Penn Station

  Elmwood Cemetery has so many fascinating people buried there and I wasn't able to get them all into a recent column.

Probably one of the most notorious people buried there is Leanna Chambers, Kansas City's infamous madam. The restaurant known as Annie's Sante Fe was named after her. "When you'd walk in, there would be a painting of Annie," said Bruce Matthews, a local historian . "She was a large woman, almost 6 feet seven inches tall. She looked matronly. But she had a very diverse clientele."

The cemetery includes the remains of August Meyer, the first president of Kansas City's Parks Board. He was also a trustee for Elmwood Cemetery. "He was the man who hired George Kessler to design the cemetery," Matthews said.

By STEVE PENN

The Star 

    Alvin Sykes, president of the Emmett Till Justice Campaign is awaiting word on when and where a summit meeting with President of the United States and the Attorney General will be held.

     Sykes has requested a meeting with President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder on behalf of the Till's family and other family member of other unsolved civil rights murders. The Till Bill, which was signed into law by President George W. Bush calls for the investigations into the unsolved civil rights muders of the 1950's and 1960's. 

The success of the University of Kansas men’s basketball team is indirectly having a positive effect on some local charitable efforts.

While the value of bonds, gold and silver may fluctuate, the demand and the price for KU basketball memorabilia these days is simply out of this world.

Last Friday, I attended a benefit for the Front Porch Alliance at the Gem Theater, where an auction was held. Nothing in the auction seemed to generate as much buzz or cash as a basketball autographed by the entire KU team, which recently won the NCAA basketball championship.

At the event, the KU basketball, which also was signed by head coach Bill Self and the other coaches, brought a whopping $3,000. The attractive package also included two tickets to any event at Allen Field House during the month of November.

Alexander Austin stared proudly at the mural near the top of the east wall in a room at the Christian Life Center of City Union Mission.

The painting depicts five homeless men. All of them have lived at the mission; some still do.

Austin once lived there as well.

“The City Union Mission wanted the mural to be symbolic of the journey of the fellas that live here,” Austin said. “I lived on the street for a while. I was in and out of the mission.”

Austin’s struggles started after he moved here from Tallahassee, Fla., in 1988 to take care of his ailing sister. Eventually he moved into an apartment of his own.

But then he lost his job and was kicked out of his place; he became homeless for several years. When he wasn’t staying in abandoned buildings or sleeping on a bench in a nearby park, he found refuge at the City Union Mission, where he showered and ate his meals.

Money to build a WiFi network across Kansas City. Funding for solar panels on City Hall.

Those are two of the projects that could be funded through the federal government’s economic stimulus package, also known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

On Thursday, contractors from across the city crammed into the Southeast Community Center to become better informed about opportunities and the steps they needed to take to qualify for the work.

“We want to let people know who to contact regarding the portions of the stimulus package they want to perform in,” said Billy Gilreath, a minority contractor who helped organize the forum.

Greg Williams, legislative liaison for City Manager Wayne Cauthen, gave an overview of Kansas City’s “shovel ready” projects.

The “Be 1 of 100,000” campaign, the brainchild of Kansas City school board member Airick West, already is showing promise.

Formed to recruit mentors for students in the Kansas City School District, the campaign has partnered with several agencies.

“Every single partner I’ve spoken to in the last month has said the number of volunteers they’ve seen has gone up significantly,” West said. “Last weekend, there were ‘Be 1’ volunteers at each branch of the Kansas City Public Library. Just from that, we had 80 people sign up to be a mentor. It’s up to the community to step up and be a part of the solution.”

West launched “Be 1 of the 100,000” based on a simple idea: The difference between students who achieve and those who don’t is the support that surrounds them.

It’s the response you’d expect from the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization.

Last week, Benjamin T. Jealous, the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, expressed anger and disappointment to the Trotter Group, an organization of black columnists from across the country, over a cartoon that ran in the New York Post. The cartoon depicted an ape being shot by two police officers and carried the caption, “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.”

Many interpreted it as a caricature of President Barack Obama.

A day after Jealous’ Trotter comments, the NAACP led protests in 70 cities outside Fox television affiliates. News Corp., owner of the Post, also owns Fox Broadcasting Co. and Fox News.

It’s a plea from Marlborough country to the powers at City Hall.

Reconsider closing the Marlborough Community Center.

Kansas City residents understand that cuts, big ones, must be made to bridge the $87 million budget gap that the city faces.But an organized core of Marlborough neighborhood residents just don’t want their community center to be among the casualties.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that closing the center, one of only three public buildings in the area, would be devastating,” Marlborough resident Betty Ost-Everley said. “It’s going to become a trash magnet and a vandalism magnet. Where do kids go for good wholesome exercise and camaraderie?”

The budget proposed by City Manager Wayne Cauthen recommends closing the center to save $207,944 a year.

You might call Ida Dockery a neighborhood hero. She believes strongly that improvements in Kansas City must be done block by block.

Active with the Ivanhoe Neighborhood Council, Dockery has taken it upon herself to do everything she can, from picking up trash to watching her neighbor’s home, to improve the 3900 block of Euclid Avenue, where she lives.

Dockery, 76, has lived in the Ivanhoe neighborhood since the 1960s and became active when car tags started being stolen in the 1990s.

She hosts a monthly block meeting, where vital issues are discussed.

“You really don’t know what’s going on in the neighborhood if you don’t meet with people and listen and talk to them,” Dockery said. “Meeting is a good way to learn what’s going on in other neighborhoods. That’s why I’m into it.”

The future of Kansas City’s affordable-housing program rides on a thick document the city recently submitted to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and receiver David Bahner.

The 134-page document starts with the history of the Housing and Economic Development Finance Corp., including audits and details about how it fell into trouble. The report goes on to explain what the city has done to correct the problems that forced the agency into receivership in 2005. It has been operating under the jurisdiction of the U.S. District Court for the past four years.

“The city spent substantial amounts of time working with the receiver,” the report states. “The city has also spent extensive time resolving the audit findings and restarting the stalled Beacon Hill and Holy Temple site housing developments. With these tasks accomplished or under way, the city is prepared to move forward with developing a new and dynamic affordable housing program.”

City Manager Wayne Cauthen will submit a plan next week to restart the city’s housing program.

Cauthen eliminated the housing department in July 2004, and the city’s housing assets have been in receivership since the much-maligned Housing and Economic Development Finance Corp. was dismantled.

On Monday, Cauthen will offer a plan that hopefully will convince the receiver and a judge that the city can properly handle its housing program.

“All the things the receiver has asked us to do, we’ve been able to achieve,” Cauthen said. “But it’s basically the receiver’s decision.”

The Black Archives of Mid-America Inc., not so long ago facing the possibility of extinction, is now making progress on several fronts.

Construction on a new headquarters at 1722 E. 17th Terrace (John “Buck” O’ Neil Way) continues, and the facility is expected to be open by July.

Dewayne Williams, a former vice president with the Boys and Girls Clubs of Eastern Jackson County, has been hired as the project’s management consultant.

And an effort is under way to get the Black Archives’ old headquarters at 2033 Vine St. placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The application must first be approved by the Kansas City Landmarks Commission, which will hold a hearing on the issue Feb. 2.

The experience and sense of fairness that John O’Malley brought to his courtroom as a Jackson County circuit judge won’t be easily replaced.

One of the county’s longest-serving judges with almost 20 years on the bench, O’Malley’s last day was Friday. He is moving on to become a judge with the federal immigration court in Kansas City.

“The staff and the folks working here have been great,” O’Malley told a crowded courtroom at his going-away fete. Among those present was Senior Judge Gene Martin, who swore in O’Malley after his appointment by then-Gov. John Ashcroft in April 1989.

It’s an oasis amid the concrete and steel known as the Kansas City Power & Light District, and it offers the perfect balance between development and nature.

Its existence has been a well-kept secret. But not anymore.

Atop the city parking garage next to Cosentino’s downtown market, where the Jones Store once stood, is a new park.

Even though the park appears ready, it won’t open to the public until early March. But I got a sneak preview.

The park features a half-acre of turf. Another half-acre is made up of environmentally friendly sedum plants. There are benches and trees along two sides, and additional landscaping is in the works.

Kelvin Simmons, a former Kansas City councilman, is preparing for his newest assignment: commissioner of administration for the state of Missouri.

Gov.-elect Jay Nixon appointed Simmons to the position in November.

Simmons must undergo a confirmation process before he assumes the Cabinet-level position.

“It’s a job filled with a lot of challenges,” Simmons said. “It’s a job that’s probably at the heart of what transpires with respect to state government.”

All the positions he’s held over the years, he said, have helped prepare him for his latest assignment. From 2001 to 2003, he was chairman of the Missouri Public Service Commission. In 2003, Gov. Bob Holden appointed him director of the Department of Economic Development.

An unpleasant experience will remain unpleasant.

But at least it no longer will be as difficult and unsafe.

Wednesday night, Kansas City began transferring cars from its old tow lot to the new vehicle impound facility at Interstate 435 and Front Street. It’ll even have a new name.

For six years the city has operated its tow lot, as it was called, at the old General Motors site in Leeds. But the old lot has grown a reputation for not offering good customer service.

Officials hope the new vehicle impound facility, as it will be known, will change those negative perceptions when it officially opens on Monday.

It’s what you do when you’re the city manager of Kansas City and you don’t want acrimony over the next budget.

You go to each City Council member and seek individual input on the front end. That’s the tack that City Manager Wayne Cauthen is employing in his bid for consensus on the next budget.

For Cauthen to stay in the good graces of the council and the mayor, he has to make substantial progress on several fronts in Kansas City in 2009. Cauthen understands that task, and he’s not about to shrink from the responsibility.

His first assignment is to excise $85 million from the city budget, a move that he admits will be challenging. But Cauthen is confident he can do it with the council’s suggestions.

In 2008, the Coda Jazz Fund continued to support Kansas City’s jazz musicians.

But if the fund, which pays the funeral and burial costs for local jazz artists, is to continue for the long term, it will need the public’s financial support.

That’s because the foundation was extremely busy this past year.

Ever wonder if there’s a need for the Coda Jazz Fund? Just have a conversation with Allison Page, widow of musician Adam Page, a bass player who gigged with singer Tom Jones and blues singers Vernon Garrett, Chick Willis, Cotton Candy and other notables.

A top pollster believes that had the economy been the No. 1 issue a year ago, the presidential election might have turned out differently.

John Cohen, the director of polling for The Washington Post, recently talked with the Trotter Group, the organization for black columnists from across the nation.

“I think things would have been dramatically different,” Cohen said. “There are a lot of reasons to think that the Democratic and Republican nomination battles would have come out differently.”

Cohen said Sen. Barack Obama’s candidacy was propelled early on by his position on the Iraq War, the No. 1 issue on voters’ minds the last three years. The economy eventually supplanted the war as the top issue.

“But (Sen. Hillary) Clinton actually won consistently among economy voters,” Cohen said.

Not every political reporter prefers the sensational reporting that boldly professes that a politician’s statement is an out-and-out lie.

Brooks Jackson, director of Annenberg Political Fact Check and a former CNN political reporter, was turned off by that type of reporting.

Jackson told the Trotter Group, the collection of black columnists, that he became disenchanted with the over-the-top political reporting style CNN was utilizing. Jackson thinks there’s a right and wrong way to fact-check a politician’s claims.

Jackson is a respected journalist who covered Washington and national politics for 34 years. When he worked for CNN, he pioneered the “ad watch” and the “fact check” form of reporting that debunks false and misleading political statements. He started doing that during the presidential election in 1992.