CEREMONY MARKS STUDENTS' PROGRESS IN DARE

The holidays may be in the thoughts of many people this time of year. But
Mark Lingenfelser also has DARE culmination ceremonies on his mind these days.

On Friday, Lingenfelser oversaw what was his second Drug Abuse Resistance
Education graduation ceremony so far this school semester.

Two more are scheduled for this week.

But Lingenfelser, an officer with the Leavenworth Police Department, said
Friday's culmination at Howard Wilson Elementary School held special meaning.

"I taught my first DARE class here," he told the fifth-grade students
graduating from the program.

He's been teaching the program for 11 years.

The school also held a special place in the heart of the ceremony's guest
speaker.

Steve Weissenfluh is a former principal of the school.

He later served as the school district's director of human resources. He
retired from that position over the summer.

Friday's ceremony marked the end of about a dozen weekly visits to
fifth-grade classes at the school by Lingenfelser as part of the DARE program.

Each fifth-grader at Friday's ceremony received a certificate as well as
other DARE-related items.

A culmination ceremony also was held in Tonganoxie last week as part of the
DARE program conducted by the Leavenworth County Sheriff's Office.

A culmination is scheduled for a Leavenworth school next month, and
additional ceremonies will be held in the area around the end of the school
year.

Lingenfelser said the DARE program does more than encourage students to say
"no" to drugs and violence. He said it focuses on making good choices.

During his remarks Friday, Weissenfluh said about one out of every four
people has a predisposition for substance abuse. He said that means a
person can be hooked the minute he tries a substance.

And once a person is hooked, three things will happen, he said.

A person can recover.

"And there's a lot of good recovery programs in every community," he said.

A person can get into trouble and go to prison.

Or a person will die.

Weissenfluh told the parents attending the ceremony that their job is not done.

Next year, the fifth-graders will enter middle school, and this will be the
beginning of their transition into adulthood, he said.

He said it will become harder and harder for parents to keep track of their
children.

He said parents need to work hard to know where their children are and who
their friends are.

Weissenfluh told the parents to use their intuition.

If something seems wrong when it comes to their children, he said, it
probably is.

He told the students that their parents may ask them to do what seem to be
dumb things in the future.

He asked the children to remember that the word "no" from their parents
means, "I love you. I care about you."

As part of the fifth-grade DARE program, each student has to write an
essay. As usual with culmination ceremonies, Lingenfelser asked several of
the students to read their essays.

Two students from each of the three fifth-grade classes at Howard Wilson
read their essays. The essays focused mostly on things students had learned
in the program.

Lingenfelser later read an essay from a former DARE student written in 1994.

After reading the essay, Lingenfelser revealed it had been written by Wayne
Simien, now a basketball star at the University of Kansas.

Lingenfelser said students could look to Simien as a positive role model.