Love conquers all, or so it did last Saturday, March 21, when Anastasia Ratcliff, a Washington native and 2012 graduate of St. Francis Borgia Regional High School, found a way to keep the wedding date she had planned with her fiance, Colorado native Stanton Skerjanec.

The timeliness of a new campaign launched by members of Peace Lutheran Church, ELCA, in Washington to forgive the medical debt of people across Franklin and four neighboring counties is not lost on Pastor Aimée Appell.

“Sharp!” Kyle Buescher said loudly enough for everyone to hear as he walked through the culinary arts classroom kitchen at Washington High School while carrying a knife.

Book clubs that meet monthly at Neighborhood Reads bookstore in Downtown Washington are finding creative ways to continue connecting as the COVID-19 outbreak forces people to practice social distancing.

Owensville is about 45 minutes from Mercy Hospital Washington, but when Judy West was discharged just days after having a heart attack Feb. 8, she didn’t worry about that distance.

As you read your Missourian today, you may want to keep a pencil and paper near by. Or if you’re good at counting, you may not need to.

From his desk inside the Washington Historical Society Museum at 113 E. Fourth St., in Downtown Washington, Marc Houseman can hear members of the Schwarzer Zither Ensemble practicing just steps away from his door on Wednesday afternoons.

If you’re being cared for by a nurse somewhere in Franklin County, the odds are good that they started their career as an LPN student at the Washington School of Practical Nursing.

Jeanne Bandermann has lots of uplifting stories about the students who come to The Dress Room at Pacific High School looking for something to wear for a special occasion. She remembers them all because their reactions are always so heart-warming.

From a distance, the white exterior of the old American Legion Post 262 Hall at 5333 Hackman Road in Augusta looks fairly nondescript, but get up close and you will notice that the brackets along the roofline look sort of like music notes.

Painting the mural of a Mediterranean scene on the side of Angelina’s Italian Market at the corner of Second and Lafayette streets in Downtown Washington late last year reminded Washington artist Jim Peters a little bit of his days decades ago painting billboards around town, when people wou…

Children are naturally creative, especially very young children, and many parents, teachers and other adults are eager to provide them with art supplies like crayons, paints, markers and more to encourage that creativity.

Back in the 1980s as Rosalyn Pursley, Port Hudson, and her daughter, KrisAnn, were backpacking across Europe, they occasionally hitchhiked to their destinations.

When you think of home, what comes to mind?

If the Supermoon that occurred last weekend had you looking up at the sky with interest and curiosity, you may want to make note of the public stargazing schedule offered by the Eastern Missouri Dark Sky Observers (EMDSO) astronomy club.

Last spring when the University of Missouri-St. Louis presented the first Timothy J. Caton Scholarship in Information System in memory of the 2008 Washington High School graduate, his mom, Marlin Heidmann, Washington, couldn’t have been more proud.

For every melody that Gloria Attoun (Bauermeister) composes and the lyrics that she writes, she has a little movie going on in her head.

Even though it’s been decades since she escaped an abusive marriage, Julie McCollum, New Haven, still remembers what it was like those first few days after her rush to get to safety.

Washington High School didn’t have an NJROTC program when Rear Adm. William Chase III was a student there in the 1980s, but the school’s marching band was the next best thing for instilling discipline and order.

Good things happen when creative minds get together to brainstorm ideas.

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.