To subscribe for FREE call 316-942-5385
Vol 42 • No. 9
Mental illness driving homeless 'disaster'
By Mary Clarkin Micky Maddux encounters the homeless three to 10 times a day. She does not live or work in a shelter or sleep on a sidewalk. She’s the owner of an art gallery in Wichita’s Old Town Square. She’s cleaned their urine and feces off her gallery front in the morning, been accosted and heard their shouting. “Sometimes it’s not always aggressive,” Maddux said. “Sometimes it’s heartbreaking.” As she spoke, a man slept on the sideewalk in the shadow of a pillar yards away from the entrance to her gallery. Maddux, who moved back from Florida and opened the gallery in May, previously donated pieces of art
ACTIVE AGING PUBLISHING, INC 125 S West St., Suite 105 Wichita, Ks 67213
Nonprofit Organization U.S. Postage PAID Wichita, KS 67276 Permit 1711
See Disaster page 8
www.theactiveage.com Kansas’ Largest Newspaper
August 2021
Inside: Win Wind Surge tickets
Generational links Auggie Navarro's family carries on golf legacy
By Amy Geiszler-Jones Growing up in a pair of boxcars on North Broadway, Auggie Navarro never envisioned himself making a living whacking a little white ball around manicured fairways and greens. But when his dad got a maintenance job at the original Crestview Country Club course, Auggie started caddying there. Thus began the Navarro family’s three-generation association with Wichita’s golf scene, a connection that’s produced champions, teaching pros and, since 2013, a scholarship program for high school golfers. The scholarship is named for Auggie,who worked as pro at Sim Park for 31 years. See Navarro, page 12
Gary Navarro and his daughter, Elea, above left, celebrate her high school team's state championship last fall. Auggie Navarro, above right, was the longtime pro at Sim Golf Course.
Allen House gets prairie garden to match By Annie Calovich Visitors to the Frank Lloyd Wright house in College Hill have always been amazed at the pristine condition of the restored interior of the residence. The grounds surrounding the house, on the other hand, for a long while did not reflect the admirable inside, which is now a museum. But local master gardeners have lately been transforming the landscape into something worthy of one of Wichita’s top attractions. The residence at 255 N. Roosevelt that was the last of the architect’s prairie houses now has its own pretty prairie of a yard. “It started in late 2015. I signed up to be a tour guide for the inside of the house, and I noticed that the back gardens didn’t do the house any favors,” Tim Reimer, a retired bank examiner for the FDIC, said recently in the midst of the busyness of his volunteer gigs. “There was Bermuda, clumps of daylilies and iris that pretty
Questions about services?
Photo by Annie Calovich
Joan Fox and other master gardeners have found the magic mixture for the original Frank Lloyd Wright urn at the Allen House. much survive on their own in Kansas. I thought it could use some help.” That same year saw Reimer in
Central Plains Area Agency on Aging or call your county Department on Aging: 1-855-200-2372
training to be a master gardener through K-State Research & Exten-
See Garden, page 7
Butler County: (316) 775-0500 or 1-800-279-3655 Harvey County: (316) 284-6880 or 1-800-279-3655