F R I D AY,

News
Merz ...

O Continued from Page 1A

then became the Southwest Kansas
Technical School, and eventually
joined Seward County Community
College.
Merz began taking vocationaltechnical classes during his senior
year at Liberal High School, in
1972-73. After graduation from
LHS, he enrolled at SCCC, but
also took drafting classes at the votech. Years later, when he began as
a vo-tech instructor in 1992, he
continued the tradition, welcoming
community college students to his
classes.
A 1975 SCCC graduate, Merz
looks back on the colleges early
days with amazement.
The fact is, in the fall of 1973,
when I enrolled as a college
freshman, that was when they
opened the Hobble Building, he
said. While I came to classes that
fall, we would literally have to walk
around carpet layers, and finish
carpenters doing their jobs, to get
to our next classes.
The sense of excitement and
newness was heady.
To get to go to a brand-new
college that was pretty cool, he
said. The whole institution felt that
way. A lot of the instructors were
fairly young and easy to relate to.
As a young professional, Merz
began his drafting career in the
lowest-tech way possible.
It was still mostly manual handdrafting, he said. Eventually, Auto
CAD came along and I went back
to college at Oklahoma Panhandle
State University to learn it.
One of the few people in the
region to gain early proficiency with
the new technology, Merz began
teaching night classes for the votech. Melvin Corn, the first of eight
directors Merz would work with,
headed up the technical school.
We got in on the ground floor,
and LAVTS became the go-to place
for Auto CAD, he said. Today, its
the standard of the industry. There
are a lot of other drafting programs,
but Auto Cad is the granddaddy.
Despite the radical changes in
technology and institutional
structure Merz has weathered, he
still views drafting as a fundamental
part of human creativity and
industry.
When the little kids come
through, for tours of the industrial
technology division, I tell them
everything in our life began as a
drawing, he said. Someone had to
think of it, and then they had to
draw it and then tell the bricklayers
or carpenters or engineers how to
make it. It doesnt matter if its a
toothbrush, a lavatory faucet, a
building, a Walmart store, a shoe,
somebody had to make drawings to
tell other people how to do it.
Merzs passion for industrial
design and drafting is matched by
an affection for the many students
hes taught over the years.
I like to keep up with my
students, and see where they go,
he said. Ive got several former
students
in
construction
engineering and management, one
thats now a licensed architect in
Houston. Randy Ormiston is now a
consultant in the steel manufacturing industry. I have one young
man who went through my
program who uses CAD to teach
autistic students out in Denver.
The human connection is what
gives meaning to the work, Merz
noted.

Manning ...
O Continued from Page 1A

at the Pentagon, declined to

comment on the substance of the
appeal.
As legal action is ongoing, we
continue to maintain careful
respect for the military-judicial
process, the rights of the accused,
and ensuring the cases fairness and
impartiality, she wrote in an email.
A 209-page, unclassified version
of the appeal was released a day
after the documents were filed with
the U.S. Army Court of Criminal
Appeals at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. It
calls Mannings sentence grossly
unfair and says her actions were
those of a naive, troubled soldier
who aimed to reveal the toll of the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The appeal says Mannings
disclosures harmed no one. At
Mannings trial, prosecutors said
the leaked material damaged U.S.
security and put peoples lives at
risk by identifying informants who

M AY

L&T

news@hpleader.com
The daily interaction with the
kids is what Ill miss. I love my
students. Watching them grow,
seeing them surprise me, he said.
Over the course of my teaching
career, Ive had a few female
students enroll, because traditionally, drafting was a maledominated area. This year, I had a
bunch, and they were awardwinners.
Those successes hearten Merz,
who has observed the push and pull
in his industry over the years.
Im glad to see the nation
embracing career and technical
education for students, he said.
We do a great job here in Liberal,
and its becoming a trend again. For
a while, I saw a dip away from that,
but now Im seeing a shift back in
that focus.
Weve watched so many of our
jobs in the U.S. go overseas or out
of the country, and I think people
are finally waking up to realize
thats not a good thing, he said.
For us to be a financially solid
nation, we need to be doing it
ourselves.
For a time, Merz said, I think
the academic world had kind of
stolen the idea of the nobility of
work. But I have never seen
vocational or technical work as
something lesser. My personal
pride is in that. Work is a noble
thing, hands-on work, using your
mind and your hands to create, to
repair, to maintain, to grow.
I think as a nation were starting
to kind of sense that we need to
restore that, he said.
With SCCC graduates at work in
Houston, San Antonio, Kansas
City, and other high-demand
markets, Merz said hes no longer
worried that drafting training in
Liberal will vanish.
I have seen, in fact in the past
five years, theres been an increase
in enrollment, he said. Thats
exciting.
As his years on faculty come to a
close, Merz has taken a look back
at how his personal history intertwines with the College.
My twin sisters are younger than
me: Janet Freeman, who lives here,
and Judy Armstrong, who lives near
Fort Worth, came to school here,
he said. Judy went through office
occupations at the tech school after
high school, and Janet graduated
from SCCC, probably about 1978.
My mother eventually became the
head bookkeeper for Liberal Area
Vo-Tech, She worked there 21
years. My little brother, whos
deceased now, graduated from the
welding program.
Merz marvels at his fathers
forward thinking.
When we came here, Dad and
Mom both saw the technical school
and the community college as this
great opportunity for our family,
he said. We had a foundation right
here in Liberal with the choice of
the two, or in my case, a combo of
the both.
In more recent years, Merz met
and married his wife, Lori, after
teaching one of her sons in drafting
class. Life as part of the college has
been good, he said, and he expects
equally positive changes in
retirement.
Its been a dream since college
to have a little woodworking shop,
and thats for sure going to be what
Ill do, he said.
Drawing ideas on paper or the
computer screen and bringing
them to reality. Thats what Merz
has been teaching students all
along, and how its his turn to make
something of his own.
had helped U.S. forces.
The request for a reversal of
charges is based on the harsh
conditions Manning endured
during nine months in a Marine
Corps brig in Quantico, Virginia.
The trial judge, Col. Denise Lind,
ruled it illegal pretrial punishment
and subtracted 112 days from
Mannings sentence as compensation.
The appeal says Lind did not fully
credit Manning for the deplorable
and inhumane conditions, which
were tantamount to solitary
confinement.
The appeal notes that Manning
pleaded guilty to lesser offenses
that could have brought up to 20
years behind bars, yet the
government chose to pursue the
original, more serious charges. If
the charges arent reversed, the
court should reduce Mannings
confinement to 10 years, as
Mannings defense team recommended, the document says.

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2 0 1 6

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Celebration
Nation ...
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said. I was able to buy this at a really good

price. I just bought it. I didnt rent it or
anything. We own the place, and it was just
going to be a better fit for us to do that.
Celebration Nation is being built through a
development company that serves as a starting
point for stores such as party stores, dollar
stores, teen stores and clothing lines.
They just develop stores, Sarah said. What
they usually do is put you in a strip mall, and
you lease your place. With us being where we
are, its kind of hard to do that. For the space
we were getting, we didnt like the locations, so
their plan is theyll go and find you a leasing.
Theyll negotiate your lease, but we kind of
went rogue and went and bought our own.
Jeremy called what he and Sarah are doing
taking a big town concept to Small Town
America.
This is going to be kind of like Party City, but
were going to sale rentals on top of that, he
said.
The development company the Archers are
using, Sarah said, is the current lifeline of the
local business.
They are our help, they are our support for
everything and anything that we need or have
questions for for the lifetime that we need
them, she said.
And while the development company will set
the initial price on Celebration Nations
merchandise, Jeremy explained that pricing can
be changed to meet the businesss needs.
Were not under their rule, Sarah said.
They just help us get started.
The Archer couple has children all the way
from toddlers Zayden and Zoey, ages 5 and 7
respectively, to teens Aspin, 15, Prestin, 17, and
18-year-old C.J. Houser to one who is nearly
age 20, Elizabeth Houser, and all of them have
helped in some way with the process. Sarah said
having family as part of the process has gone
quite well.
Theyve been with us through the whole
process, she said. Theyve actually seen it here
built up from the ground up from buying the
building to restoring the building, and theyve
been here every step and every process and
helping throughout the whole thing. Our two
little ones, sometimes, they work here from the
time we got here in the morning, and we didnt
leave till 2 oclock in the morning.
The older children in the Archer family have
been somewhat of a challenge, though, Sarah
said.
The older ones, theyve been juggling
between school and work and coming here to

Duo ...
O Continued from Page 1A

during the week of Miss Kansas,

LeNeve added.
After Miss Kansas, should
LeNeve or Amparan come away
with the crown, the next step
would be to prepare for Miss
America, which will be Sunday,
Sept. 11 at the Boardwalk Hall in
Atlantic City, N.J.
It would be a dream come true
to become the next Miss Kansas,
LeNeve said. My goals would be
to advocate for mental health and
raise awareness for mood
disorders, along with raising funds
for community mental health
programs and the Childrens
Miracle Network hospital.
Some of my goals would be to
help raise more money for the

Man convicted in
2014 fatal
shooting in
Kingman County
David Younger, 52, was
convicted Thursday of
second-degree murder in
the death of Danny Ely, 62
KINGMAN (AP) A
southern Kansas man charged
in the shooting death of
another man in Kingman
County in 2014 has been
found guilty.
Fifty-two-year-old David
Younger
was
convicted
Thursday of second-degree
murder in the death of 62-yearold Danny Ely. Authorities
responded to a suspicious
death call in Kingman on Dec.
15, 2014, and found Ely dead.
Jennifer Rapp, a spokeswoman for Kansas Attorney
General Derek Schmidt's
office, says evidence shows Ely
died of a gunshot wound to the
head.

This gentleman has his work cut out for him. He takes quite a bit of care in placing these
plates. He knows how cut-throat team rivalries can be. He has done well, however, all Chiefs
fans know they want to be nowhere near the Raiders, even if its just in a plates display. L&T
photo/Robert Pierce
work, she said. Its been fun. I think its been
fun having them here, even though at times, it
got frustrating having them here.
This week, two site developers from Las
Vegas have been in town to supervise the
construction of the stores sales floor, giving
Celebration Nation six temporary employees
for the week.
Were using three family members, and they
should have three coming from the temporary
service here in town, all local people, except for
the site supervisors that put these stores
together, Jeremy said.
In addition to having family in the store,
Sarah said starting Celebration Nation has
been a lot of trial and error about how and what
to do.
A lot of moving things, a lot of organization,
she said. Everythings just kind of been an
orderly thing. It was all orderly. We had to get
this done before we could move on to this
before we could move on to this before we
could move on to this. We gotta get the inside
part before we can get the outside. Now, its just
all come together full circle and been pretty
neat.

Childrens Miracle Network

hospitals, and come back to
Liberal and be here as much as I
can, Amparan added.
Contestants will be judged in
five events, including lifestyle and
fitness in swimwear, talent,
evening gown, private interview
and on-stage questions. During
the competition, contestants will
also have the chance to promote
their platform Amparans
platform is Promoting Better
Health to inspire nutrition and
exercise, and LeNeves is
Changing Minds: Mental Health
Awareness to bring awareness to
mental health issues. Other prizes
for the new Miss Kansas will
include scholarship money, use of
a vehicle sponsored by Mel
Hambelton Ford in Wichita, and
other sponsorships.
Preparations for the pageant
have included practicing for the
different portions of the competition, honing their respective
talents, fundraising, and making

Jeremy said Celebration Nations only

competition is Party City, and with the closest
franchise of that company located in Amarillo,
Texas, that creates a lack of suppliers in
Southwest Kansas.
Theres nothing out here, he said. Theres
Walmart. The demand is there for a store like
this, but theres no competition.
Sarah said Celebration Nation will be able to
provide service to all cultures in the Liberal
area.
Not just us the English speaking, the
Spanish speaking, she said. Were going to be
able to help everybody that comes through our
doors.
As for when Celebration Nation will operate,
Jeremy said those hours will be dictated by
customer flow.
Its going to be the marketplace, he said. If
people start knocking on our door at 8 oclock
in the morning, its going to be 8 oclock in the
morning. If theres still people here past 7 and
were going to turn a profit, itll be past 7. That
means we hire more people. Its all kind of what
the market brings. Were stepping off into this
on faith.

sure paperwork is in order.

So how would it feel to come
away as Miss Kansas?
I would be shocked, first of all,
and I would also be so incredibly
humbled because Im so much
younger and less experienced than
the other girls, Amparan said.
But it would also be amazing.
If I were to come away with
Miss Kansas my life would change
forever, but for the better,
LeNeve added. I would be in
utter shock and humbled if they
chose me.
Both young ladies also wished to
extend their thanks to the sponsors
who have helped their journey to
Pratt, including Harwell and
Harwell Orthodontics, Jury, Farrar
& Associates, State Farm, pediatrician Dr. Gurpreet Randhawa,
PeachWave, Dance Images,
Mortgages Unlimited, Guardian
Products, First National Bank,
Whispers & Wishes Photography,
State Farm Jerry Harding,
Spencer Brownes Coffee House,

Days Inn Liberal, and Pizza Hut,

Inc.
Overall, both Amparan and
LeNeve are excited for June.
Tickets for the pageant can be
purchased at misskansas.org, and
Kansas Choice at misskansas.org
is open for online voting. Votes
cost $1 for the Kansas Choice
and will give Amparan and
LeNeve the chance to automatically be in the Top 10.
Its a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I really encourage
anyone who has the chance to
compete in a local pageant to do
so, Amparan said. Because
whether you get the crown or not,
win or lose, you gain from it you
build confidence, you make
connections with other people,
you empower other women, and
you really grow as a person and
develop personal skills. Whether I
win or lose, Im still going to be
Miss Liberal, which Im so
thankful for. Im so excited for
June.