University Daily Kansan, November 18, 1982
Page 5
City
From page one
model block rehabilitation project in the Armourdale district. Staff members negotiated with the city for a year to get the project backed by community development funds — off the ground. Residents have done much of the labor in keeping the cost lower.
“WE’RE GETTING much more out of the dollar,” he said. “We’ve already started the second block, I guess the most heartening thing is the large amount of private investment spin-off that has occurred because of the project.”
Dice said he thought the city's biggest problems had been the tremendously divisive culture.
"I'm not one to slyy away from a political fight, but these were extremely bitter and dirty fireworks."
DICE SAID HE thought the city's biggest strengths were its ethnic diversity and stable neighborhoods, and their emphasis on family and community ties. People do not easily move out of their neighbors, he said. He told of a 'resident he knew from the Argentine district who got a lucrative job on the West Coast. But he returned to Kansas City after a few months because he missed not only his family but also his neighborhood.
Dice not only works in the Argentine district, but also lives there. He said he liked the strong connection with the city.
Other residents agree. During the city's urban renewal days in the 1960s and into the '70s, when the Mexican-American community in Armoudale was displaced, those in neighboring Argentine told city officials that they intended to stay put. As if to further drive home their point, younger families began building their homes on lots next to far older homes.
ACROSS THE KAW River, past the industrialized river bottoms with their aging meatpacking plants and warehouses, sits the
primarily_Croatian Strawberry Hill neighborhood.
By 1890, five national meat-packing plants had settled in Kansas City, Kan. The companies needed tremendous amounts of labor and attracted immigrants to their doors.
Most of the immigrants working in the plants settled in the bottoms near the plants. They came from Ireland, Creatia, Germany, Sweden and Slovenia, a part of Austria. When the flood of 1930 wiped out their homes, many moved up to the mountains had once been covered with wild strawberries.
STRAWBERRY HILL, more so than other Kansas City, Kan. neighborhoods, has retained its ethnic flavor. Walking down Thompson and Barnett streets can send a visitor back to turn-of-the-century Europe. Old women dressed in black, their lined faces showing years of hard work, have made sidewalks. More than Hill's residents are elderly. Many have lived there all their lives.
Matt Gindrich, 504 Thompson St., 73, can remember a time when there were 200 children on his short block alone. At age 16, he went to work as a doorboy, opening and closing the big cooler doors at the Armour packing plant. He said he remembered 300 residents walking daily across the James Street bridge at 3 a.m. to go to work at the big packing plants.
THE NEIGHBORHOOD hasn't changed much over the years, he said, except that people were able to fix up and enlarge their houses. It's still a quiet and crime-free neighborhood. And, he said, he still knows almost everyone who lives near him.
In earlier days on the Hill, families used to raise chickens and pigs in their small backyards. To feed these animals, Cindrich said, he and his neighbors would go down to the tracks, pick up grain that had fallen out of the train cars and carry it back up the hill.
Cindrich said, "Back in the '20s, we lived
across the street from a family. They were making whiskey and got raided by the police, who threw the mash on the streets. The chickens ate it and ran around and around.
"After that, they went to sleep right awav."
REARDON SAID the ethnic neighborhoods are one of his city's strong points. Reardon, himself from fourth generation Irish immigrant roots, said he was surprised by the ethnic groups effects on the city's history.
"We have a real strong work ethic here," he said. "Nobody ever gave us anything. We've got the money."
And he says the city's ethnic groups have lived together peacefully, in perhaps one of the few places where the melting pot theory ever worked.
"There are four Orthodox churches here," Reardon said. "There's the Greek, the Russian and two Serbians. When the Russian pastor died, one of the Serbian priests took over their church for two years, until the Russian community could bring in another priest."
REARDON IS perhaps the city's biggest salesman. He pointed out his city's highlights, the way a good salesman does.
"We have an extremely promising future," he said. "We're on the verge of immense growth. When I-435 goes through, we'll have hundreds of thousands of developable acres."
Perhaps the biggest thirst in Kansas City's side is its downtown. Reardon predicted that it would never be the commercial center it once was, but that it would eventually be an office and convention center. Currently, a hotel next to the Constitution Convention Center, Fifth Street and Minnesota Ave., would be the answer to Reardon's prayers.
"If we ever got that hotel, the rooms would be full. Up people from the western Kansas would have to pay for it."
"But it's a tough time to build and I'm not to tell you once this is Lake Tahoe."
no right to force an individual to do work he has no desire to do.
Draft
HE SAID THAT the government has damaged its credibility by attempting to prosecute the Pegasus attack.
"Most of the time guys like me could not take the whole thing seriously," he said. "They're bluffing and threatening that they are going to go out and prosecute all of us."
Another government action aimed at cracking down on the resisters includes cutting off federal emergency aid.
"I get a little bit scared about how we seem to be moving toward Soviet-type limitations on educational and academic institutions," he said.
Saying he thought most resistors would be willing to serve their communities or others to
compensate not serving or registering for the military, Epp added that he planned to work in Memonite volunteer service programs in the future.
AFTER THE PRESENTATION, several members of the audience took issue with some of the comments.
Another older man spoke up from the back of the audience.
William Kuchier, professor emeritus of geography, said he felt the government was attempting to do what was right, as it was not just to individuals, but to the entire nation.
"If everyone acted like you, (Cuban leader Fide) Castro would occupy the United States and kill it."
Senate
From page one
McCambridge told the Senate that 15 percent of women who used the shelter were KU students. She argued that the Senate was being asked to pay only 6 percent of the WTCS budget.
THE SENATE ALSO voted to give nearly $11,000 to KU's Recreational Services program after its director, Tom Wilkerson, said Robinson center probably would start closing earlier in the evening if additional funds were not provided.
"We have not asked for a funding request in three or four years," Wilkerson said, "and I apologize for coming to you with this request. Not having these funds wouldn't close Robinson totally, but it would reduce the evening hours available for faculty and students."
A REQUEST TO EARMARK $5,000 for the James B. Pearson Lecture Series also was approved last night. The lecture series brought Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker to KU
Adkins, the author of the Pearson Lecture bill, said he had talked with Pearson, a former U.S. senator from Kansas, many times about financing the newly created lecture series, and even proposed earlier this year that as much as $20,000 be given to the forum.
More than $2,000 for student salaries was cut from the recreation program's budget earlier, in addition to $1,000 in supplies and equipment not financed by the University.
"THE JUST PROVIDES a unique opportunity for the students to provide this University with a fun and engaging experience."
Sen. Gary Hart, D-Colo., will give the second Pearson lecture at 4 p.m. Dec. 9 in the Kansas Union. Hart is considered by many to be a contender for the 1894 presidential election.
Former Kansas Gov All Landon proposed that KU begin a lecture series several years ago. Augusta
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