Archives for June 2009

Anticipation and excitement rises as Clarendon starts preparing for this year’s 132nd Annual Saints’ Roost Celebration to be held July 2-4.

The festivities will begin July 2 starting with the Downtown Merchants’ Western Days Street Sale, which will run all day long. There will also be a Trade Show in the Clarendon Community Center at the rodeo ground starting at 5:00 p.m., which will take place all three days.

The fun continues that night starting at 7:30 p.m. with a 16 and under Junior Rodeo, which will be held at the COEA arena, followed by an outdoor dance on the COEA slab.

Each night of the rodeo there will be a calf scramble, open calf, Jr. donkey and steer riding available to all young cowboys and cowgirls. Boy Scout Troop 433 will provide concessions for all three nights of the rodeo.

The all day long Downtown Merchants’ Western Days Street Sale will continue to kick things off July 3rd, and a Depression Lunch will take place from 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. Henson’s famous annual Turtle race will begin at 3:00 p.m. at Third and Kearney.

Later on that night, another rodeo will take place at 7:30 p.m. at the COEA with an outdoor dance immediately following.

The busiest day of the celebration will be July 4, starting at 8:00 a.m. with Open Barrel Racing. Lineup and registration for the Kids’ Bike Parade will be at 9:30 a.m. across from Henson’s. The Kids’ Bicycle Parade will start rolling at 10:00 a.m.

Also starting at 10:00 a.m. will be the County Craft Fair and the Senor Citizens’ Bake Sale, both taking place on the Courthouse Square. For booth space at the County Craft Fair, contact the Donley County Extension Office.

The Old Settler’s reunion will start at 10:30 a.m. with live entertainment. The Al Morrah Shrine Club’s annual BBQ Lunch will start serving at 11:00 a.m. and will continue until the food runs out.

Registration and lineup for the annual Western Parade will be at 1:00 p.m. at the baseball field, and the parade will take off at 2:00 p.m. The Lion’s Club Cow Patty Bingo will begin playing at 3:00 p.m.

That night, the annual COEA Ranch rodeo will open at 7:30 p.m. followed by a live band dance featuring Ed Montana. The St. Mary’s Catholic Women Quilt Drawing will take place at 9:00 p.m.

 By Bruce Howard  

The First Baptist Church of Hedley will celebrate 100 years of ministry on Father’s Day, June 21, 2009, and the public is invited to join the festivities.

The Reverend Cecil Matthews of Weatherford, Texas, is credited with organizing the church in 1909; but interestingly, he is not considered the church’s first pastor and is not listed among the 28 charter members.

The church’s first pastor was Reverend Hensley, the first of 31 pastors the church has had in its century of service.

During the pastorate of Reverend Reece, the church’s third pastor, the first sanctuary was built at 3rd & Main, the same property the church building is on today.

Reverend J.S. Tipton led the church at a time when the sanctuary was destroyed by fire in 1957. Most church records were regrettably lost during that time. Brother Tipton aled the church to rebuild and construct its parsonage doing much of the construction himself. The present sanctuary was constructed in 1958.

During C.H. Murphy’s pastorate the education wing of the church was built in 1967.

Two of the church’s pastors have continued to minister in the Panhandle area for many years. Lewis Ellis, who pastored from 1975-1978, went on to pastor First Baptist Lefors for 17 years. Bryan Knowles was pastor from 1981-1988, and is still active in pulpits to this day, supplying for churches that need him.

Dr. Jim Howard was the church’s long-term interim pastor from 1991-1993; and during part of that pastorate, his son Bruce visited the church, preached and sang, and was later called to serve as pastor in 1993. He continues as pastor today, having led the church to build a new fellowship hall that serves both the church and the community.

“Our church is marked by a tremendous spirit of giving, a warmth of fellowship between adults and youth, and especially by a call from God to make disciples,” Pastor Howard said.

“We have had a part in ordaining five men to the gospel ministry in the past eight years, and God continues to allow us to help folks grow in their spiritual walk so they can minister the truth of Christ to the world. I pray the Lord gives us another hundred years to serve Him.”

The church will have a special morning service this Sunday beginning at 10:45 a.m. with a pot-luck luncheon following the service and then a special afternoon service from 1:30 to 3:00 p.m. In both services former pastors and ordained ministers will share testimonies of their time at the church and give the church a challenge for the future. There will also be special music.

Everyone is welcome to attend the services and luncheon.

Tragedy struck Mary Vorheis on Wednesday, June 10, when a fire devoured her home southeast of Clarendon.

According to Jeremy Powell, Clarendon Volunteer Fire Department First Assistant Chief, the fire was called in at 12:28 p.m. by a passerby who spotted the smoke. The fire is thought to have burned from 45 minutes to an hour before it was even noticed.

The fire took an hour to be fully extinguished. Responders included; 14 Clarendon Fire Department firemen, five fire trucks, Donley County Sheriff’s Office and Clarendon EMS.

“I would recommend Clarendon’s Volunteer Fire Department to anybody. They’re great,” Mary Vorheis said. “The Sheriff’s Department couldn’t have handled it better; Butch was out there in a hurry and a deputy stayed there with me until my relatives showed up. I think they’re all super.” 

Lightning was blamed as the source of the fire. The flames started in the living room since it received the most severe damage. The rest of the house suffers from smoke and heat damage.

According to Vorheis, the house was insured and some things were able to be recovered, like a chest of  drawers and some pictures, but most everything was gone.

“The house had a metal roof and was sealed really tight, so it was like an oven,” Powell said. “What didn’t burn was baked.”

Fortunately, the house was unoccupied when the house set ablaze.

“I’m the only one who lived in the house because my husband is in the Nursing Home,” Vorheis said. “I had just finished up working for Pat Knolls when Johnny Floyd heard about my house on the scanner. He asked Billy Chadwick to call me and tell me, since I have known him for a long time.”

As of now, Vorheis is living in Annie Shelton’s house in Clarendon. Since her son Ben is in the United States Air Force and is currently serving in Iraq, Vorheis also qualifies for help from the United Way for family crisis. 

This fire was only one of the incidents that occurred that day that required immediate attention. Powell said firemen received three calls in a row; one being a man involved in a rollover accident who reported that the wind blew his car off Hwy. 70 South. He experienced no injuries. The other call was concerning a small grass fire.

A fund for Vorheis has been set up at Donley County State Bank. The community’s support for her through this difficult time is deeply appreciated.

“The community has really been wonderful,” Vorheis said. “I would like to thank everyone for their love, concern and prayers.”

Clarendon Family Medical Center is proud to announce the addition of a new member to their staff, Sarah Burcham, who has been working as a Physician’s Assistant at the clinic for about three months.

Burcham was born in Logan, Utah. When she was six months old, she moved to the small town of Bayville, Colorado, where she was raised on a farm and eventually graduated from high school.
“Bayville is about the same size as Clarendon.  There is actually two more people there than in Clarendon when you look it up,” Burcham says. “Since I don’t have a lot of experience in the center of big city or anything like that, the small town field is what I am used to and what I consider as home.”

Burcham attended college at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, where she received her Associate’s degree and Bachelor’s of Science in Biology. She then received her Physician Assistant’s degree in upstate New York by Syracuse. It was at that time that Burcham met her husband of almost five years, Daniel Burcham.
Burcham’s experience previous to working at Clarendon Family Medical Center includes working as a nurse’s aide in home health and drawing blood at a hospital for about two years.

“I have experienced working in both small towns and larger cities because when I was a home health aide, I traveled around, and some of the areas were a little smaller than others. We were located in Crowell, Utah, which was a bigger city, but then I went into the surrounding areas,” Burcham said.

One person who made a huge impact on Burcham’s decision to be a PA was her mother.
“I was thinking about either attending nursing school or going on to get my doctorate degree and MD license, so I was talking to her because she is an RN and knows a lot of the professions in the medical field,” Burcham said. “She met a PA and told me that the job would be perfect for me, and it turns out she was right.”

Burcham discovered Clarendon Family Medical Center while she was searching online.
“I was only applying in small towns because I was from a smaller town, and I knew I loved the field there,” Burcham said. “This one came up, so I got an interview, and it just fit perfectly. I couldn’t work for better people.”

Not only does Bucham bring her medical expertise and knowledge to Clarendon, but she also brings her family; husband Daniel and eleven-month-old son Cayson. Daniel currently is caring for their son, Cayson, and renovating the house they just bought in Clarendon. While attending college in New York with Burcham, he owned a home renovation business.

“The community has been very welcoming to our family. We really appreciate how nice everyone has been,” Burcham said. “This has really been a great experience.”

Burcham was an active member of her recent community in Syracuse, New York. She and her husband were both involved members at their church. Burcham participated in community service and she also went into some of the inner-city schools and participated in after-school programs designed to keep kids out of drugs and alcohol and give students the opportunity to look at the medical field and see it as a possibility for everyone. 

The Burcham family attends church at the Church of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints in Childress. They can be seen doing anything active outside, such as playing basketball, volleyball, tennis, and golf.

“Out of everything we do, playing with Cayson is really the most fun for us,” Burcham remarks. “He really keeps us entertained.”

Carelessness on the part of four suspected crooks led to their capture last week after the burglary of a Hedley residence.

According to Sheriff Butch Blackburn, the home of Rex Fish in Hedley, which is the former Security State Bank building, was burglarized on May 27 and again on June 3.

The investigation of the crime pointed to Memphis, and as the sheriff headed down US 287 he found debris along the highway that resembled items that had been stolen from the Fish residence.
Blackburn consulted with the Memphis Police Department and traveled with them to 911 Cleveland Street where people were gathered in the alley behind the residence and items visible through an open garage door were clearly from the burglary.

Four subjects were detained and questioned. Amber Morris, 22; Kyle Murray, 17; and Timothy Wilson, 22, were all arrested on June 3. The fourth subject, Michael Henderson, 17, was arrested on June 7.  All have been charged with Burglary of a Habitation.

Blackburn said the investigation yielded three pick-up loads of stolen property that have been returned to Donley County.

The sheriff also recovered a 2009 GMC pickup truck which was used in the burglary and had been stolen from Brown Pontiac GMC in Amarillo on June 2.

All four of the subjects have confessed to their crimes, Blackburn said. Wilson remains in the Donley County Jail. The others are out on bond.

The Hedley School Board selected a former Hartley administrator as interim superintendent during a called meeting Sunday afternoon.
Board members met behind closed doors for seven minutes before voting in open session to hire Jimmy Hoyle at a rate of $375 per day, five days per week with a housing allowance.

“I’m looking forward to working at Hedley,” Hoyle told the Enterprise. “It will be a challenge, but there are good things happening here, and we just need to just need to shift the focus a bit.”

Hoyle became Hedley’s acting superintendent Monday morning even though Bryan Hill is still under contract as superintendent until the end of this month.

“Mr. Hill is going to gradually move out of the position,” Hoyle said. “I’ve talked to him, and he’s been quite helpful.”

Prior to his retirement in December, Hoyle spent 12 years as superintendent of the Hartley school, which has about 200 students. He has 36 years of experience in education with all but four of those in the Texas Panhandle.
Hoyle’s top priorities will be personnel and budget issues. Following that he will lead Hedley’s search for a new fulltime superintendent.

“We’re going to post that position soon and start collecting applications,” Hoyle said. “No timeline has been set, but from my perspective we need to get someone in here to stabilize the situation. I would like to have someone in place before school begins, but we’ll see how that goes.”

In other school business this weekend, the Hedley School Board accepted the resignation of science and music teacher Bruce Howard.

Bargain shoppers will be in for a treat during the fourth annual “Trash to Treasures” garage sale event to be held in Clarendon and nearby communities this Saturday, June 6.

Twenty-one individual garage sales are scheduled to be held. A complete description of each sale is printed on the official Treasure Map located opposite the Big E Classifieds in this week’s Enterprise.

From an air hockey table to umbrellas, this weekend’s sales will feature hundreds of treasures just waiting to be uncovered at bargain prices.

“Trash to Treasures” is being promoted with advertising dollars in area communities; and many people from neighboring counties typically attend. A citywide sale is also being held in Memphis this weekend.