Note to Editors: Adapted from the Kansas Profile radio series, this column profiles a different Kansan, Kansas community or Kansas-based company every Wednesday, as a regular feature of the K-State Research and Extension News  lineup. A photo of Ron Wilson is available at  http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/news/sty/RonWilson.htm.

Released: April 2, 2008

By Ron Wilson, director of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University.

The aroma of cooking popcorn wafts through the theater, as movie-goers settle in to enjoy the show. Going to the movies is a time-honored tradition for kids in rural America. But in this community, the kids don’t just go to the movies, they help show the movies. Today we’ll learn about the resourceful community of Oakley which is utilizing its youth to maintain this opportunity for entertainment. Special thanks to Kansas magazine and writer Sally Snell whose article told this remarkable story. It’s today’s Kansas Profile.

Meet the people of Oakley, Kansas. One is Jim Keenan, the business teacher at Oakley High School. He teaches an entrepreneurship class which is getting first-hand business experience, thanks to the historic Palace Theatre.

The Palace Theatre has been described as a “graceful, old repository of Hollywood films.” It is located in the downtown part of the rural town of Oakley, population 1,984 people.  Now, that’s rural.

The theater’s big screen, which first flickered to life in 1949, welcomed moviegoers to this northwestern Kansas town for more than 50 years. Then, the Palace was shuttered in 2001, suffering the fate of many small-town theaters.

But five years ago, Oakley citizens stepped in. They purchased the theater and handed the keys to business teacher Jim Keenan’s entrepreneurship class at Oakley High School.

“The kids do 99 percent of the management work,” Jim says. Professional staff book the movies and operate the projectors, but students take charge of the payroll, royalty payments, lining up sponsors, working with concessions vendors and creating ads.

“Whatever it takes,” Jim adds.

This is an ingenious idea. Students and other citizens get to go to the movies, and the youth get first-hand business experience in the process.

Janet Bean is another key person in the community. She says, “They only show G and PG-13 films, which makes it family friendly.” Janet is director of the Fick Fossil and History Museum, which is another treasure in Oakley.

This free museum features fossils and historical artifacts -- most donated by local citizens. The core of the collection is Vi Fick’s folk art. She and her husband, Earnest, owned a ranch south of town near the landmark Monument Rocks. They gathered thousands of fossils from chalk beds once at the bottom of an inland sea that lapped at western Kansas 80 million years ago.

Janet says, “Someone suggested that Vi make artwork out of them. So she did.” Vi created a replica of the Kansas state seal using oyster shells, fish bones, snails and papier-mâché. “These are reptile teeth,” Janet says, pointing to the eagle talons clutching an olive branch and a bundle of arrows on a reproduction of the U.S. seal.

The museum also exhibits fossilized remains of ancient sea creatures—all collected nearby. One remarkable example is the skull of the oldest documented mosasaur, a huge marine reptile. Antiques and artifacts salvaged from old-time railroad depots, barbershops, a creamery and general store round out the collection.

The town of Oakley was founded in 1886. I might have guessed it was named for the famed female sharpshooter Annie Oakley, but not so. The town is actually named after Eliza Oakley Gardner Hoag, mother of community founder D.D. Hoag. But Annie Oakley did travel with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, and Buffalo Bill played his own part in the town’s history.

More pictures and stories about Oakley can be found on the pages of Kansas Magazine, the beautiful quarterly which showcases our state. For more information or to subscribe, go to www.kansasmag.com. For information on travel and tourism in our state, go to www.travelks.com.

The final credits flow across the screen as the movie comes to an end. It’s another night at Oakley’s student-operated Palace Theatre. We commend Jim Keenan and the students of Oakley, plus Janet Bean and the Fick Fossil Museum for making a difference in their community.  Here in Oakley, the youth don’t just go to the theater, they help make the theater go.

And there’s more. Remember Buffalo Bill? His legend came to life near Oakley. We’ll learn about that in our next Kansas Profile column.

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The mission of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development is to enhance rural development by helping rural people help themselves. The Kansas Profile radio series and columns are produced with assistance from the K-State Research and Extension Department of Communications News Unit. Audio and text files of Kansas Profiles are available at http://www.kansasprofile.com. For more information about the Huck Boyd Institute, interested persons can visit http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/huckboyd/.

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K-State Research and Extension is a short name for the Kansas State University Agricultural Experiment Station and Cooperative Extension Service, a program designed to generate and distribute useful knowledge for the well-being of Kansans. Supported by county, state, federal and private funds, the program has county Extension offices, experiment fields, area Extension offices and research centers statewide. Its headquarters is on the K-State campus in Manhattan.

For more information:
The Huck Boyd Institute is at 785-532-7690 or rwilson@ksu.edu

K-State Research and Extension