Potter County | featured news

My dad, Ray “Slim” Mathis and my uncle, Jay “Fat” Mathis, were veterans of World War II and Korea.
Like most World War II veterans, my dad and my uncle did not talk about World War II, the war to end all wars.
However, I remember my dad and uncle reminiscing about Korea. Dad and Uncle Fat enlisted in the Army April 27, 1944, at Fort Sill in Lawton, Okla., and attended basic training at Fort Jackson in Columbia, S.C.
When they first arrived at Fort Sill, daddy was assigned to Company B and Uncle Fat to H and S Company.

Walter Mount joined the U.S. Navy in January of 1943 in Dallas as an aviation cadet, P-5.
He trained in Corpus Christi and Kingsville. The training in Corpus involved landing on a runway within the outline of the landing deck of an aircraft carrier.
After receiving his wings in January of 1944, he was sent to the Glenview, Ill., base on Lake Michigan where pilots qualified for carrier duty by having six successful landings and takeoffs from an old coal shuttle that had a landing deck mounted on top.

I read a post on Facebook about the mistreatment of military veterans upon their return from the war in Vietnam. I received my orders in April 1972 to fly out of Tan Son Nhut Air Base, Vietnam, to Oakland (Calif.) Army Base.
I was to process out of the Army and return to my hometown of Amarillo.
read more

Dee Aaron Hyden was a 1966 graduate of Caprock High School.
While attending Amarillo College he announced to his friend, Ken Ellis, that he was going to Vietnam and fly helicopters.
He lived his dream but in doing so, he sacrificed his life for all Americans.
In March or April of 1969 Dee was flying a resupply mission and received a round through the windshield on his side of the helicopter, inflicting Plexiglas wounds in his face.

For years, for decades, the young Marine from Hereford whom his buddies called “Rabbit” was called something else, something that put a silent knot in the stomachs of his family and those he fought with on foreign soil.
The Department of Defense tersely described Elmer Mathies, Jr., as “unrecoverable.” Forever lost in a lost world since the morning on the beach of Tarawa on Nov. 20, 1943. Difficult enough to lose a son or brother, even more so never to get him back.

Here are some World War II memories as told by my husband, Hubert Waldrop. Hubert was a POW in Germany for 15 months from February 1944 until the war ended.
“Some things I remember the last two months as a prisoner of war in Germany. We were in a camp north of Berlin called Barth on the Baltic.
Two or three weeks before the war was over, the German guards left us locked up and they evacuated the camp. Before they left, they destroyed most of the records, even some of the buildings; anything the Allies could use against them.

The Battle for Anzio, Jan. 22, 1944
Positioned on the starboard side,
Eyes fixed as land grew near,
The moon and stars revealed his face,
Full of pride, dread and fear.
All nerves were taut as anchor ropes,
Beyond, the beach in sight
Destroyed in a horde of bombs,
By Nazi army’s might.
On landing they began to dig
Some shelter from attack.
The plan was set to hold this place
To move the rival back.
Surely it was a dreadful scheme—
He saw as shells did flame.

9 a.m.:
read more

The Amarillo ISD Board of Trustees heard a presentation from the district administration and legal counsel on Monday about becoming a District of Innovation.
The designation would allow the district to exempt itself from portions of the Texas education code and gain freedom from state regulations on things like school starting dates, teacher certification, class size or student discipline.
read more

The U.S. Department of Justice announced Monday it would be placing election monitors in Harris, Dallas and Waller counties for the general election.
The department regularly monitors elections to protect the rights of voters, but its announcement comes about a week after Texas civil rights advocates expressed concern over reports of poll workers throughout the state sharing inaccurate or incomplete polling information about the state’s modified voter ID law.