KC Magazine clips

Push to rename J.C. Nichols fountain and parkway gains steam from anti-racism protests

The J.C. Nichols Memorial Fountain has been a fixture of Kansas City for some-sixty years. But the iconic fountain commemorates a man tied to racist policies that still reverberate today.

Your letter carrier may be working 11-hour days as coronavirus, Amazon and politics batter USPS

Some Days, It’s three in the morning when Ron Ford, a United States Postal Service letter carrier, starts work in south Johnson County.

Through winter snowdrifts and scorching summer temperatures, he delivers mail and packages all over town, only stopping after his last priority package is delivered, sometimes at nine or ten at night.

“I generally work pretty close to around eleven hours [a day],” he says. “At least ten.” Ford has worked for USPS for twenty-four years on various routes, and during that time he’s seen and learned a lot.

Experts say the world’s best hot dogs come from this Weston, Missouri ranch

On a cloudy day near the end of May, Patrick Montgomery, Kale Swing and Tyler Hines of KC Cattle Company traverse their hilly three-hundred-acre property on the edge of Weston, searching for one of their four newborn calves.

“Why don’t you go check the tall grass over there?” says owner Patrick Montgomery, gesturing toward a fence on top of a hill.

After 15 years, the Alonzo Brooks case has been reopened by the FBI—can it finally be solved?

It catches your eye the minute you walk in: a portrait of him from his brother’s wedding. You may have seen it on Netflix or Facebook pages, but seeing it in person is somehow different. It’s perched next to the large TV in Maria Ramirez’s house in Topeka. The TV dwarfs the photo of Alonzo Brooks in size, but the photo still holds your attention.

He’s faintly smiling, dressed in a tux. A crisp white shirt and bow tie and a ring perched on his right hand all preserved in a slightly grainy picture bring you back to the time before everything changed for the Brooks family. Alonzo Brooks mysteriously disappeared in April of 2004 from a party in the tiny Kansas town of La Cygne. His body turned up a month later in a creek right behind the house where he disappeared, offering other puzzling details.

We chat with Kansas City Chiefs VIP of 30 years: Dan Meers, the KC Wolf

Dan Meers has spent more hours than he can count in a mascot suit. From being Truman the Tiger at Mizzou during his college days to Fredbird for the St. Louis Cardinals immediately after and now KC Wolf for the Kansas City Chiefs, he’s spent over thirty years bringing joy to crowds with his antics.

“I wake up and put on a suit and tail instead of a suit and a tie to go to work,” he says.

Meers has played KC Wolf since the mascot’s creation in 1989. The Wolf was created to replace the organization’s original mascot, a horse ridden by a man dressed in Native American regalia.