Today's Features

Like most young boys, I enjoyed playing with toy soldiers as a kid. Unlike most young boys, I stuck with it, and turned it into much more than a game of “bang, bang, your guy is dead!” or knocking figures over with marbles.

Even as a youngster, growing up “down under” in New Zealand, I was a bit of a history nut. I wasn’t quite so interested in the mass destruction potential of warfare as the “why did they do it that way?” And the “how could I have done it better?” problem-solving and strategic study aspects.

Several months before the amphibious assault of Bougainville in November, 1943, by the Third Marine Division, Naval intelligence services had decoded an intercepted message regarding the plans of Admiral Yamamoto to visit three bases near that island. The information provided was so exact that on April 18, 1943, the Army Air Corps’ 339th Fighter Squadron, flying P-38’s based on Henderson Field, Guadalcanal, was able to intercept and destroy Yamamoto’s plane in the air over Bougainville.

Shelby County Community Theatre next month will debut its 37th season when South Pacific is staged starting July 19th at the facility at 801 Main St. in Shelbyville. The theater features a lineup of five main-stage shows and three more productions in its more intimate dining room upstairs at the theater. Jamie Swindler, recently installed as president of the theater’s board, spoke with The Sentinel-News about the upcoming season and her role.

Joel League, as he puts it, has his fingerprints on just about everything that has ever involved Living Waters Church.

He was there from the beginning – preaching to his congregation in Floral Hall at the Shelby County Fairgrounds when the church was just beginning in 1981.

He recalled cold days and nights with his fellow church members in the gym of the old Henry Clay Elementary School in Clay Village, which at the time served as the church’s sanctuary.