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Sports: Chiefs win fifth straight See B1

THE IOLA REGISTER Locally owned since 1867

www.iolaregister.com

Monday, November 30, 2015

A YEAR LATER

Coffeyville weathers Amazon shutdown By DAN VOORHIS The Wichita Eagle

COFFEYVILLE, Kan. (AP) — Football fans still pack Veterans Memorial Stadium here on Friday nights and Saturday afternoons in the fall. The Verdigris River still flows sluggishly by. Life continues in this town of about 10,000 a year after its biggest employer, Amazon, announced it was leaving. The closing of the distribution warehouse, along with a couple of other plant closings and layoffs last year, meant the loss of more than 800 jobs — about 5 percent of all jobs in Montgomery County, The Wichita Eagle reported. The town and county haven’t fully recovered, but the panic has receded. The local refinery is booming.

Burglar dies in chimney FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — Authorities say a suspected burglar who became stuck in the chimney of a Central California home died after the homeowner unknowingly lit a fire in the fireplace. Fresno County Sheriff ’s spokesman Tony Botti said an autopsy on Sunday concluded that 19-year-old Cody Caldwell died of smoke inhalation and burns. Authorities said a homeowner in the rural town of Huron heard someone scream after lighting a fire in his fireplace Saturday afternoon and alerted authorities. When the homeowner realized a person was stuck in the chimney, he extinguished the fire. Lt. Brandon Pursell said Caldwell was responsive when firefighters smashed the chimney to get him out, but when they got to the young man he died.

There have been a few plant expansions. Some people have found work out of town. The worst didn’t happen. “Amazon leaving, to a county of this size, will have an impact,” said Coffeyville Mayor Chris Williams. “But the consensus of the city council is that we feel we have weathered it.” But many also acknowledge that the Amazon departure feels like another in a long line of hits for the town, county and southeast Kansas region. It’s a decades-long story of slow decline, population loss, of coming back from each downturn or crisis a lit-

Amazon leaving, to a county of this size, will have an impact. But the consensus of the city council is that we feel we have weathered it. — Coffeyville Mayor Chris Williams

tle smaller. It hit its peak population in 1930 and has been slowly shrinking since then, along with much of southeast Kansas. It has been a constant struggle to retain people and jobs. Asked how the economy is doing, Chatterbox Gifts owner Mary Nyhuis answered bluntly: “It stinks.” She said that her sales in 2012 were twice what they are now. She didn’t attribute the

drop to the Amazon closing directly, but more generally to the tough local economy. “I do like having the store,” she said, “but this is getting ridiculous.” Rumors had been circulating for years about the 915,000-square-foot Amazon warehouse closing and had never amounted to anything. But on Sept. 29, 2014, when Susan Joplin, a manager in human resources, saw an email alert that a top executive

would visit the warehouse, she had an inkling of what was coming. The meeting was short. He told the assembled staff that Amazon was moving in a different direction. It needed warehouses in large cities to speed delivery to more customers. Those who stayed through the end in January or February would collect severance. Then they were released to take the rest of the day off. Joplin watched as the employees filed out, some angry, some sad, many stunned. “I was thinking, ‘What are those people going to do?’ “ Joplin said. “There were a lot of husbands and wives, so they were losing both incomes. What is this going to do to the See COFFEYVILLE | Page A4

New pastor finds dream come true in Iola By RICK DANLEY The Iola Register

If such a thing as a pureblood Presbyterian exists, Iola’s First Presbyterian Church has found one in their new pastor, Linda WhitworthReed. Though ordained only within the last decade, her roots travel deep into the bedrock of that tradition: Her father was a Presbyterian minister from Oklahoma who kept up his Greek and Hebrew until the day he died. As for Whitworth-Reed’s mother — whose upbringing was turned over to the Presbyterian Children’s Home in Itasca, Texas — the debt to the church runs, perhaps, even deeper. Despite this pedigree, the clerical mantle isn’t a birthright, and it was decades — well into Whitworth-Reed’s middle years — before she decided to follow her father into the ministry. Late Tuesday afternoon, the newly arrived pastor, hardly unpacked from her move from Little Rock, sat on the sun porch of the church’s parsonage. A sprawling basket of

Linda Whitworth-Reed has found a home in Iola as the new pastor at First Presbyterian Church. REGISTER/RICK DANLEY

purple Wave petunias dominated a nearby table. The pastor’s 12-year-old Dachshund, Cisco — wearing a handmade red sweater — rested in the corner, his attention alternating between a stuffed frog and a couple of baby carrots, a fa-

vorite snack. “In the Presbyterian Church,” remarked Whitworth-Reed, “we say: ‘You don’t call yourself; you hear the call through others.’” For Whitworth-Reed, God’s summons arrived in 2000,

five years before she entered seminary. “It was right before my dad died. We took a trip to see my godmother and parents’ very close friend, Grace Thompson. She had been a See PASTOR | Page A4

Accused shooter set for court COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — The man accused of opening fire at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs lived a troubled, isolated life in the mountains of South Carolina and Colorado, but acquaintances said he never hinted that he would target the organization. Robert Lewis Dear, 57, will make his first appearance in court today. He is accused of killing a police officer and

Icy art While Iola missed the worst of an early winter’s blast, freezing rain Friday still coated fences and trees with a coat of ice, to go with more than 3 inches of rain that fell in the area over the holiday weekend. REGISTER/RICHARD LUKEN

Quote of the day Vol. 118, No. 24

See COURT | Page A2

“Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.” — Teddy Roosevelt 75 Cents

Hi: 42 Lo: 29 Iola, KS


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