Newcomer makes Iola home

Ardena Boyce likes Iola. Although she has only lived here two years, she’s sold on its charms.
“It’s a nice little community,” she said of her adopted home. “You have your neighbors and you have your friends and people want to take care of people, which is wonderful.”
Boyce is from Tucson, Ariz., but her husband, Travis, grew up here.
“My in-laws, Terry and Sandy Zornes, are from here, and that’s what brought us to Iola,” Boyce said.
“Travis lived in Iola from age seven through 15, then he went to live with his dad in Arizona. He went to high school out there, then went to Flagstaff for college. We met in college in Flagstaff,” Boyce said.
The couple married nine years ago. They moved for a time to the Netherlands.
“I’m actually a hotel and restaurant management major with an emphasis on international hospitality,” the 28 year-old Boyce said. “They made us study abroad,” she laughed. “I’m grateful for that.
“Travis had the same major so we got to travel together. We went over to the Netherlands and spent 10 months there in the town of Breda. It was a wonderful experience.”
After finishing their degrees, the couple moved to Kansas be closer to Travis’ family.
“We see Travis’ family almost every day, and his extended family occasionally,” she said. It’s a rare week, Boyce said, when she doesn’t see her in-laws “at least five times a week.” In addition, Travis helps out with his stepfather’s business.
“Terry and Sandy service vending machines and Travis helps Terry out,” Boyce said. In addition, Travis “delivers pizza in Garnet.”

A BIT OVER a year ago, the Boyces purchased a dog-grooming business downtown and renamed it Sunflower Grooming. Boyce received training from the previous owner, plus she pursued additional training on her own.
“I never would have guessed I’d end up grooming dogs,” she said. But the opportunity was hard to pass up.
The previous owner, Barbara Lynn Crites, is “friends with my mother-in-law,” Boyce said. She was looking to sell the business, and “We came in and talked with her and decided it was a good move for us all.”
Being a business woman allows Boyce freedom she wouldn’t otherwise have. Boyce doesn’t mind that the couple aren’t managing a hotel in some exotic land.
“I value my time and in a way I’m using my degree because it’s a business degree. But I like spending time with my family and we have dogs. A job in (the hospitality) field requires a lot of time and dedication to someone else, and I’m not ready to give (my freedom) up.”
In addition to loving her business, she loves her location.
The square is Boyce’s favorite part of Iola.
“I like the downtown square. I like the layout. A lot of businesses are here. I'm thankful for this location. Things are within walking distance.
“Occasionally I walk to my in-laws and I go through the square. I like the birds and the squirrels.”
Boyce saw a similar vibrancy in the town centers of Europe.
“In the Netherlands, everything surrounds the town square.”
Boyce likes other things about her adopted home as well.
“Fall, I like the fall. That’s one thing in Tucson you didn’t get. We didn’t have four seasons. It was cold or hot. Immediately it’s cold and winter, or immediately it’s hot and summer.”
In Iola, of course, the seasons linger, and there’s four of them.
“I love the leaves changing color — it’s the coolest thing. We drive around to see what’s going on in town, and we drive around watching nature.”
Boyce appreciates the landscape here. “It’s a different environment. It’s a nice change.”
For fun, Boyce says, “I like fishing. We take advantage of the Prairie Spirit Trail. I like being outdoors. We run around on our property — We have just under two acres; it’s big enough.”
The couple also has four dogs, three boxers and a miniature pinscher, and two cats. “He’s a little mighty dog,” she said of her min-pin, Zeus.
Between exercising their dogs and the grooming business, “That keeps us pretty busy.”
For urban fun, “We go up to Kansas City sometimes and take advantage of the city, and then feel really nice when we come back to the small town.”
After growing up in a city of over half a million people, with a metro area of one million people, Boyce finds the pace of Iola to her liking.
“It’s really down home,” she said.

ABOUT THE only downside to living in southeast Kansas is that Boyce doesn’t see her own “absolutely big extended family” very often. “My dad’s family and my mom’s family are all in Tucson,” she said.
Although she’s an only child, she said her family is close. But that closeness is now tempered with distance.
Her father died while Boyce and her husband were in the Netherlands. And her mom “has her job and she has her dogs, so she doesn’t travel much.” Plus, Boyce said, “My mom calls herself a desert rat, and she’ll stay in the desert. She likes to stay put.”
That makes Boyce appreciate all the more the proximity of Travis’ family.
“We had Easter dinner with Travis’ dad’s parents in Blue Springs, Mo.,” she said. The “families are close,” she said.
Despite Iola’s declining population, Boyce said she sees no reason Iola has to fade away.
“I think if the community remains strong within itself, it will stay together. It all goes with everybody helping everybody.”