June 2023

Members of the El Reno Arts Council learned a number of valuable lessons from the first Art Mix on 66 event held last weekend. Maybe the most important being that the next festival will be held in the fall and not the summer.

A record-high annual budget totaling nearly $10.3 million has been approved for Canadian County’s juvenile center. The Gary E. Miller Canadian County Children’s Justice Center's fiscal year 2024 budget was approved unanimously by Canadian County commissioners.

A repeat felon could see his prison stay extended after being accused of pepper-spraying three detention officers while he was an inmate at the Canadian County Jail.

Nothing compares to the aroma of fair food, the lights and sounds from the midway and bringing home that 4-H blue ribbon from the county fair. The Canadian County 4-H Office is deep in the planning and preparation stages for the 2023 Canadian County Free Fair - Under the Big Top.

Canadian County District 1 personnel are working with municipalities to improve roads this summer. From May to July, county crews will have repaired and assisted with roads in Piedmont, Okarche and Calumet.

A private school voucher program funded with federal pandemic relief dollars selected schools for preferential treatment, awarded funds to families not facing financial hardship and then ran out of funds that could have been used by families that were, according to an audit released last week.

Dennis was born Sidney Dennison Cooper on Jan. 31, 1951, to Wilma Ethal Shults and Albert Leon Cooper. His parents divorced when he was an infant. His mother remarried Virgil Loucks and he was raised by him and his mother. Dennis married Charlotte Morse at Trinity Lutheran Church on Dec. 29, 1974.

U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy has declared war on a “loneliness epidemic.” Murthy noted “about one-in-two adults in America reported experiencing loneliness. And that was before the COVID-19 pandemic cut off so many of us from friends, loved ones and support systems.”

Lola Delaney Nelms was born March 8, 1948, in Terral, Oklahoma, to Lee and Lorena Delaney. She passed from this life June 18, 2023, at the age of 75 in Oklahoma City. She operated a beauty shop in El Reno for many years.

In a recently unveiled “toolkit,” the National Education Association (NEA) advises teachers on strategies to overturn policies that require educators to use a student’s given name rather than a “transgender” name, and the organization also directs teachers to various LGBTQ+ organizations, including...