Happy VETERANS DAY! Friday, November 10, 2023
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Giving comfort Moran veteran serves as Kansas VFW chaplain By TIM STAUFFER The Iola Register
For as long as there’s been war, there has been a need to comfort those who fight it. The horrors of the battlefield, the inhumanity and pain, they stay with soldiers. Enter chaplains, whose existence dates back to the medieval church. The Rev. John Hurt was America’s first military chaplain, appointed in 1791. He fought seven years in the Revolutionary War. With him, the role was formalized. And so Walter Palmisano, who lives in Moran and recently became the Veterans of Foreign Wars chaplain for the state of Kansas, carries on the legacy of a group who, as described in the VFW chaplain’s charter, “shall be concerned with the spiritual needs of the members.” But it happened almost by accident. PALMISANO, 70, wasn’t a real big military guy. In fact, while his late wife, Jo Cuppy, was alive, he never got close to a VFW post. Hiis military service just wasn’t something he talked a lot about. A military police officer in Vietnam, Palmisano grins as he says he “mostly brought pilots who were too drunk to drive back to the base. I spent most of my time trying to keep them out of
Archie Specht
Ceremony to honor Korean War veteran By VICKIE MOSS The Iola Register
Walter Palmisano of Moran serves as the Veterans of Foreign Wars chaplain for the state of Kansas. At right, Palmisano wears pins to recognize all types of religions. REGISTER/TIM STAUFFER
trouble, not get them in it.” Stationed at an air base in Can Tho, Vietnam, he was medically discharged after about a year. And that was that. Palmisano returned to his native New Orleans, married his high school sweetheart, had See CHAPLAIN | Page A3
Farmers look at rural health care, Medicaid expansion By TIM CARPENTER Kansas Reflector
MANHATTAN — Greeley County Health Services project director and Wallace County farmer Chrysanne Grund says challenges woven into health care delivery in sparsely populated areas of Kansas were often revealed at a personal level. “We know all our patients by first and last names,” Grund said. “We know those who don’t have insurance, who
may be spending exorbitant amounts every month on out-of-pocket costs.” She said hard-working folks in frontier counties in western Kansas — Greeley and Wallace counties are two of the least populated in the state — struggled to afford preventative and emergency care, while hospitals and clinics serving those populations absorbed realities of uncompensated care, low patient volume and intense competition for physicians. One piece of the solution, she said,
would be for Kansas to expand eligibility for Medicaid for as many as 150,000 low-earning Kansans — just as the four neighboring states have done. “Medicaid expansion would add to the economic stability of our health system,” Grund said. Gov. Laura Kelly, who has championed Medicaid expansion, invited Grund and others with insights into the agricultural economy Wednesday to an informal discussion of rural health care access See MEDICAID | Page A5
Vol. 125, No. 283 Iola, KS $1.00
See KOREA | Page A9
Honoring Vets A Veterans Day ceremony at 11 a.m. Saturday will feature guest speaker Sgt. Lucas Hamlin, a Moran native, at the Iola square. With no postal delivery Saturday due to the holiday, there will be no Saturday Iola Register. Instead, The Register will have a Monday edition, to be delivered in Monday’s mail.
Strike ends LOS ANGELES (AP) — On Thursday, for the first time in more than six months, neither Hollywood’s actors nor its writers will be on strike. The long-awaited clearing in the industry’s stormiest season in decades comes as a deal was reached late Wednesday to end what was, at nearly four months, the longest strike ever for film and television actors. The three-year contract must be approved by the board of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and its members in the coming days. But union leadership declared that the strike ended Thursday, putting all of the parts of production back into action for See STRIKE | Page A9
Archie Specht didn’t talk much about his military service during the Korean War. Whatever his stories were, they were lost when the Piqua native died in 2015 at the age of 86. That doesn’t surprise Nick Hay of Yates Center. He’s a veteran, too, and he understands the experiences that happen during conflict can be difficult to talk about. “The guys who looked the tiger in the eye very seldom want to talk about it. I suppose that’s because of painful memories that arise from a conversation like that,” Hay said. That’s just one of the reasons Hay has embarked on efforts to recognize veterans from the Korean War. On Friday afternoon, he will visit Iola Elementary School to present a special honor to Archie Specht’s grandson, who shares his name. Little Archie is a second grader at IES. During a ceremony and
Allen men win at home
Celestial buddies Humboldt astronomer Mike Myer captured this view of a waning crescent moon and Venus surrounded by clouds on Wednesday evening. COURTESY PHOTO
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