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Vol 42 • No. 7
www.theactiveage.com June 2021 Kansas’ Award-winning Top 55+ News Source
Inside: Fashion After Fifty
Blessing Boxes blow up
Paxton Burns and Mike Stoner do a little maintenance on Blessing Box No. 59.
ACTIVE AGING PUBLISHING, INC 125 S West St., Suite 105 Wichita, Ks 67213
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By Debbi Elmore An anti-hunger campaign started by a 6-year-old Wichita boy has turned into an intergenerational effort reaching into six other states. Called Paxton’s Blessing Boxes after Paxton Burns, who’s now 11, the
red boxes are stocked with donated food and personal hygiene products that are free for anyone to take. The endeavor has grown to 93 boxes at last count. Most are located in Sedgwick County, but Texas, Louisiana, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee and North Carolina all boast one or more. Homeowners, churches, schools and other organizations that host the boxes are primarily responsible for keeping them filled with canned sausage and tuna, peanut butter, oatmeal, cereal, pasta and similar items. A network of volunteers such as retirees Mike Stoner and Patsy and Dennis Shirley pitch in. Paxton’s mother, Maggie Ballard, first learned of a similar undertaking through a social media post five years ago. Two hours after showing it to her son, he asked if they could put up and fill a box in front of their Riverside home. They painted it red “because we See Blessing, page 6
Betsy and Scott Redler enjoy both sides of the restaurant industry.
Butler CC benefactors
Betsy and Scott Redler step up for new hospitality teaching center in Andover By Beth Bower For Scott Redler, it all started in his hometown of St. Louis. The co-founder of Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers made breakfast for his family as a kid and helped his mother and grandmother in the kitchen on a regular basis.
“I always had a passion for food,” he said. Redler used that passion to help build Freddy’s into one of the fastest-growing restaurant chains in the United States, with about 400 See Redlers, page 7
The man behind the name
McAdams Park, neighborhood honor motorcycle cop-turned-park super By Amy Geiszler-Jones Emerson McAdams took on many roles at what was known as McKinley Park in northeast Wichita. Often referred to simply as Mac, he cut the grass. He chaperoned dances. At the only city swimming pool open to black residents, he fished out snakes and threw them over a fence in the direction of a nearby canal. He raked sand on the golf course. He was there for the outdoor movies shown on Thursday nights. And if any of the neighborhood kids stepped out of line, he got on the bullhorn he often carried and bellowed out their name. “I don’t know if he ever went
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home,” said Galyn Vesey, one of those kids who hung out at McKinley Park during McAdams’ tenure. About three months after the 52-year-old McAdams died of a heart attack in October 1965, the Wichita Park Board and the City Council approved a petition to rename McKinley Park — established in 1901 and named for the assassinated 25th U.S. president — in McAdams’ honor. It’s unclear exactly when the city adopted McAdams as the name for the surrounding neighborhood, but documents referring to it by that name go back at least as far as 1975. Longtime Wichitans say the recognition is well deserved.
Central Plains Area Agency on Aging or call your county Department on Aging: 1-855-200-2372
Emerson McAdams “He was a big influence on a lot of black teens at the time,” said Vesey, who participated in the 1958 Dockum Drug Store sit-in and went on to a career in higher education. See McAdams, page 8
Butler County: (316) 775-0500 or 1-800- 279-3655 Harvey County: (316) 284-6880 or 1-800-279-3655