By CHUCK OFFENBURGER DES MOINES, Iowa, Feb. 25, 2019 — It gives me pause to tell you that this 100th Iowa Girls High School State Basketball Tournament is the 61st that I have closely followed, and of those 61, I’ve attended at least 45. Of course, the state tournament is the showpiece and moneymaker of…
By CHUCK OFFENBURGER COOPER, Iowa, Feb. 5, 2019 — Iowa just lost one of its best citizens, Mark A. Wampler. And he was one of my best sources over the years, too. Wampler, who lived in rural Slater in central Iowa but hailed from Allerton in south central Iowa, knew everybody who was anybody in this…
By CARLA OFFENBURGER COOPER, Iowa, Jan. 25, 2019 — In late December, I reported that I was most likely going to do some “spot radiation” under the direction of Dr. John Triantafyllos (fondly known as “Dr. T.”), a radiation oncologist at Iowa Methodist Medical Center’s John Stoddard Cancer Center in Des Moines. And that’s exactly what…