Thursday, March 19, 2020
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This too shall pass: Staying sane in a crazy time By VICKIE MOSS The Iola Register
Doug Wright
At a time when health professionals are advising “social distancing,” and “quarantining,” to prevent the spread of a new coronavirus, it may come as a surprise to learn that we should be connecting with one another. Just creatively. More than ever, we need to reach out to each other and build a sense of community, said Doug Wright, clinical director at Southeast Kansas
Mental Health Center. “If we’re anxious, we need to give ourselves something to focus on,” Wright said. “This is a time to focus on others. Focus on making someone else’s life easier.” The return is that such acts of kindness make us feel better. “The littlest thing can make a huge difference,” Wright said. Today’s technology makes reaching out easy, Wright added. Video chatting, for example, lends a very personal touch.
Or, go retro. Send a card or a hand-written letter through the mail. Make a phone call. Offer to babysit for a friend who is required to work or whose spouse is quarantined, just to give them a break. Offer to go grocery shopping for an elderly neighbor. You don’t have to get upclose and personal to make a difference; perhaps you can leave groceries or supplies on the porch. Children can be made to feel better if asked to color
What comes next?
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See SANITY | Page A3
Jen Coltrane
Lisa Dunne
Moms look forward on education
By SUSAN LYNN The Iola Register
A walk along downtown’s Madison Avenue Wednesday helps tell the story of how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting Iola merchants both professionally and personally. “We haven’t had a customer in three days,” said Cheryl Zajic, sales clerk at Sophisticated Rose. “It’s awful.” “I can’t blame people for not getting out,” she said. “But it breaks my heart.” Elizabeth Ingle, owner of The Shirt Shop, said an order for shirts for a school’s golf team had recently been canceled and she expects more of the same. “Business usually starts to pick up this time of year, but so far that hasn’t happened,” she said. Ingle said she is releasing her nervousness about the
pictures for residents at a local nursing care center. THE STEPS you take to reduce stress and anxiety also could actually improve your physical health, too. Studies have shown that stress can reduce the performance of the immune system, and people are more likely to get sick. “When we’re stressed, we tend to catastrophize and think of the worst case scenario,” Wright said. “People
By TREVOR HOAG The Iola Register
Ben Alexander, owner of Southwind Cycle and Outdoor, said though business has slowed to a trickle he hopes people continue to get outdoors for their sanity and health. Above, Brooke Martin, a stylist at Salon Nyne, tends to Sheena Brubaker. Bottom right are Toni Manbeck and Kelli Sigg of Audacious Boutique.
In the wake of Tuesday’s decision by Gov. Laura Kelly’s administration to shutter all K-12 schools in Kansas in response to the COVID-19 crisis, parents are doing their best to cope and start figuring out what comes next. The Register talked with two of these parents, Lisa Dunne and Jen Coltrane, both of whom have connections to Iola’s Parent Teacher Organization, to get a sense for their concerns, plans and more. Dunne, the mother of a fifth-grader and a seventhgrader, as well as the fifth grade PTO building coordinator, currently works at State Farm Insurance. She’s hopeful that her See MOMS | Page A5
Meet the raucous attorney general who led Kansas to open saloons By CELISA CALACAL and MATTHEW LONG-MIDDLETON Kansas News Service
Kansas’s 36th attorney general was infamous for popping out of trunks, inciting gunfights on buses, and going toe-to-toe with other lawmen and politicians. It was this unabashed, brash approach to law enforcement that earned Vern Miller the nickname “Lawman of the State.” “He was just kind of a cowboy who did things his way,” says Jim McLean, senior correspondent with KCUR’s Kansas News Service. “The narrative of the state of Kansas where you had these marshalls, sheriffs, of these Wild West communities, that
Vern Miller was Kansas attorney general, 1971-1975. KANSASMEMORY.ORG / KANSAS STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
would take matters in hand and clean up the town, right? Well, there’s a certain amount of that to Vern Miller.” But Vern Miller was not a Wild West sheriff. Miller
Vol. 122, No. 105 Iola, KS 75 Cents
wielded much of his power between the 1960s and the 70s, a socially and politically tumultuous time in Kansas and across the country. Growing up in a hardscrabble community outside of Wichita, Miller worked at a dairy farm and got into a lot of fights as a kid. “There was a lot of scrappin’ going on,” says Miller, now 91 and living in Phoenix. “Everybody scrapped at that age.” After serving in Korea in the 1950s, Miller returned to become a road patrolman in the sheriff ’s office. And he quickly became known for physical altercations. One legend says that, as a traffic officer following a high-
speed chase, Miller whipped a man in the face and dragged him through the car window. As another story goes, Miller fought his boss — the sheriff — in the sheriff ’s own home, ultimately costing him his job. In 1964, in a twist of irony, Miller won the race for sheriff of Sedgwick County, the state’s most populous county at the time. Not shy about his new role, Miller traversed the county, busting folks for any and every possible infraction. He even went so far as to tell churches to suspend their cash bingo games. “A lot of old ladies in town didn’t like that,” Miller reSee MILLER | Page A5
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