Lyons High School Alumni Update:

The year is rapidly winding down. They already have and have had the Christmas stuff out for a month or more. Remember when we were growing up, I graduated in 1961 you didn’t see any Christmas until the day after Thanksgiving.

Well, we have a new president. He is my president and I have to give him a chance. A lot of people never accepted George Bush as president and that is sad. I voted for him but hate he passed every spending bill Congress put in front of him. I’m for less government, not spreading the wealth and let each man have the initiative to get ahead. I don’t mind giving a hand up, not a hand out. They are already talking about giving another 5 billion stimulus package to stimulate the economy. I thought the last give away was supposed to stimulate the economy. Oh, I forgot, it didn’t work last time, so let’s try it again and expect it to work.

What do you call it when they give you money you didn’t earn. It is not capitalism, which is exactly what made this the greatest country on earth. Our founding fathers wrote the Constitution to give us freedom and not let government get too big. They came from countries where government that was too large and powerful. They new the danger in that.

The fact is Barack Obama is our president. We have to accept that because it is what true Americans do and pray he will be the best ever. People absolutely hated George Bush and it has divided our country like I have never seen. If you disagree with the President you vote someone else in next time, you don’t hate him.

We stayed at the new Celebration Center Inn in Lyons this past week-end. Very nice, and you get a breakfast with the room. It includes cereal, waffles, muffins, bagels, toast, orange juice, coffee, apple juice and peanut butter. Even had popcorn you could microwave. Guess it is good to have two motels and a hotel in town but none was full and they had a horse show, parade, and football play off game in town..

Saw Arlan Swanson, class of 1954 I think. He had his old restored John Deere tractor in the parade pulling the Lion he won at the All-School Reunion on a trailer behind his tractor in the Veteran’s Day Parade.

We went down to Wichita to buy my step-daughter a new saxophone. She is really quite good and only a sophomore in high school. I don’t know how good she could be if she practiced!!

We lost a couple more alumni: Cheryl Hunter Blackburn Class of 1964 passed away on Nov. 7th in Wichita. She had been living in Lyons the past 6 years. In Aug. 1998 she married Jimmy Blackburn in Lamar, CO. She is survived by two sons and three daughters. She had 12 grand children and one great grand child. She will be missed.

Bev Buller (obit attached) passed away Oct. 21st in Sandusky, Ohio. He graduated in 1952 and quarterbacked the team to the league championship. He then quarterbacked for Kansas University and then for a short time played for the New York Giants professional football team. His father John was our superintendent when I was in school and the football field is named after him. Bev was the purchasing director for the Sandusky Foundry & Machine Company. They are going to start a Memorial Fund in his honor called the Lyons USD Education Endowment Association. I believe Wayne Koons and John & Carolyn Sayler are the directors for the fund and if you want to contribute you can send it to the above name P.O. Box 742, Lyons, KS. 67554. Make a note on the check for the Bev Buller Fund.

Received a well thought out note from Wayne Bell for the Class of 1961 Reunion. It will be our 50th. Oh my gosh, you have to be kidding. I believe the next All-School Reunion is in 2011. His thoughts were do we want to coincide with the All-School or do ours at a different time. The last All-School Reunion had people staying in Hutch, Great Bend, McPherson, Sterling and of course Lyons. Our thought was to get out a questionnaire to our class but we would start with this update and ask questions such as:
1.) Coincide with the All-School Reunion
2.) Change our date and have it at a different time in Lyons
3.) Have it some place other than Lyons, Denver, San Diego, etc.
4.) Have a different venue such as a Cruise, could be to Alaska during the summer or Caribbean, Mexico, Baja California in the Fall. On cruises if we get enough cabins sold we can get free cabins that would lessen everyone’s cost.
Start sending in your ideas and we will let you know what our classmates are leaning toward. When we have the reunions in Lyons we get in on a Friday night, have our meeting Sat. night and we hardly get to visit with anyone, but it is our hometown. I just want to see everyone and have some time to spend visiting.

We have a new Lyons Alum who has her own online travel website. Gail O’Hanlon Wolfe.. If you are planning to travel take a look at Gail’s website, it is www.lotsleft2see.com Other Lyons Alumni with travel websites are; Lonnie Morris Class of 1963; Dan Thompson Class of 1964; Bob Moody Class of 1963, and Bob Drake Class of 1961 We would hope Lyons alumni family and friends would use these alumni’s websites found on the www.LyonsAlumni.com website if you book your travel online. You will get the same seat in the plane, the same room at the hotel and the same cabin on the cruise ship, same rental car, same vacation package, that you will get with Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, Cheap Tickets, Priceline, etc except you help a fellow Lyons alum by booking your travel or making your vacation plans on their website. You can even purchase flowers, buy cars, set up golf tee times, buy concert or sporting event tickets, purchase adventure, hunting and fishing trips and more on their websites. Better yet ask one of us how you could set up your own family reunion trips or cruises, etc.

You want to purchase an incredible Christmas Gift for family members or friends. What better Christmas gift than to wake up on Christmas morning, take a loved one to the computer and pull up their own online travel website that you purchased for them. Sound unbelievable? It can happen, we have people making millions a year with this business people making a car or house payment and people who use it only for their travel needs and tax write-offs. We personally will be able to legitimately write off our taxes between $15,000 - $20,000 for 2008. We have families in this company who have partnered to work their business. It is a gift that will keep on giving. Jerry is the guy who told me about this business and we love him for it for what it has done for us. You can contact, Gail, Lonnie, Bob, Dan or me about this incredible business.
Juanita Danewitz is back in Rio I believe for the winter and doing her favorite thing, doing the Tango. We will be getting updates from her on her stay in South America.

Jerry Regier Class of 1961 looking for Mike Stephenson Class of 1960. They were good friends and Jerry said Mike’s dad was killed in an accidental shooting. His mom later married Dr. Hill of Lyons. Mike went to Hutch Juco and then Jerry thinks he went on to KU. He thinks he may have taken over the families large feed mill business in Hutch. Jerry said Mike had the fastest 57 Black Chevy in the region and that he an Mike were double dating when Jerry totaled his 1955 Chevy going to Hutch. Jerry said he had a date with Connie Groth and Mike with Colleen Nixon. I remember they were very fortunate to have escaped with their lives in that wreck. They hit a bridge on Plum Street and Colleen ended up in the stream below. If you know where Mike is let us know.

We could sure use some subscriptions or donations for the alumni website for the webmaster. Send checks to the Lyons Alumni Club, Lyons State Bank, Lyons, KS 67554 or go to the website and you can use your credit card. Thanks.

Hope you are all doing well.

Sax Drake Class of 1961

Lyons High School Alumni Update - 11-01-08

I ask all of you to take an hour out of your busy schedule and listen to a speech by Ezra Taft Benson called Stand Up for Freedom. You can google it. It is an incredible speech about this wonderful country of ours and the dangers he foresaw about its future..

Just a few more days before the election; get out and vote for the person you believe will be the best leader for our country. It is a shame our country has become so divided.

Let's talk about high school stuff!

If you were in Lyons from the years approximately 1959 - 1964 the basketball coach was Bob Smith. He was so passionate about our hitting free throws that we had to be at the gym around 7:00 a.m. to shoot 100 free throws before school. Ralph Voss, Class of 1961 did some great work in finding this information for me. We had heard the story but here it is. The K-State Wildcats were 4-2 when they played 6-2 KU. A win would send the Cats back into the conference hunt. The coaches were Jack Gardner and Phog Allen They had both won 12 games against each other.
Kansas ( Manhattan ): KU delivered a fatal blow to K-State, defeating the Cats 80-78. The Hawks led for most of the game and held a 79-76 lead with less than a minute to play. The Cats Gary Bergen nailed a tip-in with 45 seconds to go, and when KU tried to stall, the Purple forced a turnover. With K-State down by one point, the Jayhawks Ken Buller fouled the Wildcats Bob Smith with just 10 seconds remaining. Kansas State fans were in hysterics as the sopohomore from Hope , Kansas went to the line. Smith missed the first free throw and then the second. The Jayhawks secured the rebound and scored a final point as KU's Dean Smith (became a great coach at North Carolina ) was fouled in the rebound scramble.

Thank you Ralph. I wish Ralph could have graduated with us, as he is a special person and I will always consider him a very good friend.

Our track coach was Larry Frisbie and he competed on the KU track team from 1953-1957. He ran the quarter mile. Coach was from Stafford . He was a very good track coach. At the Kansas State Indoor Track Meet, I begged to get out of the quarter because I had the fastest qualifying time in the low hurdles. Since we did not have a track I had never practiced over 100 yards in the hurdles and out doors they were 180 yards. I was always ahead or even for the first 80 - 100 yards and then they would fly by me and I might get a 4th or 5th place. Those were ribbons back then. Coach Frisbie told me to come back up in a little while and he would think about letting me out of the quarter. I waited awhile and went back up just certain he was going to let me out of the quarter and to my astonishment he told me not only was I going to run the quarter, I was going to win a first place medal. I'm not sure if I told him he was crazy but if not it definitely went thru my mind. The reason I wanted out of the quarter was that the next race after the quarter was the low hurdles. There was no way I could run both. Coach said the runners and there coaches haven't competed indoors. He said the curves are very tight and you have to run them differently. He said let's go down to the track and I will show you how to run the curves. I still wasn't really convinced because these were the best runners in the state and I knew most of them by the back of their heads because that is where I usually was. There was a group of us in the state that at the finish line we would be bunched but I was at the back of the bunch pretty consistently. He told me what to do and not only did I win the race I set a state record and it was all because of coach Frisbie. He was really tough on me a few times but I thought he was a great coach and person and I miss him.

Statements made in 1955:
"It's too bad things are so tough nowadays. I see where married women are having to work to make ends meet."
"Did you see where some baseball player just signed for $75,000 a year just to play ball. It wouldn't surprise me if some day they will make more than the president."
"Thank goodness I won't live to see the day when the government takes half our income in taxes. I sometimes wonder if we are electing the best people."
"The drive-in restaurant is convenient in bad weather but I seriously doubt whether they will ever catch on."

Do any of you have alumni you would like to contact or maybe just wondering what may have happened to certain alumni. Wasn't their an alum in the class of 1960 named Gary Smith. He was a good looking guy that always had a smile on his face. He was a pretty good athlete too. Let me know if you have alumni you have lost contact with. When we get the list up on the website we will be able to go in and see if alumni have registered. Webmaster is still working on that aspect of the website.

Lyons Daily News Aug. 1st 2005: In the good old days - 50 years ago 1955
4-H Tour and Display. The Lyons Conquerors 4-H Club held a project tour Sat. morning and a food and clothing display and demonstration on making muffins by Myrna Darling at the Floyd Jung home. Following the tour and demonstration the group had a swimming party.
The projects shown on the tour were Duroc hogs, room improvement and woodworking, Mike Stewart; Duroc, Berkshire, and Yorkshire hogs, chickens, and Ponca wheat, Keith & Art Johnson; colt and Angus deferred steers, Duroc pigs, Pawnee wheat and yellow buff Bantam chickens, Junior Clarke; Southdown fat lamb and Duroc pigs, Alma Smith; Angus heifer and milo, David Keller; Shorthorn heifers, Vernon Soeken; Sky-hi chickens, Roy McKinnis; foods, rabbits, and Duroc pigs, Paula Jung; clothing, foods and Duroc pigs, Sharon Jung; Milking Shorthorn, Johnnie Cook; Milking Shorthorn Lila Cook; rabbits and Milking Shorthorn, Gary Cook; rabbits and Milking Shorthorn Margaret Cook; Bantam chickens, Barbara Keesling; room improvement, Glenda Reed; Shorthorn cows, Herbert & Harvey Monroe; steers Jack England and potatoes, Fred England.

We lost another valued alumni. Ronnie Wilcox, Class of 1965, I believe. Ronnie had lived in Chase since 1967 and at one time was Mayor and served on the city council. He was a retired oilfield superintendent. He will be missed and our prayers go out to the family.
Sax Drake Class of 1961