Liberal’s Baker Arts Center recently welcomed its newest director.
In November, Misty Martin stepped into the role, and she and her husband, Ryan, are happy to call Seward County home.
Martin came to Southwest Kansas when she was in high school, and after attending Seward County Community College in 1992 and 1993, she and Ryan were married in 1994.
“He’s a Hugoton born and raised guy,” she said. “We’ve lived in the area for more than 30 years now. We have six kids – two boys, four girls. We lived in Hugoton until two years ago. Two years ago, we ended up buying a house just outside of town.”
The Seward County Community College executive team is proud to announce the first two rounds of Saints Stars winners as nominated by fellow faculty, staff and students across campus.
The Saints Star award is intended to highlight the good deeds that often go unnoticed — the extra effort someone puts into a routine job, everyday demonstrations of kindness and care, and a desire to make the day a little brighter for someone else.
“We wanted to introduce this award program as a way to encourage all our employees that their hard work and extra effort does not go unnoticed,” said SCCC’s Vice President of Career & Technical Education (CTE) Dr. Amber Randles. “The hope is that as we go about our everyday duties, we start to notice the good around us, whether it’s someone going out of their way to do a little more, or someone who is unfailingly kind and positive.”
Equity Bank customers will soon notice some changes being made to the bank’s 930 S. Kansas Ave.location.
Plans are currently under way to replace the location, and as Equity Bank Regional President Steve Williams tells it, the project has been in the works for a while.
“This project has been in the works for quite a while, and it came about after we looked at our branches around the full Equity Bank footprint and realized our branch on South Kansas Ave. near El Rancho Supermercado was in need of more than a little bit of repair,” Williams said. “We felt we could serve our customers a lot better with a new branch, so on April 3, the current building is going to be torn down, and then at the same location, we're putting in a new building that will serve our customers a lot better. It was really the ongoing maintenance costs of the current location that really made our decision to put together a new building. When buildings get to a certain point, it's more efficient to just tear it down and start again and make the next one last for 30 years, and we ultimately decided that was the way to go with this.”
Emergency personnel responded to an accident early Monday afternoon, according to a release from the Liberal Police Department.
“Monday, at approximately 12:09 p.m., officers and emergency personnel responded to a reported pedestrian-vehicle accident in the 900 block of N. Pershing Ave.,” the LPD release noted. “Upon arrival, officers found a male individual lying on the ground next to the roadway with injuries to his face and head. Through the investigation, officers determined that a black 2018 Jeep Cherokee, traveling southbound on North Pershing Avenue, struck the male pedestrian while he was jogging along the west edge of the roadway. The injured male was transported to Southwest Medical Center and later transferred to Wesley Medical Center in Wichita for further treatment. The driver of the Jeep was cited for inattentive driving.”
There was a lot of work done in Liberal throughout 2025, and the Liberal Chamber of Commerce has been part of that work.
As Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Rozelle Webb tells it, 2025 was very busy for the Chamber.
“We started off 2025 with a job fair, a lot of businesses were looking for a lot of employees, and we helped them out there. The Chamber Bash was also really good, we had a great crowd there. We had a lot of good legislative forums with our state legislators, Senator [Ron] Ryckman and Representative [Shannon] Francis, they always do such a good job letting people know what's going on,” Webb said. “We had the candidate forums and kept pretty steadily busy throughout the year. We also did the Friendliest Employee recognitions, which is always a real fun thing to do, because they get nominated for being friendly, and since it comes natural to them, they're surprised when they get the award. And we gave the Educator of the Month Award each month at the school board meetings, and it's always nice to recognize the teachers that are doing a really good job. We also had a really successful Duck Race Festival in 2025. We also had 17 ribbon-cuttings and we had 17 businesses join the chamber, so we're really happy with that. We lost a few businesses along the way because of the economy, but which is sad, but we try to help our businesses as best we can.”
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