Cherryvale and Caney Valley high school football players dominated the list of Tri-Valley All-League selections for the 2008 season.

At Caney Valley, senior runningback Jakob Price was a pick for first-team offense while senior lineman Brandon Stephens was also chosen for the first-team offense.

Brad Terry, a senior who battled a foot injury in the final two games of the season, earned honorable mention status at the tight end position.

The Bullpups had six players earn recognition on the defensive side of the ball. Kyle Howard, a senior defensive end, was a first-team defense player while Dustin Bayless, a sophomore lineman, picked up first-team recognition on defense.

Joel Nunneley, a senior defensive back, also was chosen for the first-team defense.

Caney Valley had two players make honorable mention defense status. They included juniors Gable LaForge, a defensive back, and Dustin Artherton, punter.

At Cherryvale High School, the league champion Chargers had five players on the first team offense. They included senior Robert Lane at running back, senior Brandon Blackburn at quarterback, senior Chance Baker at tight end, junior Dillon Blake on offensive line, and sophomore Micah Booe at center.

Roman Lopez, a junior wide receiver, was chosen for the honorable mention offense list.

Shane Hammer, a junior, was the top pick for all-league kicker.
On defense, Blackburn was a first-team player defensive back while Booe gained first team honors as a defenesive lineman.

Also earning first team honors were Ryan Studebaker, senior linebacker, Kenan Booe, senior lienbacker, and Michael Bolinger, junior defensive back.

The honorable mention defense list had Chance Baker gain honors as a defensive end.

Tri-Valley All-League

Offense first team

Jake Price, RB, Caney Valley; Robert Lane, RB, Cherryvale; Thad Wells, RB Humboldt; Brandon Blackburn, QB, Cherryvale; Andrew Whitaker, QB, Humboldt; Chase Kewley, WR, Burlington; Hayes Farwell, WR, Fredonia; Chance Baker, TE, Cherryvale; Micah Booe, C, Cheryvale ; Brandon Stephens, OL, Caney Valley; Dillon Blake, OL, Cherryvale; Evan Ratzlaff, OL, Fredonia; Micah Poovey, OL, Humboldt.

Offense honorable mention

Justin Davis, RB, Eureka; Corey Smith, QB, Burlington; Roman Lopez, WR, Cherryvale; Troy Davis, TE, Humboldt; Brad Terry, TE, Caney Valley; Ryan Louia, OL, Burlington; Cody Cramer, OL, Humboldt.

Defense first team

Kyle Howard, DE, Caney Valley; Ryan Louia, DL, Burlington; Dustin Bayless, DL, Caney Valley; Micah Booe, DL, Cherryvale; Buddy Rickerson, DL, Fredonia; Ryan Studebaker, LB, Cherryvale; Kenan Booe, LB, Cherryvale; Justin Davis, LB, Eureka; Mathew Fowler, LB, Fredonia; Andrew Whitaker, LB, Humboldt; Thad Wells, LB, Humboldt; Blake Higgins, DB, Burlington; Joel Nunneley, DB, Caney Valley; Mike Bolinger, DB, Cherryvale; Brandon Blackburn, DB, Cherryvale; Brent Matile, P, Yates Center; Shane Hammer, K, Cherryvale.

Defense honorable mention
Chance Baker, DE, Cherryvale; Jacob Manbeck, DL, Humboldt; Gable LaForge, DB, Caney Valley; Wyatt JuAire, DB, Fredonia; Brent Matile, DB, Yates Center; Dustin Artherton, P, Caney Valley; Thad Wells, K, Humboldt.

The Caney Valley High School Scholars’ Bowl team achieved a milestone on Monday, winning the school’s first-ever championship at a Scholars’ Bowl tournament.

At a meet on Monday, Caney Valley achiev ed the team championship after recording seven perfect rounds. Earning the championship trophy came on two other recent big wins, including second place at a Burlington tournament and fourth place at a meet in Eureka.

“It’s a big deal for our program to win first place at a meet,” said Les Zoch, Caney Valley head coach. “It’s the first time the team has brought home a team championship.”

Team members at the Yates Center tournament included Shelby Hanigan, Brandon Blagg, Chris Henry, Dillon Barton and Blaine Heady. Hanigan, Blagg, Henry and Heady represented CVHS at the Eureka meet while Hanigan, Blagg, Henry and Heady joined team member Jakob Price at the Burlington tournament, where the team finished with eight wins and two losses.

In each Scholars’ Bowl round, participants are asked questions in social science, language arts, mathematics, science, fine arts, foreign language and current events. Points are awarded for each correct answer, and bonus points are awarded for the successful answer in a follow-up question.

A change in the Cherryvale Planning and Zoning Commission is possible if a recommendation by a majority of the commission gains the blessing of Mayor John Wright.

At the planning and zoning commission’s monthly meeting last Thursday, commissioners voted to recommend that commissioner members Thurman Swain and Richard Tincknell be reappointed to the commission for another three-year term. The commission failed to reappoint commissioner Ken Corle.

The commission’s recommendations will be forwarded to Mayor John Wright for final consideration. Those recommendations will likely be undertaken at the Cherryvale City Council meeting in December.

Tincknell and Swain, who were absent from the meeting, received a unanimous vote for their reappointment. A motion to reappoint Corle to a three-year term failed on a 2-3 vote. Voting against the reappointment were commission members Tim Goode, Josh Cavaness and Sam Peugh. Corle, along with commissioner Ben Bellmore, voted in favor of the reappointment.

Following the failed motion to reappoint Corle, the commission voted 4-0-1 to allow Corle’s term to expire and to seek applicants for his position. Commission members are encouraging residents from rural Cherryvale to apply for the position, although the position is open to any person living within the city limits and within three miles of the city boundaries. Corle abstained from that vote.

Trey Cocking, city administrator, was at the commission’s meeting due to the absence of planning and zoning director Ron Davis. Cocking said commissioners provided no explanations or comments following their decisions concerning commissioner reappointments.

The National Weather Service recognized the City of Cherryvale on Monday night for being one of only three Kansas communities to be ready and able to deal with emergency response in the event of a natural disaster.

Cherryvale, Horton and Scranton are the Kansas communities that the National Weather Service has deemd as being “StormReady” to deal with tornadoes and other disasters. “StormReady” signs were presented to the council by Chance Hayes of the Wichita office of the National Weather Service. Those signs will be erected on Cherryvale entrance signs on U.S. 169 highway.

The National Weather Service applies the “StormReady” designation to towns that multiple communication sources between emergency responders and the National Weather Service. Storm spotter education, public readiness education, and emergency operations plans are also among the criterion used in the “StormReady” title.

In other business transacted at Monday’s meeting, city councilors:

• approved a resolution setting the dates of holidays during 2009.

Eleven holiday dates, most of which are federally recognized holidays, were established. Added to the list of city holidays for 2009 was Martin Luther King Jr., Holiday on Jan. 19, 2009.

• heard a report from Trey Cocking, city administrator, regarding the status of water and sewer funds for 2008. Cocking said the city’s water fund has been down in collection by as much as seven percent compared to previous years because of a wetter climate during 2008. Fewer people are having to use water for gardens, pools, or shrubbery because of the above-normal rainfall during the year.

While having abundant rain is good for gardeners, it poses a challenge for city coffers. Under the city’s contract with the Public Wholesale Water District #4, the city is bound to buy some $21,000 in treated water per month from the water district. In previous years, the city’s water usage falls under the minimum contract level once per year. In 2008 alone, the water usage has fallen four times under the minimum contract level.

With less water being consumed, city coffers also have fewer dollars from water bills. Under the current water rate structure and volume usage, the city’s water fund may be insolvent by April 2011.

However, Cocking stressed that the water fund can gain balance with city staff keeping a constant vigil over expenses, stopping costly water leaks, and keeping water loss to a minimum.

“I strongly believe that we can take care of the issue through cost containment,” Cocking explained after the meeting. “We’re using less water this year due to the weather but also because we’re making a concerted effort to stop water leaks and control our water loss.”

• held an executive session, which is closed to the press and public, via telephone with Teresa Woody, a Kansas City, Mo., lawyer hired by the City of Cherryvale to handle legal issues pertaining to the remediation of the former National Zinc Company smelter site in the city’s northwest quarter. After the closed-door session, councilors agreed to have Woody issue a letter to U.S. Steel Corp., and CitiGroup concerning eight issues that remain unresolved in the remediation of pollution from the former smelter site. U.S. Steel and CitiGroup are the parties that the Environmental Protection Agency contends are responsible for removing the pollution and contaminants stemming from the years when the smelter was established as the Edgar Zinc Smelting Company in 1896. A large-scale pollution removal effort was undertaken in 2007 with hundreds of tons of polluted dirt removed and relocated to a repository site at a secure area on the smelter site grounds.

Totally absent from the pages of Caney history is the story of one of jazz music’s foremost banjo players.

And, last Friday, some jazz banjoists across the world paid homage to the late Clancy Hayes, who was born in Caney on Nov. 14, 1908, by strumming a few bars of some of Hayes’ most famous tunes.

“He definitely deserves the notoriety and attention,” said noted jazz banjoist Jack Convery of Jack Convery Banjo Jazz, found at www.banjojazz.com. “I was honored enough to have met Clancy several weeks before his death in 1972. And, I can tell that he influenced me as well as thousands of others in the jazz music profession.”

Very little is known about Clancy Hayes’ early life, other than he was born in Caney. No plaque commemorates his life in his hometown. Nor is there any mention of his birth — or his music career — in local history books or museums.

But what is known about Clancy is that he perfected the jazz banjo — a folk instrument that had to muscle its way through brassy New Orleans ragtime and bold Memphis blues to gain stature with jazz music lovers.

After cutting his teeth on the vaudeville circuit, Hayes turned up in San Francisco in 1926 as a teenager. One year later, he was a regular on the Frisco music scene and performed regularly on radio in the San Francisco area.

Beginning in 1938, Hayes teamed up with Lu Watters to form Lu Watters’s Yerba Buena Jazz Band — a group that sparked what jazz lovers refer to as the “West Coast sound” of Dixieland jazz music. Hayes also played with Bob Scobey’s Frisco Jazz Band (Scobey also was an apostle of the Lu Watters jazz revival) from 1950 to 1959 where Hayes’ light baritone voice and familiar banjo plucking made the band a favorite in the California jazz scene.

Hayes later set out on a solo career, where he made several albums, including “Swingin’ Minstrel” in 1963 and “Oh! By Jingo!” in 1964. Among the familiar songs heard on those albums were “Ace in the Hole” and “Rose of Washington Square.” He also honored one of his hometowns in the song “Parsons, Kansas Blues” (Hayes did live in Parsons for a brief time following his birth in Caney).

And, while Hayes’ music style was a melting pot of ragtime, blues, Dixieland and swing, he gained greater fame with his novelty composition, “Huggin’ And A Chalkin’,” which was later recorded by Hoagy Carmichael. Country musician Jerry Reed also recorded the toe-tapping, hip-swaying song in the late 1970s.

Because of its campy lyrics, “Huggin’ And A Chalkin’” became synonymous with Caney’s own Clancy Hayes, and it would become a tune that crowds would demand until his death in 1972.

Said Convery, the noted modern-day jazz banjoist, “When I met Clancy shortly before his death, he had lived the true life of a jazz musician. He drank a lot and smoked a lot. But, he could play that banjo like nobody else.”

The life and times of Clancy Hayes have collected dust and cobwebs in attic boxes filled with old vinyl records, however his influence on jazz music can be felt today, Convery said. Clancy Hayes’ style of music helped spark the Sacramento Jazz Jubilee, which is entering its 36th season in 2009. And, it’s at that jubilee where jazz musician bring together the sweet chords from ragtime, Dixieland and blues to form the style of music that emanated from Hayes’ vocal pipes and his banjo fingers, Convery said.

Bill Miller, popular host of “The Bill Miller Show” heard on dozens of radio stations across the nation, said he still pulls out a Clancy Hayes album each year in celebration of the jazz banjoist’s birthday.

“My first job was at KLKC radio in Parsons, and I usually play Clancy’s ‘Parsons Kansas Blues’ from time to time, not only as a salute to Clancy Hayes but also as a salute to the town where I held my first job,” said Miller, who spent 16 years as an announcer on KGGF radio in Coffeyville.

Miller, an afficionado of oldies music, said the Dixieland jazz sound that musicians like Clancy Hayes perfected, isn’t heard much in today’s jazz circles. In fact, many people associated Hoagy Carmichael with the “Huggin’ And A Chalkin’” song than the song’s original composer.

However, whenever a jazz banjo is plucked or strummed in a concert or music festival, the influence of Caney’s own Clancy Hayes can be heard in the instrument, said Convery, the California jazz banjo buff.

“One thing about the jazz banjo: you either love it or you hate it,” said Convery. “But when you hear recordings of Clancy Hayes, his banjo will just make you smile.”

• Andy Taylor is a lifelong resident of Montgomery County and an avid scholar on county history. If you have a subject from Montgomery County’s past that you think should be featured in “Going Back In Time,” contact Taylor at (620) 331-9718 (cellular) or send an email to chronicle@taylornews.org.

BY ANDY TAYLOR
Montgomery County Chronicle

CHERRYVALE — City councilors on Monday threw their support for Watco, Inc., which is the parent company of the South Kansas and Oklahoma Railroad, to seek a federal grant that, if awarded, would help the company relocate the railroad company’s switching yard.

Councilors learned that Watco was applying to the Federal Railroad Administration for funds that would be used to buy property and erect a switching yard in an area generally located between U.S. 169 and U.S. 400 northwest of Cherryvale. Watco’s current switching yard, located in the middle of the downtown business district, has been the subject of consternation and frustration for community residents and the railroad company because of blocked crossings and long delays in switching cars.

Last year, Watco announced plans to seek property north of Cherryvale for a possible switching yard. However, the area along SKO lines between Cherryvale and Neodesha may pose a better option for a switching yard’s location, councilors learned on Monday.

Watco officials were in rural Cherryvale on Monday to begin the process of talking to property owners in the planned area about the prospects of locating the switch yard to that vicinity. Watco officials envision having all switching taking place in that new rail yard, which would eliminate the blocked crossings and long delays in the downtown business district. However, the SKO Railroad would still use the main line in the downtown railroad yard to send trains to various destinations in Kansas and Oklahoma.

The City of Cherryvale is not contributing any money to Watco’s plans, however councilors approved a resolution attesting to their support for the company’s plans to seek federal government funds for the switching yard’s relocation.

BY ANDY TAYLOR
Montgomery County Chronicle

CANEY — Whether to allow a private business provide ambulance services in Caney or have the City of Caney’s current ambulance program be upgraded to a paramedic-level service will be discussed by city councilors at a special meeting set for Monday, Dec. 1. The 7 p.m., meeting will be held at the Caney City Hall.

At last Monday’s monthly city council meeting, councilors unanimously agreed to further discuss the status of Caney’s ambulance program after hearing a pitch from an Oklahoma-based ambulance service to provide a paramedic-level ambulance service to the community. Integrity EMS, which is based in Afton, Okla., is proposing to provide an ambulance crew in Caney for a 60-day trial period. During that trial period, Integrity EMS would be the first responder to any emergency calls requiring an ambulance crew. The City of Caney’s current ambulance department would serve as a secondary response.

Should the city council find favor in Integrity’s services prior to the end of that 60-day period, then Integrity and the City of Caney would negotiate a contract for the Oklahoma firm to provide all ambulance services to the Caney area, said Rick Bronson, an Integrity owner.

Bronson spoke to the council for about 20 minutes, providing the councilors with details about the firm’s services and level of care. He noted that Integrity uses paramedics, who have a higher-degree of training and education on medical issues compared to emergency medical technicians (EMTs) on all ambulance runs (the City of Caney’s ambulance services now utilizes only EMT-trained crews). Having a paramedic aboard an ambulance can guarantee further care and stabilization of a patient prior to their arrival at an emergency room, he said.

Bronson did not provide any details on Integrity’s fees for ambulance services or if the Oklahoma company would use city and county sales tax money as a subsidy for the privately-owned service. Those details would have to be negotiated between Integrity and the city council, Bronson advised.

Councilors held a lively discussion on whether to turn over the city’s ambulance services to a private firm, upgrade the current ambulance services to the level of a paramedic response, or maintain the status quo.

However, councilors had more questions than answers about ambulance services, and all were in agreement that further discussion should be conducted before the council considers upgrades to local services or allowing a private service to perform ambulance services.

“I’d like to be informed on what our options are,” said councilor Penny Coy. “And, I’d like to know the pros and cons of each of our options.”

Councilor Jason Moore, who initially broached the issue of a private ambulance service at the council’s October meeting, said the council needed hard information — such as amount of overtime hours now undertaken by the city’s police/ambulance department, amount of money spent on the local ambulance service, amount of money collected from ambulance fees and/or insurance reimbursements — to make a fair comparison between public versus private ambulance programs.

City administrator Don Whitman cautioned councilors that the complexities of a city budget would be impacted should the council decide to use a private ambulance firm. He said the city’s general fund budget usually brings in about $140,000 in various revenue forms, such as city and local sales taxes, to be used for dispatching and ambulance services. Should a private firm take over the city’s current ambulance service, the city coffers would be absent about $140,000.

“It would be hard for the general fund to make up that kind of money,” Whitman told the council.

Mayor Dale McBride said he invited councilors to continue their discussions at the Dec. 1 meeting, but the mayor also emphasized that much more should be considered in the public versus private ambulance discussion than just the costs of operation. The city’s ambulance service is a component of the city’s police department, he said. By allowing a private service to operate an ambulance program would also have an impact on the police and dispatching services afforded to local residents, he said.

“I think there is much more than needs to be considered than just the costs of operating an ambulance service,” he said.