This Week

A Stargazing Party is planned at Jericho on Friday, June 7, as the ghost community prepares for this summer’s annual Route 66 Festival.

In addition to telescopes set up by the Amarillo Astronomy Club for gazing at the heavens, a full line-up of fun activities is planned for the evening, which includes live music, vendors, and food trucks.

Frost’s Custom Classics will have classic cars showcased at the event, which begins at 5 p.m. and runs until midnight. There is no charge for admission.

Vendor set-up will be from 3 to 5 p.m. Festivities kick off at 5:00, and vendors will close at 9:00 as the Stargazing gets underway hosted by the Amarillo Astronomy Club.

“The evening promises to be a magical experience for all who attend,” said Jericho townsite co-owner Blanca Schaefer.
Located north of Clarendon on SH 70, about half a mile south of Interstate 40, the old Donley County community is experiencing renewed interest as Route 66 enthusiasts have started coming to experience the history of the Jericho Gap.
The Stargazing Party is an official TX 66 Festival Event. For more information about this summer’s Route 66 festival, go to VisitAmarillo.com/TX66Fest; and for more information about Donley County’s Route 66 community, visit Facebook.com/JerichoOn66.

Residents who wish to participate in this year’s “Trash To Treasures” need to contact the Enterprise before 5 p.m. on Friday, May 24, to sign up.

The 19th annual Trash To Treasures garage sale event will be held Saturday, June 1.

For $25, each household will get a 50-word advertisement in the Big-E Classifieds and the exclusive “Trash To Treasures” garage sale signs. In addition, the Enterprise will print a city map the week of the event indicating the location of each sale and will promote the countywide garage sale in area newspapers and radio ads as well as on social media and digital platforms.

For more information, call 874-2259 or come by the Enterprise office at 105 S. Kearney.

Early voting started Monday, May 20, and continues through Friday, May 24, for Donley County voters in Precinct 3 as incumbent Commissioner Neil Koetting faces a runoff election with challenger Greg Wootten for the Republican nomination.

Wootten was the top vote getter in the March primary in the three-person race for Koetting’s job, but he did not get more than 50 percent of the vote, which prompted this month’s runoff election.

Eligible voters include Republicans who already voted in the Republican primary and other voters who did not cast a ballot in either primary in March. Voters who cast ballots in the Democratic primary cannot vote in the Republican runoff.

Early voting is being conducted at the Donley County Courthouse Annex from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. through this Friday.

Election day will be Tuesday, May 28, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. with Precinct 301 voters casting ballots at the Donley County Courthouse and Precinct 303 voters casting ballots at the First Baptist Church in Hedley.

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.