INSIDE THIS ISSUE Back To School ...................................B4-5 Business & Professional........................A6 Classifieds .............................................A12 Community Calendar ....................A14-15 Dining & Entertainment..........................B9 Focus on Grabill.................................A 8-9 Healthy Times ..........................................A2 Library Times............................................A3 Youth .......................................................A12
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Holding on to the Hoosier homestead By Valerie Gough vgough@kpcnews.net
Nichole Hacha-Thomas
The Northrop High School Big Orange Pride marching band marches in the Three Rivers Festival Parade. The band has a new director, Chris Kaflik. Kaflik began working with the band Aug. 1 and is jumped right in to prepare the band for its upcoming season.
Bands begin their march to state Carroll, Northrop bands welcome new directors By Nichole Hacha-Thomas nthomas@kpcnews.net
Courtesy photo
Doug Hassell, above, gives directions to members of the Carroll High School Charger Pride marching band during a recent rehearsal. Hassell comes to Carroll after working at Norwell High School as its director of bands. the day in sixth grade when I kind of knew I wanted to be a band director.” Hassell participated in the drum and bugle corps and completed his degree at Indiana University Purdue University – Fort
Wayne before achieving his dream. Hassell began his career at Prairie Heights High School and worked in two other schools before taking See BAND, page A9
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Area high school marching bands have been hitting the pavement hard the past month as they prepare for the upcoming competition season. When the season begins and the bands take the field, a new face will be at the helm of both the Carroll High School Charger Pride and the Northrop High School Big Orange Pride marching bands. Carroll’s new director of bands Doug Hassell comes to the school from Norwell High School. In his 14-year career, Hassell has directed bands in 11 consecutive Indiana State Student Music Association marching band finals racking up three state championship titles, three state champion runner-up finishes, three third-place finishes and two fourthplace finishes. Hassell said being a band director is all he’s ever wanted to do. “I knew at an early age what I wanted to do,” Hassell said. “I remember
From the road, the sprawling rural farmland, peppered with grazing livestock, iconic barns and golden haystacks, paints the picture of an idyllic Hoosier farm life. But it has become increasingly difficult in recent years to maintain the small, family farms that have been a staple of the economy in northeast Indiana for so many years. Tom Yoder owns a 112year-old farm off Tonkel Road in northwest of Fort Wayne. His was one of two family farms in Allen County presented with a Centennial Hoosier Homestead Award at the state fair earlier this month. The Indiana State Department of Agriculture’s Hoosier Homestead program recognizes families who have owned the same farm for at least 100 years. “I’ve got a son and
Valerie Gough
Tom and Jewell Yoder received a Centennial Hoosier Homestead Award in recognition of their 112-year-old family farm off Tonkel Road in northwest Fort Wayne. daughter and they aren’t interested in continuing the farming occupation,” Yoder said. “When my wife and I go, that might be the end of it.” When his grandfather, Levi Yoder, bought the farm in 1910, it operated as a small grain and livestock farm. His grandfather maintained a job off the
farm as a carpenter and eventually sold it off to Yoder’s father, Donald Yoder, in the 1950s. During the next 40 years, the whole family worked on the farm in some capacity. The farm would cycle through livestock, grain, dairy cows, horses — it all See HOME, page A7