Sports: Latta brothers play large role in diamond success See B1
The Weekender Saturday, June 27, 2015
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Husband’s love springs eternal Photo and story by Rick Danley
I
n the years before Velma Ensminger died, her husband, Dave, used to carry her from room to room. The pair shared a winding, single-story ranch house on a large farm near Moran. Dave was already in his eighties. Velma was five years his junior. The couple had been married for nearly six decades, but by then Velma no longer recognized his face. Ensminger recalled a conversation the two had not long after Velma was diagnosed with dementia, but before the worst of it destroyed her body. “I told her the day will come when you don’t know who I am,” said Ensminger. “‘Oh, no,’ she’d say. ‘I’ll remember.’ But the day did come. I’d put her to bed at night and give her a kiss and she’d look up at me and she’d say, ‘Now, who are you?’ She didn’t know.”
cluding the validity of the new funding law. Kansas distributes more than $4 billion a year in aid to school districts, but the four suing the state contend it’s not adequate. The same lower-court panel declared in December that the state must increase its annual aid by at least $548 million, but the state has appealed to the SuSee FUNDING | Page A6
See COURT | Page A6
See ENSMINGER | Page A5
David Ensminger
Court tosses parts of school funding law TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A district court panel in Kansas declared Friday that key parts of a new state law for funding public schools violate the state constitution. The three-judge panel in Shawnee County District Court ruled that the law fails to distribute more than $4 billion a year so that all children
receive a suitable education. The state is expected to appeal the ruling to the Kansas Supreme Court. The new law scrapped an older per-pupil distribution formula in favor of predictable grants to the state’s 286 school districts based on the funds they received before the law changed. The law was challenged by the Dodge City, Hutchinson, Wichita and Kansas City, Kan-
sas, school districts. They argued that it distributed state funds in ways that harmed programs for poor and minority students. The four districts sued the state in 2010, and legislators boosted aid to poor school districts last year to meet a Kansas Supreme Court mandate in the case. But the high court returned the case to the lower-court panel to review additional legal issues — in-
By MARK SHERMAN The ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court declared Friday that same-sex couples have a right to marry anywhere in the United States, a historic culmination of decades of litigation over gay marriage and gay rights generally. Gay and lesbian couples already could marry in 36 states and the District of Columbia. The court’s 5-4 ruling means the remaining 14 states, in the South and Midwest, will have to stop enforcing their bans on same-sex marriage. A court in Atlanta issued marriage licenses to three same-sex couples Friday morning, soon after the decision. Gay rights supporters cheered, danced and wept outside the court after the decision, which put an exclamation point on breathtaking changes in the nation’s social norms. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, just as he did in the court’s previous three major gay rights cases dating back to 1996. It came on the anniversary of two of those earlier decisions. “No union is more profound than marriage,”
WEIGHED against the heaviness of his grief — which, less than a year after his wife’s death, lives so close to the surface that even the mention of her name is enough to invite tears — is the radiant lightness and warmth of Ensminger’s personality. “You know, when I go into a room with a bunch of people, I have this urge to shake hands with everybody there.” At 84, the former farmer has retained his straight-backed posture. He gets in and out of chairs with the limberness of a younger man. He speaks in a clear, treble voice, wears his talc-white hair pulled back in a knobby ponytail, and has adopted in the last two years a sparse Van Dyke beard. Ensminger’s natural friendliness is somehow enhanced by his wide gap-toothed smile, whose straight line was
By JOHN HANNA The Iola Register
Court: Gays can marry anywhere
Beans on the heels of wheat harvest By BOB JOHNSON The Iola Register
Farming is an integral part of Allen County’s economy and its compelling presence is never more evident than at this time of year. Local farmers are harvesting wheat, planting soybeans and putting up hay. And, just to make sure
they don’t get caught up in a lull, there’s wheat ground to prep for a second crop of soybeans. “It is a busy time of the year,” said Carla Nemecek, ag agent with the Southwind Extension District. Farmers are at it from early morning often until well after the sun sets, she said. “Some have day jobs, like See FARMING | Page A5
Allen County Counselor Alan Weber, left, listens to observations from contractors who toured old Allen County Hospital Thursday, preparatory to making bids for its demolition. REGISTER/BOB JOHNSON
Streamlined ACH demo urged By BOB JOHNSON The Iola Register
An annual by product of harvest time is a preponderance of slow-moving farming vehicles on area roads. REGISTER/BOB JOHNSON
Quote of the day Vol. 117, No. 163
Allen County commissioners may rethink how they will proceed to remove the old Allen County Hospital to make room for a grocery and other development. In recent weeks a plan had
evolved to have an auction of personal property in the hospital, as well as copper and other metal and material that had salvage value. Thursday during a tour of the structure a handful of potential demolition contractors urged County Counselor Alan Weber to have commission-
“The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.” — Sydney J. Harris, American journalist 75 Cents
ers reconsider. To a one they said the county would come out ahead if it made salvage a part of the demolition contract. Their point was that if someone won salvage rights and then jerked wire, pipes and other metal from ceilings See HOSPITAL | Page A2
Hi: 84 Lo: 62 Iola, KS