We lost a good friend in Kosciusko County recently. 

Social media is work for me.

The widowed daughter of a once socially-prominent pioneer Warsaw family was found murdered in her modest Winona Lake home at 1102 E. College Ave. on Feb. 6, 1963, according reports in local media. The brutally stabbed and bludgeoned body of Mrs. Louise White Bolinger, 56, an employee of the bindery department of the nearby Free Methodist Publishing House since 1956, was discovered in the single-car garage by a fellow employee, Albert Wilson. She was clad in pajamas and housecoat.

This week there seemed to be some consternation about Warsaw boys’ basketball season ticket offering changes resulting in premature consternation.

Sometimes in financial planning we must think about the unthinkable, our own mortality. No one likes to think about their own death, so estate planning is often put off in favor of more pleasant financial tasks.

There are different approaches to life.

A week from this morning, big network broadcasts of college football, big time college football particularly, launch with the noon (Eastern Daylight time) kickoff featuring a number one vs. number two showdown: the Texas Longhorns will bring the third generation of football’s Royal Family (Arch Manning) to Ohio Stadium to take on the second-ranked Buckeyes.

High school football season is underway, and the NFL isn’t far behind. This is my favorite time to be a football fan. The reason is that as a Bears fan, this is when the season still holds promise.

Last evening, Aug. 17, on my birthday, my wife and I had the opportunity to take a trip down memory lane and sing at the “Campfire and Sunday School Chorus Hymnsing” at Grace Retirement Village. Bill Schaffer, Richard Dick, Terry White, Sharon White and Howard Mayes led us down a trail of choruses as the audience sang out, many of us not even needing the words on the screen.

We have officially shoved off from the pier on the excursion that is the 2025-2026 sports year.

NORTH MANCHESTER – Ronald J. Shockey II, 61, North Manchester, died Aug. 13, 2025.

From the middle 1940s to the early 1950s, Rev. Paul Hartford, dubbed “The Flying Preacher” or “The Flying Parson” by news media, operated a flying school out of Winona Lake’s Garfield Hotel to train potential aviator missionaries in the use of single-engine aircraft.

Two topics this morning illustrate some parallels on my mind.

One of the aims of this column, and of the Smart Money Management radio show, is to take the mystery out of investing and financial planning. Today, however, we are going to talk about myths that are widely regarded as truth.

I am not one to make predictions.

A common topic for this column and the Smart Money Management radio show is simple portfolio building and about how important it is to have a plan for managing your long-term investments, particularly your retirement accounts.

William Ashley Sunday, the colorful evangelist of the early 20th century, stormed across the United States calling people to forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ.

Famous military leader George Patton once said, "It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men live.”

I like to think my head spends little or no time buried in the sand… until it does.

Summer is a time when many people start to think about retirement. I don’t really know why, but I suspect the reason has something to do with the great summers of Kosciusko County.

I was watching the Cubs hold off the White Sox Sunday to win another series and, at that point, to stay even with the Brewers in the National League Central.

It’s another week of thoughts among multiple topics. I have nothing pithy, no one- or two-liners, but my thoughts, again, aren’t singular this week.

We are often asked, “How do I become a millionaire?” The answer is, “By living simply!” This may seem an unlikely answer when we have been conditioned to think of millionaires as people who live in mansions, drive exotic cars and fly in private jets.

This past Sunday my wife and I had the opportunity to attend Growing Our Faith By The Water at Lake Wawasee.

New information out this summer confirms what I have been telling you for a couple of years: the number of people who are umpiring and refereeing youth sports is shrinking.