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Medical Loan Closet makes it easier for patients to get needed supplies

Lloyd Hanna

Article by Joe Stumpe – Eagle correspondent
Photo by Bo Rader – Eagle photographer

February 20, 2018

Bath stools and grab bars. Support rails and transport beds. Electric wheelchairs, crutches and canes.

Used equipment distributed by the Medical Loan Closet may not be glamorous, but it makes a huge difference in the lives of recipients.

Lloyd Hanna, retired owner of a drywall company, started the nonprofit in 2012, when he was 72. Hanna heard about a similar charity in North Carolina on National Public Radio and thought “why not here?” Hanna telephoned the N.C. organization to ask if he could try something similar here and got the go-ahead.

A gold Ford F-150 served as his first office and mobile warehouse. Today, there’s a 10,000-square-feet storage warehouse at 6655 E. Harry that the organization utilizes through a generous arrangement with a supporter. Hanna made about 50 loans the first year. At last count the total is about 8,000. Wheelchair ramps and toilet seat risers are just some of the other items the Medical Closet has saved from the landfill.

Hanna is the 2018 recipient of the Sister Tarcisia Roths award for not-for-profits.

The Medical Loan Closet receives no government funding. Its primary source of what is known as “durable medical equipment” comes donations of cash and equipment from the Wichita area. Donated equipment is inspected, cleaned and repaired if needed before being added to the inventory.

Recipients are those with little income and little or no insurance. Those who can pay a fee of $5 to $25 for the loan, which is open-ended. The application is one page.

The payoff for Hanna? Hugs and many variations of “I don’t know what I would have done.” And the feeling of pride Hanna has in the volunteers who’ve joined him and “continually make the extra effort to help our clients with their needs.” The goal: “Help the underserved with respect.”

Hanna believes the Medical Loan Closet saves taxpayers money, noting that some of the donated items were initially paid for through Medicaid or Medicare. A majority of recipients return the items when they’re done, he said, and he often receives additional useable medical equipment as well.

By the way, he’s still in need of volunteers to increase the number of people Medical Loan Closet can serve (visit medicalloancloset.com for more info). He’s also happy to accept cash. The Closet’s motto: “Happiness comes from helping others…be happy.”

Hanna says his desire to help people may stem from the fact that he is a polio victim assisted by the March of Dimes. A mission trip to Guatemala raised his awareness of poverty.

The Closet has expanded to Winfield, Pratt, Garden City and Denver – thanks, Hanna said, to volunteers in those places.

With his wife, Elaine, five children and 11 grandchildren, Hanna has plenty to keep him busy. He’d like to retire from this second, unpaid job by the age of 80 – next year — but still has a couple of goals, the biggest of which is linking Medical Loan Closet online with similar organizations around the country and world. The organization has already helped missions ship items to Guatemala and El Salvador.

Yet another Medical Loan Closet initiative has been created by a volunteer who has a handicapped child. She’s created a Facebook page of families with similar needs, sending items to 12 states and two foreign countries.

“We want to grow this effort,” Hanna said.

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Beard-building Lance Minor also growing his business

Lance Minor

Article by Joe Stumpe – Eagle correspondent
Photo by Bo Rader – Eagle photographer

February 20, 2018 12:36 PM

Lance Minor came to know himself well while serving 21 years in the U.S. Marine Corps. He knew he loved the excitement of active duty, loved leading younger Marines. When he retired and returned to his native Wichita in 2012, Minor wondered how he’d find that same kind of challenge.

The answer was starting a microbrewery – Aero Plains Brewing – with a little broader purpose than just cranking out good beer. “By making and serving beer and connecting with the people of Wichita, Aero Plains has allowed me to continue to serve something greater than myself,” Minor, CEO of Aero Plains, said.

Aero Plains does serve very good beer, by the way. It was named “Best Kansas Brewery” at the 2017 Midwest Beerfest. Minor is the recipient of the 2018 Murdock Award for Business.

Minor and co-founders Ryan Waite and Brent Miller opened Aero Plains in October 2016. Other than a little confusion over its location – 117 N. Handley, tucked behind Bicycle X-Change in the Delano neighborhood – the reception has been everything they hoped for. Minor says his “old soul” wife, Mary, and Aero Plains’ “beer ambassador,” Mike Snider, have also made key contributions.

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Minor created the original recipes for Aero Plains’ beer. Minor and his partners have also listened to input from customers who want more variety, recently hiring a new head brewer, Troy Bervig. They’re working with a local branding agency, Gardner Design, to improve their labels and recently purchased equipment that will allow them to switch from bottles to cans. That, in turn, will allow them to release new beers more often.

Besides the Marines, Minor says another experience profoundly affected his life today. In 2014, just as he was preparing to launch Aero Plains, he contracted swine flu and spent seven weeks in a coma. “I realized that whatever connections I made with people, whether long-lasting or fleeting, I wanted to make those connections positive. Hold the door for people, help them with their groceries, stop and help someone change a tire, buy a round of beer for strangers.”

Aero Plains has raised money for the Mental Health Association, Hands of Hope, Wichita’s Littlest Heroes and women’s advocacy groups. Minor sits on the board of the Field of Brews fundraiser for Starkey, Inc. He and Aero Plains are enthusiastic participants in the Delano Fall Fair and other neighborhood events.

His goal for 2018, besides growing Aero Plains: grow his beard, although not for purposes of appearance. Minor has entered Aero Plains in the annual St. Baldrick’s Foundation head shaving event that raises money for childhood cancer research. While others shave their heads, Minor said, “I’m growing out my beard from September 2017 to April 2018 – because I can’t grow hair on top of my head.”

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Kevin Mullen focuses on close-up work with Wichita’s needy

Kevin Mullen

Article by Joe Stumpe – Eagle correspondent
Photo by Bo Rader – Eagle photographer

February 20, 2018

In his professional life, Kevin Mullen builds nice homes and neighborhoods for people who can afford them. In his personal life, he helps feed people who can’t.

Mullen considers himself lucky in both respects.

“Some of us lead a very sheltered life,” says Mullen, the president of Ritchie Associates, who became active in the Lord’s Diner a decade ago. “I’m one of them. There’s just so much joy in helping people, watching people come up and get a meal and see the smile on their face. You know you’re actually doing something.”

Mullen grew up in Hutchinson, earned an accounting degree from Kansas State University and worked as a CPA for three years before going into the real estate development business with Jack and Dave Ritchie. Today he and Jack Ritchie are partners.

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Their company has transformed east Wichita, creating dozens of developments with thousands of homes in them over the past three decades. Tallgrass, Wilson Estates, Lakepoint, The Waterfront, Garden Walk … the list goes on, literally, with the company’s newest developments, Brookfield and Firefly.

As good as he is with numbers, Mullen’s real satisfaction comes from seeing his company take an empty landscape and fill it with a thriving neighborhood, using as much of the landscape’s creeks, woods and natural features as possible. Maybe it’s a link to his father, Robert, an architect and artist.

“We feel like our model of neighborhoods have changed the way Wichitans think when buying a home,” Mullen said.

Mullen has not joined many boards through his life. He describes himself as direct, driven and not inclined to talk situations to death. However, he accepted an invitation to join the board of the Lord’s Diner in 2009, after the recession left him with a little time on his hands. He helped the organization expand from its original site on north Broadway into a second location in south Wichita and three mobile food trucks, increasing the number of meals served daily from about 500 to 2,500.

Twice a month, he dishes up food at the truck parked at the Atwater neighborhood center in northeast Wichita. On those nights, he says, he’s just one of 6,000 volunteers from all faiths and backgrounds who pitch in to make the Lord’s Diner work.

He recently left Lord’s Diner board and joined the board of Catholic Charities. True to his nature, he plans on doing more listening than talking while he figures out where he can do the most good. He’s also been active in developing the Stryker Soccer Complex in northeast Wichita and helping Kapaun Mount Carmel, which his children attended, build a new gym.

Mullen said any success he’s experienced would have been impossible without his partner, Jack Ritchie, and his wife of 43 years, Nancy, another K-State Wildcat with whom he has four children and six grandchildren.

“I like to believe that my family and company have made Wichita a better place,” he said. “It’s a team effort. It’s not about me.”

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Don Barry awaits long-anticipated opening of new downtown library

Don Barry

Article by Joe Stumpe – Eagle correspondent
Photo by Bo Rader – Eagle photographer

 

February 20, 2018

Don Barry loves the public libraries he grew up with – depositories of so much knowledge, free for the public’s use. Still, he can’t wait for a new kind of library – Wichita’s $33 million Advanced Learning Library – to open this spring.

“It’s like the old library is a dial phone and the new library is a smart phone,” Barry, chairman of the Wichita Public Library Foundation, says. “You know the difference.”

The opening of the Advanced Learning Library is sweet for another reason, too: It’s been a long time coming. “I can’t tell you,” Barry says of finally seeing it happen. “Luckily, I’m at the stage where I’m past crying.”

If he wasn’t, they’d be tears of joy. Barry was first appointed to library’s board of directors in 1980. At the time, he was working as a machinist at Boeing while studying at Wichita State University. He’s worked as a financial advisor since 1981 and is now a managing director at Baird.

Barry is the 2018 recipient of the Ivonne Goldstein Award for Community Volunteer.

Barry was library foundation board president in the mid-2000s, when a study recommended that a new library be built across McLean Boulevard from Exploration Place children’s science museum, creating a kind of educational district along the Arkansas River. Then he watched as the recession and politics delayed the groundbreaking for another decade.

Barry left the library board but remains a member of the library foundation’s board, which raises funds for the institution.

It’s fitting that Barry should be named the Ivonne Goldstein Award Winner. He first got to know her while both were serving on the board of Interfaith Ministries in the 1980s.

“She was an extraordinary community volunteer, that was basically her career,” Barry said. “The symbolism of a Catholic college giving a Protestant an award for community service named after someone of the Jewish faith would not be lost on her.”

In addition to the library foundation, Barry serves on the boards of Goodwill Industries and Wichita State’s National Advisory Committee. He’s previously served on boards of the Via Christi Hospital Foundation, National Conference of Christians and Jews, Humane Society, Arts Partners, Wichita Community Foundation and Exploration Place.

He first became a fan of the library in junior high. “My wife (Lora) likes nonfiction, 800-page biographies of Alexander Hamilton. I like spaceships – fiction. I get enough real life in my real life.”

From city officials to the library staff, members of its board and volunteers, Barry called the realization of the Advance Learning Center “an extraordinary team effort.” The new library, located at 711 W. 2nd, features a 10,000-square-foot children’s area, 100 computers, a coffee shop and several community meeting rooms.

“Wichita has this rich history of being against things until they have it – the Big Ditch, the (new) airport, the arena,” Barry says. “They’re going to be amazed by the library.”

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Do-everything Hailey Colburn works to help younger girls

Hailey Colburn

Article by Joe Stumpe – Eagle correspondent
Photo by Bo Rader – Eagle photographer

February 20, 2018

It’s hard to imagine today, but Hailey Colborn struggled with self-esteem as a youngster. Yes, the reigning Miss Kansas Teen USA, former Northwest High class president and ballerina who danced the role of the Dew Drop Fairy in “The Nutcracker” last year.

A self-diagnosed overachiever, Colborn says she wanted to be as good a classical ballerina as possible. “I continually felt like a structure in need of improvement.” Colborn credits her family, an “incredible support system” and a nutritionist with helping her learn to take care of her mental, physical and emotional needs. The upshot was “a drastic improvement in my relationship with the world as a whole.”

Colborn, the Brian Bergkamp Student Service Award winner who will graduate from Northwest in May, started a program called SelfPosi three years ago to help girls with some of the same issues she faced. Originally part of a platform for a pageant she was competing in, she first tried SelfPosi out on fellow students at Northwest. Realizing the message was needed even more by younger girls, she has directed her efforts toward middle schools.

She books her appearances, recruits others to help with presentations and uses her passionate personality to make her audiences are participants in the process. “I’m surprised by how open the girls involved are willing to be,” Colborn said. “They share very personal anecdotes and really engage with the presentation.” She credits her mother – “someone with an already packed schedule” – with helping her stay organized. Hailey hopes more people will come to realize “that self-love is such an important issue that so many girls struggle with as they grow.”

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A program she organized last April at McAdams Recreational Center drew more than 50 girls ages 10 to 16, who took part in workshops on issues underlying self-esteem free of charge.

Hailey is the daughter of Kevin and Denise Colborn. When not maintaining a 4.0-grade point average or volunteering for extracurricular activities, she enjoys hanging out with friends and her two dogs. She’s also a “literature fanatic” – particularly when the writers are F. Scott Fitzgerald or Toni Morrison.

One of the proudest moments of her life to date was when she was admitted early to her top choice, Princeton University. Another was when she presented SelfPosi at her former middle school, Wilbur. “I will never forget a young girl that came up to me afterwards as I was leaving, looked me in the eyes and said, ‘Thank you. I really needed to hear that today.’ ”

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Tom Sanders – 2017 Ivonne Goldstein Award

Tom Sanders

The Ivonne Goldstein Award for Community Volunteer, named for the late Ivonne Goldstein who served on the boards of or raised money for more than 50 Wichita organizations, is presented to an individual who through outstanding volunteer community service and commitment is making a measurable difference. The award was presented by Star Lumber. The 2017 recipient was Tom Sanders, former CEO of the DAV/VA Medical Center, who is active with 11 Wichita non-profit organizations. Continue reading “Tom Sanders – 2017 Ivonne Goldstein Award”

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Fred Berry of Berry Companies, Inc. – 2017 Russ Meyer Award

Fred Berry - recipient of the 2017 Russ Meyer Award

The Russ Meyer Award for Community Leadership, named after longtime aviation advocate, philanthropist and community leader Russ Meyer, is given to an individual making a positive impact in our community through demonstrated excellence in leadership and outstanding initiative to create solutions for critical issues facing the area. Continue reading “Fred Berry of Berry Companies, Inc. – 2017 Russ Meyer Award”