Summertime road to Champion

Summer time, summer time, sum, sum summertime…..” It is here! Champions are serious about flip flop weather. Particularly serious is the January birthday girl who chooses to celebrate her big day half way down the calendar for the joy of flip flops. This year the Champion Spring Fling has morphed into the Champion Summer Bash. It is official and it will happen Saturday, June 29th. Happy birthday, dear Sami! The fun will start around 11 in the morning and goes well into the afternoon. The fun need not stop. What you do on your own time is up to you. While you are at Champion you can enjoy the chance to meet up with old friends and to make new ones. All you musicians are invited to bring your instruments for a jam under the big oak tree. Everyone, bring your lawn chairs and a sunbonnet or hat might be a good idea. It is going to be a lovely day. There will be all kinds of good things to eat available from The Prominent Citizen himself and his helpers. Some Old Champions expecting company from the north and the south will have one less meal to feed them and they will get a quality experience of an awesome Ozark community. Katlyn McConnell sends her regrets from some distant adventure. We will have a good time anyway and we will tell her all about it next time she is in town.

Meanwhile, our beloved mail carrier, Karen Ross, will enjoy commemorating forty years of marriage, all to the same lucky man! She enjoys the radio on her route. She might hear “My One and Only Love.” Sweethearts still. Axyl Miller will be in the first grade in the fall. His birthday is June 17th. Daniel Parkes is in the 7th grade. His birthday is June 19th. Easton Shannon, 3rd grader, and Kash Hurt, first grader, share the 24th for their birthdays. Other special observances are for Tyler Clark, who was born June 20, 1988, and for Linda K. Watts and Sierra Parsons both born on the Vernal Equinox. Elizabeth Warren and Ava’s Cinita Brown share the 22nd for their birthdays. Nick Massey and Sherry Bennett enjoy the 25th for their special day, though Sherry had that song sung to her last Thursday. Esther Wrinkles is remembered on her birthday which was on the 28th. She was born in 1917, and left us in 2013. Ms. Eva Powell has the 29th of June as her birthday. So does Butch Kara, who is putting a lot of hard work in on making the Pioneer Heritage Festival of the Ozarks happen again the first week end in October? Happy birthday, all you students and all you adults from your friends in Champion!

Alvin Barnhart is a member of the Mountain Grove High School Class of 1959. They will be observing their 60th Class Reunion with a dinner Friday evening, July 5th at the Freewill Baptist Church. Alvin thinks as many as fifty might attend. There were about a hundred students in the class. Twenty-seven are known to have passed on. Hopes are that “The Hoover” will read about it in The Champion News and will drive all the way up from Houston, Texas. That is what happened last year. He and Dawn always bring fun with them and are always welcome.

The Summer Solstice came with some fast and hard hitting little thunderstorms, but it is like Bertie sings, “Storms Never Last” in Champion—Looking on the Bright Side!

Facebook