40 years ago

december 16, 1981

The City of Marion signed a contract Monday afternoon to purchase raw water from Marion Lake. “Cheap insurance,” according to City Attorney Ed Wheeler, “against problems in the future.”

Wheeler pointed out that Marion would look mighty bad in the event of prolonged drought conditions or if faced with expansion and lack of water to implement it, “Sitting here within a couple of miles or so of that big body of water and no contract to use it.”

A Leon couple, Walter D. Ediger, 42, and his 40-year-old wife, Jo Etta, were killed late Sunday when their single-engine Cessna 172 crashed nine miles south and a mile east of Hillsboro.

The Edigers had flown to Hillsboro from El Dorado to watch their daughter Diane perform in a Tabor College music production of Handel’s “Messiah.”

Kansas Attorney General Bob Stephen informed the City of Marion that salaries paid to city employees are “official public records” and subject to public access according to state statutes. That information was not being made available to the public at the time.

John Koslowsky, Jeff Harris, and Scott Steward are pictured standing beneath the official Christmas wreath for Marion High School’s shop class. The bells at the center are car pistons and the bow at top is a power takeoff belt borrowed from a tractor.

Erin Shea O’Dell, baptized in November, is accompanied in a family snapshot of the occasion by her great-great-grandmother, Mrs. Elmer Barlow of Holcomb; great-grandmother, Mrs. Orvis O’Dell of Florence; grandfather, Delano O’Dell of Florence; and father, Michael O’Dell of Marion.