Stories from Saturday, April 15, 2017

The American Red Cross will hold a blood drive from 1 to 6 p.m. on Monday, April 17, in the basement reception area of St. Lawrence Catholic Church, 405 Seventh St. in Monett.

Prosecution has ceased against the former office manager of the Barry-Lawrence Ambulance District in an attempt to recover $135,000 awarded to her in 2015 by a previous board of directors under questionable circumstances. The current board, which reorganized on Tuesday, sat down with attorney David Cole for a review of the case on Tuesday. ...

A Monett man charged with sodomy in 2015 has been acquitted by a Barry County jury after six hours of deliberations. Derek Shields, 25, of Monett, was found not guilty following a jury trial in the courtroom of Judge Jack Goodman. “We are extremely pleased the jury found him not guilty,” said John Lewright, Cassville attorney who represented Shields. ...

The Barry County Relay for Life, the major local fundraiser of the year for the American Cancer Society, will continue in Monett in a much abbreviated version on April 28 at the Monett Middle School FEMA shelter at Ninth and Cleveland, where the Monett Chamber of Commerce has held its Festival of Flavors...

The Ozark Festival Orchestra concludes its 37th season on April 23 with its annual Young Artists and Pops oncerts, underwritten by the Barry-Lawrence Area United Fund. The concert will be held at 3 p.m. at the Monett High School Performing Arts Center...

Pierce City High School alumnus Jim Keebaugh was one of the nearly a dozen local blacksmiths that participated in the Hammer In Festival at the Ritchey Mansion recently.

Monett artist John Bremer spoke about his painting technique in a presentation on Thursday at the Monett Branch Library.

The city of Pierce City will now have a retirement plan for its full-time employees. Last month, Mayor Allen Stockton advised aldermen that he wanted to check into the possibility of setting up a retirement plan for eligible employees, but indicated he had concerns with the Missouri Local Government Employees Retirement System (LAGERS), which is the plan used by most major municipalities...

The City of Monett's electric department has received national recognition for achieving exceptional electric reliability in 2016. The American Public Power Association, a trade group that represents more than 2,000 not-for-profit, community-owned electric utilities, presented the award...

The kindergarten classes from Monett Elementary School gave a concert of 21 nursery rhymes set to music before a crowd on Thursday night at the Monett High School Performing Arts Center.

It was a busy week for swearing in ceremonies, as Pierce City political candidates taking office vowed to serve the residents of the city.

As part of the Easter season, a video has been prepared by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to focus on finding peace through Jesus, regardless of religious background. According to Sister Reagan Stirling, with the Granby Ward in the Monett Stake of the Reformed LDS Church, the video "Prince of Peace" has been posted on the website Mormon.org...

The Dorcas Ladies Aid of Trinity Lutheran Church, Freistatt held its April meeting in the Fellowship Hall of the school. Doris Meyer, president, called the meeting to order, welcoming 14 members. The worship, “Spring Cleaning,” was given by Nadine Obermann. It stressed that the only thing needed to clean up our Spiritual House is the word of God. Members sang “Create in Me a Clean Heart.”...

Dr. and Mrs. Brad Hanson of Monett are pleased to announce the upcoming wedding of their daughter, Abby-Leigh, to Spencer Graham, son of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Graham of Shell Knob.

Miles Laning, student in Amy Barker’s digital photography class at Monett Middle School has been awarded third place in the Junior High/Middle School division of the 2017 Photo Contest co-sponsored by Jostens, the leading publications and consumer products company for schools, and Wolfe's Camera, This competition empowers students to positively capture their school experiences and share the stories of their entire school communities through photography...

Recently Midwest Transit Equipment of Nixa oversaw the delivery of five of the six buses for the Purdy school district. The district purchased two buses and leased four in order to establish what Superintendent Steven Chancellor described as a “routine replacement cycle.”...

Students in Misty Calhoun's second grade class at Monett Elementary participated in a five-week nutrition lesson which she titled "Nutrition and You." The 18 students in the class learned how the digestive system works to fuel the other systems in the body. Their driving question has been "Why do kids need healthy foods?" They have been investigating through various formats, with their last goal being to help others learn to make healthy choices...

Officials at Monett Elementary School have chosen students demonstrating the characteristics of being safe as Students of the Week for April 10.

Almost two years ago, the Pierce City baseball team met coach B.J Curry for the first time in the cafeteria at the high school. Mason Moreland was just getting ready to start his junior season when it donned on him what Curry would need out of the Eagles’ pitcher and short stop...

The Monett track team prepares to face a slew of familiar Big 8 foes on Tuesday at Cassville. Both squads are fresh off seventh-place finishes in the Nixa Invitational on Tuesday, where they mainly faced larger schools loaded with talent. “I was really pleased with how we did last night,” said Tyler Rickard, Monett boys coach. ...

Over the past two weeks, The Monett Times has received a number of emails in response to the story I wrote about Holocaust survivor Rachel Miller’s presentation at the Monett schools on March 23. The correspondence, from persons not living anywhere near Monett, had little to do with Miller’s personal account or her family’s murder at the hands of German Nazis. The letters criticized my identification of the Auschwitz death camp as being located in Poland...