City Offices Closed for Funeral.

The Administrative Offices of the City of Carthage, with the exception of the Fire and Police Departments, will be closed today from 10 a.m. until 1 p.m. so employees can attend the funeral services for Public Works Director Chad Wampler.

The funeral will be held at the Fairview Christian Church at 11 a.m. Burial will be in Park Cemetery.

Wampler graduated from Carthage High School in 1991 and was teaching in the Webb City school system before returning to Carthage in 2004 to became the Director of the Public Works department. He worked in that capacity since that time and also was assigned to supervise the Street Department when Street Commissioner Tom Shelley retired last year. He was 36 and initial indications are that he died of heart complications.

City officials are not only mourning the passing of a personal friend, but the loss of a valued department head with exceptional leadership skills.

Contributions may be made in his memory for his children at Southwest Missouri Bank, Carthage.

The local wildlife seems ta be on the move. I’m referrin’ to the animal version, not the teenagers.

We have a raccoon in our neighborhood. It was seen the other day movin’ it’s kids (don’t know the term for baby raccoons) down the street. Musta got an eviction notice.

A baby squirrel was also spotted that was lookin’ for a home. It was last seen huddlin’ down in the bushes.

Then there’s that opossum that seems to wander down the middle of the street from time to time.

I keep thinkin’ that zebra that’s on the loose will show up eventually. That would prob’ly foster some attention even in my neck of the woods.

This is some fact, but mostly,

Just Jake Talkin’.

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artCentral

ART NOTES from Hyde House

by Sally Armstrong, Director of artCentral

I have been reading the history of our organization, located in the old binders of minutes of all the original planning meetings and then business meetings of the original boards. It has been so interesting to see who is still in our community that was instrumental in starting artCentral back in the early eighties. Our artist friend Bob Tommey has a beautiful exhibit of his work up currently in Joplin, at the Spiva for the Arts Center downtown, and I was reading some of his comments recently regarding that exhibition, and of his history here in the area. He noted that he had started artCentral, and in fact, he did. A group of Carthage citizens who were interested in the arts, and I mean ALL the arts, which included the performing arts (vocal and instrumental music) as well as the performing arts (drama and dance) came together with those interested in the visual arts. The year was 1985, and the original incorporation is for an organization called C. A. S. T. & Company, which stood for Carthage Arts Support Team & Co., to support community artistic endeavors. The signers of the articles of incorporation on November 25, 1985 were: Bob Tommey, Dallie Miessner, and Earnest Jett. The original board of ten on that document contained these three and included Charlie Rogers, Neil Campbell, Henry Heckert, Ruth Kolpin, Jim Farley, Scott Rosenthal, Ida Platt, and Marvin VanGilder. Many of these folks are active in the Carthage arts community today. Their original purpose stated was to: 1) Establish a local center for the arts 2) Promote the development of workshops in the various arts 3) Seek funds from federal, state and local entities for the promotion of the arts 4) give mutual assistance in cooperation with other civic groups with coals compatible to the goals of their organization. In the years since this beginning, many starts and stops have occurred in the life of this original organization up until the time the visual arts branch was formed on it’s own, that which we know as artCentral. I will attempt in future articles to describe our history for you from our records, as we prepare to celebrate our 25th anniversary in the year to come, 2010. Stay tuned!