From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Aug. 17, 1915:

• “Death came out of a clear sky this morning to Milton Pettibone, 24 years old, at the country club grounds at 10:45 o’clock. Pettibone, who was an electric lineman in the employ of the Lawrence street railway and light company, received a 2300 volt shock from an exposed wire at the top of a light pole and was instantly killed. His father, Charles Pettibone, of 1124 Rhode Island street, a line foreman for the company, was with him, and had to shake his son’s body loose from the fatal wire. Father and son had just finished placing the lightning arrestors on the new line to the country club…. A telephone call was immediately placed at the fire department and Chief Reinisch made a record run to the University where he obtained the school’s pulmotor and took it to the scene of the accident. The artificial aid to restore life had arrived too late, however…. [Light company superintendent] Skinner says, ‘Pettibone was one of our best linemen…. The whole office here is upset for we were all very fond of him. I have telephoned the boys to come in off of the country lines.’ Pettibone was married and had one child about seven months old. He had moved to 1209 Pennsylvania street only yesterday.”
• “Half-day sessions in some of the schools pending the completion of the new school buildings will be necessary, and were authorized at the special meeting of the city school board that met last Saturday evening…. Superintendent Smith says: ‘It is probable that those assigned to the McAllister school will occupy rooms in the New York building in the afternoon, and that those assigned to the Cordley school will occupy rooms in the Quincy building in the afternoon. The morning session in each of these buildings will be given over to the children originally assigned to the New York and Quincy schools.'”
• “The weeds in Lawrence are still growing at a record breaking pace and city officials are busy trying to keep the ordinance which makes property owners keep them down, in force. One man says that he has obtained five cuttings of very choice weeds off one vacant lot that he owns, this year, and that he expects to get at least two more. ‘If my alfalfa had just done as well, I wouldn’t feel so bad,’ he says. ‘However the same rains that made the weeds grow so fast that I could see them sprouting up, ruined the first cutting of my alfalfa.'”
• “The European war should teach the people of Kansas a lesson most of us will be prone to overlook. It is to get busy and put through a comprehensive scheme of improving our highways…. In the event that the United States should ever be invaded there is little likelihood that there would be any war upon the soil of Kansas, but the need of good highways for the transportation of troops and foodstuffs would be as apparent from the first month of the war as it has been apparent all over Europe during the past year. Such an eventuality is possible according to the judgment of the most intelligent Americans of all vocations living today. Transportation of troops, munitions of war, and foodstuffs in minimum time and at maximum speed across Kansas by rail, auto and wagon may save this nation from a great peril in the not remote future. Look ahead.”