Anything that has been in existence 151 years, gone through four generations of the Ray family as owners and is now under a third corporate hand is bound to have had the opportunity to have experienced a number of good employees. However, none can compare in longevity, consistency and reliability to those qualities demonstrated by Darlene Wierman.

When I walked into the Cassville Democrat office that October day in 1970 and was greeted by Kathryn Mitchell at the front desk, sitting there with her Bible in front of her, I thought this would probably a good place to work. Shortly after that, Bob and Sue Mitchell came in all excited about a new church building site where they had just been for a ribbon cutting for the First Christian Church. I told them my friend Mildred Hare over in the Standard Mutual Ins. office told me there might be an office position opening up because Johnnie Edie was leaving to have a baby. Although I had no knowledge of newspaper publishing, I did have a background in bookkeeping and what a busy office was like, which was my previous job in Colorado where I had been employed as the school district’s executive secretary and bookkeeper for several years.

When I arrived at the Cassville Democrat and met Office Manager Darlene Wierman for the first time, I’m not sure either of us knew what to do with one another. Darlene was a living history of the Democrat, having worked at the paper since 1970, and I was still a greenhorn of a journalist, accepting the first editor job of my career.

I officially have more than 365 days of fatherhood under my belt. Maybe it’s because sleep has been at a premium at times, but it sure doesn’t feel that long ago I was holding my 6-pound, 11-ounce newborn and fawning over her monkey- sounding cry. A week after, I was hugging my second as she completed our Troutman four. A year later, our nearly 20-pound one-year-old is hitting milestone after milestone, almost too quickly for us to keep up.

For the 76th year since football returned to the Cassville campus, the Black and Gold will be resuming play on the third athletic field for the R-4 schools. There is a new coach at the helm with the history of this squad yet to be written.

I have a pretty steadfast rule against putting our staff or our staff’s families in the paper, extending as far as no pictures of family pets. However, even the most constant rule may be bent from time to time if the situation warrants.

With the COVID-19 pandemic coming to the forefront with a number of variants these days, you really don’t understand how it can continue this way until it hits home, and despite all the shots and precautions, you can find yourself dealing with the thing.

The Aug. 2 election showed us two things in Barry County, the power of hoofing it through rural parts of the Ozarks, and the power behind a rural precinct ballot. Steve Blankenship, of Jenkins, won the Barry County presiding commissioner race over Chad Johnson and Andrew W.

The 2022-2023 school year will begin on Tuesday, August 23. We are excited to welcome our students and staff back for another great year at Cassville R-IV School District.

Cassville’s main drag from 10th Street going south has taken on various looks over the decades, some for the good and others that have depleted the commercial potential. It’s still an interesting thought to remember those former contributors to our way of life, which was once called “the good life, in our own way” by one metropolitan writer.