Features

Back by popular demand, two concerts featuring the Hill Country Community Band (HCCB) and the Wimberley Community Chorus (WCC) will be held on Tuesday, July 4 at the First Baptist Church of Wimberley. The first, free concert will begin at 1:00 p.m. and will be reprised at 4:00 p.m. Director of HCCB, James Malik said, “It is, without a doubt, one of the things I look forward to the most every year. It’s an exciting concert. It’s a wonderful collaboration between two great organizations honoring our country, honoring the men and women who serve our country.”

Penny Gabrielsen will direct the singers of WCC for both shows. Malik said, “She’s fantastic, a lot of fun to work with. I love the enthusiasm of the Wimberley Community Chorus, and the great performances that they give.”

Start the Fourth of July weekend early with the Big Scoop! Join the fun at the Wimberley Community Center on Saturday, July 1, 1-7 p.m., and help local kids get ready for school in the fall. 

In addition to all of the ice cream you can eat, served out of the summer heat, the event includes live music, sing-a-longs, contests with prizes, face painting, Lego robotics and a karate demonstration. The Wimberley High School Band leads off the entertainment, which also includes the Wimberley Dance Elite, WHS Pom and Dance Team, Contemporary Cloggers, Blanco River Academy Singers, Ballet Forklorico by Ocotochtli, Heather Wiley & Lee Baker, Doc Jones, Perry Raybuck, and Tracy Weinberg.

Danny Hickman has been teaching Spanish for the past 15 years at WHS, and you can tell he loves his job by the smile on his face and the way the kids treat him. He loves them. They love him back. Heck, they even bought him a recliner that they put in his room when he was recouping from a liver transplant. 

Hickman has a cool swagger too. He sports nicknames – not simply one – such as señor or Maestro. In other words, he’s a colorful guy. 

Beyond his characteristics as a genuinely likable guy, The Maestro also knows how to teach. He has received many honors for his skills – the least of which perhaps was a runner-up finish in the Best Teacher Category of last year’s Best of Wimberley contest. He has been named best teacher for numerous groups and rightly so. But how did Hickman get his start?

The 19th annual Butterfly Festival at EmilyAnn Theatre and Gardens went off without a hitch as around 6,400 people attended the event over the weekend.

“This is our once-a-year fundraising effort and event, so we appreciate those in the community that helped us and came to Butterfly Festival,” Ann Rolling, executive director of EmilyAnn, said. “Their dollars and investments go to the future running of EmilyAnn, and this enables us to continue to give that to the community.”

Last week was the peak of the season for hunting Easter eggs. An international tradition, gathering eggs date back to pre-Christian times when spring signaled the rebirth of the earth, symbolized by an egg. In Christian times it became a symbol of Christ in his tomb. 

People began to color the eggs, like the spring season that brings back color to the earth in flowers and the green grass. But at Wimberley’s Easter egg hunts, real eggs are not used anymore but plastic eggs filled with candy.

The first big hunt was at Deer Creek on Thursday with pre-K, primary and some elementary kids. There were lots of them, brought in by WISD busses. Lots of parents and grandparents attended too. The Deer Creek residents also had a fun time watching the kids in the petting zoo, playing games and riding on a tractor train. But best of all, not one child left without finding an egg.

Keeping the school and halls clean is a hard job. As kids tend to do,students spill things and generate the usual kid trash – which from time to time can be pretty nasty. WISD’s longtime employee Leon Cordova takes it all in stride. After all, he has been doing the job for 21 years.

Although born in Littlefield, Texas his family moved to Wimberley in 1972 when he was in first grade. He has lived here ever since. He is one of 12 kids of the Cordova family. The youngest one of the family, his brothers used to prop him up in the back of a pink Cadillac and ride around town.

“Wimberley is freedom to me. I could do anything, really. Hang out with kids, swimming; they’d let you go anywhere. It was a small town where everybody knew everybody,” Leon said about growing up here. 

Former Wimberley High School Coach Dick Smith has found his vocal calling as the mid-morning host of ‘Over Easy with Coach’ on KWVH 94.1 Wimberley Valley Radio. As you might expect from a host used to calling out orders and “coachin’em up,” the listener will never hear a lack of conversation or down time on air. Smith has an infection enthusiasm, and it affects those around him. 

This big guy, both tall and hefty, is really a big teddy bear, though, and he is well loved in the community and at the high school, from which he retired after coaching football, basketball, and tennis. He deems it a great honor to be called coach.

“I was third in my graduating class but not in the top ten percent,” Smith said. He grew up in the tiny town of Santa Anna, located about 175 miles northwest of Wimberley. The town’s population was about a thousand, as it is today. 

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” Hamlet Act 1, scene 5.

Imagine one second you’re alive and well, then during some accident, drowning or car crash, you leave your body and discover you’re in some sort of a different atmosphere and environment.

Seeing heaven during a Near Death Experience (NDE) and then returning back to earth can be an experience that is life changing to say the least. That is what the Near Death Symposium is all about.

There were 44 of them, all lined up like some sort of dream or movie set. Classic Porsches like a 912, or brand new ones. All clean, shiny and ready to go on a jaunt throughout the Hill Country. Although it was Saturday April 1, this was no April Fools joke.

The Porsche Club of America (PCA) came to visit Wimberley Saturday and made an 11 o’clock pit stop at Wimberley’s Chamber of Commerce. Not only club members were on hand, but the National President of the (PCA) Caren Cooper and Hill Country Chapter President Tracey Gross, who lives in Dripping Springs. The Porsche Companies’ North American liaison to the PCA, Paul Gregor of Munich was also there. 

When a dog’s name is Chopper, one pictures a big set of teeth and a growling demeanor, but this Chopper is not anything like that. He is a white and black Border Collie that is 12 years old.

Chopper is very well trained and it shows. He is a certified by Therapy Dogs International (TDI), loves children and really identifies with them. He is comfortable. 

On a recent trip to the Wimberley Village Library, Chopper was a little anxious, as no kids were present at the children’s section.  

Chopper’s skills are put to good use with children on Mondays from around 3 p.m. to around 5 p.m., and he was ready to get started. About 20 children visit and read to Chopper while laying next to him – sometimes on him. Chopper listens encouraging the children to read.