News

Pat Hannaford of Pontiac (right) shown here with life-long friend Sonja Grisham, will be the speaker at the prayer brunch set for 10 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 17, at Frontier Baptist Church in Pontiac. All women are invited to attend. To get to Frontier Baptist from Gainesville, take Highway 5 south,...

Counterfeit $100 bills have appeared in Ozark County recently. The bills have Chinese writing on them, which, according to an online source, can be translated as “not to be used as real currency” and “bill to be used for counting practice.”
Multiple counterfeit $100 bills have been found across the county, Ozark County Sheriff Darrin Reed confirmed Monday. Six of the bills, which have pink and white Chinese symbols on the front and back, were reportedly found in Pontiac and turned in to Century Bank of the Ozarks.  On a post made...
County, state and federal offices and many businesses, including banks, will be closed Thursday, Nov. 22, for the Thanksgiving holiday.  The Ozark County Courthouse, Gainesville City Hall, The Center, Ozark County Health Department, Gainesville License Office and the Ozark County Times will also be...

Vince Quosig, shown here celebrating his 90th birthday last year, spent Friday night in his stranded car west of Theodosia when he missed the turnoff from NN Highway to his home on a county road. Rescuers spent all day Saturday trying to find him – and finally succeeded about 6 p.m. Quosig turns 91 on Nov. 29.
Ellen Richardson said Monday that her dad, Theodosia resident Vince Quosig, 90, wouldn’t have survived another night – lost, alone and cold in his stranded vehicle – if Ozark County rescuers hadn’t worked diligently Saturday to find him. “He would be dead if it wasn’t for them,” she told the Times...

West Plains-based MDC fisheries management biologist Nathan Recktenwald takes a sample from a deer killed Saturday by Blaine Taylor, left, at the sampling station at Gainesville High School. While mandatory sampling has ended here, voluntary sampling is encouraged and can be done in Ozark County by contacting McKinzie Taxidermy at 870-321-379 or 870-321-3483.
Deer hunters in Ozark County braved temperatures in the teens Saturday morning as they took to the woods for the opening day of 2018 firearms season. This year’s opening-weekend harvest total was not available at press time, but the Missouri Department of Conservation website posted an unofficial...

As election judge Ted Bischoff watches, Barren Fork Precinct voter Pamela Cramm sends her ballot into the Unisys Optical Scanner last week while voting at the Wasola Volunteer Fire Department building.
Ozark County voter turnout in last week’s general election was “phenomenal,” Ozark County Clerk Brian Wise said Monday. “Numbers like this are unheard of in a midterm. It has to be in the top three that I have ever seen.” Slightly more than 55 percent of Ozark County’s 7,419 registered voters...

Theodosia resident Elmer Roberson is shown on the D-8 Caterpillar bulldozer he operated in Korea while serving with the 13th Combat Engineers in the Army’s 7th Division.
The day Elmer Roberson had to leave his wife, Betty, and their young daughter to go to the Korean Conflict “was the hardest day, one of the toughest you can imagine,” he said.  Elmer, then living in Bible Grove, Illinois, had been drafted. “I went for the physical, and then I only had two days’...

Cpl. Oliver DeWitt Barner
Editor’s note: Nov. 11, 2018, marks 100 years since the Armistice was signed, ending military action on the Western Front in World War I. Recognizing that anniversary, this uncensored WWI letter from Ozark County native Oliver DeWitt Barner, describing the last moments of the war, is reprinted from...

When the Con Thien outpost where Pat Neal served was overrun by the North Vietnamese in May 1967, this tracked vehicle carrying 17 infantrymen became tangled in concertina wire and couldn’t move. A North Vietnamese soldier with a flamethrower was waiting when the operator dropped the ramp so the men could escape. He opened fire, killing them all. Neal and another Marine removed the bodies from the vehicle. Memories of that grim duty still haunt Pat today.
The worst of Pat Neal’s PTSD nightmares came 30 years after he left Vietnam, but those three decades didn’t diminish their impact.  “During all those years, I was working and busy, and I drank a lot at night. I would go to work, come home and drink, get up the next morning and go to work. One day,...

Summer Loberg. Ozark County Jail booking photo.
A Cedar Creek woman who attempted to flee from an Ozark County Sheriff’s Deputy in March 2017 while driving a four wheeler with a 30 pack of beer strapped to the front rack was found guilty of driving while intoxicated, aggravated offender, during a court trial Oct. 30 before Circuit Judge Craig...

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Ozark County Times

504 Third Steet
PO Box 188
Gainesville, MO 65655

Phone: (417) 679-4641
Fax: (417) 679-3423