The Paper of Wabash County - June 21, 2017, Issue

Page 1

Vol. 40, No. 14

PO Box 603, Wabash, IN 46992 (260) 563-8326

of Wabash County Inc. June 21, 2017

www.thepaperofwabash.com Proudly Serving Wabash County Since 1977

28 seek 4-H Fair crown

State OKs funding for WRT

By The Paper staff Twenty-eight contestants will vie for the title of 2017 Miss Wabash County 4-H Fair Queen this year. The pageant will be Wednesday, July 12, at the Honeywell Center in Wabash. The Miss Wabash County 4-H Fair Queen will serve as the official host of the Wabash County 4-H Fair, July 14-22. The queen will also represent Wabash County in the 2018 Indiana State Fair Queen Pageant that will be held in Indianapolis January 57, 2018. The queen will receive a scholarship which is provided and supported by the past Wabash County 4-H Fair Queens. Members of the queen court will receive scholarships provided by the Wabash County Extension Homemakers, Beacon Credit Union and the Wabash County Fair Board. The contestants will be judged on the basis of the ability to converse, speaking ability, poise, personality and ability to be an ambassador for the Wabash County 4-H Fair. The judging is divided into three phases of competition which include a personal interview, professional wear/overall impressions and formal wear. The interview and professional wear judging is closed to the public. The public pageant will conclude the judging with the formal wear phase after which the 10 finalists will be announced. The final phase of the competition is the onstage question in which each finalist will answer a question submitted by fellow contestants. Jordan Michel, 2016 Miss Wabash County 4-H Fair, will crown the new queen. The pageant will be held at the Ford Theatre of the Honeywell Center with doors opening at 6:30 p.m. and the pageant beginning at 7 p.m. Admission is free. The Wabash County 4-H Fair Queen Pageant is presented with support from The Honeywell Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the enhancement of artist, social, recreational, and cultural opportunities for the people of Wabash County and the State of Indiana. Sarah Adamiec, 18, daughter of Michael and Carey Adamiec, recently graduated from Manchester High School and will be a freshman at Saint (continued on page 4)

By Joseph Slacian jslacian@thepaperofwabash.com Accompanist Eileen Dye plays the piano as the Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) seventh through 12th grade group practices one of the songs from Disney’s “High School Musical.” Photo by Emma Rausch

VPA efforts help youth build interest in theatre By Emma Rausch emma@thepaperofwabash.com The Visual and Performing Arts theater program kicked off Monday, June 5, and is once again offering Wabash County youth an authentic theater troupe experience. During the program, first through 12th grade students dedicate three weeks of summer afternoons to memorizing lines, music and blocking for one to two final performances starting Thursday, June 22. While the program normally puts a bit of pressure on its actors, this year’s seventh through 12th grade students are feeling a bit of heat as they prepare to perform Disney’s “High School Musical.” Due to the musical’s popularity among younger generations, actors Lindsay Rice, Ben Reichenbach, Blake Wynn and Madison Nevil admitted there’s been some pressure with “not screwing the show up” since they know that there will be “High School Musical” fans and gurus in the audience opening night.

“But we can do it,” Rice affirmed in an interview with The Paper of Wabash County. Rice, a junior seven-year VPA actress, takes on the role of Gabriella Montez, a smart, new girl at East High School that eventually becomes the love interest of star basket baller Troy Bolton, played by Reichenbach, a first-year VPA actor, in the Wabash show. Together, Rice and Reichenbach’s characters decide to try out for their high school’s musical and inadvertently compete with the story’s main antagonists, twins Sharpay and Ryan Evans, portrayed respectively by VPA veterans Nevil and Wynn. This year’s production is pushing each of the four leads to their acting limits and challenging them to be better than they’ve ever been in the past. For Nevil and Wynn, the struggle is to be meaner than their usual selves while Rice and Reichenbach are challenged with being the brainiac and star athlete. “It definitely is a difficult journey,” (continued on page 6)

Eagles Theatre renovations to benefit media art students By Emma Rausch emma@thepaperofwabash.com The Historic Eagles Theatre will be undergoing changes later this year and not just for structural renovations, but for programming as well. The Media Arts program, a new educational endeavor and partnership with Heartland Career Center, will begin its pilot run next fall and aim to instruct high school youth in all things media, according to Teresa Galley, the Honeywell Foundation educational outreach manager. “About two years, a group of us started meeting just to dream about Eagles might

be, and over the course of trial and error, one of the things that came up was Mark Honeywell was an amateur film maker,” Galley told The Paper of Wabash County, “and actually the studio with the (Honeywell) Golf Course was his film studio as one in Boca Chita, his home in Florida. “Eagles Theatre has been a movie house since the mid-1920s even though it was originally an opera house, so it seemed like (the Foundation) had a legacy in film.” What locked in the idea for the space, though, was the past Wabash County residents that ventured into careers as media experts, she continued. (continued on page 18)

The Wabash River Trail’s request for funding from the Regional Cities Initiative was approved last week by the Indiana Economic Development Corp. The IEDC announced late on the afternoon of June 12 that the WRT’s request for $941,031 was approved. However, that doesn’t mean the WRT will immediately receive the funds for work on the first phase of the Lagro to Wabash portion of the trail. When the Regional Development Authority approved the funding at its April meeting, it listed with it two stipulations that WRT officials must meet before it would receive the funds. One of the stipulations is that the WRT have at least two public meetings to discuss the trail and its route. It has had one of those meetings, thus far. The second stipulation is that it have all the proper permits needed for the work. “The RDA stipulations from the meeting in Wabash remain in place, and the WRT will have to fulfill those conditions before any disbursement of funds into the project,” Michael Galbraith, director of the Road to One Million project for the Northeast Indiana Regional Partnership, told The Paper of Wabash County. Lindsay Devlin, a communications special(continued on page 7)

Hicks to run for sheriff By Emma Rausch emma@thepaperofwabash.com

Steve Hicks has announced his intentions to run as a Republican candidate for Wabash County Sheriff in the May 2018 Primary Election. “I am dedicated to the department and have a passion for law enforcement,” Hicks said. “It has been an extremely rewarding career and I have been preparing myself for this opportunity.” A lifelong Wabash County resident, Hicks began his law enforcement career in 1994 and for 20 STEVE HICKS years has served at the Wabash County Sheriff ’s Department as a merit officer. (continued on page 17)


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