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.

Sue Johnson, president of the Arts Council, said the inaugural event was a “great success” but the Oklahoma heat in late June was more than many could handle.

“We know we’re moving next year’s festival to the fall, probably September,” Johnson said.

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.

Weatherford’s Damon Neal Dunbar Jr., 38, was charged with three counts of discharging a stun gun, tear gas, mace or other deleterious agent against an officer and one count of possession of contraband in jail.

The felony case stems from an Oct. 16, 2022, incident at the Canadian County Jail.

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.

He went to church on Sunday and every Sunday, Pastor Harold Kamm would stand at the pulpit and announce, “God loves you and so do I.”

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.”

According to the CDC, 25.5 percent of adults ages 18-24 reported having seriously considered suicide in the past month.