This Week

Clarendon High School has announced the top students for the Class of 2024 are Toby Leeper and Avery Halsey.

The top students will be recognized along with other graduating members of the class during commencement exercises at the Harned Sisters Fine Arts Center at Clarendon College next Friday, May 24.

Toby Leeper is the class Valedictorian with a weighted grade point average of 6.16. He is the son of Timothy and Catrina Leeper. He has attended Clarendon CISD since his kindergarten year. He was named to the A Honor Roll with a 4.0 unweighted GPA for all four years of high school.

Toby qualified for Regional UIL in science, mathematics, and current events over all four years. He was a state academic alternate in science in his junior year along with earning the National Rural and Small Town Scholars award. Toby was a National Merit Commended Scholar and was a member of the National Honor Society. He was a co-founding member of the Babble-On Historical Society, among several other distinctions.

Toby plans to attend Texas State University as a Terry Scholar immediately following high school, where he will major in Aquatic Biology, aiming to achieve a postgraduate degree to work in the research field and volunteer for conservation efforts.

Avery Halsey is the Salutatorian with a weighted GPA of 6.01. She is the daughter of Matt and Stephanie Halsey and has attended Clarendon CISD all four years of high school. She has been involved in UIL Academics, qualifying for the regional meet all four years and attending the UIL State Academic Meet in copy and editing her junior and senior year.

Avery was also involved in the gifted and talented program, student council, and was a class representative all four years. She was inducted into NHS her sophomore year and served as president her senior year. She was involved in service projects such as Snack Pak 4 Kids, the Food Bank, Clarendon Senior Center, and the Shattered Dreams drunk driving awareness project.

She also has been a dancer at Lone Star Ballet for eight years and performed in over 15 productions with the ballet, along with teaching at Lone Star Dance Academy for two years.

She will be attending Texas Tech University as a biology major with a Pre-med concentration and minoring in dance.

The Clarendon City Council voted against a proposed “Sanctuary City for the Unborn” ordinance last Thursday, May 9, with aldermen saying the bill would come close to overstepping city authority and cause division in the community.

The vote was 3-0 with Aldermen Eulaine McIntosh, Tommy Hill, and Terri Floyd all voting against the proposed ordinance. Alderman John Lockhart was absent from Thursday’s meeting due to a work conflict, but he voiced his opposition to the ordinance when it was first presented last month.

The regular meeting, which was held at the Mulkey Theatre, was attended by about 80 people, many of whom were from out of town. Public comments lasted over an hour with 18 people speaking for the ordinance and 13 against it. Those in attendance were given the opportunity to register their opinion on the issue when they arrived with 39 in favor and 31 opposed.

Arena of Life Cowboy Church Pastor Bunk Skelton was among those in favor of the ordinance and said the issue was about life and the will of God and said he approached the subject from his role as the father of an aborted child.

Also speaking in favor was Mark Lee Dickson, the political activist who first sent the ordinance to the city. He said the ordinance would close loopholes in the Texas Heartbeat Act. He said the Odessa and Lubbock mayors support it and said Attorney General Ken Paxton approves of it and said those who reject the ordinance reject the Heartbeat Act.

Rev. Ken McIntosh of the First Christian Church was among those speaking against the sanctuary ordinance. McIntosh first spoke out against the measure at the city’s April meeting and said he was more opposed now. In a prepared statement given ahead of time to the city and the Enterprise, McIntosh wrote, “Passing the ordinance only further divides and damages our community.” He also wrote, “Most of what the ordinance contains is already Texas law.”

Sara SoRelle also spoke against the measure. “We live in a community where differences exist. This ordinance would split Clarendon in two.”

Once the item came up on the business agenda, Alderman Eulaine McIntosh spoke first and discussed the research that she and other city officials had done to learn more about the proposal.

“When we do this job we want to be fair and make informed decisions,” McIntosh said. “We know we won’t make everyone happy. This ordinance comes very close to overstepping the city’s authority. I think our best course would be to vote no.”

Alderman Tommy Hill said he has a job and his employers are the citizens and taxpayers of Clarendon.

“I am pro-life,” Hill said. “State law is already in place that makes abortion illegal in Texas. We have church people that can come together and help these young mothers. We don’t need an ordinance to tell us to do that. We were based on Christianity. I don’t think we need to adopt this ordinance.”

Alderman Terri Floyd said the last month had been really hard for her.

“When you first hear about it, you think, ‘Oh, yes. We need to protect the unborn,’ especially if you’re pro-life which I feel that I am,” Floyd said. “But the more you listen to both sides of the story, there’s more to it. I don’t like the idea of someone turning in their neighbor for driving their daughter across the state line. I prayed hard about it, and I had a lot of people pray with me, and I just feel in my soul that this is not the job of the city council. Maybe there’s a different option we can take that we don’t have to be so harsh about it.”

Following the public comments, Sheriff Butch Blackburn praised those in attendance for their behavior at the meeting.

“Everyone has been civil and respectful,” Blackburn said. “This is why we’re called Saints’ Roost.”

The council then proceeded through its regular agenda with most of the crowd leaving the theatre after the sanctuary bill was voted down on agenda item five.

The Clarendon Volunteer Fire Department responded to a house fire in the 800 bock of Johns Street in the early morning hours of Thursday, May 2, and the property was a total loss.

Fire Chief Jeremy Powell said the department was dispatched at 4:43 a.m. and arrived on the scene within about six minutes to find the home of Terry Sims fully engulfed.

Sims had made it out of the house, and Powell said it was likely that the fire had been burning 15 or 20 minutes before the call went out. Fire fighters worked to keep the fire from spreading to other nearby structures.

CVFD responded with four trucks and 12 firefighters and had the blaze knocked down by 5:15. They remained on the scene until 7:30 a.m.

Powell said the house was burned so badly and so completely that the department was not able to determine a possible cause.

Red Cross personnel were contacted to help Mrs. Sims following the loss of her home.