to match all the possibilities.
Imagine how long it would take a person to find a match, if all he had was a magnifying glass and 10,000 cards of fingerprints. It=s a practical impossibility. But this system can find a match in less than a half hour.
For those of us who always wanted to be FBI agents when we grew up, this is really neat. It=s a high-tech way of fighting crime. Derald Caudle says, AMost smaller police departments don=t have access to the national FBI database. This system is an affordable alternative.@
The U.S. Army crime lab uses this system on a daily basis. One of their special agents is quoted as saying, AWe continue to be impressed. Looks and acts and feels like a Learject for the price of a Cessna 150.@
Since June 1998, the Phoenix Group has taken the AFIX Tracker to more than 20 trade shows. Orders have come in from as far away as Georgia and Massachusetts.
The system has been used successfully, even when there was only a smudged or partial fingerprint to compare to. In one recent case, a fingerprint found on a Sudafed box from a meth lab was successfully matched by AFIX Tracker to identify the suspect.
How exciting that such a state-of-the-art technological system is being produced in small-town Kansas. Derald Caudle says of Pittsburg, Kansas, AThis is a nice town. It=s a good place to raise kids.@
It=s time to say goodbye to the scene of the crime in Massachusetts, where the computer system from Kansas is helping to bring in the bad guys. We salute Derald Caudle and the people of Phoenix Group for using their creativity and entrepreneurship to make a difference in fighting crime with technology.

Charles Hennen - Nestrelago
Today let=s visit a place in Kansas you probably haven=t heard about. The name of this place is Nestrelago. Have you ever heard that name before? Nestrelago. You could look at a map for a long time and not find Nestrelago, because it=s not printed on a Kansas road map. But it is there just the same.
No, it=s not some imaginary place, or an Indian legend either. This place called Nestrelago is a place where local people are working together for the good of their community and rural Kansas. It=s an interesting true story of cooperation in a very rural place. Stay tuned, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Charles Hennen. Charles is Superintendent of Schools at Utica in western Kansas. He=s a native of Pleasanton, Kansas who holds degrees from Phillips University and Pittsburg State. He did doctoral work at K-State. Charles can tell us about Nestrelago.
One day someone mentioned to me a school district called Nestrelago. I=d never heard of it, so I started to look into it and was referred to Charles Hennen. It is his school district which is sometimes called Nestrelago.
Charles says, AWhen I interviewed for this job, I thought maybe it was an Indian name. But instead, it takes its name from the four counties in which the school district is located: Ness, Trego, Lane, and Gove.@ Oh, now I understand. If you take the first few letters of each county name and put them together, it spells Nestrelago.
Of course, all unified school districts have assigned numbers, such as USD 383. Most also have more descriptive geographic names, such as Southern Gray County or Jefferson West. Nestrelago represents all four counties.
Charles says, ADuring the school unification process of the 1960s, this was the coalition that happened to be put together.@ It appears to me that the county seats had their own school systems, but the rural areas in the corner of these counties were left to go together. So they formed their own new identity, called Nestrelago.
The school building is located in Utica, which is in the center of the district. Utica is a town of 195 people. Now, that=s rural.
This school district has either the smallest or one of the smallest enrollments in the state. It has 76 full-time equivalent students in grades K through 12. There are only seven in the senior class. With low and declining enrollments, that means big challenges. Charles said his school would lose $130,000 in the next year, or 16 percent of the budget.
I had to ask if that was sustainable. Charles says, AI believe that the Constitution of this state makes it a state function to support education. Therefore, the state has an obligation to fund our educational system or do something about it.@
Meanwhile, the people of this very rural part of the state have pulled together to support their school. Charles says, AThere is a tremendous amount of local pride in our school. What happens in the school is the center of life in a small town. A ball game here is a community event. The crowd of people visiting after the game is as large as the crowd during the game. This is a good environment to raise kids in. And people like to hire our kids, because they have such a good work ethic.@
And what about those seven seniors? Charles Hennen says proudly, AAll seven are going on to some form of post-secondary school.@ And let=s talk ACT scores. The highest score a person can get on an ACT test is 36. Among these seven seniors there are scores of 29, 32, and 33. Wow.
Charles Hennen says, AI=ve been in schools of 500 that didn=t have three ACT scores that high.@ To that I say, score another one for rural Kansas.
It=s time to say goodbye to this place you probably haven=t heard of: this school sometimes called Nestrelago. Just as the name brings together the diverse names of the counties, so the school has brought together the people of the region in support of education and community. We commend Charles Hennen and the people of Nestrelago for making a difference through a commitment to community and education. And best wishes to those seven seniors. We=re proud of you.

Kent Sinclair - Information Technology Cooperative
Let=s think about history for a minute. There have been times when farmers needed vital supplies like fuel or animal feed or electricity, and these supplies were difficult to acquire individually on a cost-effective basis. Those farmers searched for a solution, and they found that they could band together to acquire these vital supplies through creation of a cooperative.
Okay, thanks for the history lesson, you might say. But I=m facing the modern issues of today, trying to deal with this changing economy. What does that have to do with me?
Today we=ll meet some rural leaders who have a vision of bringing modern technology to benefit western Kansas. They=re doing it through the time-honored idea of the cooperative. Stay tuned, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Kent Sinclair. Kent is Executive Director of the Garden City Information Technologies Cooperative in Garden City, Kansas. It=s called GCITC for short.
Kent is proud of this initiative. He=s a Garden City native who graduated from Garden City Community College and K-State, and was a commercial market consultant for AT&T before joining the information technology cooperative.
Now, I know that a farmer=s co-op can buy tires, for example. Can a community cooperative buy technology? Well, it doesn=t exactly work that way.
Kent Sinclair explains that, two years ago, some key leaders in the Garden City community got together to brainstorm about the future. These included a hospital executive, the president of the community college, the city manager, school superintendent, and a leader from county government. As they discussed the future needs of the region, the importance of technology was brought home. They also found, at a practical level, that each one of their entities had similar technology needs. But what were they to do about it?
Eventually, it became clear that no one else was going to do it for them. They had to create their own future. Just as farm leaders concluded years before, this group decided they could work together for mutual benefit. So the Garden City Information Technology Cooperative was formed. It includes the city, county, hospital, school, and community college. The Executive Committee is chaired by Dr. Jim Tangeman, President of the community college.
The vision of this group is to establish Finney County as a leader of telecommunication services in the Midwest, and in so doing to enhance access by the population to business, educational, governmental, social, health and recreational opportunities.
Phase one of the project is to enhance coordination and technology sharing among the members of the cooperative. For example, the school district=s Internet server now serves as host for the other entities, since they are all tax supported in one way or the other. This results in efficiencies for users and taxpayers. It is estimated that this system saves the hospital $22,000 and saves each member 10 percent on their telecommunications bills.
Phase two is to pursue a high speed, high bandwidth communications network within the region. This would mean connecting the members with fiber optic cable, for example, which has high capacity for transmission of voice and data. Phase three would be to use these telecommunications technologies to benefit the entire region, by providing such things as interactive videoconferencing, optical imaging, geographic information systems, and other high tech stuff.
The ultimate goal is to benefit the entire region. In fact, the Internet server is provided to the school, and then GCITC, by Pioneer Telecommunications. Pioneer is based in the neighboring county in the town of Ulysses, population 5,859 people. Now, that=s rural.
It=s exciting to see the leaders of this rural region get together and build for the next century. Kent Sinclair says, AWe want to propel our community forward, and be on the leading edge of the future.@
Let=s think about history B those times when citizens got together to form cooperatives that could provide vital services and supplies. These leaders in Garden City are making modern history today, by using the time-honored principle of cooperation to bring high technology to southwest Kansas. Just as acquiring fuel was vital to farmers in earlier times, so acquiring information technology is vital to community leaders today. We salute Kent Sinclair, Dr. Jim Tangeman, and other leaders of GCITC for making a difference with forward-thinking technology and cooperation.

Safari Museum
If you were looking for a collection of artifacts from darkest Africa, where in the U.S. would you look for it? Perhaps the Smithsonian in Washington, or maybe some museum in New York? You can find a remarkable collection of genuine African artifacts much closer to home B in fact, right here in rural Kansas.
Get ready for a safari, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Barbara Enlow Henshall. Barbara is a long-time volunteer at the museum that we are going to visit today. It=s the Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum in Chanute, Kansas. Barbara provided us a tour of the museum, introduced us to director Conrad Froehlich, and told us of a call the museum had received from French television asking permission to do a documentary about a pair of American adventurers who explored Africa early in this century.
Why would a television company from France make a transatlantic call to rural Kansas regarding African explorers?
Chanute has a population of 9,498 people. Now, that=s rural. Yet this community is home to a museum with a remarkable collection of African artifacts, and it tells the true story of two amazing individuals: Martin and Osa Johnson.
Martin Johnson was from Independence and Osa was from Chanute. Martin was an adventurer. As a young man, he traveled with author Jack London on a trip to the South Seas in 1907. He returned home to southeast Kansas as something of a celebrity and opened a theater. Young Osa met Martin at that theater, and the two eloped a few weeks later.
Apparently Osa caught the adventure bug from her husband, because Osa and Martin would make two expeditions to the South Seas, two to Borneo, and five extended trips to Africa. One of those trips spanned four years! Wow, that=s a long time to have the neighbor feed the dog.
But Martin and Osa Johnson didn=t just explore these regions, they were photographers, authors, and naturalists too. They captured these true-life adventures and exotic cultures on film, using both still and motion pictures, and brought them back to the American public.
These films brought the far-off continent of Africa home to thousands of Americans. In the process, their documentaries brought Martin and Osa Johnson fame around the world. They had gone on the vaudeville circuit with material from Martin=s trip with Jack London. They went on lecture tours after their African trips. They were great celebrities of their time.
Martin Johnson died in a plane crash in California in 1937, and Osa lived until 1953. In 1961, a museum was established in their honor in her hometown of Chanute. The museum has grown over time. A fan of the Johnsons, a New York City doctor who had lived in Africa, donated a large collection of African artifacts and these have been added to through the years. In 1993, the museum moved into a historic railroad station downtown.
Today, the museum includes more than 10,000 photographs taken by the Johnsons. The African gallery includes ceremonial masks, carved figures, musical instruments, swords, jewelry, and textiles from four regions of west Africa. There are two lifesize models of Bambara dancers which make a striking display. The museum also features a lifesize recreation of the Johnsons= safari camp and memorabilia such as Osa Johnson=s vaudeville dress. There is a fine arts gallery and a library with 10,000 books, journals, and manuscripts on early African exploration, plus much more.
A few years ago, a Kansas author visited 249 museums around Kansas. He published a list of the top ten museums in the state, and guess which one ranked Number one: The Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum in Chanute.
Barbara Enlow Henshall, a K-State graduate and long-time volunteer at the museum, tells us that the total value of all the museum holdings could be as much as $2 million. She says, ATo have this in Kansas is spectacular.@
If you were looking for a collection of African artifacts, where in the U.S. would you look? Chanute, Kansas probably wouldn=t have been our first guess. But because of the adventurous spirit of the Johnsons and the community spirit of many citizens, this treasure of a museum can be found right here in Kansas.
We salute Osa and Martin Johnson for their courage to explore, and for their contributions to documentary film making and wildlife research. We also salute Barbara Enlow Henshall, Conrad Froehlich, and all those who are making a difference by preserving and sharing this heritage.

Sarah Coiner - Telecommuter
It=s morning and time to go to work. You=ve put on just the right clothes, gathered your papers, and it=s time to go. And...now you=re there.
Wait a minute, that was fast. What happened to the rush hour commute, the cost of gas, the car pool, and the traffic? The answer is, you don=t have to put up with that. You are telecommuting B interacting with your office electronically through the computer and telephone from your home. Today, we=ll meet someone who is telecommuting across the continent from rural Kansas. Stay tuned, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Sarah Coiner, telecommuter. This is her story. Sarah grew up in Colorado and moved to California at age 17. She and her husband started a family and a career there.
Sarah was living in southern California when she was president of the PTA at her child=s school. As a fundraiser for the PTA, the group was selling a variety of gift items produced by a company named Red Apple. The company was so impressed with Sarah that eventually they asked if she would be interested in a job. Her child was just starting kindergarten, so Sarah said yes. That was seven years ago.
Over time, their family grew B but so did the stress level. Sarah says, ACalifornia has so many problems with gangs, smog, and a stressful lifestyle. We were robbed several times, and it=s not that we weren=t in a good neighborhood. And I wasn=t happy with the school system.@
It was time to make a change, and Sarah found that she could do her job over a telephone and computer. So in February 1999, they made the move all the way out to rural Kansas.
Sarah continues to work for the Red Apple company, which markets various food and gift items as fundraisers for local PTAs just as Sarah had done in California. Here=s how it works. Through the local PTA, the kids in a school will get brochures about the various gift items. They take those brochures home and make sales.
This is a huge business in California. Sarah says, AThe schools in one county in California generated more than a million dollars in sales in one season.@
Sarah=s role is to manage the communication part of the process. For example, one of her assistants makes calls to schools to drum up business. Other calls are made to schedule presentations of the gift brochures at the schools. And then there needs to be a place where purchasers of those products can call for customer service.
Note that each of those activities involves telephone calling. Then you realize those calls could be handled anywhere. Sarah and the Red Apple company figured that out also, so she will soon be doing her work electronically from rural Kansas.
Sarah and family moved from California to the town of Jennings in Decatur County in northwest Kansas. It is a town of 167 people. Now, that=s rural.
But if a Red Apple customer in California or Georgia makes a telephone call for customer service, that call goes to Sarah in Jennings, Kansas. Her computer is networked with her assistants and the main office in California so they can share information. A lot of information is sent through the fax machine also.
Sarah says, AIt doesn=t matter where you are as long as you have a computer. If I needed to go to Denver for a week of training, I could just take a laptop and work from there.@ And of course the customer in California or Georgia has no idea where his call is going. He just needs help, and Sarah can provide it.
So why live in Jennings? Sarah says, AA small town was what I wanted. And we do have family in the area. My father, Frank Bouts, lives over at Selden. This is a nicer growing up area for kids.@
It=s amazing to me that someone is telecommuting from rural Kansas coast to coast. But Sarah says that in three and a half weeks, she=s run into 3 different people who have moved out here from California.
The work day=s over. It=s time to head for home. Gather your papers, pick up your things, and....now you=re there. Nicest commute you=ve ever had. We salute Sarah Coiner for making a difference by telecommuting in northwest Kansas. I=ll bet she gets good gas mileage too....

Wenger Manufacturing
Have you ever witnessed the founding of an industry? It makes me think of Thomas Edison inventing the electric light in New York, or Henry Ford mass-producing cars in Detroit. Today, we=ll visit a community where an industry was founded. But this doesn=t have to do with cars or lights, it=s something as fundamental as food. It=s called the extrusion industry.
And where do you suppose this multi-million dollar industry was founded? Not New York or Detroit, but rural Kansas. Stay tuned, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet LaVon and Don Wenger of Wenger Manufacturing in Sabetha, Kansas. Wenger is this pioneering, global company with rural Kansas roots.
Let=s begin our story in 1929. Joe and Louis Wenger were the sons of Swiss immigrants. As the youngest of nine brothers, there wasn=t much opportunity for them on the farm. So they built a feed mill, and started experimenting with equipment to blend molasses with forage to make livestock feed. The equipment worked well, and they started to expand.
In 1958, LaVon Wenger, a son of one of the founders, developed and patented the first commercial cooking extruder. These extruded items had a number of advantages, and demand for the machines started to grow.
In 1959, Wenger designed and manufactured the first commercial extrusion cooking systems for grain processing, in effect founding the extrusion industry.
Now, you might not know what an extruder is, but I can almost guarantee that you have eaten something produced by an extruder. For example, have you eaten elbow macaroni, fettucine, corn balls, cheese curls, or flaked or puffed breakfast cereal? Of course you have. Those types of expanded products can be made by an extruder. I=ll bet the Cheerios my daughter has for breakfast are made by an extruder too.
There are many other commercial applications of extruder products, in such things as aquatic feed and petfood. This type of processing is very popular, and it is in demand overseas as well as in the United States.
Today, Wenger Manufacturing is a global leader in commercial extrusion cooking systems. It specializes in state-of-the-art systems which range in size from small lab research applications to large production units which can produce up to 22 tons of product per hour. Wow. Wenger has twice been honored by the Kansas Engineering Society for having the Governor=s New Product Award. Wenger operates a technical center, which is an agrifood laboratory, and maintains a cooperative research relationship with several universities, including K-State.
Wenger sells coast to coast and world-wide. In fact, 60 percent of Wenger=s production typically is exported. Customers include all of the industrialized nations and most of the developing countries. Wenger has twice been named the Kansas exporter of the year.
With international sales offices in Belgium and Taiwan, you might think that this global company could go anywhere. But the plant and the headquarters remain located in the town where it all began, in the northeast Kansas community of Sabetha B population 2,354 people. Now, that=s rural.
What does this mean to Sabetha? The company has helped spawn several other businesses. Wenger Manufacturing itself now has 240 full-time employees and the payroll has grown to 13 million dollars.
Wow, what a record. Joe and Louis Wenger were the pioneers who braved the Great Depression, and Lavon and Don Wenger are the second generation who are carrying the company on to greater heights. Don Wenger says, ANow the third generation is coming on, and we=re excited about the future.@ That next generation includes Marc, Jeff, and Brad Wenger and Lafe Bailey, director of sales and marketing.
Have you ever witnessed the founding of an industry? Me neither. I=ll never see Thomas Edison or Henry Ford, but I=ve visited this innovative company which founded a world-wide extrusion industry from a small town in Kansas.
It=s great to see a home-grown Kansas company have such world-wide success. We salute LaVon and Don Wenger and all the people of Wenger Manufacturing for making a difference through innovation and international entrepreneurship.
Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, move over.

Greenbush I - Historical Legend
Today let=s learn some Kansas history. The year is 1869. According to legend, a missionary priest was making his way across southeast Kansas on horseback. He was on his way to the Osage Mission when a ferocious spring thunderstorm came up -- as we Kansans know they can do. Wind, hail, and rain started to pelt the young priest. He was out on the open prairie B not a building in sight. Nowhere to take shelter.
So the frightened priest did the only thing he could do. He took refuge in a nearby clump of bushes and crawled under his saddle for protection. And he made a vow: He vowed to his Maker that if his life would be spared, he would build a church on that spot.
Father Colleton=s life was spared that day. And true to his word, he built a church on that location. The church would lead to a school, and that would one day lead to an educational service center. And that has led to a remarkable initiative to serve education from rural Kansas. Stay tuned, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Father Colleton did build a church on that spot, in a community that would come to be known as Greenbush. The church was named St. Aloysius.
The St. Aloysius church was the first Catholic church erected in Crawford County. It was a small wooden frame structure completed in 1871, and a settlement grew around it. A post office was established in the community in 1874, and it was given the name of Greenbush.
Mother Nature continued to demonstrate her fickle ways at Greenbush. The church which had been inspired by a storm was itself destroyed by a storm in 1877. But the citizens of the community were committed to rebuild, and this time they quarried stone from a sandstone outcropping along nearby Hickory Creek. The church building was completed in 1881.
The town of Greenbush was never incorporated. It grew in the late 1800s, and then began to fade. The post office was discontinued in 1901.
But the church at Greenbush was a focal point for people throughout the region, and it grew. Around 1900, plans were made to build a still larger church B a building to be larger than any church then in Crawford County. Again, the men of Greenbush parish quarried stone from the ledge on Hickory Creek. The new building was dedicated in 1907.
The 1881 church was converted into a community building used for church gatherings and a school. In 1958, land was purchased to build a bigger school. The Greenbush school closed in 1975 and in 1976, became the Southeast Kansas Education Service Center.
Meanwhile, the church continued to serve the people of the region. Then came August 11, 1982. Would you believe that Mother Nature would once again show her dark side? On that date, lightning struck the St. Aloysius Church and it was destroyed by fire. Today, the sandstone ruins of the old church still stand.
But parishioners remained true to Father Colleton=s promise. The 1881 church was again renovated into a place of worship. Thus the second church became the fourth church. It was rededicated in March 1986 and was named to the state register of historic places in 1994. It was a fitting tribute to the people of the St. Aloysius Church in Greenbush, Kansas.
Still, time marches on. Today there are only a couple of houses remaining in the town of Greenbush, so the population of the town is less than 20 people. Now, that=s rural.
Due to a shortage of priests, nine churches in southeast Kansas were closed in 1993, including St. Aloysius. The last regularly scheduled mass was held there on September 4, 1993. The church building remains, however, and special services and weddings are still held there.
We=ve come to the end of our Kansas history session. But there is more to be told about the community of Greenbush. You see, that school which had become a regional service center has gone on to become a remarkable high-tech facility which is making a difference. The people at Greenbush aren=t just honoring their history, they are making history. Father Colleton=s vision of service to people is being achieved in a different way now, and we=ll hear about that on our next program.

Greenbush II - Serving Schools
Imagine the date is March 3, 1999. We tune in to the PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer. This award-winning TV show has excellent coverage of national news. And what location do you suppose we=ll be seeing on this national news program today?
Would you believe it is the unincorporated town of Greenbush, Kansas? What in the world would attract a national news program to feature this tiny town in the southeastern part of our state? Stay tuned for the answer. This is today=s Kansas Profile.
If you were watching the PBS News Hour on March 3, 1999, you would have seen a film feature about Greenbush, Kansas. Greenbush is the site of the Southeast Kansas Education Service Center. The center=s innovative efforts to serve education are receiving national attention and were featured on the PBS News Hour. Here=s why.
On our last program, we learned the history of how the former school at Greenbush became the location for a regional service center. Today, the Southeast Kansas Education Service Center is called Greenbush for short.
In effect, Greenbush is a cooperative effort among the school districts in the region. They recognized that they could pool their strengths by working together. The cooperative nature of the service center means that school districts can participate in educational services that would otherwise be unavailable or unaffordable, or are simply offered most cost-effectively through a cooperative arrangement.
The goal was and is to provide equal educational opportunities for all kids.
There are regional service centers serving schools all across the state, but Greenbush is unique in that it receives no base fiscal support from school districts, the state, or federal government. How then does it survive? The answer is, it meets needs.
Today, Greenbush offers a cafeteria-style set of programs. No, that doesn=t mean they sell school food. Rather, it means that schools can pick and choose the educational support services which their school needs. They pay only for those services they use.
For example, a school may simply wish to have some signs engraved or order some educational videos. They can do so through Greenbush. But the schools can also contract for a comprehensive program of school improvement services, including assessment, technology, and integrated curriculum development. Greenbush offers consortiums in everything from environmental compliance to maintenance and custodial work.
If two or more school districts want a program, the Greenbush staff will put together a program and a budget. Schools can buy it as long as it serves their needs.
Today Greenbush has 180 different types of cooperative programs, not including various contracts. Membership in these programs is entirely voluntary.
Program director Mike Bodensteiner says, AThe bottom line is that school districts and other agencies belong to and pay for only those programs that meet their local needs. Voluntary programs designed around district needs create tremendous service and cost accountability.@
The primary service area of Greenbush includes 125,000 students, 10,000 teachers and administrators, and 79 school districts in 29 counties of eastern Kansas. But every school district in the state contracts for some type of service from Greenbush.
Greenbush continues to grow. Today, there are Greenbush branch programs in Paola, Emporia, and Highland. Greenbush also administers the operation of special alternative schools in Parsons and Topeka, as well as provides special education services for the state department of corrections, juvenile detention centers, alternative and charter schools, and low incidence special education programs.
Yet the central office remains in the tiny community of Greenbush. The mailing address for Greenbush is the nearby town of Girard, population 2,731 people. Now, that=s rural. It=s great to see that this rural setting is the home to such innovations in education.
The PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer is now over, but the service to schools lives on. How exciting to see that this national news program would include a feature about small town Kansas. It=s even more exciting to know that this entrepreneurial center is making a difference by serving Kansas kids. And to top that, we=ll hear about more innovative ways in which Greenbush is serving rural Kansas on our next program.

Greenbush III B Innovative Learning

Let me tell you about my world tour. Recently I visited a tropical rain forest, saw a Native American Indian tepee, went to an archeological dig, heard people conversing in Japanese, visited an astrophysical observatory, and saw a teacher teach a class to kids a hundred miles away.
Quite a tour. But the things I was just telling you about weren=t a part of some physical trip around the world. I experienced all those things within one half-hour at a place in rural Kansas. Stay tuned, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Now how in the world could I see a tropical rain forest, hear Japanese, and do all those other things within one half-hour? The answer is, I visited an innovative educational service center in southeast Kansas which is offering all these experiences and more. Today is our third and final program about this remarkable facility known as Greenbush.
Greenbush is the name of the Southeast Kansas Education Service Center. The center is located in the tiny town of Greenbush, near Girard in Crawford County. The center offers 180 different programs in educational support to the schools of Kansas.
I had visited Greenbush before, several years ago. The thing that struck me on my most recent trip was how the facility had grown and changed.
In 1996, Greenbush added the William L. Abernathy Science Education Center. It includes a rainforest greenhouse with more than 75 different types of tropical plants. There is also a horticultural greenhouse for more traditional plants and vocational learning.
Then there=s the Abernathy archeological dig. This is a simulated dig site covered with sand. Instructors bury replicas of fossils and pottery. Students must grid the area and learn about scientific archeology, anthropology, and paleontology. Besides all these -ologies, they get to dig in the sand too.
Next door is a nature trail and native wildlife site, including an Indian tepee. And towering above all this is the Astrophysical Observatory. This is in cooperation with Pittsburg State. The physical structure is two stories high, topped off with a rotating steel dome 24 feet in diameter. Inside the dome is a huge research-grade telescope, with a 24-inch mirror inside. Smaller portable telescopes are also available to monitor the night sky. But bring your coat B there=s no heating or cooling in the building so as to avoid even the slightest condensation or distortion of the image from this high quality equipment. The observatory offers outstanding educational opportunities for kids, and offers a free program to the general public once each month. A thousand people came just to see the Hale-Bopp Comet.
Next stop is a classroom. But as you might guess, this is no ordinary classroom. In the first place, the teacher is teaching Japanese B that=s something I don=t hear every day. In the second place, she is teaching students in two other towns via interactive television. It=s called the Interactive Distance Learning Network.
The potential of this technology is great. It means that a student in a rural school B which probably doesn=t have a Japanese teacher B can have the opportunity to take such a class without leaving his or her hometown. Rural teachers can get in-service training without traveling miles and spending hours of wasted windshield time. Students can take electronic field trips to the observatory and thus virtually into outer space.
High schools on this network are located in towns such as Lebo, population 911; Thayer, population 441; and Allen, population 194 people. Now, that=s rural.
Such two-way video and audio communications are possible because the Craw-Kan Telephone Company has 12 fiber-optic cables running into the building. Dave DeMoss, executive director of the center, says, AIt really doesn=t make any difference now that Greenbush is located...on the Crawford County line in the middle of a soybean field. Those 12 fiber-optic cables run over to Frontenac, and in Frontenac they hook into AT&T and take us world-wide.@
Let me tell you about my world tour. It was a tour of the Southeast Kansas Education Service Center, which is bringing innovative education to urban and rural kids in Kansas. We commend the people of Greenbush for making a difference through visionary education. It=s created a world of opportunities.

J. B. Voss - Leadership Wilson County
A win-win situation. Are you getting tired of hearing that phrase? It=s been used a lot, but I think it is still important. A win-win situation is where both sides or both parties in a particular situation win or find positive benefit.
Achieving win-win situations is a sign of good leadership B and I use that term for a reason. Today, we=ll learn about a rural county where good leadership has helped build a win-win situation. Stay tuned, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet J.B. Voss. J.B. is a businessman in Fredonia, Kansas. Fredonia is the county seat of Wilson County in southeast Kansas.
J.B Voss works for the ADM company in Fredonia. He is a merchandiser at the soybean processing plant there. J.B is an Illinois native whose work with ADM took him to various locations around the midwest. Seven and a half years ago, his assignment with the company brought him to Fredonia. J.B. enjoys life in Fredonia, and he got involved in the community. By 1997, he became president of the Fredonia Chamber of Commerce.
As I said earlier, Fredonia is the county seat of Wilson County. Wilson is a rural county, with a total population of just over 10,000 people. There are two larger towns in the county: Fredonia, with a population of 2,541; and Neodesha which has a population of 2,765. Typically, in a county like this with two towns about the same size, there is a rivalry. Both towns compete to keep up with the other.
One of the things that towns sometimes do is set up leadership development programs. These are very valuable programs for the future leadership of the community, and it is a benefit which a chamber of commerce can offer.
Sure enough, in Wilson County there was a Leadership Neodesha and a Leadership Fredonia. Actually, Neodesha=s leadership program had been going for six years and Fredonia=s program had lapsed after beginning five years ago, but a chamber member had come to them asking to restart it.
Now does it really make sense to have two duplicative leadership programs operating in the same county? That question was one of those facing J.B. Voss as he became president of the Fredonia Chamber of Commerce.
Fortunately, J.B. sees the big picture. He says, AWe need to think as a county.@ He recognized the need for the smaller towns to pool their strengths if they are to compete with the larger communities. And more fortunately, other leaders in the county saw the big picture also.
J.B. says, AAs president of the Fredonia chamber, I started having breakfast with J.D. Cox who is president of the Board of the Neodesha chamber.@ Think about that a minute. J.B. was having breakfast with J.D. Sounds like an algebra problem. But instead, it was an opportunity for these two towns with much in common to see how they could work together.
So what to do about the two duplicate leadership programs? They agreed to form a new county wide leadership program B Leadership Wilson County B which would grandfather in the alumni of both communities= programs. And since Neodesha had the currently operating leadership program to share, Fredonia agreed to share its highly successful ag appreciation dinner. Guess what. It is a win-win situation.
Now both the leadership program and the ag appreciation dinner are county-wide. 280 people came to the ag appreciation dinner, and Leadership Wilson County is in its second class. The County Commission and local businesses support the program. 10 to 12 people participate in each class. They take a bus tour of historic locations in the county, take an ag tour, and do team building. And they try to take the program county-wide, involving the most rural communities. For example, the first year=s class included the wife of the mayor of the town of Buffalo, population 294 people. Now, that=s rural.
J.B. Voss says, AI thoroughly enjoy small towns. And we=ve got to understand that if it=s good for Neodesha, it=s good for the county so it=s good for Fredonia too.@
A win-win situation. It=s a sign of good leadership when both parties can cooperate to find a situation that is a win for each of them. We salute J.B. Voss, J.D. Cox, and the people of Leadership Wilson County for making a difference by working together.
It makes Wilson County a winner.

John Cyr - North Central Kansas Community Network - 1
On April 12, 1999, almost 400 leading innovators of computer applications gathered on the Mall in Washington, D.C. They were the recipients of the Computerworld Smithsonian Medal for innovative use of telecommunications technology, and they were there to see their work accepted into the Smithsonian Institution=s Permanent Research Collection of Information Technology. These innovative winners came from such places as Argentina, Hong Kong, and....rural Kansas.
Yes, rural Kansas. Boot up your computer, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet John Cyr. John is executive director of the North Central Regional Planning Commission. The commission serves 11 counties and 84 cities in north central Kansas. It is based in the Mitchell County town of Beloit, population 4, 015 people. Now, that=s rural.
Yet this rural town of Beloit is host to a winner of one of these international awards for computer innovation. Here=s the story.
The North Central Regional Planning Commission was formed in 1972. It assists cities, counties, and businesses with planning, getting grants and loans, and other things.
John Cyr has degrees from KU and K-State. He joined the planning commission in 1980 and became executive director in 1986.
In 1993, John read an article which said that some cities were not waiting for corporate investment to build their telecommunications infrastructure, but rather were plowing in advance telecommunications in advance of such development. That planted a seed in John=s mind.
In 1995, a teacher named Todd Tuttle and one other came to John looking for assistance in getting their schools and classrooms wired for computers and Internet connections. In short, they found that the cost of paying for such connections by themselves was prohibitive.
But rather than sitting back and waiting for someone else to come solve the problem, John=s group developed an alternative. If several communities in the region went together, they could spread that cost to make it manageable. So in December 1995, John=s group organized the North Central Kansas Community Network, or NCKCN. Todd Tuttle helped put the technology together.
NCKCN is a public-private partnership between the regional planning commission and a privately held computer company in Beloit. NCKCN provides a wide area network of computers in north central Kansas. In effect, NCKCN provides local Internet access B you don=t have to make a long distance call to access the Internet.
The mission of NCKCN is to make information technology available to north central Kansas at the lowest possible price. NCKCN is set up as a non-profit enterprise to keep the costs of providing the service as low as possible. John Cyr says, AWe give the service free to high schools, libraries, and units of government. Individual subscribers pay a monthly fee.@ The network has grown even faster than anticipated.
John says, AWe had estimated we would have 40 to 45 signups per month. Instead, we have 60 to 65.@
NCKCN has three main goals.
One is to benefit those individuals and communities that find themselves left out of the technology revolution at the current time and thereby develop an awareness of informational technology in small town, rural society.
A second goal is to broaden the application and use of informational technology within the education and business structure of North Central Kansas through demonstration and education.
The third goal is to broaden everyone's view of community and lessen the sense of rural isolation by heightening awareness of the human and physical resources possessed by the whole of North Central Kansas.
This is forward-looking, visionary thinking. Credit should go to the Kansas Department of Commerce & Housing, which assisted with a block grant. John Cyr credits the communities themselves for leadership and forethought.
The result is that, through local access to the Internet, the global marketplace is available electronically to citizens of rural north central Kansas.
It=s time to leave the Mall in Washington, D.C., where innovators from around the world were being recognized for their work in information technology. We=re especially pleased that one of those innovators is in rural Kansas, where it is making a difference through the visionary use of technology. But what does this technology really mean to a citizen of those communities? We=ll talk about that on our next program.

John Cyr - North Central Kansas Community Network - 2
Today let=s go down to the town square. That=s a good thing to do in small-town Kansas. At the town square, we can discuss what=s going on in the world. We can talk about the garden, or developments in the community. We might get some new ideas, or sell that extra item we=ve been wanting to move out. We can visit with people we know, and meet some we don=t.
These are all things one can do in a town square, so what makes this one unique? The answer is that what I have been describing is a virtual town square. It is a town square that is organized on the Internet. You can go to this town square on your computer, without ever leaving your home, and do all of the things I was describing. And this town square isn=t for just one town, it serves all of north central Kansas.
Today=s Kansas Profile is our second and final program in our series on the North Central Kansas Community Network. It=s called the NCKCN for short.
On our last program, we met John Cyr of the North Central Regional Planning Commission which organized the NCKCN. In effect, the NCKCN is an Internet provider to communities in north central Kansas, but it is also much more.
nckcn.com has been organized by the regional planning commission as a virtual community. At that site there are 17 links which can take the visitor to a variety of services. For example, if you click on neighborhoods it will take you to a list of websites for all the towns in the region. If you click on education, it will list all the schools. If you click on the senior center, it will take you to a list of websites with information of interest to older citizens. If you click on town square, it will take you to a place where you can have discussions, list items for sale or trade, make announcements, and more.
I was impressed with what I found when I clicked on businesses. It took me to an on-line business directory which listed businesses in the region from A to Z B or to be more specific, from agriculture, auctions, and automotive to veterinary, wholesale supply, and wood crafts.
There are also sites for weather, jobs, and entertainment B which includes recommendations for fun and interesting places to eat in the small towns of north central Kansas. Sounds like one to bookmark....
Thanks to NCKCN, Internet service is available throughout the region, including such places as Jewell, population 483; Scandia, population 389, and Sylvan Grove, population 283. Now, that=s rural.
John says, ATogether, we have nearly 17,000 in population.@
What does having such Internet access mean to the people? One ad agency in the region used to serve customers primarily in the Great Plains region. When the agency developed a new product, they had to ship it or take it to their customers by car. Now, this agency has picked up accounts for 80 divisions of a national company. The ad agency can put their new products on a secure cyberfile which can be accessed by any division of this company anywhere in the world B within a matter of minutes.
Farmers are using NCKCN to market specialty products in California. Two patent attorneys have moved from Philadelphia to Scandia. And then there are the sociocultural benefits.
John Cyr says, AMy mother at age 72 bought her first computer after Christmas 1998. She does her books on it and e-mails the grandkids daily. She wouldn=t be doing that if there was a long distance charge every time she used the Internet.@
John says, AWe call it the North Central Kansas Community Network in order to set up a mindset within all of our communities that they are part of a larger whole. We=re not just isolated communities, but we have linkages with our neighbors.@
It=s time to leave the town square. It=s a place like many other town squares in the country, but this is an electronic one. We salute John Cyr and the people of NCKCN for making a difference through this innovative approach to building a larger community using technology.

Peggy Ziegler - Heart of the Prairie
Have you ever been making a purchase at a gift shop, looked out the window, and seen a crowd going by outside? That=s the way it is at many malls during the Christmas season, isn=t it? You make a purchase and see the crowds of people hurrying by outside.
Stay tuned. The gift shop I=m talking about now is a place where you can purchase fine gifts, just as you=d find in a mall in Kansas City or Wichita, but if you look out the window, the crowd you might see going by outside isn=t people B but rather, a flock of wild turkeys.
This gift shop isn=t just another place located in some urban mega-mall. This is a country gift shop that is truly in the country. In fact, it=s the Heart of the Prairie, and it=s today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Peggy Ziegler. Peggy is owner of this wonderful gift shop in east central Kansas.
Peggy grew up near Admire, Kansas, nestled in the eastern flint hills north of Emporia. She and her husband were living and working in Emporia when they decided to move back out to the country. They built a home near where her great-great-grandparents homesteaded in 1856.
Peggy quit work to raise two daughters. She started making craft items just for fun. People liked them, and then wanted more of them. A friend encouraged her to go into the business, so she started going to shows and finding success in marketing her crafts. It went so well that she was going to shows every weekend in the fall.
But as the business grew, so did the travel. With her family in mind, Peggy wanted to stay closer to home, so she thought about opening a craft shop of her own.
But where to put it? She wanted something with character, not just some run-of-the-mill location.
One day she was explaining this dilemma to her mother as they had coffee, and her mother said, AWhat about the old schoolhouse down at the corner?@ Peggy said, AThat=s it!@ Peggy=s mom said, AOh no, I was only kidding.@
A look at the old schoolhouse revealed why she was only kidding. The old building had been constructed in 1890. The last school was conducted there in 1946. It was a community building after that, and then a place for the old folks to play cards. But the building had been abandoned several years by this time, and it was in rough shape. The roof was leaking, the windows rattled, and the only bathroom was the one down the pathway in back.
Peggy says, AFortunately my husband appreciates old stuff too.@ They saw the potential in the old building and they bought it. They saved the old wood floor and some windows, put in new insulation and wiring, and installed an indoors bathroom. Modern technology sure is wonderful, isn=t it?...
And what was this gift shop to be called? Peggy selected Heart of the Prairie. In November 1993, the Heart of the Prairie gift shop opened for business.
With Peggy=s creative touch, the business has grown every year since. Today, the Heart of the Prairie gift shop has been visited by customers from New York to California and as far away as Argentina. A large number of customers come from Topeka and Emporia. The shop offers fine goods, such as Boyd=s Collectibles, Yankee & Village Candles, and Lang & Main Street Paper Products. These are as high quality as any store in Kansas City, but what makes it unique is the gift shop=s setting in the country.
The store is located five miles north of the junction of Highways 99 and 56 near Admire. Admire is a town of 149 people. Now, that=s rural.
The store is surrounded by wheat fields and grasslands. Peggy says, AThere is a flock of wild turkeys that occasionally crosses the field out our front window.@
Have you ever made a purchase, looked up, and seen a crowd going by outside? Maybe you thought they were turkeys, but at the Heart of the Prairie gift shop, they really are-- The feathered kind. We salute Peggy Ziegler for making a difference with her creative touch and love of country life. Her location really is the Heart of the Prairie.

DeLange Seed
If you were going out to plant sweet corn in your garden, would you start by planting weed seeds? Of course not, no more than you would put water in your gas tank or sawdust in your supper. It=s important to begin with the right seed if you=re going to get what you want in the end.
There=s a saying in the seed industry that ASuccess starts with the seed.@ This reminds us of the vital role which seed plays in producing good crops. After all, if you planted weed seeds instead of sweet corn in your garden, you wouldn=t be very happy with what came up. And top quality seed enables a Kansas producer to begin with the best chance for a top quality crop.
So we endorse the idea that @success starts with the seed.@ One man who personifies that statement is Howard DeLange, who has built a successful seed business in rural Kansas. Stay tuned, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Howard DeLange. Howard is owner of the DeLange Seed House in Girard, Kansas. Here is the story.
The DeLange family is native to Kansas. Howard=s father was a farmer near Girard who occasionally would do seed cleaning for neighbors. One thing led to another, and from seed cleaning it was a natural progression to sell seed that was ready to use.
DeLange Seed was established in southeast Kansas in 1970, and it was Howard DeLange who took the business to new heights. Today, DeLange Seed is an innovative and diversified seed company. It produces and markets every type of seed but garden seed. In other words, if you were producing major Kansas crops like wheat, corn, or soybeans, you could buy seed from DeLange. You can also get seed for alfalfa, sudan grass, or forage sorghum. You can even get seeds for wildflowers or turfgrass.
Steve Ahring, a manager with the company, says, ADeLange Seed has the total package. There are proprietary type varieties, which DeLange Seed developed, and then the commodity type seeds. We primarily serve the southern half of Kansas.@ However, orders have come from as far away as Texas and Tennessee.
Today, the company offers more than 75 separate seed items. Along with this growth has come expansion in their territory.
The DeLanges went to Sedgwick County to look for the best seed wheat. That led to creation of the second branch of the organization, DeLange Seed of Sedgwick. It=s based in the town of Sedgwick, population 1,451 people. That=s rural B but stay tuned.
DeLange Seed of Sedgwick supplies the Wichita market, which has strong demand for things such as bird food, lawn grass, and wildflowers.
One thing that especially impressed me was the extensive field testing that DeLange Seed does on various varieties of field crops and seeds. For example, DeLange uses the data which K-State Research & Extension generates on various varieties, and then tests commercial varieties further to be sure they give their customers what is best.
For example, DeLange Seed operates test plots for corn and milo varieties at several locations around southeast Kansas. There are test plots near towns such as Girard and Valley Center, and even at places such as Hartford, population 557, and Liberty, population 136 people. Now, that=s rural.
These rural places are where the DeLange Seed people give these varieties of various crops a try B planting them side by side to see which ones will do the best for their customers. That information is then provided to their customers for their use.
This customer service has enabled the DeLange Seed company to succeed and become a leader in the industry. Howard DeLange says, AMy son Darren is the third generation in the business.@ Howard and Steve Ahring both have been elected by their peers as presidents of the Kansas Seed Industry Association, and son Darren is serving on the association board.
If you were going to plant sweet corn in your garden, it wouldn=t do to start by planting weed seeds, would it? It is important to start with the right stuff. Kansas agriculture has had great success, in part due to the high quality seed material which farmers are able to acquire. We salute Howard DeLange and Steve Ahring for making a difference by building a business based on quality seed and customer service. After all, success starts with the seed.

Leadership Sherman County
Today let=s visit the top county in Kansas. And what county would that be, you might ask? It=s a loaded question. During certain times of football or basketball season, that is liable to start an argument.
So let=s consider our definition. We=re going to visit the county which is on the top of the state from a geographical, altitudinal standpoint. In other words, it is the highest geographical county in the state, which means it must be on top.
That=s what you=re likely to be told if you come west to Sherman County, Kansas. Stay tuned, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Dana Belshe. Dana is the extension agent for agriculture in Sherman County. He was my host during my most recent visit to Sherman County.
There are some neat people in Sherman County: John Golden, the former state senator and county commissioner; Ron Pickman, the Goodland City Manager and his wife Donna; Jeanie Schields and Jeff Deeds, graduates of the Kansas Agriculture and Rural Leadership program; and Ron Harding, president of the Goodland Area Chamber of Commerce, among others.
John Golden, for example, is one who will tell you that Sherman County is the top county in the state. He points out that the Sherman County town of Kanorado is located at the highest elevation of any Kansas town. While the neighboring county of Wallace has the highest single point in the state, that being Mount Sunflower, Sherman County as a whole apparently has the highest elevation. So Sherman County can bill itself as the top county in the state.
Now, you need to understand that all this is said with a lot of good humor. There is no intent to put down other counties, but rather to promote this one.
This group works hard at promoting the county, and that=s a good thing because there are a number of challenges. The agriculture and oil & gas economies have had hard times. It=s a long way from any major metropolitan area such as Kansas City or Denver.
Did I say go west to Sherman County? You can=t get any further west and still be in Kansas. Sherman County borders Colorado. It is located in the mountain time zone.
Sherman County also has many pluses. It has an excellent group of community leaders, as I mentioned a minute ago. It has a strong agriculture and agribusiness base. It is located on Interstate 70, and it is a trade hub for its region.
So how does a county like this position itself for the future? How does it build cohesion and awareness among residents of the county? How does it prepare its citizens for future challenges?
The answer probably is, in several ways. But one of the best ways, in my view, is the creation of a county-level leadership development program. Extension agent Dana Belshe, Jeanie Schields, Donna Pickman, Jeff Deeds, and Jo Rogers were part of the core group who put together the Leadership Sherman County program.
Under this program, a set of citizens B maybe eight to a dozen B are selected each year to go through an educational program called Leadership Sherman County. The program is targeted to emerging or potential leaders in the county. They go through a get-acquainted process, tours, state and local speakers, educational programs, and a visit to the state capitol.
In general, the goal is to build awareness of people and issues in the county and to equip future leaders of the county to deal with challenges to come.
The key to the future of our communities is strong local leadership. Programs like Leadership Sherman County can empower and inform leaders to be committed to their communities and to be thinking and acting to make a better future for those communities.
While the Leadership Sherman County program is relatively new, already it has encouraged its participants to be more involved in boards and leadership opportunities.
It=s time to say farewell to the top county in Kansas. Yes, Sherman County is geographically on the top side of the state. More importantly, the people of Sherman County are working to make their county better through development of future leaders. We salute Dana Belshe and the people of Leadership Sherman County for making a difference through leadership development. It=s a top-level experience.

Joe Farrar - Farrar Corp
Here=s a riddle for you: What does a bridge in Hong Kong have to do with the loudspeakers at EuroDisney and a Walker lawnmower in Australia? Give up?
Well, it=s not a very funny riddle, but it is an interesting story. The answer is, they all contain metal castings that were made in rural Kansas. Think about that a minute. Imagine Hong Kong, Europe, and Australia being connected through rural Kansas. Stay tuned, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Joe Farrar. Joe is President and General Manager of the Farrar Corporation. This Kansas-based company is the common thread in this scenario between Hong Kong, Europe, and Australia. Here is the story.
Joe Farrar=s grandfather was a high school math teacher who did some part-time blacksmithing in south central Kansas. After World War II, Joe=s father and uncle used their metal-working skills to develop products they could build and sell.
They were working on a sickle drive to replace one on a John Deere combine and they decided to make their own castings for the product. In 1967, they started a foundry in their hometown. In late 1974, they incorporated a company to produce these and other products.
Joe graduated from K-State in engineering and joined the family company. In 1988, he became company president.
Today, the company specializes in furnishing a wide variety of castings and finish machined parts and assemblies to a diverse group of original equipment manufacturing customers throughout the United States. The reach of some of these companies extends world-wide.
Farrar Corporation can do design, technical assistance, patterns, castings, machining, heat treating, painting, and assembly for these companies. In effect, it combines the services of a machine shop with a ductile iron foundry, which is good for its customers.
Now what exactly is ductile iron? It=s a type of iron discovered during World War II when the U.S. was trying to make iron stronger for the war effort. Ductile iron is tougher and stronger than cast iron, but also more flexible.
For example, the strongest cast iron has 30,000 psi tensile strength. The weakest of ductile iron has 60,000 psi tensile strength, and it can be heat-treated to 230,000 psi. Wear-resistance is better than heat-treated steel.
So you can see why companies would want ductile iron castings or parts in their machinery. Joe says that ductile iron is the only category of cast ferrous material that is growing in use.
Joe=s company makes this ductile iron into various parts for their customers. These now include more than 1,500 active patterns and over 150 original equipment manufacturing customers throughout the central U.S., in about 12 states. These parts go into such things as lawnmowers, conveyors, welding equipment, and magnets for loudspeakers in sound systems.
Listen to this. Joe=s company made castings used in bridges in such places as Canada, Hong Kong, and around the U.S. They made magnets in speakers that are used in the EuroDisney theme park, and had parts in the welders that helped build the Alaska pipeline.
And all this tremendous work was accomplished by the Farrar Corporation at its facility in the town of Norwich, Kansas, population 460 people. Now, that=s rural.
As its markets have grown, the company has grown. In 1968, the foundry began with 15 employees. Today, the Farrar Corporation employs 150 people.
The next step of growth involves the city of Manhattan B Kansas, that is. The Farrar Corporation will soon be opening a new metal machining facility in Manhattan. The foundry in Norwich will remain open, and the new facility in Manhattan will be a wholly owned subsidiary of the company.
So now you know the answer to the riddle: The connection between a bridge in Hong Kong, the speakers at EuroDisney, and a Walker lawnmower in Australia is that they all contain parts made in rural Kansas.
Maybe the larger riddle is a different question: how does a manufacturing business located in a rural setting succeed in a global marketplace? It appears the answer to that question is in entrepreneurship, hard work, and a commitment to quality. That=s what we find at the Farrar Corporation. We commend Joe Farrar and the people of his company for making a difference through their progress. They are solving the riddles of our modern economy.

Charles Jardine
Have you tuned in your black-and-white television lately? Yes, I said a black-and-white television. It seems that there are fewer and fewer of those these days. Nowadays, televisions show color and take up a whole wall. But in the grand scheme of things, it wasn=t so long ago that television was a new technology and all TVs were black-and-white.
Today, we=ll meet a man who helped launch and build the television era in our state. And guess what, we=ll find him in small town Kansas. Don=t change that dial, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Charles Jardine. Although he wouldn=t put it this way, Charlie Jardine is a man with a unique perspective on the history of television B he helped make it. Charlie is essentially the first television cameraman in the state of Kansas. He has a fascinating story to tell.
Charlie Jardine grew up at Independence, Kansas. After he served in the Korean War, he and his wife went to Topeka where he attended Trade School to become an electrician.
Charlie was looking for a part-time job when he applied at WIBW. The station was looking for something called a cameraman. Charlie said, AWell, my hobby is photography.@
The job paid one dollar per hour. Charlie says, AI bugged 'em and bugged 'em until I got the job.@
This was the very beginning of television in Kansas. Charlie says, AThe first time WIBW went on the air, it was on for forty-five minutes before an ortho tube burnt out.@ That tube was a $3,000 item, which was a lot of money in those days.
Charlie=s job was not only to operate a studio camera during live broadcasting but to work in the film department.
Reproduction of live programming in those days was by a process called AKenescope.@ This consisted of placing a 16 millimeter movie camera on a tri-pod in front of a TV set and recording the program as it was being aired live. Of course this was black and white and like any pioneering efforts it had its rough spots.
This was live television, and there was no opportunity to retape a show or correct mistakes. Charlie says, AViewers would see the picture go black, or see something fall on the set. You=d hear laughter or other noises in the background. If the things that happened then were on a tv station today, the whole station would be fired.@
Of course, not all of the TV shows were live. There were pre-recorded shows, but what we now call a network feed was very different in those days. Charlie says, AMajor programs like the Lawrence Welk show or Andy Griffith were shipped from one station to the next so each could show it. Every week we=d get the film of the Andy Griffith show from a station in Springfield, Missouri, and as soon as we showed it we=d send it by air freight to the station in Lincoln, Nebraska so they could show it.@ So much for via satellite...
When technical glitches happened on the air, as apparently they did frequently, Charlie says, AMy friends in Topeka would say, what is going on out there?@
The answer is, they were making history. And policy-makers of the time were at the center of it. Of course, Senator Arthur Capper was in at the genesis. He was the biggest publisher west of the Mississippi at the time. He took radio engineers and put them on television to get it started. Charlie says that Alf Landon used to come over at 10 p.m. to watch them shoot the late evening news.
Because of the sports coverage, Charlie Jardine rubbed shoulders with such figures as Dev Nelson, Tex Winter, and Phog Allen. Other celebrities of the time whom Charlie saw at the station included Patsy Cline, Rosalind Russell, Esther Williams, Randolph Scott, and Joe Louis, and even (Mr. Maytag) Gordon Jump who was a student at K-State. Wow!!
Charlie worked his way up to head the film department at WIBW, and then he was a studio manager at a TV station in Wichita and later became a Producer-Director of live programming. His final stop was in supervision at Boeing aircraft before retiring. Now Charlie and Donna live in Park City north of Wichita. Park City is a town of 5,426 people. Now, that=s rural.
Charlie says, AWe like the small town atmosphere.@
Have you tuned in your black-and-white TV lately? There are fewer and fewer of them these days. But we remember the beginnings of television and those pioneers who helped to get it started. We salute Charlie Jardine and others who are making a difference through the technology which they pioneered. And now, back to our regular programming.

Amazon.com in Coffeyville
Let=s go to the bookstore. We=ll see the best-sellers and browse through some titles B say, about 4.7 million of them....
Wow, that must be a big bookstore. In fact, it is a virtual bookstore, which markets its books, videos and other products over the Internet. And would you believe this high-tech operation is locating its latest and largest distribution center in rural Kansas? Just click on your radio, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Leroy Alsup. Leroy is city manager in Coffeyville, Kansas. Leroy tells us this remarkable story.
Let=s start with the book company named Amazon.com. This aggressive company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It opened its virtual doors as a seller of books over the Internet in 1995. Gee, just 1995. Relatively speaking, that was just a nanosecond ago, but a lot has happened since.
In July of 1995, the company opened an online store that was easy to navigate and sought to offer the broadest possible collection of books. As I understand it, this meant that anyone almost anywhere could get on their computer, go through the Internet, and electronically call up a list of books that they might want to purchase. You make your selection, enter your credit card or account information, and in a few days your purchase will be delivered to your front door.
It=s like other kinds of shopping except it=s done via computer. You don=t get to leaf through the books, but you don=t have to leave home either. And this bookstore is open electronically 24 hours a day.
This innovative idea has exploded. Net sales by Amazon.com were $148 million in 1997 and $610 million in 1998. Today, Amazon.com offers 4.7 million books, CDs, audiobooks, videos, computer games, and more. Amazon.com is the number one Internet retailer of books, videos, and music. You can now buy and send gifts and e-cards through Amazon.com, and even participate in electronic auctions. An estimated 10 million people in more than 160 countries have bought from Amazon.com.
The company has had to hustle to keep up with such rapid growth. That=s where Coffeyville came in.
Coffeyville is located in Montgomery County in southeast Kansas, just 2 miles from Oklahoma. Coffeyville has a population of 12,242 people. Now, that=s rural.
But this rural location happens to be the site of a facility which had previously been occupied by the Golden Books company. In spring 1999, City Manager Leroy Alsup got the call that someone was interested in the Golden Books property. He and his team put together some information, and in no time the decision was made: Amazon.com was coming to Coffeyville.
Why would such a high-tech, west coast company come to Coffeyville? Leroy Alsup says, AThe first factor was simply the existence of a building that met their needs. The work ethic of our labor force was the second factor in our favor.@
And remember what a real estate agent says: location, location, location. Being centrally located in the U.S. is a plus. Amazon.com says this new facility will enable people in the midwest and southeast to have their orders shipped to them much faster.
And what does this mean to Coffeyville? For starters, the company is expanding the existing 460,000-square-foot facility to more than 750, 000 square feet this year. It will be the largest distribution center in the whole Amazon.com company.
They expect to employ more than 500 people by year-end 1999 and a thousand when fully operational. This company will generate a 19 million dollar annual payroll. Wow. No wonder many observers have called this a home run for Kansas.
It is so exciting to see this component of a high-tech operation come to rural Kansas.
It=s time to leave the bookstore now. We=ve seen the bestsellers and started to browse through some titles - but we won=t get through all 4.7 million today. We salute Leroy Alsup of Coffeyville and all those who were involved in bringing this remarkable company to Kansas. They are making a difference by generating jobs and income in rural Kansas through this new high-tech computer retailer. And with that, you can click on exit program.

Dr. Knackstedt - Medicine & Hunting
Today let=s go hunting. Sounds like fun, doesn=t it? Get out your hunter orange and prepare your shotgun. But what=s in season?
Would you believe: the latest in medical information?
Wait a minute. What does that have to do with hunting? The answer is, more than you think. Grab your hunting license, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Doctor Cameron Knackstedt. Dr. Knackstedt, or Dr. K as he is commonly known, is the innovative physician who has tied these unlikely topics together: modern health care and upland game bird hunting. The result is economic development in rural Kansas.
Dr. K was born and raised in the McPherson area where he did a little bit of hunting as a boy, as did many of us. He received his Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine degree from the University of Health Sciences in Kansas City. During medical school, he was recruited by none other than Huck Boyd to come to Phillipsburg, Kansas to practice medicine, which he did. Dr. K has been there more than 20 years now.
Phillipsburg is a town of 2,578 people. It=s a challenge to generate economic development in a town that size.
Dr. K and his wife went to a continuing education session in Colorado where doctors could go skiing on the side. Dr. K thought, AWhy couldn=t we have a session like that in Kansas? What does Kansas have that could draw people here?@
One of the answers is hunting. Northwest Kansas has some of the best pheasant and quail hunting in the country. Dr. K had discovered this when he moved to the region. Now he thought there was a way to build on that.
In 1994, Dr. Knackstedt founded the North Central Kansas Osteopathic Medicine Society. That society joined other sponsors in conducting a medical update session in Phillipsburg for health care providers, in conjunction with a weekend of game bird hunting.
What a great idea. It lets the doctors combine business with pleasure. They can get the medical education they need, and then engage in some healthy outdoor recreation.
But would the concept work? Listen to this. In November 1998, there were 65 physicians who attended the medical conference and hunting weekend, plus 40 exhibitors who attended from hospitals and pharmaceutical companies. Doctors have come from Texas, Colorado, Utah, and as far away as New York state.
This is now an annual event, held each November on the second weekend of pheasant season. On the Thursday before, the continuing medical education session is held from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. They have sessions on such topics as pneumonia, migraines, and neurosurgery and many more. It provides 14 hours of credit in continuing medical education.
These sessions are now held in the Huck Boyd Community Center in Phillipsburg, which has a videoconference center that can bring in outstanding speakers electronically. Last fall, the attendees heard a lecture on depression which was presented via videoconference by a doctor in Kansas City.
In 1999, one of the presenters is scheduled to be the world-famous heart surgeon Dr. Michael DeBakey. Another recent speaker onsite was a Texas doctor who is a world-renowned expert on infectious diseases. A fellow doc said to Dr. K, AWow. How did you get him here?@ The answer is, he wants to hunt.
And hunt they do. On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning, those who choose can go on guided hunting tours on farms in the area. Local farmers are contracted with to serve as guides. The Phillipsburg Chamber of Commerce plays a key role in this. By the end of the weekend, everyone appears to have had a good time.
It seems to me that this is a win-win-win situation. It=s good for the doctors, who get their medical education plus some enjoyable outside activity. It=s good for the rural communities, because those doctors are spending their dollars here instead of going to some resort elsewhere. And it=s good for the farmers, because they are generating income through the use of their natural resources. Guides even come from such communities as Logan, population 582, and Glade, population 100 people. Now, that=s rural.
It=s time to end our hunting trip. Clean your gun and slip off your hunter orange. We=ve seen pheasant, quail -- and even the latest in medical advancements. We salute Dr. Knackstedt, the Phillipsburg Chamber, and all those who are making a difference through this ingenious effort to produce economic benefit by combining game bird hunting with medical education. In terms of an idea, it looks to me like they=ve bagged a big one.
Linda Hatch
What is the recipe for success in rural America? That is a question I have pondered quite a bit. Today we=ll meet someone who has found lots of recipes B I mean the real kind, that you can use in your kitchen. She has assembled a whole collection of classic, family recipes that she is marketing from rural Kansas.
Tie on your apron, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Linda Hatch. Linda is the entrepreneur who has brought together this wonderful collection of recipes. They are marketed as Grandma=s Recipes Cookbook.
Linda comes from a pioneering family in southeast Kansas. Her great-great-grandfather had the first Indian trading post on the Neosho River. He was the first mayor of Chanute and the first superintendent of education.
From these roots, Linda=s family continues in southeast Kansas. Her grandmothers must have been great cooks. Linda credits her grandmothers as the sources of most of the recipes which she assembled for this cookbook.
Linda says, AI think we need to get back to family traditions, where everyone sits down to dinner and talks and asks what they did that day and how they are and if they could help each other come together as a family.@
So Linda started pulling together old family recipes. She got recipes of her mother and her husband=s mother, and her grandmother and her husband=s grandmother. She found several family recipes in old church books.
It took half a year, but eventually Linda pulled together more than 300 recipes which she has assembled into a cookbook.
Linda says, AThis Cookbook comes from the effort to keep the spirit of my grandmothers and their family recipes alive and not forgotten. This is done with great love and appreciation for their strength, compassion and dedication to their family. These are the same qualities I am passing on to my children, that families= life and tradition are the threads that create the weaving of the family cloth.@
Imagine a century of home cooking. I understand some of the newer recipes are trickier than others. I guess a hundred years ago, we wouldn=t have had a lot of the gadgets in the kitchen that we have today. Think about cooking on only a wood-burning stove, with no microwave oven or electric can opener in sight.
Apparently there are a lot of recipes for desserts in this book, which would earn it high marks from me. Linda says, AIf you=ve got a sweet tooth, you=ll like it B a lot of desserts. At our family reunions, everyone would go for Grandmother Beach=s pies first.@ Sounds like a good family to be in...
Some of Linda=s favorites include chocolate gravy, cheese grits casserole, Grandma=s famous bread and butter pickles, cowboy stew from earlier days, and something called Better than sex dessert. Wow. Wonder what=s in that one.
Linda and her husband have two daughters, Samantha age 4 and Katelyn age 2. She=s a stay at home mom now and would like to stay a stay at home mom. But that doesn=t mean this traditional mom is afraid of modern technology. Quite the contrary. She has her own e-mail address and is even marketing her cookbook through the Internet.
This enables her to pursue this entrepreneurial concept while remaining home in the southeast Kansas town of Yates Center, population 1,717 people. Now, that=s rural.
But from this rural setting Linda is marketing her cookbook worldwide over the Internet. She is doing the publishing herself, and the book is only available direct from her.
You can visit Linda=s website at www.grandmasrecipes.net Once again, that is www.grandmasrecipes.net. Her e-mail address is lhatch@yatescenterks.net. Or you can send $15 plus tax to Grandma=s Recipes, 1107 North Grove, Yates Center, Kansas 66783. That address again is Grandma=s Recipes, 1107 North Grove, Yates Center, Kansas 66783.
What is the recipe for success in rural America? There are probably many versions. One would be a portion of creativity seasoned with a dash of entrepreneurship. That=s what we find in Linda Hatch, who is making a difference by honoring her family traditions and sharing them with the world using modern technology. Her ideas belong on the front burner. And with that, we=re done.

Linda Katz - Prairie Tumbleweed Farm
The Christmas season is here. Get out the ornaments, and let=s gather around and decorate the old Christmas tumbleweed..... Yes, I said tumbleweed. Would you believe that someone would make a tumbleweed into a Christmas tree? Or top that: Would you believe that someone could sell tumbleweeds around the world over the Internet for Christmas and other occasions?
Now, who would be crazy enough to order a tumbleweed over the Internet? Stay tuned for today=s special holiday edition of Kansas Profile.
Meet Linda Katz. Linda tells us the amusing and amazing story of Prairie Tumbleweed Farm. This company is marketing its products worldwide over the Internet, but it all started as a lark. Linda Katz gave us the history.
Linda, a former insurance agent, and her husband live in Garden City. Linda says, AI am a big fan of the Internet. I wanted to learn how to make a web page of my own, and I had seen lots of personal web pages that weren=t very interesting. So I wanted to build a web page around my nieces and nephews, whom I love, and make it fun.@
So Linda gathered her nieces and nephews to pose for some pictures for her website. She decided, with tongue firmly in cheek, to call it Prairie Tumbleweed Farm and announce tumbleweeds for sale over the Internet.
Linda says, AI borrowed a couple of hard hats from my brother=s pickup truck and went out to a friend=s field where he has some heavy equipment. We gathered tumbleweeds and took pictures around the tractors. I scanned those photos onto my website, called them company photos, and named it Prairie Tumbleweed Farm.@ Linda wrote a funny piece describing the annual tumbleweed harvest and offered the tumbleweeds for sale in small, medium, or large. They are even advertised as being organically grown and 100 percent Y2K compliant.
Of course, this was all in fun. After all, tumbleweeds are those nuisance weeds that grow wild and blow free all around western Kansas. Linda=s farm is a subdivision. And the officers of the company consisted of her nieces and nephews.
But the information was posted on the Internet, and lo and behold, in a few days, she got a call from someone placing an order.
Linda says, AIt was a woman on the east coast who really wanted a couple of tumbleweeds for her western theme wedding. I figured it was the first and last order we would ever receive. So I walked out our back door and down three houses to a big field, where I picked up a couple of nice tumbleweeds to send to this lady.@
But it didn=t stop there. Orders kept coming and Linda kept filling them. Linda got calls from coast to coast, and as far away as Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia. The people who film the Barney shows ordered some via airmail for a western skit. And some have actually ordered and decorated them for Christmas, just as Linda had jokingly suggested.
The press picked up on it, and the business has now been covered in USA TODAY, People Magazine, Modern Bride, National Enquirer, and Paul Harvey. The result is worldwide attention. In one year, Linda=s tumbleweed farm website received 32,000 hits. They come from all over the U.S., and from Australia, Singapore, Switzerland, Finland, Israel, New Zealand, Malaysia, Russia, Lebanon, Luxembourg, and more. The website address is www.prairietumbleweedfarm.com.
Company proceeds are divided among the officers of the company B namely, her nieces and nephews. That=s appropriate, because Linda=s real goal in this process is family fun. After all, in how many companies is the average age of the corporate officers 15 years old? The vice president of the company is Katie Goldsberry, a student at K-State. She comes from the southwest Kansas town of Meade, population 1,540 people. Now, that=s rural.
Linda says, AThe most interesting part has been talking to people from all over the world. And I=m glad for my nieces and nephews to benefit.@
Yes, it=s time to gather around and decorate the Christmas....tumbleweed. We commend Linda Katz for making a difference. Her idea of having fun with the tumbleweeds has resulted in worldwide attention, but especially for the benefit of her family. We are reminded of the importance of family during this special blessed season.
Who would be crazy enough to order a tumbleweed over the Internet? Well, I asked Santa Claus for a medium....
Wishing you happy holidays.

Excursion Train
Today let=s talk about railroad ties: You know, those long blocks of wood they put under train tracks. Today, we=ll meet some people who are using railroad ties and everything related to build an enterprise for tourism, economic development, and fun. It=s an excursion train, and it=s located in rural Kansas.
All aboard, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Dave Winter. Dave is general manager of the Abilene and Smoky Valley Railroad. Perhaps you didn=t know that Abilene had its own railroad. It does, thanks to lots of people.
Imagine starting a railroad from scratch. It seems like an impossible dream, but stay tuned.
Joe Minick and Fred Schmidt are two men in Abilene who have been interested in trains for a long time. They had the idea of an excursion train at Abilene.
Other people caught this dream, and they formed an association to pursue the idea. In 1993, the Abilene and Smoky Valley Railroad Association achieved its non-profit status.
Now, how do you start a railroad? Of course, you have to have a train, but the train can=t operate without the tracks. In this case, the association acquired the old Rock Island Railroad line that runs through Abilene. For a locomotive, the group got a 1945 ALCO S-1 Diesel from the Hutchinson and Northern railroad line.
The locomotive was reconditioned. Passenger cars and a caboose were acquired. An old railroad car was rebuilt into a small depot and gift shop by the tracks in Abilene.
Did I say this was an impossible dream? On the walls of that gift shop are some pictures with the caption: A day to remember, November 5, 1994. An impossible dream come true.
On that day, the Abilene and Smoky Valley Railroad made its first official trip.
Today the railroad is in its fifth year of operation and has regular departures. Call toll-free for departure times at 1-888-426-6689. That number again is 1-888-426-6689. There are also charters, dinner trains, school tours, and special events.
Passengers board at the depot in Abilene and go east through the scenic Smoky Hill River valley. There is a gondola car, which is an open air observation car, as well as the restored 100 year old coach and dining car. The train is wheelchair accessible.
And speaking of the Smoky Hill River, the train actually crosses the river on the old, high, steel-span bridge. All told, the train makes a 1 2 hour, 10 mile round trip from Abilene to the town of Enterprise, population 875 people. Now, that=s rural.
Dave Winter says with a smile, AWe=re not as long as some of those big railroads, but we=re just as wide.@
On the day I rode the train, the engineer B who did not know me B invited me to ride in the locomotive with him on the return trip. Imagine the pilot of a 747 inviting you to sit up in the cockpit during the flight. The train engine generates 660 horsepower, enough to power several homes. And back at the railroad yard, they are restoring a historic Santa Fe steam locomotive built in 1919.
I mentioned special events. On our last program, we heard about Thomas the Tank Engine coming to Abilene to pull the train. This is a lifesize working model of the English character from the children=s television show. Credit goes to Dave Winter, whose initiative and persistence brought this special opportunity to Abilene.
The Abilene and Smoky Valley Railroad has had visitors from all over, including India, Japan, Australia, Norway, and Russia. One man in Abilene was surfing the Internet and he found a German website with pictures a German tourist had taken of the old train in Abilene. Wow. Dave Winter estimates there will have been 80,000 passengers on the train by the end of 1999, generating more than a million dollars in economic benefit for the community. And would you believe that the people who run the train, do the tours, staff the gift shop and take the reservations are all volunteers?
We=ve been talking about railroad ties. Not just those blocks of wood under the tracks, but a common interest in railroading that ties these people together. We salute Joe Minick, Fred Schmidt, Dave Winter, and all those who are making a difference by honoring our heritage and building our communities through this initiative.
And don=t hop the train just yet. We=ll visit a wonderful railroad museum on our next program.

Thomas the Tank Engine
Today I=d like you to meet my friend Thomas. His full name is Thomas the Tank Engine. If you have very young kids, or grandkids, you may have already met Thomas. Thomas lives very far away, but guess what B he=s coming to rural Kansas. It=s today=s Kansas Profile.
If you don=t have little kids, then you may not have had the privilege of knowing Thomas the Tank Engine. Thomas is a fictional character in a series of children=s stories that were written in England years ago. They would probably be long forgotten or never heard of in this country, except for the fact that PBS created a television series based on these children=s stories.
The stories were really good, and kids loved them. It turned into a highly successful public television show, and a whole series of books and videos followed. Thomas the Tank Engine has turned into a kind of Barney on railroad tracks.
Because of my kids, I was vaguely aware of Thomas, but I recently learned the origin of Thomas and found it very interesting.
The story begins in England some 55 years ago. An Anglican clergyman, the Reverend Wilbert Awdry, had a son named Christopher who was stricken with scarlet fever. Young Christopher survived, but had to remain in isolation as he recovered. So to entertain young Christopher, Reverend Awdry started making up silly stories about trains that came to life. As kids do, Christopher demanded to hear the stories over and over again, and he corrected his father every time inconsistencies crept into the retold versions.
So to keep the story straight, Reverend Awdry started writing down the story on scraps of paper. And to add to the stories, he started drawing pictures of steam locomotives. He drew a row of locomotives sitting in an engine shed, and drew a human face on the front of each one. Some were smiling, some were sleepy, some were sad.
Christopher would ask, AWhy is this one happy, Daddy?@, and the Reverend would make up a story. He did it over and over. Apparently Mrs. Awdry enjoyed the stories too, and she encouraged her husband to do something with them. A distant cousin put them in touch with a publisher who received the scraps of paper from Reverend Awdry and put together a manuscript. In 1945, the first of the series was printed under the name AThe Three Railway Engines.@ This was the first of nearly 100 simple moral tales about trains with human personalities, their joys and their mistakes. Take it from me, these stories are good, positive lessons about life.
These children=s stories were popular in their day, but as I mentioned, they were to gain new life decades later. In 1984, a writer wrote a script about Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends for a television show on PBS. The show caught on and has spawned a whole set of children=s books, videos, and souvenirs. There is even a Thomas the Tank Engine website. Wow, Thomas has come a long way from Reverend Awdry=s scraps of paper.
And what about Thomas the Tank Engine coming to rural Kansas? Oh yes. Currently, there is a lifesize, working version of Thomas which makes special appearances at selected locations around the world. On July 16, 17, and 18, 1999, Thomas the Tank Engine will be in Abilene, Kansas B a town of 6,520 people. Now, that=s rural.
Thomas the Tank Engine will be offering rides on those days in Abilene. Families can come out and ride a real-live train pulled by Thomas. The train will run each day every half hour from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Reservations can be made by calling toll-free 888-426-6689. That number again is 888-426-6689.
There are two footnotes to this story. One is that Reverend Awdry retired after writing 26 books about Thomas and his friends. But the series of books is continuing, written by none other than the Reverend=s son Christopher.
The second footnote has to do with how Thomas came to be invited to rural Kansas. That is a remarkable story in its own right.
It=s time to day goodbye to my friend Thomas: Thomas the Tank Engine. We salute those who are making a difference by bringing these timeless stories to life again for the children of today, and for those who are bringing Thomas to Kansas. We=ll hear about that on our next program.

Josh Reid
Today let=s go to Hawaii, to the Maui Invitational Basketball Tournament. It is the second round, and Kansas State is playing Arizona State. The game is very close. With just over 20 seconds to play, Arizona State takes a three-point lead. It looks bad for our Wildcats.
The clock is ticking down. K-State is down by three. With 12 seconds left, a K-State player attempts a three-point shot. He=s fouled! That means he will have to make all three of his free throws just to pull K-State even. Wow, what pressure.
The crowd is screaming. The players gather around the lane. The referee hands the ball to the shooter, a young man from rural Kansas. Lace up your athletic shoes, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
The young man at the free-throw line was Josh Reid, a guard on the K-State team. But to really understand Josh Reid, you need to know where he comes from: The western Kansas town of Brewster, population 290 people. Now, that=s rural.
Brewster is truly western Kansas Bit=s only a couple of miles from the mountain time zone. It is also a community where the people rally around their kids, their schools, and their athletics.
Josh says, AThe community really thrives on following their kids in sports. Alumni from other states even come to the tournament games. During the state tournament, somebody put up a sign in town that says, 'Last one out, turn out the lights.=@
Josh=s family is a great support for him too. Josh=s dad runs the grain elevator in Brewster, and his grandparents both farm.
Josh says, AMy grandma had a basketball goal over at her place, and I would go over there and shoot hoops for 4 or 5 hours a day.@ He shot baskets, idolizing the Steve Hensons and Mitch Richmonds of the time.
That extra practice and a lot of other work in the gym paid off. By the time he got to his junior year, Josh led Brewster High School to the state championship. In his senior year, he was selected the state=s Mr. Basketball and averaged 28 points per game. In his final game at the state tournament, Josh set the all-time single-game scoring record with 47 points. Wow.
Josh came to K-State and started the transition to major college basketball -- quite a transition. After all, Josh had 13 people in his graduating class. Josh is 6'6", and in high school he could play center. But in division 1 basketball, the competition is much bigger, stronger, and faster. Josh is an outstanding outside shooter, especially for his size, so he became a guard. It was quite an adjustment, but Josh played a lot of minutes and even had his first career start his freshman year in college.
Josh=s career has gone up from there. In his sophomore year, he had 28 points against Missouri which tied for the most ever scored by a Wildcat in a Big 12 Conference game. By his junior year, he helped lead the Cats to a 20-win season.
Something else happened along about that time: He found a bride. Josh married Brit Jacobson, an outstanding women=s basketball player at K-State. Josh says, AShe=s my biggest fan.@
Josh was also doing well in the classroom. As a major in management information systems in the College of Business, Josh was selected First Team Academic All-Big 12.
It was during Josh=s junior season that the Cats played in the Maui Invitational tournament, where Josh was fouled on a three-point attempt with the clock winding down. With the Cats down three, Josh would have to hit all three shots to tie.
This young man from Brewster, Kansas calmly stepped up to the free-throw line and hit one, two, and then three free throws to get the Wildcats into overtime, where they finally won the game. Josh was the Cats= leading scorer. Wow, what an exciting finish and what an outstanding performance under pressure. Coach Tom Asbury said, AOh, no problem -- Hawaii=s just like Brewster with a beach.@
Yes, all those hours shooting hoops in Grandma=s backyard paid off. Josh Reid has had an outstanding career at K-State, both athletically and academically, and we wish him well in his senior season. We salute Josh Reid and his family, and especially the people of Brewster who are making a difference by investing in and supporting their kids. It=s a win for the kids and the community.

Bill Clarke - Train Museum
Did you hear that train whistle? It means the train is coming. It=s fun to watch a train. Look how fast it=s going B and it=s only a few feet long.
This is no ordinary train. It=s an extraordinary collection of O scale model trains, and it=s today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Bill Clarke. Bill is the man who assembled this remarkable collection of model trains and memorabilia. Bill was profiled on our program a couple of years ago, but his train collection has moved to a new and exciting home.
First, some background. Bill Clarke grew up in the northwest Kansas town of Kirwin, population 259 people. Now, that=s rural.
In that small town, it was a big deal when the train came to town each day. Bill Clarke says, AI watched the train come in on the Missouri Pacific and I watched it until it left.@ This stirred such an interest in him as a boy that he played train with his little red wagon. He painted Missouri Pacific and Union Pacific on the side. Each night at 6 p.m. he would go around two or three blocks in Kirwin, pretending that his wagon was a train. He used the water meters as stations. Imagine: ANext stop, Johnson=s water meter....@
By the way, Bill notes that the Union Pacific and Missouri Pacific have finally merged in real life, just as he had written on his wagon. Bill says, AI had that figured out over 70 years ago...@
Bill went on to a long and successful career as a professional photographer in the nearby town of Phillipsburg, but the interest in trains stayed with him. In 1966, he was in Denver and he saw a model of a Santa Fe Super Chief. He bought the model locomotive, and that was the beginning.
For the next thirty years, Bill would collect all types of model railroads and related souvenirs. He stored and displayed them in the back room of his second story photo studio in downtown Phillipsburg. But when the Huck Boyd Foundation was building a brand new community center in Phillipsburg, that was a natural place to display the railroad memorabilia for the future.
It was Huck Boyd who successfully led the fight to maintain rail service through the region when the Rock Island Railroad went broke and abandoned the track. Bill knew Huck Boyd, and so he donated this remarkable collection to the Huck Boyd Foundation.
The foundation built a special museum for the model railroad collection as part of the community center in Phillipsburg, and it is a sight to see. There are 94 engines, 170 cars, 38 cabooses and 137 railroad lanterns housed on a scale model 57-foot mountain range. These are all operating cars complete with sound and lights. Special room lighting can be adjusted to create day or nighttime effects.
There is 1200 feet of track and nearly 2 miles of electrical wiring in the display. Trains chug through tunnels, across trestles, and by dozens of farm, home, and business buildings. You can see water towers, switchyards, oil wells, radar towers, people, cars, and animals. There is even a moving newsboy handing out papers, complete with a dog encircling a fire hydrant. We don=t want to get too realistic here...
The museum has been open since Christmas 1997. Has anyone come to visit? More than 2,000 people in its first full year. When I signed the guest book in June 1999, there were names on the previous page from as far away as Colorado, Connecticut, Iowa, and California. Three pages back there was a group from Bretagne, France.
I can see why people would travel miles to see this remarkable display, and I=d recommend it to anyone. There is more to see than I have time to tell, but I should mention one other thing in the collection: it=s an old red wagon, with Missouri Pacific and Union Pacific painted on the side. Yes, Bill Clarke=s boyhood wagon was rescued from the junkyard in Kirwin. It=s on display in the museum, and it completes the circle of Bill=s lifelong interest in trains.
The model train museum is open by appointment. You can contact the Bill Clarke Studio at 785-543-5415 or the Huck Boyd Center at 785-543-5535.
Hear that whistle? The train is taking off. We salute Bill Clarke and the people who are making a difference by offering this wonderful collection to the public. I think they=re on the right track.

John & Karen Pendleton
Today let=s go to an inner-city elementary school in Washington, D.C. It sounds like a scary place to go, but it will be our first stop. In the heart of urban Washington, school is in session. Let=s go into the classroom and see what the lesson is today. Guess what B it=s a farmer and his family from rural Kansas. What in the world is a Kansas farmer doing in an inner city school back east? The answer to that question is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet John and Karen Pendleton. John and Karen are the farm entrepreneurs who visited Washington D.C. schools in March of 1999. They are owner-operators of Pendleton=s Country Market in Douglas County near Lawrence, Kansas.
The Pendleton family started farming in the Kansas River Valley more than 40 years ago. They raised the traditional crops of corn, wheat, and milo. Albert Pendleton developed a beef feedlot, one of the first in the area.
The Pendletons had three sons, all of which went to K-State. Son John came back to the farm, with his wife Karen who is also a K-State grad.
In 1981, the county extension agent encouraged John and Karen to diversify their production from the traditional field crops, so the Pendletons planted a half-acre of asparagus. For people who wanted to come buy the asparagus, there were four places to park. People came and bought, and that was the beginning.
Today, that 2 acre of asparagus has grown to 20 acres -- perhaps the largest pick-your-own asparagus field in the world -- and the beef feedlot has been converted into parking places for customers. Depending on the season, Pendleton=s Country Market offers hydroponic tomatoes and other vegetables; a full selection of more than 50 herbs and more than 200 perennials and annuals; a colorful variety of dried flowers and arrangements; Pendleton=s Blue Corn Chips; fresh honey; and homemade jams and jellies. And, oh yeah, there is asparagus.
Karen does a wonderful job with the flowers. Dried flower arrangements are really popular right now -- Martha Stewart says so. Karen and friends take their flower arrangements to art and craft shows. Karen also puts on open houses and workshops for people to learn about flower arranging. Now she=s doing flower arrangements for weddings and funerals.
These innovative farmers even have their own website at pendletons.com.
This is an outstanding example of diversification and responding to a market need. The retail outlet is located on the family farm between Lawrence and the town of Eudora, population 3,713 people. Now, that=s rural.
But this rural location is situated between two major metropolitan areas in Lawrence and Kansas City. That means it=s a fun and easy trip for shoppers to come from Johnson County and get some flavor of the country.
This experience of communicating with the urban public would come in handy for the Pendletons. In early 1999, they were selected by the Ag Council of America to come to Washington DC for National Agriculture Day to make educational presentations about agriculture in the urban schools. John says, AThese teachers and students had never met a farmer. The kids asked some funny questions, but they were actually very attentive and quite well behaved.@ John and Karen=s three children made the trip also. By the time it was done, the urban kids were asking these Kansas kids for their autographs.
Today, there is yet another new feature on the Pendleton farm: a corn maze. That=s maze, m-a-z-e, as in a puzzle. This is a lifesize maze in a cornfield, built so that people can walk through it. It=s another reason to go to the Pendleton farm B but it=s only available until corn harvest, so we encourage you to visit Pendleton=s Country Market.
It=s time to say goodbye to the inner city school in Washington DC. As unlikely as it sounds, the school lesson today was agriculture, and the presenters were members of this Kansas farm family. We salute John and Karen Pendleton for making a difference with their entrepreneurial approach to ag production and marketing, and their service as ambassadors for agriculture.
And remember that corn maze I mentioned? We=ll meet the remarkable artist who builds such designs on our next program.

Stan Herd - Stan Herd - AMichelangelo of the Milo@
Today we=re going to visit an artist=s studio and see the artist at work. Don=t worry, you won=t need to wear a painter=s smock in this studio. There=s the artist creating his artistic work: Right over there on that tractor.
Yes, I said tractor. It=s not paints, oils, or bronze which this artist uses for his creative work, but rather growing plants and the great outdoors. This artist creates crop art. Not pop art, but crop art B and he comes from rural Kansas. Stay tuned for today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Stan Herd. Stan is an internationally known crop artist. What is crop art? It is a type of art in which the images are created in the earth and growing plants. These works of art are huge B the size of a farm field, and they are best viewed from above. You may have seen Stan Herd=s work, in a pictorial magazine about Kansas or an advertisement featuring one of his remarkable designs. On our last Kansas Profile, we learned of a cornfield maze which has been created near Lawrence. It was Stan Herd who made it.
These projects represent a combination of Stan Herd=s two great interests: Art and the land. Our story begins on the family farm in southwest Kansas. Stan grew up near the Comanche County town of Protection, population 560 people. Now, that=s rural.
On the farm, he spent hours riding the tractor. He began to wonder what the land looked like from above.
As a boy, he had an interest in drawing, and his parents encouraged him. Two of his brothers went to K-State, while Stan went to art school in Wichita. He painted a number of murals around the state.
In 1976, Stan Herd painted a design on the top of one of those metal Quonset huts. He went up in a plane to take a photograph of it from the air. From the plane, he looked down on a field that had been crusted over by rain and turned to a light tan color. A tractor was disking the field, leaving a contrasting, dark brown line behind it. Stan Herd was struck by the idea of a portrait in the soil.
Stan sketched out the idea of a portrait of the Indian leader Satanta, who according to family legend had camped near what is now the Herd farm. He borrowed a tractor from a local implement dealer and plowed a giant design of Satanta into the golden stubble of a 160 acre wheat field. It made an awesome scene.
In 1983, Stan and his wife moved to Lawrence. Like the airplane from which we see his images, his career was about to take off. I call him a Michelangelo of the Milo.
Now, how does one do crop art? The first step is to create a design on paper and draw it on a grid. The image is then laid out on the ground with transits like surveyors use. Then the lines are marked with orange flags. Some of the flags are numbered, so that when he starts plowing he simply follows the numbers.
Today, Stan integrates growing plants and earth work in his designs. For example, in a design called Sunflower Still Life, the yellow in the sunflower petals were brought to life by actual sunflowers. When the flowers were at their peak bloom, the scene was beautiful and it was captured on film. He has done Will Rogers, Amelia Earhart, farm and native American scenes and more, plus commercial images on contract.
All this has generated international attention. Stan=s work has appeared in such publications as Smithsonian, National Geographic, People Magazine, and the Wall Street Journal. He has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, NBC >s Dateline, ABC=s Good Morning America, and CNN News. His image of the face of the Statue Of Liberty was pictured on the cover of U.S. News and World Report. Wow. Not bad for a Kansas farmboy.
It=s time to take our leave from this artist=s studio. There=s no paint smock to remove, for this artist=s paintbrush is a tractor, and his canvas is the great outdoors. We salute Stan Herd for making a difference through his creative talents and his love for the land. Now, that is a wonderful picture.

Rod Cole
Today let=s go to Indianapolis, Indiana. It=s the annual banquet of the Professional Football Strength and Conditioning Coaches Society. They=re about to announce the national Collegiate Football Strength and Conditioning Coach of the Year award. And here=s the winner: It=s a young man who hails from rural Kansas.
Get ready for some heavy lifting, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Rod Cole. Rod is the head strength and conditioning coordinator for varsity athletics at Kansas State University. He is the young man who was recognized as the national strength coach of the year at that awards banquet in 1998. It is a nice honor for a well-deserving person, who happens to have roots in small-town Kansas.
Rod Cole is a native of Kensington, Kansas. Kensington is in Smith County in northwest Kansas. Today, it=s a town of 511 people. Now, that=s rural.
In small towns, sports is a big deal. Sports provides a healthy activity for the kids, and it=s something the people of the community can rally around.
The Kensington school has had a lot of success in sports. By the way, their school mascot is one of my all-time favorites: The Kensington Goldbugs. I=m not sure what a Goldbug is, but it doesn=t sound like it would strike fear into an opponent=s heart. I say that with all respect, because I was once a Manhattan Junior High Papoose...
Anyway, the Kensington Goldbugs have had a lot of success in sports. Rod went on to play football for four years for Bethany College, where he was team captain and leading tackler. He went on to be a high school coach and got his masters at Wichita State. He then became strength coach at Dodge City Community College and in 1993, came to K-State where he is today.
Rod Cole is coordinator of the programs to help K-State=s varsity athletes improve their strength and physical conditioning. In fact, more than 300 athletes from all sports are under his tutelage.
If this brings to mind a mental image of a guy with gym shorts and a whistle in a weight room, that is indeed a big part of the job. There is a very impressive weight room at KSU Stadium now, and the athletes go through a strenuous regimen to improve their abilities. But Rod is also in charge of the flexibility and training aspects of the job, plus his other responsibilities with the football team. If nothing else, you=ve seen him on the football field waving on the team with a white towel.
One of the things I appreciate about Rod is his concern for players and others as people. He is active in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and was named one of the Most Admired People in Manhattan, Kansas in 1997. Rod and his wife are active in their church and have four children.
In 1997 and again in 1999, he was named the Big 12 conference strength and conditioning professional of the year. And in 1998, he was recognized at the annual awards banquet of the Professional Football Strength Coaches Society as the National Collegiate Strength Coach of the Year. It=s nice to have a national champion from Kansas.
Rod Cole says, AThis award is a tribute to all the players who have come through the K-State football program, as well as the coaches who have given us great support.@
He says, AMy background is ideal for the job I=m in now. I coached in small schools where I had to coach football, baseball, basketball, and track, so I can deal with players from all these sports. And growing up in a farming community, hard work is stressed.@
Apparently that work ethic is paying off in the K-State weight room and on the field.
It=s time to say goodbye to the annual awards banquet of the Professional Football Strength and Conditioning Coaches Society in Indianapolis. We are pleased that the national winner is a young man who came from rural Kansas. We salute Rod Cole, who is making a difference by training and leading the young people with whom he works.
And there=s more. We=ll meet some of the athletes in KSU=s athletic programs who come from small-town Kansas on our next programs.

Ed Broxterman
Today let=s go to Atlanta to the opening ceremonies of the 1996 Olympics. There=s lots of pageantry and excitement, with the best amateur athletes of every nation gathered in one place. Here come=s the Olympic torch and then the grand entry, featuring delegations from all around the world. And here comes the U.S. team, including a young man from rural Kansas.
How could a small-town Kansan become an Olympian? Several reasons, but one of them is a lesson he has learned in life: Never give up.
Stay tuned, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Ed Broxterman. Ed is the young man from rural Kansas who made the 1996 U.S. Olympic team.
Ed comes from a farm near Baileyville, Kansas. Baileyville is an unincorporated community in Nemaha County in northeast Kansas. Since it is unincorporated, there are no official census figures on population, but unofficial estimates suggest a population of about 190 people. Now, that=s rural.
As I=ve said before, in rural schools, athletics is a big deal for the community. Ed competed in various sports while he was in school there. He says, AThe coach wanted me to high jump because my older brother was a high jumper in college. But I wanted to go my own way, so I didn=t want to.@
Then one day when the coach wasn=t watching, Ed thought he would give the high jump a try. He tried it, and guess what: He liked it, and took it on as a sport.
By his junior year, he broke the state high jump record with a jump of six feet eleven inches. By his senior year, he was the top-ranked high jumper in the state B in fact, he set the record for the highest jump in the nation for a high schooler. But when it came to tournament time, a rain had left the track slippery. He slipped on his attempts and didn=t qualify for state. What a disappointment.
But he had learned that lesson: Never give up. Ed went on to K-State and continued his track career there. And what a career it was. Despite various injuries, he had the highest jump in the Big 8 as a freshman. He later tied for first in the NCAA Championships. Then came the Olympics.
Many people B including me B probably don=t realize how successful K-State has been in track. In terms of heights achieved in the high jump, for example, K-State has been one of the top three schools in the country in recent years. Using the height which is the minimum Olympic standard for all countries, K-State would have had several Olympians all by itself. In fact, during 1996, two out of the six U.S. high jump team members were K-Staters. Among all the Olympic sports, only one university had more Olympians in 1996 than K-State. Wow, what a record.
At the Olympic trials in 1996, Ed was one of 30 competitors for three slots. It was 126 degrees on the track and Ed was fighting a hamstring injury. But remember that lesson: Never give up. Ed gave it all he had, jumped 7 feet six and a 2 inches, beat his previous personal record by two inches, and made the Olympic team.
Ed=s track career has taken him from coast to coast and even to a track meet in Israel. Not bad for a kid from rural Kansas. Ed had a fabulous experience in the Olympics, and he especially remembers coming home.
Ed says, AThere were 60 or 70 people who came to the airport when I flew into Manhattan. The support from our rural community was tremendous. It wasn=t just Baileyville, it was the whole region.@
Ed has completed his Master=s degree in Business Administration at K-State , and he hopes to compete in the 2000 Olympics. If so, it will be in part because of the lessons he learned in rural Kansas.
Ed says, AWe learned hard work from years of cuttin= cane and puttin= up hay. You learn great things from a farm, how to work hard and never give up.@
It=s time to say goodbye to the pageantry of the Olympics, but we remember the lessons learned. We salute Ed Broxterman, his family, and community, for making a difference with their commitment and support. Remember to hold the Olympic torch high, and never give up.

John Ploger - Carnival Heritage Center
Have you ever seen an antique double-decker carousel? Yes, I said a double-decker carousel. That would be like a two-story merry-go-round. Have you ever seen one of those?
If you haven=t, don=t feel bad. There is only one of these antique double-decker carousels remaining in North America. Guess what: it=s located in rural Kansas.
Hop on the merry-go-round, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet John Ploger. John is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Foundation for Carnival Heritage. That=s a volunteer position - his real job is that of a realtor and insurance agent in the southwest Kansas town of Kinsley in Edwards County.
John says, AKansas has a rich history with carnivals which dates back to 1901.@ In that year, an Edwards County farmer named Charles Brodbeck went to see his first carousel with his family. He told them it was funny that people would ride someplace on horseback or horse and buggy and then pay good money to ride a wooden horse in a circle. I guess even then people were willing to pay for a change of pace.
Charles Brodbeck was so intrigued that he bought a carousel and gave rides for the local people. Later, son Fred took the carousel to various locations and sold rides. He did so well that the family decided to give up farming and concentrate on carousels. They added other attractions too, buying what was the third Ferris Wheel sold in the U.S. at that time.
This was to grow into a traveling carnival. In fact, there were six different traveling carnival companies which originated in Kinsley with various members of the Brodbeck family. For example, the Brodbeck Shrader Carnival was for many years the carnival at the Kansas State Fair B in fact, it was at the time the third largest traveling carnival in the country.
Fast forward to 1990. Some citizens in Kinsley sought to preserve and promote this remarkable carnival heritage as a way to utilize an old building downtown which had been donated to the school district. Plans were developed for a non-profit National Foundation for Carnival Heritage. Several county and city organizations appointed individuals to the Board of this group, even including outlying towns in the county such as Lewis, population 423, and Belpre, population 105 people. Now, that=s rural.
Yet this rural setting is the home to a lot of carnival history, and fortunately it has been blessed with people who want to make the most of it.
Funds were raised to renovate the old building and open a Carnival Heritage Center in Kinsley. A local bank has donated three more buildings downtown. A 1941 carousel is being operated in Kinsley in the evenings, and a unique double-decker carousel is being restored.
The double-decker was built in Germany in 1900, so it will soon be a century old. It was brought from Munich in 1985 and ended up in Florida. Thanks to the persistence of John Ploger, it was purchased by the Foundation and moved to Kinsley in 1998. That was not an easy proposition. The center pole of this historic carousel is a 26 foot long wooden pole which weighs 800 pounds. Maybe that=s why they always had a strong man at those old carnivals...
Anyway, John Ploger says the mechanics of the old double-decker are in really good shape. A local carver is creating historic carnival figures to go on the carousel, and the foundation hopes to build a building to house it. The foundation is looking for sponsors to expedite the work. Meanwhile, the Carnival Heritage Center is open in downtown Kinsley.
Kinsley even has an annual festival called Carnival Days, which is coming up on November 6, 1999. It is a full day of fun activities for kids and families. They re-create some of the old time acts, such as magicians and sword-swallowers, and induct recipients into the Carnival Hall of Fame. The public is invited and welcome to attend, November 6 in Kinsley.
Have you ever seen an antique, double-decker carousel? I haven=t either, but the day is coming soon when we=ll be able to see one B and even ride one B in rural Kansas. We salute John Ploger and the people of the National Foundation for Carnival Heritage for making a difference by preserving, and building on, this part of Kansas history.
And did you hear me say that a local carver is making the figures for it? This local carver is sending his carousel figures all around the world. We=ll hear about that on our next program.

Bruce White - WhitesBruce White - Whites= Carousels
Carousels
Today let=s go to Athens, Greece. A shipment is arriving from the States. It is a decorative figure of a carousel horse to be placed in a restaurant. And would you believe that this carousel horse is coming from halfway around the globe in rural Kansas? It=s true B and it=s today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Bruce White. Bruce is the master carver who is creating these carousel horses in rural Kansas and shipping them all over the world. Here is the story.
Bruce White grew up in Coldwater, Kansas where he was interested in wood carving at an early age. He would whittle away at sticks making all sorts of things. After graduation, he enlisted in the Navy and served 12 years. He resumed his carving talents in making plaques for the Navy.
While stationed in Japan, Bruce=s wife entered some of his work into a major Japanese art contest. Lo and behold, Bruce=s globe won first place in its category and his dragon won Best of Show.
After the Navy, Bruce and his wife moved to her home state of Florida where he achieved success as a free-lance artist. Bruce says, AAfter I got to the point that I could do this business and live anywhere I wanted, I wanted to get out of the rat race.@ After 20 years, he chose to come back to Kansas.
He and his wife went town-shopping in Kansas and happened to find a house they liked in Kinsley. There Bruce founded his own company, White=s Carousels, to cast and sell replicas of the popular carousel horses which he carved.
Kinsley was an amazingly fortuitous choice, because this town has a great deal of history with carnivals. As we heard on our last program, Kinsley has a Carnival Heritage Center, which is appropriate due to the fact that there were six traveling carnivals which originated in Kinsley early in this century.
Bruce White=s carousel horses are a natural fit with this carnival history. He is helping with the Carnival Heritage Center as well as running his own business.
Here=s how the process works. Bruce makes an original hand carving of a particular design out of wood and then creates a mold with the original. Figures are cast from the mold and hand-painted. An automotive clear coat finish is used to render the figures absolutely weatherproof.
These figures are used as signature interior designs, decorations, or rocking horses.
And, not all of the designs are horses. In fact, Bruce has done gorillas, rhinos, dogs, dolphins, snakes, dinosaurs, salmon, hummingbirds, coyotes, and more. As custom restaurant decor, Bruce can make plaques, figurines, and signs. He even made a little dinosaur model for the Toronto Raptors NBA basketball team.
Whites= Carousels does most of the carousel carving for the company which is the world=s largest manufacturer of amusement park rides. Bruce also created and produces the carousel horses found in every one of the Applebee=s Restaurants around the world. Wow.
Demand has been so great that he has pressed his twin brother Brent into doing some of the carving.
Bruce says, AWe have carousel horses from Seoul, Korea to Boise, Idaho.@ Articles about Whites= Carousels have appeared in newspapers from the Washington Post to the L.A. Times. In September 1998, Bruce was featured in National Geographic. Governor Graves has one of Bruce=s horses in his office in Topeka -- I=ll bet Katey likes that one -- and in fall 1998, Bruce produced a carving of an Arabian horse in authentic gear for the Crown Prince of Kuwait.
Yet this internationally known artist remains in Kinsley, Kansas, population 1,533 people. Now, that=s rural.
Bruce says, AI love livin= in a small town. I work in a 114 year old building. In a big city, a building like this would cost a couple hundred thousand dollars. Our overhead is less. And I like the lifestyle. I like walking down the street and having people say, 'Hey Bruce, how ya doin=?= and they really mean it.@
It=s time to say farewell to Athens, Greece, where a carousel horse has just been delivered from halfway around the world in rural Kansas. We commend Bruce White and the people of Whites= Carousels for making a difference through entrepreneurship and creativity. It makes for a wonderful ride.

Nicky Ramage
It=s the last K-State women=s basketball game of the '98-99 regular season. Excitement is in the air. The game is nationally televised. The coliseum crowd is the second largest crowd for a women=s game in school history.
And there=s one other factor: The opponent is a nationally ranked team, ranked in the top 25, that happens to be those in-state rivals, the Kansas Jayhawks. Yes, there=s a lot on the line as the team takes the court. I emphasize team because players learn the value of teamwork B as expressed by one of the K-State starters who comes from rural Kansas.
Dribble your ball over here to the radio, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Nicky Ramage. Nicky will be a senior on the K-State women=s basketball team in the fall of 1999.
Nicky is a native Kansan, who grew up on a farm outside of Little River. Little River is in Rice County in central Kansas. It=s a town of 478 people. Now, that=s rural.
Growing up on the farm, Nicky worked summers for her dad. When school time came, Nicky turned into an outstanding athlete.
As a high school junior and senior, she led her basketball team to the state championship two years in a row. Her last year the team went undefeated. Nicky earned first team all-state all-class honors her junior and senior years. She was also active in volleyball, track, and student council.
Nicky says she always liked K-State. When she made a recruiting visit she enjoyed the atmosphere, the coaches, and the team, so she came to K-State to play basketball.
That was a big step. It=s a long way from playing against Kansas= smallest schools to Division 1 big-time athletics.
Nicky says, AIt is a huge change. People told me it was a big transition, but you never really know until you experience it. Just coming to college and away from home is a big adjustment, and then you add the basketball. My family, friends, and coaches helped me a lot.@
In her freshman year, Nicky started the last 11 games of the season. It was the mark of things to come. In her sophomore year, her best game was at the Big 12 Tournament.
Nicky says, AI really made a commitment to get better before my junior season. I worked hard over the summer. I wanted to play hard with great intensity to help the team.@
That commitment was to pay off. In Nicky=s first game that season, she scored 27 points. Nicky would go on to be the team=s leading scorer and leading rebounder. She scored in double figures in 21 of 30 games.
Wow. It makes you proud to see someone from rural Kansas do so well at the Division 1 level.
Nicky says, AI had the mindset that I wouldn=t be overwhelmed coming to Manhattan. Maybe you=re in a class of 300 people, but you don=t even think about it. But I do notice it when I go to visit friends in the big cities. You have to drive and drive just to get anywhere.@ The driving is probably more stressful there too.
Nicky says, AI still love living out in the country. I wouldn=t change anything about growing up on a farm.@
Now Nicky is preparing for her senior season. Some outstanding newcomers have been added to the squad. She says, AI=m really, really excited about next season.@
When I asked Nicky about her highlight of the last season, it wasn=t her personal achievements such as scoring in double figures in victories at the Big 12 Tournament and the Women=s NIT. Rather, her favorite game was one where she was not the leading scorer, but one where the team had great success: the final game against KU.
Yes, it was the last K-State women=s basketball game of the '98-99 regular season. Excitement was in the air. The game was nationally televised, in front of the second largest coliseum crowd for a women=s game in school history. And against a top 25 opponent, the in-state rival Kansas Jayhawks, it was the Wildcat women who pulled off the victory.
We commend Nicky Ramage and other young athletes from small-town Kansas for making a difference through hard work and commitment to the concept of the team.

Mark Simoneau
Imagine it=s the opening game of the K-State football season. The stadium has been expanded, and more than 50,000 fans are screaming for their Wildcats. Now it=s time for kickoff, and the opponents' 11 players take the field. Then it=s time for K-State to come out, but there=s only one Wildcat player who takes the field.
Wow, eleven against one. I don=t like the sound of that. Even a Bill Snyder-coached team couldn=t win against those odds.
The point is that even a star football player can=t win a game all by himself: It takes a team. Teamwork is one of the most important things we can learn from athletics.
Today we=ll meet one of those star football players who believes in teamwork. He comes from rural Kansas. Get ready for kickoff, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Mark Simoneau. Mark is a star linebacker for the K-State Wildcats football team. He has had tremendous success in football, yet he comes from the northwest Kansas town of Smith Center, population 1,939 people. Now, that=s rural.
Is it possible for someone from a small town to compete at the upper level of athletics? Yes. In fact, there are lots of small town Kansans who have gone on to compete successfully in various sports. They have represented rural Kansas well. At the same time, those athletics are very important to the communities from which they came.
Mark Simoneau says, AThe school and athletics were central to the community where I grew up. If you were a good individual and worked hard, you would get respect.@
Asked what he considered the primary thing that he learned growing up in a small town, he said, AHard work. And in a small town, everybody knows everybody else, so you know there are watchful eyes which makes you want to do the right thing.@ I think he=s right.
And when asked about the highlight of his high school career, he said, AJust playin= football. Being with a group of guys all workin= toward the same goal.@
That is what I call teamwork, and I really appreciate Mark=s emphasis on the team. Too often today there are professional athletes who make lots of money and call attention to themselves with lots of hot-dogging. The team concept can get lost, but it is still alive and well in Bill Snyder=s program B thanks in part to athletes like Mark Simoneau, who learned it growing up.
When you look at the numbers, you find that Mark had a tremendous high school career. As a high school running back his senior year, he averaged more than 10 yards per carry! That is phenomenal. Yet it was the team concept that he considered his highlight.
As a college player, Mark has a list of honors as long as a football field. As a redshirt freshman, he became a full-time starter at linebacker and was ultimately named conference defensive freshman-of-the-year. As a sophomore, he was named First-team All-Big 12 by several sources. As a junior, he led the team in tackles.
Now it is time for Mark=s senior season. He served as a co-captain of the team as a sophomore, junior, and now as a senior. That makes him only the second player in K-State history to be selected a three-time team captain.
The individual honors continue to flow to Mark. He has been named pre-season First-team All Big 12 by several sources, and was even named the preseason Big 12 defensive player-of-the-year. He is on the watch list for the Butkus award, which goes to the nation=s top linebacker.
Yet when I asked him his goals for this season, he said, AFor me to have my best year ever and for the team to have great success.@ Yes, for the TEAM to have great success.
This isn=t meant to diminish individual performance. To the contrary, each member of the team must perform at the highest level.
In the words of Michael Jordan: ATalent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.@
Imagine it=s opening day of K-State football season. The stadium is filled with 50,000 screaming fans. When it=s time for kickoff, you know there will be eleven members of the team on the field, supported by a larger team of fans, fellow players, and coaches. That teamwork leads to individual honors as well as team success. We salute Mark Simoneau and the K-State football family for succeeding through teamwork. And with that, we've reached our end zone.

Bob Dole lecture
Today let=s talk about Kansas history -- particularly, the interconnection between the lives of two prominent Kansans. Both made significant contributions to their respective professions and to the state, and both came from rural Kansas. Their story is today=s Kansas Profile.
Our story begins in Phillipsburg, Kansas, with the man known as Huck Boyd. Huck studied journalism at K-State and returned home to the family newspaper business. He became editor and publisher of the weekly Phillips County Review, with support from his wife Marie.
Huck was very involved in his community. He became involved politically in the leadership of his town, his county, his state, and ultimately the nation. He rose through the ranks of the Republican Party and served for 20 years, until his death, as National Committeeman representing Kansas.
One night decades ago, Huck was traveling home across western Kansas after some evening function he had attended. The hour was very late as he came through one particular town, and he noticed a single light on in the county courthouse. Who would be working so late in a county courthouse? Huck went in to find out. That happened to be the Russell County Courthouse, and the hardworking person that Huck found there was the Russell County attorney B a young man named Bob Dole -- yes, the same Bob Dole that we know of today.
Huck was impressed by this young man. Bob Dole was a local boy who had become a war hero. He suffered horrific wounds in World War II, but in spite of his crippling handicap, Bob Dole had gone on to earn a law degree from Washburn University. Huck saw his potential, and he encouraged young Bob Dole to run for office.
Talk about Kansas history. The encounter between Huck Boyd and Bob Dole would lead to a lifetime friendship. Bob Dole considered Huck Boyd his mentor in politics.
At the 1968 Republican National Convention, Congressman Bob Dole was introduced to the assemblage as a candidate for the Senate. He was introduced by Huck Boyd. In the Watergate years, when Senator Dole faced a very difficult campaign, behind the scenes helping to organize an electoral victory was Huck Boyd.
The two became close friends. Pat Roberts says that when Huck passed away in 1987, Senator Dole was so overcome with emotion that he was unable to deliver the eulogy at the funeral. When the Huck Boyd Foundation was established in Huck=s honor in Phillipsburg, Senator Dole agreed to serve as honorary co-chair. And when the new Huck Boyd Community Center was dedicated in Phillipsburg, the featured speaker was Bob Dole.
It=s interesting how the lives of these two leaders have become intertwined.
Of course, Bob Dole came from the community of Russell, population 4,597 people. Now, that=s rural. Yet he came from these rural roots to become majority leader of the United States Senate and his party=s nominee for President. He credits Huck Boyd with helping him reach these achievements.
Fast forward to today. The Huck Boyd Foundation sponsors two projects at K-State: the Huck Boyd Institute, which I help staff, and the Huck Boyd National Center for Community Media. That center is housed in the A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications at K-State, which is very appropriate because of Huck=s life work in journalism.
Gloria Freeland is the director of the Huck Boyd Center there, and Gloria had a vision of a lecture series named in Huck=s honor. She knew who she wanted to be the inaugural speaker in this lecture series, and she went out and got him: None other than Bob Dole.
Senator Dole will be giving the first Huck Boyd Lecture on Community Media on Monday, October 25, 1999 in McCain Auditorium on the K-State campus. The title of his speech is AGrass Roots Journalism, Grass Roots Democracy.@ The public is invited and encouraged to attend. And to make this even more fitting, the Senator=s lecture will be transmitted to the teleconference center at the Huck Boyd Center in Phillipsburg using the telecommunications resources from Dole Hall at K-State. What=s more, this happens on October 25, just one day before Marie Boyd=s 91st birthday.
How appropriate that Bob Dole is giving the first Huck Boyd Lecture. Many people may not know of the special connection between the two. We hope you can join us for Senator Dole=s lecture on October 25. It will honor both Bob Dole and Huck Boyd, two Kansans who have spent their lives making a difference.

Mike Wernette - AmerSeal
Today let=s go to the largest open pit copper mine in the world. It=s located halfway around the globe in South Africa. As you might expect in the world=s largest open pit copper mine, the equipment is large too. In fact, they use giant 150 ton ore haulers, running 24 hours a day. Big rigs need big tires, in a setting that is very rough. And what do you suppose they use to protect those big tires from going flat?
Would you believe it=s a product made halfway around the world in rural Kansas? Roll your tires over here to the radio, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Mike Wernette. Mike is owner of the American Sealants Company in Clay Center, Kansas. Mike=s company produces a product that is sold all over the country and overseas. It has even found its way into the largest open pit copper mine in the world.
So what is this product? It is a heavy duty tire sealant that goes inside your tire to prevent flats. It looks kind of like shampoo, but it has a scientifically developed chemical formula that completely coats the inside of the tire. This will not only seal punctures in the tire tread, it seals leaks around the rim or the bead of the tire.
Now, this is not the stuff that people sell to re-inflate your flat tires. Mike=s product is used to prevent the problem before it happens. It is pumped inside the tire as a preventative.
The product is so useful that it is utilized by major industrial companies and consumers like you and me.
Mike Wernette=s company produces and markets the product under the name AmerSeal. Other companies like the product so much that they hire Mike=s company to produce it for their own label. These include such companies as Country General, Carquest, Cushman, Plainsman-Orscheln, and Farmland Industries. Mike told me he had just signed a contract with NAPA, which will have Mike=s product in more than 6,000 stores across the country. Wow.
How did all this get started? Mike is a Clay Center native. He went to Washburn in pre-law and then decided he would work for a year or two to save some money. Well, he=s still working.
A friend of Mike=s who was in business on the west coast had received an inquiry about this type of product, and he was convinced there was a market for it. He said to Mike, if we developed a product like this, would you market it? Mike agreed, and they got started.
Mike=s dad was a rural mail carrier in Clay County. Because of the rough country roads, Mike=s dad always carried two spare tires with him in case of flats.
Mike says, AWe developed a product and tested it in dad=s tires. It was a great way to test the product until we came up with something we really liked.@
Mike has continued to improve the formulation over time and the company has grown. Of course, this product is great for vehicles that have a lot of heavy use.
For example, UPS has a huge shipping and sorting facility. UPS found that the carts they use in their facility were constantly getting flats from running over staples. AmerSeal solved the problem.
Mike says that the state of Kansas tested the product in their highway mowing machines, and it reduced the flat and leaking tire problems by more than 90 percent. Today some manufacturers put it in the tires beforehand. For example, Mike=s company just did a quarter of a million bicycle tubes for K-Mart. Wow.
And there is world-wide demand for this product in such countries as Australia, Indonesia, Argentina, France, Malaysia, Taiwan, and the former Soviet Union. Yet the company remains in the Kansas town of Clay Center, population 4,692 people. Now, that=s rural.
It is exciting to see a rural Kansas company have such success. Mike Wernette says, AMy business takes me to Europe and Asia B I=ve been to China twice in the past year B and I don=t see any better place to live than right here. I=ve got some of the best, most dependable, and loyal workers anyplace.@
It=s time to say goodbye to the world=s largest open pit copper mine, but we can go knowing that their loads of ore are riding safely on tires protected by this product from rural Kansas. We salute Mike Wernette and the people of American Sealants for making a difference through innovation and entrepreneurship. Those are qualities that won=t leave you flat.

Wayne and Diane Lenhart
Today let=s meet a company which has in-house engineering. Have you ever heard that term, Ain-house engineering@? It means that the engineering expertise is contained within the company, and the company doesn=t have to go elsewhere for it. In the case of this particular company, when I say the engineering is in-house, I mean it literally. The engineering, as well as the management, marketing, and labor, all lives in the same house.
In other words, this is a home-based business. It is one that is providing state-of-the-art plastic injection molding services, and it=s located in rural Kansas. Stay tuned, this is today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Wayne and Diane Lenhart. They are the owner-operators of WDL Enterprises of Clifton, Kansas.
WDL does plastic injection molding. That means they have molding machines which melt small plastic pellets, injects the molten plastic into a mold, then automatically opens the mold and ejects the new plastic part. By changing the mold you can create products of different designs.
This is not minor equipment. Wayne tells me that the polypropylene plastic is heated to 430 degrees and injected under very high pressure -- in the range of one to five tons per square inch. For example the K-State cookie cutter requires a mold clamping pressure of 24 tons. Wow.
Yet this type of high-pressure molding means that it is possible to produce highly detailed, high quality products in a huge variety of forms.
Wayne and Diane Lenhart have been in this business for several years now. Both of them grew up in the country, not far from their current location.
Wayne says that his dad, who was a farmer, bought a metal lathe when Wayne was in the eighth grade. Wayne was intrigued with this lathe, and fortunately it came with an operators manual, which Wayne studied and became a self-taught operator. Wayne excelled in metal-working class in school, and he attended technical school in Newton to do machining. He worked in industry for a time before coming back to his home area.
Wayne was farming and doing machine repair when he was called in to Clay Center to do some welding. The company was also molding items to go on a seed planter sensor. The product needed some modifications, so Wayne did them. While working there, he designed his first mold.
He would go on to buy his own molding machine and go out on his own. Wayne and his wife Diane incorporated WDL Enterprises in 1993. By using his mechanical and engineering skills; Wayne was able to purchase used equipment, rebuild it, update it, and put it back into production.
Some of the unique products which WDL has produced for customers includes bottle caps, lids, and enclosures; clothing buckles, latches, and stays; cookie cutters, key chains, logo tags, and ID tags; a specialty tool installation kit; UV protected, FDA approved fire retardent and color enhanced products, and all types of plastic hardware. WDL produces lots and lots of plastic stays to go in medical back and wrist supports. And speaking of cookie cutters, you can get them in team designs and team colors for Nebraska, KU, and K-State B perfect for baking during football and basketball season.
One company came to Wayne with a problem. They were selling a bottled product, but the standard bottle cap tended to leak. Wayne worked with the company to re-design the product, which now sells around the country and around the world.
Wayne believes, AQuality control makes a difference. Custom engineering is just a way to improve the product for the customer.@
We=ve been talking about in-house engineering. Yes, the expertise is literally in-house, because this is a home-based business. Wayne and Diane bought an old country schoolhouse just a mile from his parent=s place. They remodeled it into a lovely home and put their various pieces of equipment in the basement. The address is 899 28th Road, near the north central Kansas town of Clifton, population 502 people. Now, that=s rural.
Because of in-house entrepreneurship and state-of-the-art production, we salute Wayne and Diane Lenhart for making a difference with their skills and hard work.
And there=s more. Remember the company that had its bottle cap redesigned? We=ll hear about that on our next program.

Judy Brzoska
Remember the Alamo. That=s a famous statement in American history, of course. Today, we can remember the Alamo for a whole different reason: The Alamo happened to be the source of an idea that has developed into a business for a Kansas entrepreneur. Believe it or not, it has to do with baking cookies. Stay tuned for a delicious Kansas Profile.
Meet Judy Brzoska. Judy lives in Lawrence, Kansas, where her husband is a dentist and she a dental hygienist. Now she has launched a new business involving cookies and college mascots.
But, you may ask, what does that have to do with the Alamo? Oh yeah, I remember the Alamo.
Judy says that, a few years ago, she and a friend were visiting Texas and they went to see the Alamo. Her friend was getting something in the gift shop so Judy was waiting. Judy noticed that among the big selling items in the gift shop were the boxes of Alamo cookies. These were small boxes of cookies that were baked in the distinctive shape of the Alamo itself.
Judy was intrigued to see the cookies selling so well, and she said to herself, AWow, I wonder if anyone has made college mascot cookies?@ In other words, what if the cookies were baked in the shape of a college mascot instead of the Alamo?
Perhaps she thought of this because she has been living for more than 20 years in the college town of Lawrence, where anything with a Jayhawk on it is a hot seller. Anyway, the thought lingered in her mind until she called the Texas company that made the Alamo cookies to see if they were interested in college cookies. They were not, but they gave Judy the name of their baker.
That initial contact has led to the creation of a business, under the name Kollege Kritters B that=s spelled with a K as in Kansas. After some research and development work, Kollege Kritters started selling boxes of cookies with college mascots on them.
In year one, Kollege Kritters offered KU and Nebraska cookies. In year two, it offered Kansas State and Ohio State cookies. More mascots are possible in future years.
These cookies are delicious. They are not animal crackers, although they come in a small box like animal crackers, but these are made of shortbread and are quite tasty.
Judy uses the recipe and facilities of the same baker who makes the Alamo cookies. Then Judy does the Kansas distribution, which has expanded over much of the state. Another distributor covers Nebraska for her, and her Ohio State cookies are being sold through the Ohio State bookstore.
In only her third year, Judy is selling cookies from Kansas City to Garden City and far beyond. Of course, the K-State and KU cookies are big sellers in Manhattan and Lawrence. Judy sells in the largest cities, but also such towns as Council Grove and Seneca, population 1,995 people. Now, that=s rural.
These sell in gift shops and stores. I found them in Manhattan area stores for two dollars or less, and a percentage of each sale supports the K-State scholarship fund.
Of course, it is the attractive purple packaging that first caught my eye. And here=s a scouting report for you. Judy says, AThe Powercat is my best cookie, because it doesn=t break. But the Jayhawk cookie is my cutest cookie.@ I guess it=s all in the eye of the beholder.
And because fans are fans, Judy has received calls from all over the country interested in the perfect gift or souvenir. Judy has had calls literally from Florida to California, and even from Europe. Judy says, AI=m an ordinary person who dreamed something and worked hard to make it successful.@
You can reach Kollege Kritters toll-free at 1-888-383-5665. That number again is 1-888-383-5665.
Remember the Alamo. Yes, that=s a famous location in American history, but it also happens to be the place where Judy Brzoska got the idea to bake and sell cookies based on college mascots. We commend Judy for making a difference through her imagination and creativity. I=m sure this isn=t a half-baked idea.

Gabe Eckert - International Grains Program
Today let=s join an interesting gathering of people. There is someone here from Bangladesh, for example, and someone from Venezuela. Next to him is someone from West Indies and then someone from Algeria. In fact, there are 23 different countries represented in this particular room. Imagine all the languages spoken here. Is this a committee meeting at the United Nations? No, it=s a class being taught by the International Grains Program at Kansas State University, and it is attracting participants from all around the globe.
That=s especially exciting for the young Kansas farm-boy who is student communications assistant for the International Grains Program. He=s a student leader in his own right, and his story is part of today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Gabe Eckert. Gabe is student communications assistant for K-State=s International Grains Program, often called IGP for short.
IGP is a program of the Department of Grain Science and Industry at K-State. Dr. Brendan Donnelly is head of the Grain Science department and director of IGP.
So what does IGP do? The mission of IGP is to promote and assist market-development efforts for cereal grains and oilseeds. It does so through technical training and assistance programs in education, grain and oilseed storage and handling, milling, marketing, and processing. These programs are targeted at international flour and feed millers, grain buyers, governmental officials and others.
What this really means is, we want to sell more grain and we can do so when we have better informed customers. When prospective buyers of U.S. grains know more about how to use the U.S. marketing system and how to best handle our grain products, they are more likely to buy from us.
That=s why the farmer-funded grain commissions from Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Texas contribute money to support the IGP, as does the Kansas Legislature. IGP was established by the Kansas Legislature back in 1978.
Every year, IGP attracts more than 100 people to come to Kansas from around the world. Part of the attraction is an internationally-acclaimed faculty in K-State=s College of Agriculture who facilitate the classes. Most of these are one- or two-week short courses, but IGP also works with international trade teams and coordinates overseas technical assistance.
A year ago, the IGP hired a student communications assistant named Gabe Eckert. Gabe is a senior in agricultural communications at K-State. He comes from a farm near Effingham in Atchison County in northeast Kansas. Effingham is a town of 546 people. Now, that=s rural.
Gabe came to appreciate how important it is to have world markets for the crops he and his family produced on the farm. Gabe is also a student leader. He was a state officer of FFA, served as student senate chair, and in April 1999 was elected student body vice-president.
It=s good to see student leaders come from our rural areas. It=s also good to see them supporting our international trade efforts.
After joining the IGP staff part-time, Gabe redesigned the IGP annual report, started a quarterly newsletter, created an informational brochure, and redesigned a website for IGP.
Gabe works in the IGP Center on the K-State campus which includes a grain grading laboratory for hands-on learning and a 48-seat classroom equipped with video, multimedia and audio equipment for simultaneous translation. That no doubt helps with all the languages which need to be translated.
Gabe says, AGrowing up on a farm, it=s amazing to see how many places your crops may go to. I want to help Kansas farmers understand how our farm economy benefits from international exports.@
It=s time to say goodbye to this interesting gathering of people. Yes, there are people here from Algeria to West Indies and from Bangladesh to Venezuela, but it=s not a committee of the UN. Rather, it=s a self-help, educational effort by farmers and a university in the U.S. We commend Dr. Brendan Donnelly and the people of IGP. And we salute Gabe Eckert for making a difference in student leadership and in supporting the international importance of Kansas agriculture. That=s a win in any language.
Carousels
Carousels
Today let=s go to Athens, Greece. A shipment is arriving from the States. It is a decorative figure of a carousel horse to be placed in a restaurant. And would you believe that this carousel horse is coming from halfway around the globe in rural Kansas? It=s true B and it=s today=s Kansas Profile.
Meet Bruce White. Bruce is the master carver who is creating these carousel horses in rural Kansas and shipping them all over the world. Here is the story.
Bruce White grew up in Coldwater, Kansas where he was interested in wood carving at an early age. He would whittle away at sticks making all sorts of things. After graduation, he enlisted in the Navy and served 12 years. He resumed his carving talents in making plaques for the Navy.
While stationed in Japan, Bruce=s wife entered some of his work into a major Japanese art contest. Lo and behold, Bruce=s globe won first place in its category and his dragon won Best of Show.
After the Navy, Bruce and his wife moved to her home state of Florida where he achieved success as a free-lance artist. Bruce says, AAfter I got to the point that I could do this business and live anywhere I wanted, I wanted to get out of the rat race.@ After 20 years, he chose to come back to Kansas.
He and his wife went town-shopping in Kansas and happened to find a house they liked in Kinsley. There Bruce founded his own company, White=s Carousels, to cast and sell replicas of the popular carousel horses which he carved.
Kinsley was an amazingly fortuitous choice, because this town has a great deal of history with carnivals. As we heard on our last program, Kinsley has a Carnival Heritage Center, which is appropriate due to the fact that there were six traveling carnivals which originated in Kinsley early in this century.
Bruce White=s carousel horses are a natural fit with this carnival history. He is helping with the Carnival Heritage Center as well as running his own business.
Here=s how the process works. Bruce makes an original hand carving of a particular design out of wood and then creates a mold with the original. Figures are cast from the mold and hand-painted. An automotive clear coat finish is used to render the figures absolutely weatherproof.
These figures are used as signature interior designs, decorations, or rocking horses.
And, not all of the designs are horses. In fact, Bruce has done gorillas, rhinos, dogs, dolphins, snakes, dinosaurs, salmon, hummingbirds, coyotes, and more. As custom restaurant decor, Bruce can make plaques, figurines, and signs. He even made a little dinosaur model for the Toronto Raptors NBA basketball team.
Whites= Carousels does most of the carousel carving for the company which is the world=s largest manufacturer of amusement park rides. Bruce also created and produces the carousel horses found in every one of the Applebee=s Restaurants around the world. Wow.
Demand has been so great that he has pressed his twin brother Brent into doing some of the carving.
Bruce says, AWe have carousel horses from Seoul, Korea to Boise, Idaho.@ Articles about Whites= Carousels have appeared in newspapers from the Washington Post to the L.A. Times. In September 1998, Bruce was featured in National Geographic. Governor Graves has one of Bruce=s horses in his office in Topeka -- I=ll bet Katey likes that one -- and in fall 1998, Bruce produced a carving of an Arabian horse in authentic gear for the Crown Prince of Kuwait.
Yet this internationally known artist remains in Kinsley, Kansas, population 1,533 people. Now, that=s rural.
Bruce says, AI love livin= in a small town. I work in a 114 year old building. In a big city, a building like this would cost a couple hundred thousand dollars. Our overhead is less. And I like the lifestyle. I like walking down the street and having people say, 'Hey Bruce, how ya doin=?= and they really mean it.@
It=s time to say farewell to Athens, Greece, where a carousel horse has just been delivered from halfway around the world in rural Kansas. We commend Bruce White and the people of Whites= Carousels for making a difference through entrepreneurship and creativity. It makes for a wonderful ride.

K-State Research and Extension

Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development

1999 Profiles