Breaking News

Editorial

Celebrating transportation

We are now in the midst of National Transportation Week, an annual celebration of all the things that keep people and goods moving in this country. By proclamation of President Joe Biden, the week began Sunday and will conclude Saturday. This celebration of the transportation industry has taken place each May since it became a permanent event in 1962. An annual observance taking note of this vital industry’s importance to the nation dates back to the 1950s. That makes this an appropriate time to remind readers of the importance of a first-class transportation system to the economic ...

Fort Dodge school system is making the right move to enhance safety

Many of us remember a time when school safety largely consisted of monthly fire drills and a tornado shelter drill in the spring. Those remain very important. But, unfortunately, the number of potential safety threats facing students today goes beyond fires and tornadoes to scary things that were not envisioned just a couple decades ago. Mass shootings, other violence and drug crimes are among them. Keeping the students, teachers and school staff members safe needs to be a top priority for school districts everywhere. It is a priority for the Fort Dodge Community School ...

Brushy Creek Area Honor Flight is back

When a 737 roars into the sky above Fort Dodge Regional Airport just as the sun begins to brighten the horizon this morning, one of the most unique and heartfelt tributes to area veterans will be back in action. There will be about 130 veterans aboard that plane. They will be going to Washington, D.C., for free to see the nation’s war memorials. The trip will be the 23rd one conducted by the Brushy Creek Area Honor Flight. The first took place in 2010. Since then, about 3,000 area veterans have made the journey. The Brushy Creek Area Honor Flight is largely the vision of one man, ...

Nurses remain dedicated to caring for all

There is perhaps no profession that is so intertwined with an individual’s life as nursing is. Nurses are there to help bring new life into the world. They administer the vaccines, and help people get through all the various illnesses and injuries of a lifetime. And at the very end, nurses care for people in their last days. Nurses provide care in the form of medicine and therapy. But they also provide it in the form of reassuring words and a comforting presence. In light of what they do for all of us, it is highly appropriate that we spend a little time honoring them. National ...

It is time to stop the violence

Fort Dodge has a problem. It is a deadly problem. The problem we are talking about is ongoing senseless violence that is taking the lives of too many young adults. That violence is also leaving others with physical scars that will last a lifetime, while the survivors of those whose lives ended too soon will struggle with emotional scars for the remainder of their days. The latest spasm of violence happened Tuesday. One young man was killed and another was wounded in a shooting. Just a month earlier, a young woman, a mother of three boys, was shot to death. And if all that isn’t ...

Good reading for a good cause

There is still time to get some good reading material at excellent prices. The Friends of the Fort Dodge Public Library is now offering a good opportunity for everyone to expand their collection of books. That group is now conducting the spring version of its twice yearly used book sale. There are tables stretching the length of the library’s big meeting room and they are covered with books for sale. There are even some books still in boxes beneath the tables. Something to satisfy just about any reading taste can be found on those tables. World War II history? Got ...