This Week

More than 60 people were present Saturday as Donley County’s newest historical marker was unveiled at the Rowe Cemetery near Hedley.

The cemetery was established in 1898 when Isaac Smith sold two acres of his land for use as a graveyard by the community of Rowe. Four children of the Beedy family were the first remains to be interned there.

By 1911, Rowe – which was named for English-born pioneer and RO Ranch founder Alfred Rowe – had become a ghost town as its residents flocked to a new settlement with more favorable soil and water. The new settlement was called Hedley.

The old town’s namesake was also ill fated. The Englishman was a first class passenger on the HMS Titanic and was frozen to death in the icy waters of the Atlantic when the great ship struck an iceberg and sank on April 15, 1912.

The citizens of Hedley never forgot their origins or the old graveyard. By 1912, the Hedley Cemetery Association had been formed to care for the Rowe Cemetery. More land was purchased from the descendants of Isaac Smith in 1915 and 1953, which brought the total area to 12 acres.

In 1914, the association was reorganized as the Rowe Cemetery Association, and it continued to raise funds and care for the cemetery until 1951 when the responsibility was turned over to the City of Hedley.

Today, donations are still the major source of income for the Rowe Cemetery, and volunteers are still needed for maintenance of its grounds. The Rowe Cemetery Association Trust was established in 1984 to provide revenue that can be used for perpetual care.

In 1988, the trust board installed two arched gates, and the Hedley chapter of the American Legion erected a memorial in 1990 to honor the veterans that fought from the Civil War to the Vietnam War.

During Saturday’s program, Bruce Howard gave the invocation, and Jack Moreman welcomed the crowd assembled.

The Hedley Choir sang “The Star Spangled Banner” as Bufford Holland presented the American flag, and Skyler Conatser led the Pledge of Allegiance. The Choir also sang “Texas, Our Texas” while Connie DeBord presented the Lone Star Flag. Conatser led the pledge to the Texas flag.

Jean Stavenhagen read a short history of the cemetery.

“This beautiful old cemetery before us this morning has survived for over a hundred years, outliving the town for which it was named but retaining the dignity of its English namesake,” Stavenhagen said. “Its silent earth is filled with the early pioneers who paved our way, the soldiers who fought our battles, and the families who loved us.

“Rowe Cemetery exists today because of the long line of people throughout the past century who dedicated themselves to its support and protection. The placement of this impressive marker assures the Rowe Cemetery of its significant place in history.”

Afterward, M.O. Weatherly and Randy Shaw unveiled the marker. Lyndon Messer read the inscription.

The principal people who worked to secure the marker were recognized by Doyle Messer and Stavenhagen. The program was closed out with Barbara Collins singing “Amazing Grace” and “God Bless America.”

A local man is in the Donley County Jail this week following the early morning assault of a local woman.

Sheriff Butch Blackburn said Stanley McCampbell, age 38, was arrested last Wednesday, September 5, after he allegedly crawled through a bedroom window of a home belonging to a woman on Goodnight Street and proceeded to hit her in the head with a piece of concrete.

The woman got away from the man and ran to a nearby home belonging to her aunt.

The relative then brought the woman, who was bleeding from the head, to the sheriff’s office about 4 a.m. where a dispatcher called for an ambulance.

After taking statements and collecting evidence, McCampbell was arrested that afternoon and charged with burglary with intent to commit assault, Blackburn said.

McCampbell was arraigned Thursday by Justice of the Peace Jimmy Johnson. The man was on parole for attempted murder, Sheriff Blackburn said.

Tickets are on sale now for the seventh annual Col. Charles Goodnight Chuckwagon Cookoff to be held next Saturday, September 22, at the Saints’ Roost Museum.

Museum officials say 14 wagons are signed up to compete for top prizes, and the day will provide great family entertainment for all ages.

The gate opens at 7:30 a.m. with breakfast and lunch concessions provided by the Clarendon Chamber of Commerce. The tradeshow starts at 10 a.m., and museum tours will be available throughout the day.

Patrick Robertson and KEFH-FM will provide music beginning at noon. Live entertainment begins at 2 p.m., and performances are scheduled all day and include Dan Hall of Clarendon, Thut Creek and Cozy Parsons of the Red River Steakhouse in McLean, Katrina Burrow and David Strange of Clarendon, the Saints’ Roost Band, Christine Walls of Quitaque, and Gary Alan Bruce of Pampa.

The Chuckwagon meal will be served at 5 p.m. with a menu of chicken fried steak, potatoes, beans, and cobbler.

At 6:30, the museum will raffle off a pair of Jim Owens Handmade Boots, and the cookoff awards will be presented at 6:45.

The Clarendon College Theatre Department will present a melodrama, “He Ain’t Done Right By Nell,” at 7 p.m., and an open-air dance will follow with music provided by the Palo Duro Band of Amarillo.

Admission to the all-day event is free. Tickets for the authentic Chuckwagon supper are $10 each and can be purchased in advance at Henson’s in Clarendon by calling 806/874-3517. Boot tickets are also available at Henson’s or from any museum board member.

On Sunday morning, cowboy church will be held under the tent at the museum with preaching by Jimmy Burson of Silverton.

All proceeds will benefit the Saints’ Roost Museum’s continued operation and its ongoing effort to restore the historic Ft. Worth & Denver City Depot.

The Donley County Commissioners’ Court today decided to go forward with a proposed budget that will increase taxes seven percent and trim personnel in three offices.

The decision comes after a called meeting of the court on September 5, 2001, in which commissioners said they could not see a way to raise enough money to keep the positions funded. The Enterprise will have a complete report next week.

Last week, Donley County officials got their chance to respond to proposed cuts in their budgets during an August 30 called session of the commissioners’ court. Three officials sought to preserve their secretaries’ positions while Sheriff Butch Blackburn argued that personnel in his department deserve raises.

The proposed county budget for 2001-2002 called for the secretary in the Extension Office to be cut to half time. Church said his office is involved with agriculture and community development, 4-H programs, and consumer science programs. He said the Extension has been instrumental in providing crop demonstration plots, cotton variety and fertility trials, moisture monitoring for peanuts, a roundtable lecture series, the Don Taylor business development series, the July 4th Craft Fair, and nutritional programs at the senior citizens centers in Clarendon and Hedley.

The Extension Office saved local residents $115,000 in health screening fees over the last four years at the annual Health & Wealth Fair, he said. Church also pointed out there are 142 young people in 4-H and discussed the Walk Across Texas program his office sponsors.

“We can do all of those things because we have a fulltime secretary,” he said.

County FCA Agent Sue Church also said that the local secretary has been asked to train the Extension’s district secretary. Three other community members also spoke out in favor of the Extension’s secretary, praising her commitment and performance on the job.

Pct. 1&2 Justice of the Peace Jimmy Johnson echoed complaints aired recently by some county officials who did not approve of the commissioners’ handling of the proposed budget.

“I wish you had called us and told us the county was in a deficit,” he said. “What disturbs me is that my employee found out about the cuts before I had a chance to tell her.”

Johnson’s court clerk was also cut to part time status in the proposed budget.

Johnson outlined the responsibilities of his clerk and told the court that she exercises her duties with a professionalism of which Donley County should be proud. He also said that Pct. 3&4 Justice of the Peace Ann Kennedy in Hedley is a personal friend of his, but that there is no comparison between his court and hers. Johnson said his court is busier with items such as felony arraignments, bail hearings, and delinquent taxes due to his office being in the county seat.

The justice said his office is not a revenue producer for the county on its own. He said his court produces revenue through tickets written by law enforcement agencies by being timely in handling its business.

“[My clerk] has been with me almost five years,” he said. “It takes a long time to educate a court clerk to handle that type of business.”

Tax Assessor/Collector Wilma Lindley also had her deputy’s position cut to half time. She agreed with Johnson.

“I felt like [the court] should have called me in and talked about it,” she said.

Lindley said the only people who don’t use her office are the ones that don’t own vehicles.

“Some days we’re swamped,” she said. “Some days we don’t have very many people, but I feel like I should have the fulltime help because I need my vacation.”

Sheriff Blackburn had no cuts in his personnel, but the proposed budget also had no pay raises for his deputies and dispatchers like he had sought.

“I know we’re broke; we have been broke for 100 years,” Blackburn said. “I wouldn’t ask for my people a raise if we weren’t paying our own way.”

The sheriff pointed to the increased number of traffic tickets his department has issued since he took office in January, noting that it has dramatically increased county revenues.

“Already this year, we’ve written over 300 traffic tickets,” the sheriff said. “That’s a total of $98,210.25 if they were all paid. What has been collected is $52,817.45. I don’t believe y’all were getting that under the previous administration.”

Blackburn said he is the fourth lowest paid sheriff in the state and said the county is asking his deputies to work for “welfare wages.”

Blackburn earns a salary of $20,834.88. His deputies earn $18,680.58 annually, and dispatcher/jailers earn only $6.97 per hour.

The sheriff said average pay for counties this size is approximately $27,000 per year. He realized Donley County couldn’t meet the average, but said it should do better.

“We’re putting these [deputies] out here on the highway, they’re going on calls that not very many people want to go on, and the reason they’re doing that is because they want to. They’re not doing it for the pay. We need to at least pay them a wage where they don’t qualify for food stamps.

“If you want to save money, we can send these rented radar units back and forget about the $52,000 we’ve already collected.”

For their part, members of the commissioners’ court said they did not question the job any department was doing, but that the county only has so much money. The court also pointed to a health insurance benefit that the county provides to its employees – the premiums for which have increased from $60,000 annually in 1998-99 to $120,000 in 2000-01 and is expected to cost $157,000 in the coming year.

County Clerk Fay Vargas said the health insurance provides excellent coverage, but other county officials questioned the high cost of insuring family members under the program.

After returning from a lunch recess, the court spent the afternoon looking for ways to restore the secretaries to fulltime in the proposed budget. Commissioners considered raising taxes to just under the legal rollback limit and also looked at hiring a fifth deputy whose job would primarily be traffic control.

As the afternoon progressed, the court was discussing across the board pay raises for most employees that might be paid for by higher taxes and increased revenue from traffic control. Attention focused on a four percent raise, and Sheriff Blackburn said that a four percent raise “on not very much is not very much” and still pushed for higher raises in his department. Blackburn told commissioners he would settle for a four percent raise for his dispatchers but wanted to increase deputy salaries to $20,000 annually with the chief deputy getting an additional $1,000.

Commissioners recessed for dinner and reconvened after 8 p.m., and at that time commissioners began discussing having two departments share a secretary and not having such a big tax increase.

Commissioner Donnie Hall told the sheriff, “You’re not going to get what you want.”

Blackburn responded that his office did not want to take on the added burden of a fifth deputy if it meant just a “Mickey Mouse” four percent raise.

Judge Jack Hall told the commissioners he thought the court should take more time to consider the budget and not rush to any decisions. Commissioners met again Wednesday afternoon and agreed to make the cuts as proposed.

A final vote on the 2001-2002 budget will be taken on September 19 at 1:30 p.m.

The quick response of deputies in Donley and Gray counties led to the arrest of a man suspected of assaulting a woman last week.

Donley County Sheriff Butch Blackburn said a 31-year-old Farmington, New Mexico, woman told Gray County Deputy Jim McDonald that a truck driver had attempted to sexually assault her in his vehicle. Donley County Chief Deputy Randy Bond was dispatched to the mile marker 124, the Clarendon exit on Interstate 40, where he met McDonald and the complainant.

According to Blackburn, the truck driver picked up the woman in Amarillo and pulled off on the access road inside Donley County. The man reportedly held a knife to the woman’s throat while he tore her clothes and attempted to assault her. The woman managed to get away, and the trucker drove off.

Deputy McDonald saw the woman running along the highway and stopped to help her.

The woman gave the deputies a detailed description of the assailant and his truck, which was put out to area law enforcement agencies. The truck was later stopped by the Beckham County Sheriff’s Department in Oklahoma.

The driver was held by Oklahoma authorities until Sheriff Blackburn arrived Friday and arrested him. Michael Lyn Smith, age 39, of Cleveland, Georgia, was charged with aggravated assault and returned to Clarendon where he was arraigned by Justice of the Peace Jimmy Johnson. At presstime he was still incarcerated in the Donley County Jail.

“I would like to thank the Gray County Sheriff’s Office and Deputy Jim McDonald,” Blackburn said. “If not for the prompt response of Deputy McDonald and [Donley County] Deputy Randy Bond, we could not have caught this guy. He would have just been gone.”

Blackburn said the subject denies the woman’s charges but has a lengthy criminal history.

Hedley Public Schools will soon be embarking on a $1 million new building following receipt of a grant recently.

Superintendent Bryan Hill said the Hedley Independent School District was notified of the grant during the first week of August by the Texas Education Agency.

The new facility will be located on the current school grounds, west of the Owl Gym and south of the main school building. After completion, the main entrance to the school will face west instead of south as it now does.

Plans call for four new classrooms and a combination multipurpose library/auditorium area. One of the new classrooms will be a lecture hall, and the multipurpose room will include computers, which will be wired to the Internet and accessible by community members.

The new facility will nearly double the space of the main school building, Hill said. The building will be of a metal frame construction with a metal roof and a masonry veneer exterior similar to the Bronco Gym in Clarendon, he said.

Architect Steven Butler of Canyon is currently drawing plans for the project. School officials hope to have the job completed sometime early in the 2002-2003 school year.

Hill said HISD originally applied for the TEA Instructional Facilities Allotment grant in 1999 and has been reapplying every year. The grant will cover approximately 83 percent of the cost of the new building. The remainder of the cost will be picked up by HISD taxpayers with 15-year bonds.

In November 1999, school district voters approved issuance of bonds to cover the district’s match by a margin of 96-30. The condition of the vote was that the bonds would not be issued until the school was awarded the grant.

“Community support has been overwhelming,” Hill said.

While other area rural schools are facing declining enrollments, the Hedley school has been on the upswing. Hill said 115 kids attended Hedley ten years ago. That number is now 189, growing steadily for the last seven years.

The school attracts approximately 50 transfer students from Clarendon, Memphis, and Wellington, Hill said.

More improvements may be in store for HISD’s physical plant. Hill said the district is currently working on a grant application that would renovate the roof of the main building and update the facility to meet the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The Clarendon Board of Aldermen announced their intentions to begin tax abatement processes on two businesses during their regular meeting last Tuesday.

Applications were presented by the Clarendon Economic Development Corporation on behalf of Bayou Medical Ltd. (Dr. John Howard and family), which plans to build a new clinic south of the Medical Center Nursing Home, and Bill Cornell, who is building a new feed and farm supply store at Second and Orpe Streets.

Clarendon EDC Director Helen Parker spoke to the board concerning tax abatement policies and guidelines. The board made changes to the guidelines and accepted them. Aldermen also voted to amend Ordinance 323 to change the identification of Industrial Reinvestment Zone #1.

Hospital District Administrator Alan Graham presented a request to have the cul-de-sac in front of the Medical Center Nursing Home designated as Medical Center Drive and to have physical addresses assigned to current and future buildings there. The hospital district will continue to maintain the cul-de-sac. The designation is for 911 and delivery purposes. The city granted the request with odd numbers on the south and even on the north to stay in keeping with city street addresses.

In other city business, the order of the code of criminal procedure for the Municipal Court was approved, and the library policy and procedure manual was tabled for review. Alderman Bob Watson was appointed to the Panhandle Emergency Medical Service Advisory Board, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s rental contract on the city radio tower was renewed.

Aldermen met for nearly an hour in closed session to discuss pending litigation relating to the animal and livestock ordinance. No action was taken.