Friday, April 11, 2025
ADDISON TIMES MAJOR SPONSOR: STEPHENSON RIFE ATTORNEYS
WELCOME TO REALITY
Cristi Brant, left, was one of numerous volunteers helping Shelbyville Middle School seventh graders learn how life choices affect budgeting yesterday. The annual event is hosted by the Indiana Federation of Business & Professional Women - Shelbyville. | photo by KRISTIAAN RAWLINGS
Haehl Farm Receives Homestead Award
State Department of Agriculture Director Don Lamb, Diane Haehl, Avery Haehl, Ainsley Haehl, David Haehl, Aubrey Haehl, Eric Haehl, Margaret Haehl and Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith pause for a photo recognizing the Haehl family’s recent Homestead Award. The family’s 120-acre farm, located on CR 200 N, is now in its fourth generation. The award recognizes farms that remain within the same family for at least 100 years. The Haehl farm has been in the family for nearly 140 years. | SUBMITTED
SHS Student Named Outstanding JAG Senior
Shelbyville High School senior Brooklyn Winkler, a JAG Outstanding Senior, will participate in the JAG National Career Development Conference in Indianapolis this month. | photo by KRISTIAAN RAWLINGS
Brooklyn Winkler is about to have a national platform to highlight the program she credits for her success. Winkler, a senior at Shelbyville High School, was recently named the Jobs for America’s Graduates (JAG) Outstanding Senior for the region, and is set to participate in competitions and networking at the National Career Development Conference.
SHS hosts one of 125 national non-profit JAG programs in the state, where students learn employability skills and receive adult mentoring. The daily course helped Winkler land on a career choice.
“I wanted a class that would provide a community, a group of people who would listen to, help and support me,” Winkler said.
This is her second year in the program. “Last year, I tested the waters in JAG and presented on a bunch of different careers that I thought about. JAG helped me figure out that I really wanted to do cosmetology.”
Previous regional and state conferences have provided opportunities to present in front of judges and participate in community service projects.
“We did Kindness Rocks (at state competition) last year,” Winkler said. “We painted rocks to bring back to our home towns and placed them in parks to spread the word about JAG. We also did cards for the military and first responders.”
At the national conference, she will room with an Outstanding Senior from Avon and participate in various expos and contests at the JW Marriott downtown.
The local JAG chapter is led by Shelbyville High School graduates Luci Pettit and Ronisa Ross, who both hold bachelors and associates degrees from Indiana University and Ivy Tech Community College, respectively. Recent JAG field trips at SHS have included visits to Newfields, the Indiana State Museum, Shapiro's Deli, Dress for Success and visits to several colleges. There are also weekly guest speakers who talk about college and career choices and answer questions.
“We set students up with the skills they need to get a job, keep a job and professionally leave a job,” Pettit said. “We also set them up with a job shadowing experience and possible summer internships.”
Although Winkler is looking forward to her place of honor at the conference, the benefits of JAG go well beyond the spotlight.
“Competition is so much fun, but it doesn’t even really feel like a competition, because we’re all in the JAG community,” Winkler said. “Even if I were to not place at all, there would be kids who would tell me they were so proud of me. It’s just such a meaningful class.”
ADDISON TIMES MAJOR SPONSOR: FULL CANOPY REAL ESTATE
NOTEBOOK:
HOOSIER NEWS: U.S. Rep. Victoria Spartz was one of only two Republicans to vote against a GOP budget that narrowly passed yesterday. The Hamilton County congresswoman, who worked in accounting and finance before taking office in 2020, has long focused on the country’s financial situation. Spartz threatened to resign from office in late 2023 if a commission was not established to study the national debt. “I appreciate efforts of my colleagues, but the instructions we voted on today are still setting us up for the largest deficit increase in the history of our Republic, & opening up a ‘pandora’s box’ by changing accounting rules to hide it,” Spartz said on X. “In good conscience, I couldn’t vote YES.” (IndyStar)
NATIONAL NEWS: A collection of 144 items related to the life of Abraham Lincoln will go up for auction in Chicago in May. It is consigned by the Lincoln Presidential Foundation and is estimated to be worth $4 million. Highlights include some of his childhood homework, campaign items, signed letters and the morbid centerpiece of the auction, a pair of bloodstained white kid gloves that the president had in his breast pocket on the night of the assassination, estimated to sell for $800,000. Other antiques from the night of his killing include a cuff button, a ticket from a theatergoer and a subsequent reward poster for John Wilkes Booth and his co-conspirators. The origin of the 144 items is interesting in and of itself — they’re from a collection of 1,540 items donated by a historian and collector, then sold to the museum Foundation for $23 million in 2007. However, that appraisal might not be entirely right, given that the authenticity of a stovepipe hat believed to be worth $6.5 million has subsequently been called into question. (Puck/Numlock)
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SHS Courier Archive Highlights
April 5, 1927
Alfred Campbell received the Paul Cross Medal. He received a watch chain from the team.
Charles Titus, a sophomore, had died “from the effect of flu-pneumonia.” The Courier expressed its condolences to his family.
Dorothy Metzger had been hurt in a local interurban accident. She had suffered “a very badly hurt foot” and was on crutches.
A student had teased Mr. Linville with a fake hold-up: “Your money or your life?” Mr. Linville responded, “I have only got my life. My wife keeps the money.”
Dr. Hall gave a talk to high school boys, warning them of the dangers of smoking cigarettes. He said many boys turned to cigarettes because their first attempt at cigars or pipes resulted in sickness, and cigarettes reportedly had “no immediate harm,” but Dr. Hall cautioned otherwise.
The Courier published an editorial encouraging the formation of a committee to regulate who could wear the letter “S”. Students who had not earned the letter had somehow obtained them. “Certain rules and regulations concerning who are eligible to wear the school insignia should be made,” The Courier said. “In the meantime, all students and former students of the high school can aid in creating respect for our high school letter ‘S’ by not wearing the letter if you are not legally entitled to do so.”
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This Day in Shelby County History
News around Shelbyville and the surrounding area as reported on or about this date in history. Selections are curated by The Addison Times from Shelby County Public Library Genealogy Department materials.
2005: Gertrude Nickles won a certified one-carat diamond ring from Friedman’s Inc. jewelry store in the Kroger center. Kathryn Obermeyer, Nickles’ daughter, had entered her mother’s name in a nationwide drawing conducted at 162 Friedman’s stores and won the grand prize.
1995: Officials with Osco Drug store announced potential plans to build a new store, which would affect the county’s tentative plans to build a road between the Classic dealership on E. State Road 44 and the Professional Building that led straight north to a proposed bridge. But Osco was negotiating with the owners for the same piece of land. An alternative identified route by the county was starting west of the Eastside Express Car Wash and leading north in an angle to the proposed bridge across Little Blue River. The bridge discussion followed Mayor Bob Williams’ suggestion to build another access point over the river for emergency vehicle and to relieve the Morris Avenue bridge.
1985: Shelbyville High School girls selected for May Court were Lori Lay, Heather Bratton, Misti Kremer, Gail Douglas, Judy Justice, Kate Gallagher and Desiree Huber. Juniors elected to prom court were Kelly Zinman, escorted by Brian Tackett; Mimi Rubush, escorted by Jay Cherry; and Ann Vardaman, escorted by J.D. Lux.
1975: Actress Marjorie (Tomlinson) Main, a Shelby County native and a fixture on the movie screens of America for 10 years as “Ma Kettle,” a raucous hillbilly matriarch, died of cancer in Los Angeles at age 85. Main, who had returned here several times for visits during her career, had been born near Acton and Fairland and attended Franklin College before launching her acting career. She had also starred on Broadway. Main had lived simply. Her wardrobe consisted of long dresses, flat shoes and big floppy hats. She did not own a car until she was 50 and lived for more than 30 years in a modest neighborhood without maids and only a gardener, “and as often as not she was out working with him,” a friend said. Main left no known relatives and would be buried in Hollywood Hills beside her husband, Stanley Krebs. “I’ve been lonely so much of my life,” she had said when making her funeral arrangements, “and I’d like to be with him in death.” (Krebs, who died in 1935 at age 71, had been 57, and Main 31 years old when they married.)
1965: Edna Wickizer, 67, of Shelbyville, died in a tornado in Michigan. Her husband, Donald Wickizer Sr., was head of Tippecanoe Press here. Edna had been riding in an automobile with her husband and a friend when the twister picked up and overturned their car. The Wickizers, who had been married in 1963, lived at 12 W. Hendricks St.
1955: Jean Meltzer, wife of the Shelby County Sheriff, began her new position as jail matron, a post made mandatory by the 1955 General Assembly. The first lunch she made for inmates was beans and ham, fried potatoes, cornbread and coffee.
1945: Local newspapers hosted a meeting at the Strand Alcazar to discuss the potential uses of FM (Frequency Modulation) radio.
Private First Class Walter Sosbe, of Shelbyville, had the unusual experience for a cannoner of firing a 105mm howitzer within rifle range of the enemy in action in Manila. Sosbe had been asked to fire the cannon at a building which Japanese soldiers had converted into a strong point. The goal was to persuade the soldiers to get out of the building. “We persuaded them,” Sosbe said.
1935: Moral Township students hosted a Tom Thumb wedding play in the auditorium. The school orchestra also played.
1925: Kids would have 30 minutes to find the 1,000 Easter eggs hidden in the city park, organizers announced.
1915: The neglected shrubbery in the ornamental plots in the four corners of public square was the cause of considerable agitation. The Republican said the issue was to be expected. “It was planted and told to grow. It has had no care, no attention, no nothing….” The paper said the shrubbery could be better, but could also be worse. Someone had suggested flower beds, but the paper pointed out those would likely be ignored, too. “Some think that to run cement four feet wide on the inside of the curb and place thereon park benches is the proper caper while others say it would not do at all. And so there you have it.”
ADDISON TIMES MAJOR SPONSOR: Freeman Family Funeral Homes & Crematory
OBITUARIES
Rex Dale Huber, 85, passed away peacefully on February 12, 2025, after a courageous battle with lung cancer. He was born on November 7, 1939, in Shelbyville, Indiana, to Roland Oren and Anna Mae Huber. Rex is survived by his beloved wife, Kye Ja Huber, and his children, Joe Huber and Leslie Huber-Yedlin. He was preceded in death by his daughters Annie Neal, Kelley Perea-Shafer, and Holley Huber-Hopkins. He also leaves behind a loving legacy through his grandchildren (14) and great-grandchildren (12), who brought immense pride and joy to his life. Rex is also survived by his brothers John Huber (wife Jane Huber) and David Huber, and by his sister-in-law Nancy Huber. He was preceded in death by his brothers Jim Huber and Bill Huber.
Rex had a lifelong passion for John Deere tractors and found great joy in traveling and exploring new places. Whether close to home or halfway across the world, he carried with him a deep appreciation for the beauty of life’s journey. Rex was often the first to volunteer to help others and for many years he organized a donation of supplies to support an orphanage in Mexico, a cause that was near and dear to his heart. He will be remembered for his strength, humor, and zest for life—a man who faced every season with a resilient spirit and a twinkle in his eye. He loved to tell a good joke and to have a good laugh with those around him.
In accordance with his wishes, a private service will be held. Services have been entrusted to Freeman Family Funeral Homes and Crematory, 819 S. Harrison St. in Shelbyville. Online condolences may be shared with Rex's family at www.freemanfamilyfuneralhomes.com.
Kevin G. Corley, 62, of Shelbyville, passed away Wednesday April 9, 2025 at The Willows. He was born September 11, 1962 in Shelbyville, Ind., to Gene Corley and Norma Jean (Dyer) Houston.
Kevin’s favorite pastime was riding his motorcycle and spending time with his family enjoying a cold beer. He was an avid NASCAR fan.
He is survived by his son, Kyle Corley; his daughter, Kelly (husband, Joe) Hansford; his ex-wife, Terry Corley; his grandchildren, Taylor, Ryan, Colten, Madison and Eljay; his great grandson, Buckley; his sister, Cissy Corley; his brothers, Terry Corley, Donald Corley and Aaron Corley; two nieces and three nephews. He was preceded in death by his parents; two sisters; one brother; one nephew and step-father.
Visitation will be Monday, April 14, 2025 from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Murphy-Parks Funeral Service, 703 S. Harrison Street, Shelbyville, Ind., 46176. Funeral services will follow at 7 p.m. at the funeral home with Pastor Jose Rivera officiating. Burial will be Wednesday, April 16, 2025 at 11 a.m. at Whispering Hope Memorial Gardens and Crematory in the Honor & Glory Veterans Garden, 625 Progress Parkway, Shelbyville, Ind., 46176. Funeral Directors Greg Parks, Sheila Parks and Stuart Parks are honored to serve Kevin’s family. In lieu of flowers family request donations to be made to the Kevin Corley funeral fund. Online condolences may be shared at www.murphyparks.com.