By JUDY SHERARD

jsherard@dailynews.net

Besides student activities Kennedy Middle School has ties to national events.

Presidential candidate and then-Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kennedy was guest of honor and speaker at a sixth congressional district dinner for Ellis County Democrats at the school on Nov. 20, 1959.

There were 642 people at the dinner to hear him speak on the importance of accepting and bearing responsibilities as members of a free nation and world power, according to an article in At Home in Ellis County.

Though he didn't attend, Tim Schmidt remembers people talking about it.

"It was a major event," he said.

Ten years later the name of the school was changed to honor Kennedy.

Little came of Madalyn Murray's interest in northwest Kansas in 1963, but she did focus on the school, then Jefferson West, for a brief time.

Founder of the American Atheists, she apparently came to the area in 1963 to build an atheist information center, university, radio station and home for retired free thinkers, according to an article in At Home in Ellis County.

Retired Stockton farmer Carl R. Brown offered to give 80 acres to Other Americans Inc., an atheist group she headed. Brown, 77 at the time, was an atheist, nudist and former member of the Legislature, according to the article.

Dr. Harold Chapman also offered to give her 11 buildings at Speed, but later rescinded his offer.

While she was developing those ideas, Murray announced she was going to enroll her youngest son, Garth Murray, in the Hays public schools.

She intended to file a suit challenging the use of Catholic nuns as teachers. Hays schools at the time had 13 nuns. School representatives said Murray couldn't enroll her son until she proved they were residents, the article said.

Murray later added O'Hair to her name, and won a Supreme Court case in June 1963 declaring prayer at schools unconstitutional.