feature section
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY kansan
Friday, October 22,1965
Serving KU for 76 of its 100 Years
welcome parents!
Sunflower Village: Era in KU History
By Jackie Thayer
Go 13 miles east of Lawrence on Highway 10. On the left side of the road is Sunflower Village; on the right side is a solid half-mile of rose-bushes—and the Sunflower Ordnance Works.
Interest doesn't focus on the Village these days, but rather on the Ordnance Works.
The Village was built for the plant workers. After the war, it was opened to ex-GI's who attended KU. In 1945-46, over 1200 KU students lived in the Village.
The University leased 28 Sunflower barracks for dormitory space in 1946. Capable of housing 1400, only 970 spaces were used for single men.
The west Village, for married students, consisted of symmetrical rows of pre-fabricated or cinder-block houses, closely crowded together. Paper and trash littered the area because no individual or group was responsible for keeping the Village clean. There were two-three-and-four unit houses, but no one knew where the divisions really came.
Every morning the Sunflower housewife placed an ice order with her milk order outside the door: there were no refrigerators, only iceboxes. Coal, gas, lights and water were furnished with the low rental fees. This fee was 25 per cent of the combined family income, with a maximum of $37.50 for three-units.
Despite cramped quarters and continual squabbles with the bus company over fare increases, the Village had its advantages. They had a theater, bowling alley, drug store, study hall, an extension of Watson Library, playground, first aid station from Watkins Hospital, a university lecture series, its own voting precinct, grocery store, service station, barber shop, tavern, laundry and dry cleaning shop, photographer, shoe repair shop, two dairies and bakeries, an elementary school and kindergarten.
With all the other conveniences of old Sunflower, they even had Daily Kansan delivery.
In the early 1950's, the barracks in the east Village were bought by Louis Ensley, a Lawton, Okla., native who had been dealing in government surplus since 1917. He tore the barracks down, but kept his eye on the west Village, which was not yet for sale.
It finally went on the market in 1961. For 10 years, only five families—32 people—had lived in the Village, including its present postmaster, Charles Norris. Today the population is 1,533 with 313 families, and constantly growing.
The Village is operated and licensed as a hotel and motel, although, in fact, its housing is permanent for many families.
The big appeal at Sunflower is low rent. The first six-months Ensley owned the Village, a contract was offered that guaranteed no rent increases for 10 years. Until June of this year, the guarantee was for five years. There is no longer a guarantee. Rents range from $40 a month for a one-bedroom unit, to $75 for five bedrooms, and lights, gas, water and garbage pick-up are included.
About 20 families are employed with the ordnance works; 95 per cent commute to Kansas City for jobs. Charles Myrick, assistant manager of the Village, says that one family moves in and one moves out, on an average, every day of the year. It has a 2200 total capacity and is now 72 per cent rented. Myrick said.
The Village is not incorporated, but is the private property of Ensley. He makes the rules and enforces them with a deputy sheriff, commissioned from Olathe but whose salary is paid by Ensley.
Ensley established the Village because it was "something new," and everyone told him he couldn't do it.
WHERE ARE THE MEN—The women have taken over the newsroom of the University Daily Kansan. Virtually all of the top editors, including sports, are coeds. It's not that there aren't men in the William Allen White School of Journalism; the students with the most training and experience just happened to be women this semester. Seated around the copy desk are, from left, Janet Cartier Hamilton, Salina, editorial editor; Karen Lambert, Wadsworth, editorial editor; Mary Dunlap, Albuquerque, N.M., feature and society editor; Joan McCabe, Lawrence, city editor; and Nancy Scott, Council Groves, sports editor. Seated in the center is Judy Farrell, Topeka, managing editor, flanked by her four assistant managing editors, from left, Jane Larson, Naperville, Ill.; Jacke Thayer, Ellsworth; Susan Hartley, Atwood; Susan Black, Ottawa. Oh yes, two men serve as wire and photo editors.
SUNFLOWER VILLAGE—This is a lane in Sunflower Village, Kansas. This private town, located 13 miles east of Lawrence, once housed over 2,000 KU students. Today, it is a unique world of Kansas City commuters and retired persons. Its history with KU can be found in this story.
Fishery Mystifies Average Student
"The what?"
"Could you direct me to the fish lab?"
So little known is the Fisheries Laboratory, located west of Iowa Street and south of 19th Street, that the average student is somewhat surprised to learn of its existence. However, the lab, under the direction of Dr. Frank B. Cross, associate professor of zoology, is actually a thriving operation.
The laboratory was constructed on Endowment Association property in 1954 by legislative appropriation. The buildings at the lab are made of two small houses taken from what is now the parking lot of Allen Field House.
THE STATE Biological Survey operates the lab
Enclosed by a high wire-link fence, the laboratory is composed of 11 rectangular ponds and a larger reservoir. Each pond has a surface area of 1/10 acre and is filled from the reservoir, which is located above and north of the ponds, to a depth of 745 meters (approximately 29 1/3 inches).
The reservoir itself is filled by rain running off the hills surrounding it.
FOR EXPERIMENTS that require even more controllable conditions than the sectioned ponds allow, a bank of concrete troughs exist. These troughs are filled with city water that had stood in a large metal tank to eliminate the chlorine and other chemicals harmful to the fish. The troughs were not in use last summer.
Every two weeks the ponds are seined (the fish removed by long nets) and the fish weighed. The data are then tabulated and sent to the Computation Center in Summerfield Hall for processing. There the information is fed into computers and the results sent back to the fish lab. These results include percentage gains and losses, graphs of the tabulated results and future feeding schedules.
BESIDES CATTISH, bass and bluegill are under observation. The main project involving these is a study of hybrids between small-mouth bass and spotted bass. These hybrid bass are still small, but fathead minnows and red shiners have been introduced into the ponds containing the bass to feed them when they become large.
The minnows breed on floating logs.
NOT ALL projects are conducted in the large outdoor ponds. Two indoor rooms are filled with aquariums and held at a constant temperature. In these aquariums the bass for the hybrid experiment are bred. Also being conducted indoors is a study by Ron Nolan, concerning "a predator-prey relationship." For this experiment small mosquito fish are placed in tanks containing larger carnivorous fish, and the reactions of both observed.