“We can’t have a town without schools. It is a public matter which every citizen should support and support decently. I have no use for the spirit of stinginess that animates some people of large property interests and big incomes when it comes to a matter of schools. We ought to have a school everywhere we need one and whenever we put one up we should make it a good one, up-to-date in every particular. It is one of the departments of government that we cannot afford to be miserly about.”
— John “JP” Weigand, Wichita Beacon, July 28, 1916
The words of JP Weigand, Wichita business pioneer and founder of what is, to this day, one of the city’s most prominent real-estate firms, resonate as true now as they did when he said them 109 years ago…