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Socks for the Sole effort meets a community need

Editorial

It’s an automatic part of daily life for many people: when you get dressed, you put your socks on. Clean, dry socks make the feet feel good. Putting socks on is so routine many folks do that without even thinking about it. Unfortunately, there are children in the Fort Dodge community who don’t get to put on a good pair of socks every day. Family financial problems mean that they don’t have enough socks or the ones they have are pretty threadbare. To make sure that as many kids as possible go back to school this year with good socks on their feet, the Community Health Center of ...

Behind the headsets

Local Columns

Two weeks ago, I spent a couple of hours visiting the Webster County 911 Center. I'd always known that what they do was essential, but sitting in the room and listening to them take call after call, I saw it in a completely different way. The dispatchers are the voices on the other end of 911 that remain cool. They're speaking with folks on potentially the worst day of their lives, and they must remain alert, ask the correct questions, and keep rescue crews informed in real time. It's high-pressure, multitasking at its finest, and relentless. And they do it all with professionalism and ...

Be sure to attend your county fair

Editorial

Times change. Even so, there are a few constants in life. One is the pleasure provided by the county fairs that continue to be a highlight of summer in Iowa. For as far back as anyone who now lives in this part of Iowa can remember, these summer festivals have been much-anticipated and much-enjoyed features of summertime. The fairs, of course, have changed over the decades. One central theme, however, remains much the same — a celebration of farm life and the assorted positive educational and personal-growth pursuits that are treasured features of life in rural and small-town ...

New surgery center is investment in the future of the region

Editorial

Nobody wants to end up in an operating room. But when a person has to have surgery, they want to be in the most up-to-date facility with the best trained staff. In Fort Dodge, UnityPoint Health - Trinity Regional Medical Center is taking a huge step toward making sure that surgery patients will find themselves in that very situation by adding a nearly $40 million new surgery center. The project had been planned for five years. Construction is now underway, and the work is very obvious to anyone going to the hospital or even driving by it on Kenyon Road. It is expected to be completed ...

United Way responds to help families devastated by a fire

Local Columns

Losing your home to fire is one of the worst tragedies any family can face. It is a true disaster in so many ways. It is the loss of much more than a home - it is the loss of comfort and security that a home represents. A fire emergency is a very difficult crisis to deal with for all families , but for lower income families with little or no disposable income, a fire emergency can be devastating. In the past year, over a dozen families with children in our area have lost everything due to devastating house fires. These incidents have not only taken their homes, but also their sense of ...