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THE IOLA REGISTER Monday, November 18, 2013
Student councils gather By KAYLA BANZET The Iola Register
Runners truck through race, despite heavy winds By KAYLA BANZET The Iola Register
Strong southerly winds and rainy weather played a major role in the Portland Alley Marathon on Saturday. There were around 90-plus competitors in the second annual race from Iola to Chanute. Runners were exposed to poor weather conditions early in the morning and had to run into strong winds. The race began at 8:30 a.m. in front of Thrive Allen County on the Iola square and ended in Chanute. Half marathon runners ended the race on the Humboldt square. The marathon is organized by Thrive Allen County and Chanute Regional Development Authority. It is sponsored See MARATHON | Page A4
At top, runners start off the second annual Portland Alley Marathon on the Iola square. Above, team members of Monarch Cement celebrate the race’s conclusion. From left, Walter Wulf, Jr., Joseph DeVoe, Brent Wilkerson, Dusty Bartlett, Jon Burchett and Tony Kasten. Below at left, Matthew Keenan fights the wind seven miles into the race. Below at right, Don Burns finishes strong. REGISTER/KAYLA BANZET and SUSAN LYNN
STUCO representatives from the Pioneer League met at Iola High School Thursday to learn how to improve their schools. Each year the meeting moves among schools within the league. Students heard from speaker Jim Mosely. His message was structured toward the student council members to get more students involved in student activities. “As beautiful as your generation is, yours is the most broken,” he said. Mosely talked about multiple students that he has taught and how they have affected him. He recalled one junior girl who had to take his class with freshman students. He had discovered the girl cried in the bathroom every day. When he approached her to find out what was wrong, the girl shut down. “She dropped out of school and went to work at Walmart,” he said. “Every time I see her, I think about how I let her down.” He also shared an experience he had when he was in high school. A friend who was being abused at home was also picked on by Mosely’s friends at school. Years later he didn’t even want to attend the class reunion because he was still hurt. “He came to the only place that he felt acceptance, but we extended his pain,” he said. Mosely said he worries he could have done something to change this friend’s high school experience. “You have kids in your school that sit by themselves,” he said pointing at the crowd. “They don’t come to dances See STUCO | Page A4
Storms plow through midwest, kill six in Illinois WASHINGTON, Ill. (AP) — As a powerful tornado bore down on their Illinois farmhouse, Curt Zehr’s wife and adult son didn’t have time to do anything but scramble down the stairs into their basement. Uninjured, the pair looked out moments later to find the house gone and the sun out “right on top” of them, Zehr said. Their home, on the outskirts of Washington, Ill., was swept up and scattered over hundreds of yards by one of the dozens of tornadoes and intense thunderstorms that swept across the Midwest on Sunday, leaving at least six people dead and unleashing powerful winds that flattened entire neighborhoods, flipped over cars and uprooted trees. “They saw (the tornado) right there and got in the basement,” said a stunned Zehr, pointing to the farm field near the rubble that had been his home. Early today, Washington Mayor Gary Manier estimated that from 250 to 500 homes were either damaged or destroyed in the storm and that it wasn’t clear when residents would be
allowed to return. “Everybody’s without power, but some people are without everything,” Manier told reporters in the parking lot of a destroyed auto parts store and near a row of flattened homes. “How people survived is beyond me,” he said. The unusually powerful late-season wave of thunderstorms brought damaging winds and tornadoes to 12 states: Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and western New York. Bill Bunting, forecast operations chief of the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., said the storms all belonged to the same system and would be “moving rapidly to the east and continue east overnight and into the morning.” Illinois was the hardest struck with at least six people killed and dozens more injured. An 80-year-old man and his 78-year-
Quote of the day Vol. 116, No. 17
See STORMS | Page A4
A fireman searches through the remains of homes along Devonshire Road after a tornado left a trail of damage along in Washington, Ill., on Sunday. MCT
“A problem well stated is a problem half-solved.”
— Charles Kettering, American inventor 75 Cents
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