If the bitter cold weather these past few days already has you longing for an early spring, the owners of Paddle Stop New Haven, a new business “serving Missouri River paddlers,” are right there with you.

If you have ever heard someone wonder, on a really frigid day or stretch of days here in Franklin County, “What ever happened to that global warming?” Jody Miles has an explanation for you.

This time last year, Kara Bell was in her ninth month of a new whole food, plant-based lifestyle and nearing a milestone: losing 100 pounds.

Losing his last three toes to diabetes hit Henry Hull, Washington, hard. He was already living with end-stage kidney failure and blood pressure problems, and had previously lost his other seven toes to diabetes.

Sharks to the right of me. Sharks to the left of me. Sharks all around me. It’s a situation in which I never expected to find myself, but there I was, submerged in the water and clicking away with the Go-Pro that is part of the shark dive experience package.

What does it take to win the title of “Best Christmas Market in Europe” three years in a row? Seeking the answer to that question was the motivation behind an early December trip to Croatia for this self-described Christmas market junkie.

Standing outside of the new St. Louis Aquarium that opens Christmas Day at Union Station, Shawn Brinker, a 1996 graduate of Washington High School, who served as on-site project manager of the massive, two-year job for McCarthy Building Companies, smiled as he recalled one of his earliest bu…

As Jon Bauer and his daughter Molly were setting up their family’s Christmas village and train layout at the Washington Public Library earlier this month for the annual Holiday House Tour, Molly realized something was missing — a dog that looked like Benji, the greeter at Neighborhood Reads …

Andrew Graham had only met Heidi Nuckolls of Washington one time before she came to him in February as a personal training client at the Four Rivers Area YMCA.

Nothing makes Tracey Kemp happier than to see her students “fight” over who gets to read one of the new books on the Book Buzz shelf in her classroom. As an English and communication arts special education teacher at St. Clair High School, she loves seeing the teens so excited about reading. 

Christmas trees hold a special kind of magic for Halii (Fain) Preiss, Pacific. It goes back to when she was a young girl growing up in Villa Ridge.

It was wet and muddy over Thanksgiving weekend, but that didn’t stop a record number of families from heading to Heritage Valley Tree Farm on Four Mile Road just south of Washington to find their choose-and-cut Christmas tree.

There’s nothing better than a cheery pair of mittens to dispel winter’s chill, but if you want to give a gift with staying power, look to books.

The temperature may be dropping, but many of the rides are still running at Six Flags St. Louis in Eureka, where the grounds have been transformed for the fourth annual Holiday in the Park, open now on weekends and select days through Jan. 1.

Jennifer Hope, EdD, is not easily deterred, not when she believes in something. In fact, a boss once described her as tenacious, and while that word initially felt harsh to her, now she fully embraces it.

For Gary Meyer, the parsonage at St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Beaufort, where he and his wife, Donna, have been members for 12 years, represents more than just a place for the pastor to live.

It’s rare to find a writers’ group that is supportive and friendly. At least that’s the reality of many writers in the Washington Wordsmiths, a group that meets the fourth Wednesday of each month from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Washington Public Library.

It wasn’t too long ago that Kristi Fitzpatrick told her husband, Deric, she needed to expand the 1,000 square foot design studio he built for her in a workshop they share on their property near Clover Bottom.

If you’ve never heard of the Italian priest Padre Pio, you are not alone, although a group of Catholics at St. Gertrude and St. Ann parishes want to change that. Their goal is to get more people praying, to generate hope and for people to experience healing of all kinds.

Molly Butterworth will tell you that her first love is history, but start her talking about cars and you will realize her passion for the automobile runs deep.

Once Harold Englert, a flight medic with ARCH 6 based out of Sullivan, took the group of students gathered at Mercy Hospital Washington for their monthly Health Care Explorers meeting outside, he didn’t have to do much to hold their attention.

One of Marc Houseman’s favorite old photos in the vast collection at the Washington Historical Society is the sepia-toned image shown here on this page.

People who are looking for historical information on anything related to Washington, Mo., often start in one place: the Washington Historical Society Museum at Fourth and Market streets in Downtown Washington.

As an RN, Judy Tobben has more than just empathy for the patients she sees at the Mercy Washington’s Spine Center and Pain Management. She has complete understanding.

The way Johnny Jedrey can get a yo-yo to spin up, down and around, in his hands, around his bicep and even behind his back, will leave you shaking your head over his mastery of the tiny toy.

A disc golf course at Burger Park in Washington is one of the newest community projects funded by the Washington Lions Club. The first nine holes were installed over the summer, and the other nine are expected to be open by next spring, if not sooner.

When the news came that William James McKenzie V, who goes by Billy, had been accepted into the engineering program at Missouri S&T with a double major in engineering and pre-law next fall, it was more than a source of pride for him and his parents, Brandy and William James McKenzie IV (…

Father Dale Wunderlich doesn’t have a vocation story of how he was called to the priesthood, or at least not one that he feels is particularly interesting. But at the heart of his simple story are his Washington roots, the education he received at St. Francis Borgia and Our Lady of Lourdes g…

People who know Susie (Wallach) Rice today might not know it, but she was an extremely shy child. So shy, in fact, that she didn’t really talk to anyone outside of her own family until she was 6 years old.

It both surprises and doesn’t surprise Rich Deppe, whose family has been farming here for decades, that Co-Operative Association No. 2 of Washington marked its 100th anniversary earlier this year.

When John Stillman returned from Vietnam in late 1968 after serving a year in the Army’s 101st Airborne and 199th Light Infantry Brigade, he wanted a nice quiet place to live, work and raise a family. After a year of fighting a gruesome war, he thought that was all he needed to get over the …

Write what you know. That’s long been the popular advice for writers.

Kathy Skrivan, president of the Union Kiwanis Club, was working a Halloween event last year, handing out candy to young children, when one little girl who was in second or third grade noticed the Kiwanis logo on her shirt.

Union natives and Americana musicians Duke and Tami (Williams) Sheppard, known as Pint & a Half, are back in town this week to perform a series of concerts across the St. Louis metro area, including one this Saturday night, Sept. 28, at Henderson House Concerts in Union.

“You need to give this animal a purpose. You need to find him a job.”

Vacation Bible Schools or VBS are a popular summer activity for children around Franklin County. Various churches across the area host these weeklong events that include daily activities, crafts and games built around a biblical theme.

Judy Wagner knew as early as grade school that she wanted to be an engineer.

In July, more than 122 years after Erastus Brown, an African-American living in St. Clair, was lynched in Union by a mob while he was being held in the county jail on charges of attacking a white woman, the Franklin County Community Remembrance Coalition held a memorial for him at East Centr…

Judy Tobben was walking out of the clubhouse at the Franklin County Country Club (FCCC) in Krakow a couple of weeks ago when she saw Dave Wehmeyer, the horticulturalist on staff, driving by in a golf cart. She stopped him just to share how impressed she was by the landscaping.

The words hanging over the doorway leading in and out of St. Peter’s United Church of Christ at the corner of Fifth and Market streets in Downtown Washington say it all: “Enter to Worship,” “Depart to Serve.”

Next Monday is a holiday, Labor Day, but Becky Feltmann and Sheila Mueller will be at Washington Public Library for the regular meeting of the new Suicide Loss Support Group.

Back in 1804 when Lewis and Clark embarked on their expedition out West, they stopped at a small French settlement known as La Charrette on the north bank of the Missouri River near present day Marthasville.

Jennifer (Jones) Patrick thought of it as a teachable moment the day she and her children noticed a robin’s nest and eggs in the tree just a few steps from their front door in Webster Groves.

She’s kind of a big deal — this Laura McHugh.

If you visited the Washington Town & Country Fair last Thursday, you were greeted at the gate by members of the Washington Rotary Club. They were both scanning tickets as people came in and providing re-entry wristbands as they left.

John McAvoy was an FDNY firefighter with Ladder Co. 3 in Greenwich Village, N.Y., on Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center towers by flying airplanes into them, ultimately causing the towers to collapse and killing thousands of civilians and first responders.

For Washington resident and St. Francis Borgia Regional High School grad Molly Light, her professional goals have always been clear: improve mental health and fight eating disorders through psychology.

Million-selling singer-songwriter David Lee Murphy had no plans to make a new record until a country superstar made them for him.