Features

An organization that is unique to Wimberley, and really reflects the community is My Neighbors Keeper (MyNK). Started in August-September of 2011 during the Bastrop fires, Tom Keyser, Madonna Kimble and others got together and decided to “put together a benefit to get immediate help” to the victims there, according to Kimble.

Burning Love, a citywide benefit that had bands, raffles, and auctions all to help Bastrop. The benefit raised $25,000. Keyser asked Fire Chief Carroll Czichos if the fire department needed funds. Czichos said no, but there was a need for a victim’s resource fund. “When there’s fires, floods, there’s no money for a victim to get a place for a night, clean clothes, or a rental car,” according to Keyser.

This winter has been unlike others in the past, with summer-like weather and then slight freezes. On foggy mornings, the river provides some photo opportunities, with the shadows, white sunlight and the fog making the Blanco mystical. Many times in the morning the brain just doesn’t appreciate what lies right in front of our eyes, whether traveling to work, or just on the way to pick up a cup of coffee. Although River Road has taken a big hit, time and the fog cover the scars that are still seen midday. It’s hard to ignore the beauty of the valley. See more photos on page 18.

The glow of light seen on a dark night attracts observers with a sort of warmth, connectivity, and yearning to join the mystery offered by its display. Follow the light to a village, a party, a campsite, a cup of hot chocolate in a cozy home. Safety. Celebrity artist Thomas Kinkade captures the hearts of millions by a common theme in his paintings: the golden glow of the inner light of houses and churches on cold winter nights.

Christmas lights began as an American tradition instigated in the early 1900s by Thomas Edison, inventor of the electric light bulb. And lighting up for Christmas has been a tradition in Wimberley for as long as some can remember. Surely it must be a bright spot on Google satellite maps - like a certain eminent star.

 Little did anyone know when Katherine Anne Porter School’s theatre director, Melissa Moncus, and her students chose “Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street” and began rehearsals that it would culminate almost four months later in one wild December weekend.

“We knew going in that this show was huge and challenging, but we didn’t know that we would become a tight-knit family forced to band together to jump every hurdle we encountered,” explained Moncus.

Now playing in the Burdine Johnson Indoor Studio, at the EmilyAnn Theatre & Gardens, the classic story by Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, has been adapted for the Children’s Series stage. Guest director, Diane Irwin, a graduate of Texas State University produces a delightful, interactive version which proves to be one that even a Dickens purist can recommend. Speaking after the first show, Irwin said, “I actually studied to be an actor, until I decided I wanted to be a director. I’m applying to grad school at Columbia in New York to get my MFA in directing.”

World War II veteran Sterling Rogers, of San Marcos, spoke during the Great Generations, a monthly meeting held at St. Stephens Episcopal. 

Roger’s was a prisoner of war during WWII and was held at Stalag Luft, the same camp that the 1963 movie The Great Escape is based around. Rogers said he arrived at the camp a few months after the escape, and that the act had made things a bit more difficult at the camp. 

At 92 years of age, Rogers shared the story of his plane crash and the subsequent confinement. The story below picks up at the moment Rogers, a Bombardier pilot, had to crash his plane just after he ejected the bombs on board. All 10 crewmembers survived. (Editor’s Note: This transcription has been edited to be as close to Rogers’ telling of the story as possible.)

Halloween puts a lot of pressure on everyone to come up with the perfect costume, but in the case of one local deer, the costume didn't fit.

A concerned resident contacted the Hays County Sheriff's Office on Thursday after a deer was spotted in distress.

Often times, this sort of call is not one that deputies enjoy, as it often involves an injured deer. However, the deer in this case wasn't hurt — just temporarily blinded.

Blinded by a pumpkin that is.

“It was a deer with a pumpkin stuck on its head,” Hays County Sheriff’s Deputy Stephen Traeger said.

Deputies Mark Andrews and Anthony Schafer arrived to the unique scene to find the pumpkin-hooded deer wandering down Live Oak Drive in the Mountain Crest subdivision of Wimberley.

“I don’t think it could really see,” Traeger said.

Richard King
Special to the View

“My eyes almost popped out of their sockets,” when I discovered that the Blanco River Flood had not only annihilated the first floor of our two-story house on Spoke Hollow Road during the Memorial Weekend, but, that it had also flooded my beautifully restored 1955 yellow and white Buick Century station wagon. At the time the vehicle was sitting in a two-car covered carport on the other side of our house from the Blanco River.

Wimberley Volunteer Firefighter Chris Dibrell has truly lived a life of service. From heading to Ground Zero after 9/11 to working with Iraqis during the war and all the way back to Wimberley, Dibrell has always answered the call of duty. 

After graduating from Texas A&M University in 1988, Dibrell was commissioned into the Army Reserves. A few year’s later, he joined the Austin Fire Department, but one fire department wasn’t enough.

Keith Fiala is a jazz trumpeter. He makes his living from it for quite a number of years. Along the way he has played and tour with jazz greats such as Maynard Ferguson, his mentor Arturo Sandoval and others. But as his wisdom grew with age, the words of Sandoval kept nagging him. “Give back to others.”

Fiala, in order to make a living had to play in a couple bands, give lessons and do other things to make a living. He remembered that while touring with Ferguson, in the afternoon before a concert, the band would teach others interactively.