Player of the week Page 2
A Kansas City legacy Page 4
Easiest chili ever Page 7
Free complimentary copy January 10, 2014 • Volume 1, No. 15
www.raytowneagle.com • 75¢
Only The Name Has Changed
What was formerly Blue Ridge Mazda is now Blue Ridge Auto-Truck Plaza
The Blue Ridge Mazda dealership at 6824 Blue Ridge Boulevard that had long been part of the city’s landscape since 1983, moved its Mazda franchise to Lee’s Summit in 2008. Kansas City’s oldest Mazda dealer, Blue Ridge
Mazda, now operating as Lee’s Summit Mazda, is continuing its 30-year tradition in a brand new state-of-theart facility on 975 SE Oldham Parkway. The good news is that the owners of the Mazda dealer-
ship chose to maintain a presence at the former location in Raytown, now Blue Ridge Auto Truck Plaza. The same owner offers a full service center, body shop and parts department. While maintaining a large inventory of pre-
Lee’s Summit Mazda
owned cars and trucks, they also offer a wide variety of financing options, such as Buy Here Pay Here. In fact, Blue Ridge Auto Truck Plaza stores much of the Lee’s Summit dealership’s new car inventory.
So, in many ways, the only thing that changed was the name. Blue Ridge Auto Truck Plaza is looking forward to many more years of serving Raytown.
All Aboard The Historic Orphan Train The Marguerite McNair Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) will host “All Aboard the Historic Orphan Train”, a presentation by Carolyn Grover. The public is welcome to sit in on the presentation at 7:00 p.m. on Monday, January 8, 2014, at Bickford House, 9110 E. 63rd Street. The Orphan Train Movement that spanned 75 years was intended to be a welfare program founded by Charles Loring Brace. He was so full of compassion for orphaned and homeless children that he was compelled to get them off the streets of New York and send them to the country. From 1853 to 1929, about 250,000 orphaned, abandoned, and homeless children were relocated primarily to the Midwest. “Some of these children included Henry L. Jost, who served as mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, from 1912 to 1916. Other children grew
up to be governors, lawyers, congressman and one became a Supreme Court justice but some were not so fortunate,” says Grover. Her adventure in learning about the history of the Orphan Train Movement started about ten years ago with her first talk in Emporia, Kansas, at a relative’s request. That was all it took for her to get hooked on learning and giving programs to educate others about this remarkable story. Grover continues, “I have given many programs on this subject and I still find many people who have not heard of the Orphan Trains. This story needs to be told because it is part of our history. Most of the children placed out were not really orphans. They were put out because their parents couldn’t care for them.” For the past nine years, Grover has been making her Orphan Train presentation to various organizations, such as chapters of the Daughters and Sons of the American Revolution, church groups, genealogy and historical societies. She never charges for her service because she feels it is more important for the story to be told.
“My dream is to be able to go into schools to educate students on this part of American History,“ says Grover. “Explain how the movement came about and let them experience how those children must have felt to be taken out of their element and put on
a train to where they didn’t know,” Carolyn Grover has been married to Bob Grover for fifty-one years, has four children and 13 grandchildren, and is a member of the DAR and is the Chaplain for the War of 1812 chapter.