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Kansas Profile

Author: Pat Melgares

Daniel Friesen, IdeaTek

Posted on by Pat Melgares
Head and shoulders picture of Daniel Friesen, IdeaTek
Daniel Friesen

Let’s meet some freedom fighters. These won’t be found in some jungle fighting a dictator. These fighters are working to achieve freedom from bad Internet service, and they are based in rural Kansas.

Daniel Friesen is founder and chief innovation officer at IdeaTek in Buhler. He describes his company’s staff as freedom fighters for good Internet service, particularly in rural communities.

Daniel went to high school in Buhler. He was a tech-savvy kid. “When our teachers at the school got computers, they would ask me to set them up,” Daniel said.

In 1999, he and four high school friends started a computer repair business in Buhler with $250 in the basement of his parent’s house. The business was named IdeaTek.

Daniel continued the business in college while his four friends pursued other interests. He studied computer systems support at Hutchinson Community College and management information systems at Wichita State before pursuing the business full time in Buhler, where he and his wife and family live today. Continue reading “Daniel Friesen, IdeaTek” →

Dr. Tom Walsh, Onaga Community HealthCare System

Posted on by Pat Melgares

Today let’s meet a rural doctor who practices medicine but doesn’t have patients. You may ask, “How can that be?”

The answer is that the people he sees are more than patients – he sees them as friends and neighbors. This type of relationship with those in his care has led to a lifelong career in practicing rural medicine.

At right: Dr. Tom Walsh

Last week we learned about the Community HealthCare System in northeast Kansas where Dr. Tom Walsh practices. He will retire at the end of 2021 after 46 years of practicing medicine in the rural community of Onaga, population 751 people. Now, that’s rural.

Dr. Walsh’s father Eugene was a family doctor in Onaga as well. After medical school, Eugene came to Onaga for one year to help his friend Dr. Fleckenstein – but he liked Onaga so much he never left.

Tom and his brother accompanied their dad on house calls. Tom decided to follow his father into the medical field. “I knew what I was getting into,” Tom said.

“When my folks took me to college (at Notre Dame), it was the first time I had ever been east of Kansas City,” Tom said. After graduation, he went to medical school at KU. He also met and married Marcia.

In 1975, Dr. Tom Walsh and Marcia moved to Onaga to join his father’s practice. Dr. Walsh would later become affiliated with what is now the Community HealthCare System of northeast Kansas. Marcia would rise to become the system’s chief operating officer. Continue reading “Dr. Tom Walsh, Onaga Community HealthCare System” →

Todd Willert, Community HealthCare System

Posted on by Pat Melgares

By Ron Wilson, director of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University

 

Have you heard the saying about building an airplane while trying to fly it? That would be one way of describing one hospital in rural Kansas which was transforming itself while continuing to provide services – and in the case of the hospital building, a new hospital was literally built in the place of the old one. This small-town hospital in rural Kansas has been transformed into a state-of-the-art health care facility.

Todd Willert is CEO of Community HealthCare System headquartered in Onaga. He shared the story of the remarkable progress of this organization.

At right: Community HealthCare System hospital, Onaga

Todd is a native of the Chicago area. “There were as many people in my high school graduating class as in the whole town of Onaga,” Todd said. After serving in health care administration in Illinois and Iowa, he was recruited to Onaga and became CEO in 2015.

He credits a former director, the late Joe Engelken, and local physician Tom Walsh with many of the organization’s advancements through the years. Todd wrote: “When Joe joined in 1981, Community Hospital Onaga’s team consisted of 30 employees and Dr. Tom Walsh. We could have remained a sleepy little hospital in northeast Kansas, but Joe had other ideas. He looked past decades-old football rivalries and instead focused on how communities could work together.” Continue reading “Todd Willert, Community HealthCare System” →

Shannon Martin, Burford Theatre

Posted on by Pat Melgares

By Ron Wilson, director of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University

 

“Welcome to my imagination.”

That sign is displayed on the desk of a creative person who manages a theater in small town Kansas, as she imagines how to engage more people in the arts.

Shannon Martin is the director of the Burford Theatre and Ark City Area Arts Council in Arkansas City. Her desk sports the sign, “Welcome to my imagination.”

Shannon went to high school in Iola and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Pittsburg State. She is the mother to four sons: Micah, Riley, Wyatt, and Wade.

Shannon and her husband Grady now live in eastern Cowley County. Grady works for General Electric and runs a cow-calf operation. Their historic farm home, stone barn and rental cabins are near the rural community of Dexter, population 278 people. Now, that’s rural.

In 2017, Shannon took the position as director of the Ark City Area Arts Council and director of the historic Burford Theatre in downtown Arkansas City. Continue reading “Shannon Martin, Burford Theatre” →