Note: The Bluffton Athletic Boosters recently completed payment on the Ricky Matter Strength and Fitness Center. This story commemorates that event.
Photo and story by Josh Stallings, Icon university intern
The moment you step in the doors of the flawless weight room or enter the gate for a football game, the memory of a very talented and promising young man hits you like a sucker punch to the gut. The two structures are in remembrance of Ricky Matter, a Bluffton High School student who lost his life in a car accident six years ago.
As part of their learning about Veterans Day, the kindergarten classes at Bluffton Elementary made ornaments for Christmas trees that will be sent to military bases in Iraq.
Some of the kindergartners, their families, and teachers attended a ceremony at Kaleidoscope Farms on Sunday, Nov. 7. The kindergartners presented the ornaments to the veterans that selected the trees. The trees will be shipped as part of 300 trees from Ohio through Project Evergreen. FedEx provides the shipping.
The Alzheimer's Association support group will meet at 3:30 p.m., the third month of each month (Nov. 15) and the first Tuesday of every month at 7 p.m. (Nov. 9) at Mennonite Memorial Home.
For more information contact Tricia Herrmann or Emily Koogler at 419-358-1015.
Dave Dobradenka is the Bluffton popcorn-eating champion of 2010. Dave won the Shirley's Gourmet Popcorn eating contest during Shirley's customer appreciation event on Nov. 6.
Dave managed to down one tub and one handful of popcorn in five minutes, beating out seven other contestants, according to Pete Suter of Shirley's.
With Dave are his team of supporters, Jessica Dobradenka, Debbie Wise, Dave, Tammy Cottle, Wynter Wise and Kortney Cottle.
Dave wins a one-year supply of popcorn from Shirley's.
Jim Barnett (BHS Class of 1969) is now a member of ADK46R, the select club for mountaineers who have scaled all of the 46 Adirondack Mountain peaks over 4,000 feet high. The club was started in the early 1920s after Robert and George Marshall published a book "The High Peaks of the Adirondacks" recounting their climbs. The pair believed that all the peaks they documented were 4,000 feet and over, but subsequent geological surveys have shown that 4 of the mountains are slightly less. The highest peak of the 46 is Mt. Marcy which is 5,344 feet.
