Like many in Iola, Barbara Shafer Beine moved here to be closer to family. Now she says, “All the reasons we wanted to move down here are gone.”
Beine and her husband Phil moved from Ottawa in 2005 to assist her mother, who was in need of frequent dialysis treatments.
Her mother passed on three years ago, but Phil and Barbara have remained. A little over two years ago, their youngest daughter, Jessica, moved from the Kansas City area to be closer to them. Now the family includes granddaughter Alyssa, two, as well.
Although she had been gone from Iola for decades, Beine grew up in the area. Her parents and grandparents did, as well.
Barbara Shafer was raised on a farm five miles north of Iola. “It was Route 2 back then,” she said of her address.
Her father raised Herefords and she and her siblings tended 4-H pigs. When the wind blew the smell of the swine to the house, her father told them, “That’s the smell of money.” She didn’t like the odor, but the cash after selling the pigs was nice, she admitted.
Barbara attended Iola schools and graduated from Iola High School in 1968.
“We had to wear dresses to our knees,” she said of the school’s dress code. “The next year, they got to wear jeans — I missed out.”
In addition, she said, living on a farm at that time was socially isolating. Highway 169 didn’t exist for easy travel. With parents busy with farm work and other siblings to care for, “We didn’t get to go out very much,” she said. “At that time five miles was too far to go into town but once a week.”
Barbara moved to Yates Center after high school, where she “worked for Newtex, a sewing factory.” There, she met Phil Beine.
Phil had already enlisted with the army to pursue his chosen field, avionics. The couple married and together they moved to Georgia where Phil was based.
Phil was sent to Germany, and Barbara returned to Iola where she said she discovered “I was pregnant.”
She moved in with her parents, Harry and Juanita Shafer, while Phil was overseas. In December of 1973 their son John was born. A couple months later, Barbara and the baby joined her husband in Germany, where they spent the next year.
Back state side, Phil worked in at King Radio in Ottawa. “They build airplane radios,” Barbara explained. King offered Phil a better position in Gardener, so the family moved to Wellsville to be closer to the job.
Later, after being laid off, Phil found work in Olathe.
The family returned to Ottawa when Phil was offered a position with Dodson Aviation. He had that job until just before the couple moved to Iola. Phil had gotten laid off form work, and the closest place he could find employment there was in the Kansas City Area. In addition, the crime rate was going up in their area.
Phil “left his truck at a Park and Ride one day, and when he came back, his windshield wipers had been stolen,” Beine said. With her mother needing assistance, the move to Iola made sense.
Phil found work in Gas at Microtronics. Jessica works there now, too, as a secretary.
“I’ve always been a stay-at-home mom,” Beine said of her job.
For fun, Beine said she likes to ride scooters with friends on Iola’s streets. “We love riding them,” she said. “We just take off and ride all around town. The traffic’s a lot better here than in bigger towns,” she said.
“When we moved down here, they had the cheapest houses and property taxes and utilities were cheaper than where we came from,” she said. Now, however, she noted those prices are all on the rise.
She also misses the restaurants that have left town, like Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken. Those that remain, aside from fast food, she said, “are expensive.”
“One thing that’s neat is the drive in,” she said. “My daughter was 30 years old and had never been to a drive in movie.”
Beine also likes the fall here. “I love it when it’s cool,” she said. But winter’s ice she could do without. “They don’t scrape the streets,” she said of the city. “I was shocked when I first came here that they don’t do that.
But I do like the fact they go around and spray for mosquitoes,” Beine said. In addition, “I like the Bowlus Fine Arts Center and the Christian events there.”
Plus, Beine said, “It’s neat they kept the Funston Memorial up. It used to be out in the country,” she said of the historic home, “and it’s condition was so bad.”
Although she doesn’t see her family moving at this point, Beine would like to see some improvements in Iola.
“The hospital needs to upgrade,” she said. “If anything major happens, you have to go to the hospital Wichita.”
Also, she hopes the community will rally around providing transportation for dialysis patients.
“I’d ride up there and sleep in the car for four hours,” while her mother received treatment, Beine said of her thrice-weekly trips to Chanute. Beine had to have her mother at her treatment at 4:30 a.m., she said. She said she saw others from Iola doing the same thing, and thinks a van service might be helpful for patients in need.
Beine said she was “encouraged by the tea party, that they were allowed to pray. But more people should have turned out.”
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