From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Oct. 9, 1988:

• About 15,200 underground fuel storage tanks in Kansas were constructed of unprotected steel and were in danger of leaking, according to officials heading the state’s Underground Storage Tank program. Chuck Linn, who was in charge of the program as chief of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment’s solid waste management program, said that the tanks were “a serious problem and you’ve had a number of problems in the Lawrence area…. The older the tank is, the more likely it is to leak.” An estimated 2,280 underground tanks in the state were now leaking fuel into the ground or were on the verge of doing so.
• A former German soldier who had spent nearly two years in Kansas as a prisoner of war during World War II was revisiting the state this week under happier circumstances. Fritz Uhrig, who had spent to a POW camp in Concordia after his capture by Allied forces in North Africa, had stayed in Kansas from July 1943 to March 1945. Gerald and Virginia Pearson of Lawrence had met Uhrig by chance during a 1970 visit to Germany and had visited his house several times; he and his wife were now returning the visit.