Newspaper Articles for Lane County, Kansas

HUTCHINSON --- The pews are gone and the sound of singing hasn't been heard in a good 30 years.

Not that there aren't signs of a past life as the weather-beaten Amy Baptist Church, about to see its ultimate demise.

A torn green curtain still hangs by the pulpit. Dusty books and hymnals, some more than a century old, line a few shelves in the basement. An old attendance record sheet is part of the litter on the floor, along with a few Christmas decorations.

And a sign quoting a Bob verse from the book of John, situated above the basement's kitchen, still is legible: "Jesus said, 'I am the resurrection, and the life: he who believeth in me shall live and not die.' "

Garden City Co-op branch manager Ryan Herman and employee Bentz Lewis walked through the church on a warm fall afternoon, litter crunching at their feet. Lewis peered up into the old steeple, where, it seemed, an owl or other bird had found a home.

"It seen better days," said Lewis, who rummaged through some of the books in the basement, finding one that dated to 1897.

The church, along with the mammoth grain elevator, an abandoned elementary school and a couple of homes, is all that is left of Amy.

The town, located just west of Dighton on K-96, once had a lumberyard and a general store. The town even had a band --- complete with uniforms --- and a bandstand.

"It had activity," said Pat Herndon, who owns the Old Bank Gallery in the nearby county seat town of Dighton. "But it never had a big population."

Amy started back in the late 1800's as Ellen -- a stop established by the railroad, said Joel Herndon, Pat's son, who also serves on the Lane County Historical Society board.

However, it wasn't until 1906 that the town began to thrive, and the town was renamed Amy, Pat Herndon said.

Nolan Yates, who started the post office that year, applied for a permit with the U.S. Postal Service, but his request was denied because Ellen was already the name of another town in eastern Kansas. No knowing what to name his community, Yates picked names of local teenage girls and submitted them to the postal service. An official there picked Amy, after 16-year-old Amy Bruner.

Pat Herndon said her husband's grandfather, John Herndon, started the lumberyard around that same time as well. A grocery also opened in 1906, according to an old sign salvaged from the store that now hangs in an area farmer's work shed.

It was during this time the town prospered, Pat Herndon said. There were children's games and even a small merry-go-round with an organ music box --- the riders pumping the ride to move, similar to an old-style railroad handcar.

Those are just a few of the stories that former residents have passed down generation to generation, Herndon said. She moved to Amy in 1961 after marrying her husband, Walter. The couple lived there until 2002, when they moved into Dighton.

It is also where they attended church for a number of years; she and her husband served as youth sponsors in the 1960's.

Joel Herndon said he even played baby Jesus for one of the Christmas programs.

The Herndon family was among the first church members and the last, with her father-in-law, William Walter Herndon, a regular parishioner until it closed in the 1970's.

These days, the church stands in the shadows of the elevator, which still bustles with farmers, especially during harvest seasons. Across the highway is the old Army school district No. 4 building --- it, too, dilapidated, the old play equipment nearly hidden by weeds.

It closed around 1980, Pat Herndon said, saying that son Joel attended the school until the fourth grade. It served as a voting spot for a while, before the Kansas climate took its toll.

Other buildings are long gone. The post office closed in 1954. The store was torn down four or five years ago. Any traces of the lumberyard and bandstand have disappeared as well.

And, it seems, the church will meet the same fate.

Elevator operator Herman said the church, owned by the cooperative for about a year, along with a home next door, will be razed in the next few weeks, if not sooner. One of the last remnants of Amy's early history will vanish.

"It always hurts to see a piece of history go," Pat Herndon said.
(Wichita Eagle ~ November 20, 2010 (By Amy Bickel, Hutchinson News) ~ Submitted by Lori DeWinkler)