By ANNE KAZMIERCZAK
Register Reporter
Chris Heffern is a man of action rather than words. He prefers things physical, he said: sports, hunting, fishing.
“I like building things, working with my hands, being outside,” he said.
Heffern is one of seven four-year straight A students graduating this year from Iola High School. He credits his parents with his success.
“My mom and dad always pushed me. They expected us to get good grades,” Heffern said of his parents, Chuck and Linda.
His parents also always expected their children — Heffern has two younger brothers, Clint, a sophomore at IHS, and Colton, in seventh grade at Iola Middle School — to go to college, he said.
“They told me I had to go to college, they didn’t care where. They said it would be better for me,” he noted.
Heffern plans to go to his mom’s alma mater, Pittsburg State University, and enter the construction engineering program in the fall.
Linda Heffern teaches math at IMS, and Chris joked that his own math — he’s taking calculus — is “too complex for her to help me with anymore.” Math is a big part of the construction trade, he said, and he intends to rise to the top.
“I’d like to be making a lot of money as a supervisor or manager of a large construction company,” Heffern said of his goals.
The program at Pitt should help him with that, he said.
“You can get an internship every summer. You usually get job offers before you get out of school.”
HEFFERN also made the football team at PSU. He played football, basketball and baseball “all throughout high school,” he said. “In the summer, I’m on the American Legion baseball team,” as well, he noted. “I’ve done that for three years.”
The full schedule doesn’t phase him, though.
When school work strained him, he would ask teachers for help.
“Don’t be afraid to talk to them,” he advised younger students. “They’ll help out. Don’t be afraid to do the extra hour of homework or stay up late to study,” he added.
Heffern admits that wasn’t always easy.
“It’s tough — you’ve got to put your time in. The peer pressure” to blow off school work “gets worse the older you get,” he said. “You have to tell yourself ‘stay home, you’ve got to do this homework or study for this test.’”
Heffern said he began taking note of his grades — and going that extra mile — in elementary school.
“Any time a grade would start to get low,” he said, he worked to bring it up.
Heffern said he cemented his focus on success after his sophomore year at IHS.
“I figured, once you’ve got a couple years in, why quit now?”
So he maintained the 4.0 throughout, and won a McFadden scholarship this past year for his efforts. He also received an Edward B. Zahn FFA Scholarship Trust, American Legion Scholarship, Wayne Garrett Scholarship and more.
Heffern was devoted to FFA his four years at IHS, he said, and singled out ag ed teacher Charles Kerr as a positive influence in his life.
“I spend a lot of time with him,” Heffern said.
“When you’re young — a freshman and sophomore — you do a lot,” with FFA, Heffern said. “I judged a few events, I was an officer all four years” and “we went to the state convention in Manhattan every year,” he said.
“Time management is the big thing,” Heffern said of juggling his many extracurricular activities.
He also enjoys hunting and fishing with his family, he said, and chose PSU for its proximity to home.
“It’ll be nice to be a little closer” than he would have been had he elected to go to Kansas State University or the University of Kansas, he said. “I’d like to stay around southeast Kansas; stay around family.”
And despite his goal of making it big in construction, Heffern said, his ultimate goal is simpler: “I’d like to be happy; I don’t have to be rich.”
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