The Siouxland Soup Kitchen announced in a social media post today that it is scrapping plans to build a new facility next to The Warming Shelter, after the construction bids the nonprofit received were unaffordable. The Soup Kitchen said on its Facebook page it is looking to find out if they can renovate their current building to give them more dining room space to accommodate our rising number of diners.
In April, the Soup Kitchen reported that it was launching a campaign to raise money for a new building. It was supposed to be constructed in a parking lot at the corner of Ninth and Nebraska streets, directly adjacent to The Warming Shelter.
Lyn Armentrout, the Soup Kitchen's executive director, told The Sioux City Journal back then that the nonprofit had outgrown its current building at 717 West Seventh St., where it has been since 2013.
The West Seventh Street building, a painted brick structure built in 1928, was once an auto repair garage and later housed other businesses. Siouxland Community Soup Kitchen LLC purchased the property in 2007 for $128,500.
A black man’s body was found burning in a Jasper County ditch two years ago. And on Monday, the last of the four white people charged in relation to the murder of Michael Williams was sentenced.
Cody Johnson of Grinnell was sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty to accessory after the fact. Williams’ father James Byrd Williams said it wasn’t enough for what was done to his son.
In 2021, Steven Vogel was sentenced to life in prison for killing Michael Williams. Days before his attempt to burn Williams’ body, Vogel brought Cody Johnson to the basement where he hid the body. Johnson tried to help Vogel move the body.
The number of Iowa prison inmates who reoffending has been dropping.
The Iowa Department of Corrections director Beth Skinner says data from state Fiscal Year 2021 shows that recidivism went down last year for the first time in six years. Also, recidivism has gone down another 1.7% this year.
And that would be for the state’s fiscal year that ended June 30, 2022. At one point, more than four out of 10 people being sent to a state prison had been sentenced to a correctional facility before. It’s fallen to 37%, which Skinner says ranks Iowa among the top 10 states at reducing returns to prison.
More than 600,000 people are released from state prisons in the United States each year. Within three years, two out of three of them are arrested and more than half are incarcerated again.
A small portion of Iowa inmates have been sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison, while 95% of the people in an Iowa prison today a release date. Skinner said ensuring a period of parole is a priority.
Hawkeye football legend Nile Kinnick, who won the Heisman Trophy in 1939, is the subject of a new 90-minute documentary that’s on the big screen in select Iowa theaters and online via the website Vimeo.
Iowa filmmaker Scott Siepker says “Kinnick: The Documentary” offers audiences an in-depth look into Kinnick’s riveting journey of hope, duty and perseverance, from his rise to fame on-field at the University of Iowa to his service during World War Two..'”
One of the people interviewed for the documentary is Don Bice, who was Kinnick’s first cousin. Bice, who’s now in his mid-90s, also grew up in Adel and was about the same age as Kinnick’s youngest brother, George.
Kinnick left law school after his first year and enlisted in the U.S. Navy Air Corps Reserves. He was killed in 1943 when he was 24 years old, while on a training flight from the aircraft carrier USS Lexington off the coast of Venezuela. After five years of working on this documentary, Siepker says he’s been reminded that, “our heroes are the most inspiring when we remember that they are not that different from the rest of us.”
From pouring over his letters and war journals, Siepker says it’s clear Kinnick had a wonderful sense of humor. He also had a clear plan laid out for his future which included finding a great woman to marry and with whom he could start a family, to finish law school, and to enter a life of public service. Siepker says many historians believe Kinnick could have become a U.S. Senator — and risen even higher.
To access the documentary go to:
The Ames City Council is considering naming the municipal airport after James Herman Banning, a former Ames resident who was the first Black aviator to obtain a federal pilot's license.
Banning was also the first Black aviator, along with his friend Thomas Cox Allen, to fly coast to coast across the country.
The council could discuss the name change as early as Sept. 13.
Councilmember Gloria Betcher proposed the council have a discussion to rename the airport for James Herman Banning in February. At that time, councilmember Tim Gartin asked the city to first create a policy for renaming city buildings.
The council has since adopted a policy for naming non-parks and recreation facilities, major features and amenities.
