MONTICELLO -- Gene Staples, president of Indiana Beach Holdings, LLC, announced Wednesday, April 22,  that he is the new owner of the 94 year old iconic amusement park called Indiana Beach.

“Once again it will become a family run midwestern amusement park,” Staples stated about Indiana Beach. Depending on the current pandemic status, Staples plans to open the park hopefully in July.

Staples, who lives in the Chicago area, is a U.S. Navy veteran who loves to pay attention to the details. He plans to do just that when it comes to managing Indiana Beach.

“It's still a vintage amusement park and we're going to take care of what we can take care of over those next few months,” Staples explained. “Like I said, tracking the Hoosier Hurricane. We're going to do lots of painting. We're going to do lots of small improvements that some people may know, some people may not know, but it's important improvements that we talked about may not provide a return on investments, but to me, the one thing that's lacking is a lot of attention to detail and we're slowly going to be doing that attention to detail.”

Citizens of Wabash County, along with the entire world are experiencing unprecedented times currently with the COVID-19 pandemic taking over, causing stay-at-home orders, job loss, and uncertainty.

Due to the unemployment and children not being in school and receiving a daily meal, many families are wondering how they will feed their family. Luckily, many businesses, school corporations and others are coming together as a community to help those in need during this time.

For those families and individuals who are still facing the fear of hunger, food pantries, such as FISH of Wabash, Campus Pantry at Manchester University and The Community Cupboard of Living Well in Wabash County are continuing to serve the community.

Janet Shoue, director of FISH of Wabash told The Paper of Wabash County that the pantry has been seeing many new families signing up for food each week, but that their total numbers have not increased a significant amount.

Along with the rest of the none-essential businesses in Wabash County, gyms and exercise services are also closed. One of those is Wabash CrossFit, and although the trainers and members cannot meet face to face, they have opted to continue their training virtually while borrowing equipment from the gym.

“When we started to feel like the gym was going to need to close we wanted to feel like our members would have what they needed to workout at home,” owner Jenna Hovermale told The Paper of Wabash County.

“The weekend before the stay at home order was announced we told our membership we were going to close our doors until the state made a decision,” she continued. “We then gave the members a choice to put their membership on hold, we don't have contracts so people cancel at any time, or we would reduce the cost of membership and they could join our digital gym and borrow equipment. Not a single member canceled their membership. Some wouldn't let us reduce their membership fees. The response was overwhelming. As new owners of Wabash CrossFit and Fitness this has been a scary time for us. We took on a commitment and debt only three months ago to buy a business and the fact that we had so much support when we made that decision it gave us hope that we could make it through this. We started by having members pick their top five pieces of equipment. This could include our rowers, bikes, dumbbells, barbells, squat racks. If it wasn't bolted down to the floor it was an option. One of our trainers, Jeff Guenin-Hodson is a mastermind at spreadsheets, he volunteered to help me organize the lists and made sure everyone would at least get their first couple of top items. It ended up that everyone pretty much got what they needed and most of the items on their lists.  We have gone back to the gym and have had some members needing a few more things and have tried to make sure everyone has something that will work for them.”

Indiana will receive $96,523,889 in funding to assist 65 Hoosier airports, including Wabash Municipal Airport.

This funding was made available by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

The Wabash airport is slated to receive $30,000.

Under the CARES Act, $10 billion was awarded as economic relief to eligible airports across the U.S. affected by the prevention of, preparation for, and response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“This $10 billion in emergency resources will help fund the continued operations of our nation’s airports during this crisis and save workers’ jobs,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine L. Chao said in a news release.

NORTH MANCHESTER -- After a year away from the Manchester High School football program, Alyx Brandewie will return to the Squires on the gridiron this fall, this time as its head coach.

Brandewie, an assistant coach with the Squires for three years, was named the new Manchester head football coach at the Manchester Community Schools April 14 board meeting replacing Greg Miller. 
“I'm really excited to come back to Manchester,” Brandewie said. “I think we have a lot of really good kids at Manchester. We have a lot of kids who show up and work really hard. I want to honor that toughness. That's who we are going to be and what we will hang our hat on.”
Brandewie was previously with the Squires from 2016 to 2018 as an assistant coach before returning to his alma mater in Minister, Ohio.

Despite Manchester Community Schools finishing the last three months of the 2019-20 academic year through eLearning and all activities canceled, the Class of 2020 will have a graduation ceremony.

Superintendent Dr. Teresa Gremaux sent a letter to the MCS community with updates and details how the remainder of the school year will proceed, one such detail being graduation.

“The administration is working behind the scenes to provide a memorable experience for all graduates and their families,” Gremaux said in the letter. “It may look different from previous years, but be assured, we will hold a ceremony that will honor the class of 2020. We want them to feel valued, appreciated and loved for the many years they gave to MCS.”

The details and dates have not yet been determined and will be based on the lifting of the “stay at home” order by Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb.

Recently, with the COVID-19 pandemic, everything seems to be changing. Businesses are closed, people are encouraged to stay home and social distance, weddings, graduations, sports, proms, and so much more are being either canceled or postponed.

One thing that can’t be closed are hospitals, and something that can’t be canceled or postponed are the births of babies.

But, along with everything else, COVID-19 is causing a lot of unknowns and changes for expecting parents.

Alyssa McDowell recently gave birth to her first son, Lincoln.

Leading up to the day Lincoln was born, his parents, Alyssa and Dustin already began to see changes to the process they experienced with their first baby, Lily.

Wabash County E911 Central Dispatch employees are among the essential workforce still required to go into work and do their jobs during the state-wide lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic.

Just like all other essential workplaces, officials at the dispatch are taking precautionary measures to make help ensure that their employees are safe and healthy.

Sandy Beeks, executive director said that cleaning is being done during and between every shift.

“We are not allowing any visitors in the dispatch center during this time, only the dispatchers,” she said. “If one of our dispatchers feels sick, we ask them to stay home until they are feeling better and not displaying a fever.”