Letters: Readers discuss vaccine success, useless background checks and Walt Disney
Got it done
My husband Jeff and I received both doses of our COVID-19 vaccine in March at the Okun Fieldhouse in Shawnee, as organized by the Johnson County Department of Health and Environment. Our experiences were amazing, from signing up and being notified about appointment availability through getting the shots. Everyone there was friendly, smiling and extremely helpful. We were in and out in a very timely manner.
Thank you so much for your handling of this enormous undertaking. We have an amazing feeling of relief after getting the second shot.
- Deanna Rudd, Prairie Village
From the past
Stories recently appearing in The Star relating to the Disney family and Westminster Congregational Church were quite interesting. (March 18, 4A, “Historic KC church beloved by Disney family is coming down stone by stone”) I refer to brothers Charles Elias Disney and Daniel H. Disney, who are Disney descendants and were interviewed for the coverage. My great-grandparents, David and Mary Brown, were members of the congregation at the time the Disneys attended this beautiful church in Hyde Park.
I remember my family talking about the annual family picnic known as “Westminster Day” held in Electric Park at 46th and The Paseo Boulevard. This amusement park greatly inspired Walt Disney as a youth, as did the Westminster Congregational Church, particularly the stone architecture that Disney thought resembled a castle.
The one structure in Kansas City still remaining that relates directly to Disney’s creative endeavors is at 31st Street and Forest Avenue, just east of Troost Avenue. This is where young Walt Disney established his Laugh-O-Gram animation studio and where Mickey Mouse was born, having originally been a real pet mouse named “Mortimer” that Walt fed and cared for.
- Catherine Kaysing, Clearwater, Florida
Checks won’t work
There is an ongoing narrative that universal background checks and further gun control measures would somehow stop mass shootings and reduce crime and gun violence. Nothing could be further from the truth, according to FBI statistics. The facts are that most mass shooters passed background checks.
Look at the FBI statistics from the Clinton administration after gun-control measures were passed and compare them with crime statistics after those restrictions were removed. The facts and statistics, as analyzed by the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Foundation for Economic Education, don’t support the opinion that more gun laws would solve the problem.
You are entitled to your opinion but not your own facts.
- Frank Green, Kansas City