Photo by Kansas City Royals \u2013 Courtesy<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\nAfter Witt received his plaque, the team rolled out a customized wheelchair for Stanley, who has ALS. Witt autographed the wheelchair, and posed for several photos with the Stanleys.<\/p>\n
Stanley was flanked by wife Tina, their children, grandchildren, and an army\u2019s worth of extended family and friends and supporters in the stands.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, my goodness, it was quite a night,\u201d Tina Stanley told the Register Thursday morning. \u201cIt was magical.\u201d<\/p>\n
The progressive neurological disorder, commonly known as Lou Gehrig\u2019s Disease, causes muscles to weaken and waste away. There is no cure.<\/p>\n
Jack was diagnosed with the disease in September, after having brief bouts of slurred speech last summer. He also often complained of having a \u201chumming\u201d feeling in his hands.<\/p>\n
After doctors ruled out a stroke, and confirmed Jack hadn\u2019t been afflicted once again with giant cell arteritis, an ailment he\u2019d dealt with previously, they ordered a visit to a neurologist.<\/p>\n
The diagnosis came Sept. 20.<\/p>\n
Tina said her husband remains able to walk, but tires when walking long distances, and the disease has begun to affect his speech.<\/p>\nA sizable contingent of family and friends joined Jack and Tina Stanley as Jack was honored during a pregame ceremony at Wednesday\u2019s Kansas City Royals Game. Stanley, a former long-time Iola Middle School principal, was diagnosed with ALS last September. He was presented with a customized wheelchair autographed by all-star shortstop Bobby Witt Jr., who also was honored during a pregame ceremony with the prestigious Lou Gehrig Memorial Award. Photo by Toni Manbeck \u2013 Courtesy<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nWEDNESDAY\u2019S<\/strong> ceremony came about two months after the Stanleys were visited by a wheelchair salesman.<\/p>\nDuring the course of their conversation, the salesman asked if the Stanleys were baseball fans.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They are.<\/p>\n
The salesman sent Tina a message a day later, asking her to return a call, without Jack knowing.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe asked if we\u2019d be willing to see Bobby Witt Jr. get his award,\u201d she recalled. \u201cThey\u2019d provide the tickets so that we and our sons and their families could attend.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.iolaregister.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Iola educator Jack Stanley, seated, is flanked by his family at Wednesday\u2019s Kansas City Royals game. Pictured with Jack are, front from left, grandchildren Ellie, Jack, Alexa and Luke Stanley; second row, daughter-in-law Melissa Stanley, Jack\u2019s wife Tina Stanley, grandson Blake Stanley and daughter-in-law Jeneal Stanley; back row, sons Scott and Shawn Stanley.Photo by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2436202,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2436201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Former-Iolan-receives-a-Royal-surprise.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2436201"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2436203,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436201\/revisions\/2436203"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2436202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2436201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2436201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2436201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}