CapFed Best News: Gage Park mini-train reopens for year
Twenty-eight people and one dog rode as passengers Saturday morning as the Gage Park Mini-Train made its first trip of the year.
That dog was Keelee, a 14-year-old Boston terrier/Jack Russell terrier mix who sat in front with her owners, Topekans Carl and Janice Palmer.
Keelee loves riding the train, which she gets to do on a regular basis when it s running, said Carl Palmer. I ve never met a dog this smart, the 83-year-old Palmer said. She goes out in the morning, gets the paper and brings it up to the house for me. And the mailman hands her the mail and she brings the mail up to the house.
When the Westboro Baptist Church began preaching hate, Bill Beachy responded with love and the Love Your Neighbor program.
“Bill was an activist; he wanted to call people together and he wanted people to sound their voices,” said Jim McCollough, former executive director at the Topeka Center for Peace and Justice.
Multiple people told The Topeka Capital-Journal that Bill was a caring person with a passion for social justice and civil rights issues.
Beachy spent 20 years as the executive director of the Topeka Center for Peace and Justice and also chaired Topeka’s Human Relations Commission. He helped create the Dr. Martin Luther King “Whose Dream Is It?” celebration and brought prominent civil rights leaders, like John Lewis, to Topeka to share their stories.
Highland Park senior Citlaly Olguin wants to one day help people like her parents as a lawyer, and the first step in that future legal career is a Shawnee County District Attorney s Office internship.
Harvesters, in partnership with Town and Country Christian Church, is handing out around 40,000 pounds of food Thursday morning.
“It never fails that we have people tell us, ‘I wouldn’t be able to make it through the month without you,’” said Kathy Deitering, volunteer coordinator at Town and Country Christian Church. “This is the reason we are here.”
The “mega” food drive is at the Kansas Neurological Institute one block south of 21st and Randolph. The event starts at 9:30 a.m. and goes until supplies run out.
Deitering said there is a line for cars and a line for people to walk up, but asks that people with cars refrain from parking and walking to pick up the food. It is also a non-contact food drive, meaning food will be put in the trunks of people’s cars without ever requiring them to get out of the vehicle.
Dan McCready was on the Robinson Middle School stage Monday morning, doing something he has done his best to approximate over the past year, when two men in suits suddenly appeared behind the orchestral director and the handful of students he was conducting.
The two men, peers of McCready’s and representatives from the Northeast Kansas Music Educator Association, were there to present McCready with one of three Outstanding Young Director awards, given to the region’s most promising orchestra, band and choir teachers early in their careers.
McCready, who doubles as the orchestra director for Topeka High, said he was “absolutely blown away” and humbled by the award. He grew up in a deeply musical family, who he played alongside at bluegrass music festivals in Winfield.