Grant Overstake has come full circle in his career as a journalist.
Fresh out of college, Overstake took a job managing the Johnson City Pioneer, a small weekly in western Kansas. Job description: Everything, including reporting, photography and paste-up, even delivering the paper to the post office.
From the 1,000-circulation Pioneer he was catapulted to the 1 million-circulation Miami (Fla.) Herald, to write sports, news and features.
Despite the dramatic change, “I never lost my community journalism roots,” Overstake said, which not only served him well in the big city but — 20 years later — has brought him back to his native Kansas.
Overstake, 54, has been appointed managing editor of The Iola Register, with duties to oversee its news department as well as develop a stronger online presence.
His wife, Claire, also 54, will join him as soon as school lets out in May. She is a middle school science teacher in Marshfield, Mo., where the couple has been living for the past year.
OVERSTAKE BEGAN his career in journalism as a teen covering sports part-time for the Wichita Eagle and Beacon, shortly after graduating from Wichita Heights High School. He continued his education at the University of Kansas School of Journalism, where he was awarded the prestigious William Randolph Hearst Award for writing.
In what seemed a straight trajectory to a national byline, after four years at the Miami Herald, Overstake called it quits. The newspaper job was as jealous as any mistress, robbing Overstake of time with his wife and their first-born child.
“I really wanted to stay married to my high school sweetheart,” Overstake said with a shrug. He and Claire have been married 33 years and have three adult children.
“It was also at this time that I converted to Christ,” Overstake added, “which changed my world view.”
Answering a spiritual calling to serve the poor and needy, the couple decided to leave successful careers, pack up their pre-school aged children and enter The Salvation Army’s School for Officers’ Training in Chicago. Both were commissioned and ordained as ministers in The Salvation Army church.
Their first appointment as Officers (ministers) was to Muscatine, Iowa in 1992, where they served as co-directors of the Corps Community Center. The following summer, they oversaw relief efforts in the aftermath of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1993 which inundated the area.
Overstake said his work with The Salvation Army “was like being in the Christian Peace Corps,” with its mission to provide relief and resources to the poor and needy. The experience would build a bridge for Overstake to accept a position as a pastor with the United Methodist Church, while Claire returned to her first love of teaching.
Overstake was appointed to serve Methodist churches in Stafford, Leavenworth and Hiattville, located in Bourbon County, near Fort Scott.
“By then, our children begged us to stay still,” he said. “We’d been moving almost every two years ever since they were born. They wanted some roots.”
The Overstakes settled in Fort Scott, where all three children graduated high school while Claire taught. Grant returned to The Salvation Army as a regional director of development and public relations, serving Pittsburg, Coffeyville, Arkansas City, El Dorado and Emporia.
After their youngest daughter completed high school in 2006, Overstake felt like he could finally return to the newspaper business he’d left some 20 years before, “without feeling guilty about it.”
And he also could approach it with a different perspective.
“I have the training of a hard-nosed journalist, but also the sensibilities of a Christian,” he said.
He accepted the editor’s post at the Hillsboro Star-Journal when longtime publisher Bill Meyer was still at the helm. Overstake threw himself into the role, earning a dozen Excellence in Newspaper Awards from the Kansas Press Association in 2007.
The satisfaction was undeniable, but, “I gained 40 pounds from burning the candle at both ends, eating junk food and not exercising,” Overstake said.
For Overstake, who ran track for the University of Kansas, that was a too high of a price to pay.
“I had plaques on the wall, and in my arteries.”
A little more than a year after Overstake began at the Star-Journal, its longtime publisher died. Overstake saw it as an opportunity to move over to the town’s private college, Tabor College, where he served as director of communications for the next three years.
“It was a great place to learn about social media platforms and Internet technology,” he said. “We created a digital campus community with more than 50 blogs.”
Overstake has used his digital savvy over the past year while serving as the general manager of two large weekly newspapers in the Marshfield, Mo., area, creating a “digital town square” site for social networking and as a source of user-generated content for the papers. Those publications are owned by Community Publishers, Inc., whose business plan is to surround metropolitan-based publications with “strong community newspapers.”
Missouri was a positive experience, Overstake said.
And being back in Kansas? “Even better,” he added.
Overstake said he and Claire look forward to making Iola “our community.” Claire, who earned the Kansas Presidental Award for Excellence in Math & Science Teaching while teaching at Goessel USD 411, hopes to find a similar teaching job in the area.
In addition to contributing to the community through their roles with the newspaper and in the classroom, the couple plans to make positive contributions as masters athletes. Both have exceeded the USATF All-American performance standards in several master’s track and field events. Claire is the current defending national USATF master’s decathlon champion in her age group. Grant placed third in the 2009 national decathlon championship and was second in 2006.
“It keeps us in shape and mentally sharp and it’s a great way to make friends,” Overstake said of the experience of training for and competing in the two-day, 10-event contests.
In June the two plan to compete again at nationals in Dallas. Beyond that is a worldwide master’s decathlon competition scheduled in London the week before the 2012 Olympics.
Growing up in Wichita during the Jim Ryun era, the couple had plenty of positive exposure to the sport of track and field. Claire and Grant ran track together in high school and at KU. He was a decathlete. She was a sprinter-hurdler for the Jayhawks.
Claire “came within a whisker” of setting a national record as part of the state champion Wichita Heights sprint relay teams. Their son, Garrison, was a standout prep sprinter and football player at Fort Scott who earned a track scholarship to the University of Nebraska.
The couple’s commitment to fitness and community involvement has been recognized with a multi-year sponsorship by the Brooks Sports Inspire Daily (ID) Program. In addition to keeping their own training regimens, they have donated their time, expertise and encouragement to junior high, high school and college track athletes everywhere they’ve lived.
They hope to do the same in their new home town.
“It keeps us young,” Overstake said.
