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Jason Smith, Smart Rural Communities

Posted on by Pat Melgares

Logo, Smart Rural CommunityIt is one thing to be a rural community. It’s another to be a Smart Rural Community.

The designation — “Smart Rural Community” — was created by a national association to recognize rural telecommunication companies that are providing superior broadband service in their areas. And many of those are found in Kansas.

Last week we met Jason Smith, general manager and CEO of Rainbow Communications in Everest, Kansas. In 2015, Rainbow Communications was one of 10 rural telecomm companies across the nation to earn the Smart Rural Communities Showcase Award.

The award is presented to those rural telecommunications companies that demonstrate superior broadband service in the regions they serve. The Smart Rural Communities designation has now been broadened to include any community that is served by a telecomm company that meets certain high standards.

This is a project of NTCA, the national rural broadband association. NTCA works on behalf of more than 850 small independent businesses and cooperatives that provide broadband service in rural communities. These businesses cover approximately one-third of the nation’s land mass.

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Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum

Posted on by Pat Melgares
Statue of Amelia Earhart in front of museum in Atchison
Amelia Earhart statue, Atchison (Kan.)

Amelia Earhart speaks. She smiles, looks up, and begins to talk about her life experiences.

Wait – didn’t Amelia Earhart disappear in the South Pacific 80 years ago?

Yes, but she is alive again – at least virtually – in an incredible museum that will open in her hometown of Atchison in spring, 2023.

Joe Brentano is director of the new Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum. Makinzie Burghart is director of development. Burghart grew up in Atchison as did Amelia Earhart 120 years earlier.

Earhart and her younger sister, Muriel, spent many of their early years at their grandparent’s home in Atchison. In 1908, she saw her first airplane at the Iowa State Fair, but it didn’t excite her at the time.

Years later, she and a friend were at a flying exposition when a stunt pilot dived at them.  “I believe that little red airplane spoke to me as it swished by,” Earhart later wrote.

After attending another air show, she was hooked on flying. She would go on to become the first president of the Ninety-Nines, a women’s aviation organization; the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic; first woman to fly solo coast-to-coast; and the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to the mainland. Continue reading “Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum” →

Amelia Earhart

Posted on by Pat Melgares
Amelia Earhart statue
Amelia Earhart, as represented in Statuary Hall, U.S. Capitol

The pilot has come in for a landing. In this case, the pilot is the famous aviator Amelia Earhart (or her replica in the form of a bronze statue), and her landing place isn’t an airport – it’s the nation’s capitol.

Amelia Earhart was recently honored by the State of Kansas by having her statue placed in Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol building.

Statuary Hall is that area of the capitol that displays statues depicting people representing all 50 states. Each state is authorized to send two statues to this collection. Kansas recently replaced one of its statues with one of Amelia Earhart, who captured the world’s attention as a pioneer in aviation.

With support from the Atchison Amelia Earhart Foundation, her statue was unveiled in the National Statuary Collection in July, 2022.

Amelia Earhart was born in Atchison on July 24, 1897. She must have been quite the adventurous child. One time she and friends built a homemade roller coaster by greasing boards with lard and suspending them from the top of a toolshed. Amelia made the trial run on this roller coaster in a wooden crate and crashed part way down.

She came up with a torn dress and split lip but a big smile, proclaiming, “Oh! It’s just like flying!”

Continue reading “Amelia Earhart” →