Remember the Titans: Southern Coffey Co. girls knock off state’s fourth-ranked teams.
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THE IOLA REGISTER Locally owned since 1867
www.iolaregister.com
Thursday, January 12, 2017
THE LONG ROAD HOME Psychiatrist returns to Iola, fills a need for southeast Kansas
CREATIVE COMMONS-PIXABAY
Tobacco key to gov’s budget
By RICK DANLEY The Iola Register
Dawny Barnhart, then a graduating senior, bid goodbye to Iola in 1989. She returned this year, a doctor. It’s the hope of most smalltown folks, when they launch their best young people out into the world, that, in time, those young people will come back. And when they return, their heads full of knowledge or their hands fluent in a new trade, it’s a bonus if they’ve acquired a skill that answers to that region’s need. It would be impossible to overstate the steep need for mental health professionals in southeast Kansas. Installed as a licensed psychiatrist at the Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas in July, Dr. Barnhart is one of only a handful of board-certified mental health professionals in the area. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, more than half of the 3,075 rural counties in the U.S. lack even a single trained mental health expert. This, despite the fact that the incidence of mental illness and substance abuse in rural America is outpacing the numbers in cities. BARNHART’S intention was always to come back to Iola. When she met her partner, Jonathan Adams, in 2012, in Kansas City, she remem-
By MEG WINGERTER Kansas News Service
Dr. Dawny Barnhart, foreground, and Jonathan Adams
bers telling him, essentially: “Now, there’s something you need to know about me. I’ve committed my life to medicine and I really want to be in southeast Kansas.” But Barnhart’s route back to her hometown charted a fairly scenic route. After a precocious career at Iola High School, Barnhart enrolled at John Brown University, in Siloam Springs, Ark., where she majored in history with a focus in Russian studies. It was the right time for it. The Cold War was over, the wall had come down, the Stalin archives were
just unearthed, and Sovietologists were thick on the ground at every university. “And so my intent,” recalled Barnhart,“was to get a graduate degree in Russian studies.” She’d spent a profitable semester abroad studying in Nizhny Novgorod — that old haunt — a riverine city six hours east of Moscow. And so it was no surprise when, after graduating from John Brown, Barnhart was accepted at the Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies at the University of Kansas. Partway into her graduate studies, however, Barnhart
left KU. “The call of the real world came,” she remembered. Appropriately, the call came from a telephone company, Sprint, where Barnhart clocked in and out each day until the monotony of that life became too much to bear. Some way into her tenure at Sprint, Barnhart fell into a conversation with her cousin, a doctor at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. “I told him I wasn’t cut out for the corporate world. And he said: ‘Then why don’t you think about becoming a docSee HOME | Page A3
Gov. Sam Brownback’s budget proposal would sell the state’s future payments from tobacco companies to plug financial holes for the next two years. The budget proposal — outlined Wednesday morning — calls for the state to receive $265 million from “securitizing” the tobacco payments in fiscal year 2018, which starts in July, and the same amount in the following year. What the state actually would get is an open question, however. Budget Director Shawn Sullivan said Wednesday that the state could net anywhere from $480 million to $775 million, depending on how it issues the bonds and how the market moves. Under a legal settlement, major tobacco companies have compensated states for the societal costs of smoking since the 1990s. Kansas has placed that money in the Children’s Initiatives Fund, See TOBACCO | Page A5
Linda Whitworth-Reed
Pastor to speak at King service This year’s event commemorating the birth of the late Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. will be at 7 p.m. Monday at Wesley United Methodist Church. The Iola Ministerial Association is sponsoring the service. The Rev. Linda Whitworth-Reed of First Presbyterian Church will deliver the message. Fellowship and refreshments will follow.
Band-tastic Five Iola High School band students, from left, Madi Carlin, Kassy Shelby, Jennifer Tidd, Erin Klubek and Quentin Mallette, qualified to participate in the Kansas State Music Educators Association State Convention Feb. 21-23 in Wichita. The students auditioned for the state berths Saturday in Salina. Carlin, a junior, is a two-time state qualifier, and has a chance to be a three-time state qualifier next year as a senior. (It should be noted that freshmen are ineligible for state band.) Shelby and Tidd are sophomores, Klubek and Mallette are juniors. Iola had the second-most state qualifiers among all Kansas 4A high schools, behind Buhler High. Their instructor, Matt Kleopfer, praised the students for their dedication to their craft. “To see the quality of musicians we have here is pretty awesome.” REGISTER/RICHARD LUKEN
Quote of the day Vol. 119, No. 53
“The pay is good and I can walk to work.”
— John F. Kennedy 75 Cents
Hi: 37 Lo: 24 Iola, KS