CHANUTE — It wasn’t a coincidence that Mary Alice Lair chose to wear a purple mink shearling coat when she greeted Gov. Sam Brownback at the economic summit held in Iola in mid-November.
“I mean to get noticed,” she said. The colorful coat did its job. Lair was pictured on the front page of the Register that afternoon, shaking the governor’s hand.
Lair’s personality is as colorful as her wardrobe.
She bases her life on “family, faith and country,” she said. “And fun.”
“I love to have fun, to be around fun people. It may be selfish, but I purposefully seek to be around younger people. They keep me young.”
At 75, Lair’s energy seem endless.
“People have asked me what my favorite chair is in my house. I tell them I don’t have one. I never sit down.”
LAIR IS KNOWN on the state and national levels for her contributions to the Republican Party. She is in her 12th year as a national committeewoman. She began volunteering for the party in 1968, and has since worked her way up through precinct and state committees before her election to the national committee in 1989.
She also has been a delegate to the Republican National Convention several times since 1976.
“I’ve won every election I’ve ever entered,” she said.
Lair has pictures of her favorite Republican politicians lining a hallway wall. She is pictured with several including President George W. Bush.
She lists Ronald Reagan as one of her three heroes — “for obvious reasons,” she said.
The other two are country singer Toby Keith and Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Indian tribe.
“He was such a kind and peaceful chief,” Lair said of the Indian leader from the late 1800s. “And when he faced persecution by the United States Government, he kept â¨his dignity.”
Lair said she liked country music even before it became popular.
“When everyone was falling in love with Elvis, I preferred Patsy Cline,” she said.
Country singer Keith “is such an American,” she said. “All his songs are happy and about loving America. He’s the one who tore down the Dixie Chicks when they criticized President Bush for invading Iraq.”
Lair and her husband, Virgil, 84, divide their time between four homes.
“When I said I wanted somewhere warm, Virgil told me to find the best place. I looked at Arizona and other places, but the people seemed too old.”
It wasn’t until she discovered Islamorada along the Florida Keys that the fit seemed right.
“You can go out for a walk and continue onto happy hour without even having to change clothes,” she said of the casual atmosphere of the island’s restaurants. She also noted that most of the residents there are slim and trim like herself. Lair walks two miles several days a week as well as making good use of a fitness center. She’s also faithful about watching her weight.
“You will never see me in stretch pants,” she said of the style that allows some give.
In a tour of their five-year-old home near the Chanute Country Club, a must-see are Lair’s walk-in closets, one for clothes, complete with a chandelier, and a smaller one for shoes and boots, especially cowboy.
Lair said she shops “wherever I go.” A favorite destination is McGinty-Whitworth in Iola. “You are so lucky to have that store.”
Lair said she tries to dress in a “sensitive and sensible manner,” when in southeast Kansas. “I don’t want to look out of place.”
Their other homes include a condominium in Vail, Colo., and a “hunting lodge,” in Cody, Wyo. Virgil Lair is an avid big game hunter, as is evidenced by trophies of big horn sheep mounted on their living room wall.
Lair explained the lack of Christmas decorations around their Tuscan-styled home in Chanute: “For 40 years we’ve celebrated Christmas in Vail. This year is no exception,” she said, expecting her four children, 14 grandchildren, and one great-grandchild to be there “at least for three days overlapping.”
The Lair’s children are all involved in some aspect of the family’s business of banking. Virgil Lair owns banks in Chanute, Erie, Chetopa, Neodesha, Fall River, Parsons and Stark.
Son Mark is the chief executive officer of Chanute’s Bank of Commerce; Gregg is on the board of directors of the family business; Casey is president of the bank in Neodesha; and daughter Jill Aylward works as an auditor for the family business.
All four graduated from Kansas State University, following their father’s footsteps.
Virgil’s family is “four generations deep,” in K-State allegiance, she said.
MARY ALICE Lair wasn’t exactly up front with her children about her own education.
“It was a long time before I told them I didn’t graduate from college,” she said.
Truth is, she was a child bride.
Mary Alice Smith grew up in Stark where her dad raised livestock. As a child she and her three siblings attended public elementary schools, but were transferred to private Catholic boarding schools in Kansas City for the remainder of their educations.
Mary Alice attended Loretto Academy, graduating in 1954.
“It was a lot of fun,” Lair said of those years. “Most of the kids were day-hops. But for the 50 or so of us who were boarders, we became good friends.”
It was on a weekend visit home that a 17-year-old Mary Alice was espied by a “much older” 26-year-old Virgil Lair of Piqua.
While they courted, Mary Alice attended Avila College for two years.
They were married five days before she turned 19, settling in rural Piqua where Virgil entered farming. Before long he was appointed to the Piqua bank’s board of directors by its CEO Webb Dreiling.
“And then Virgil started buying banks,” Lair said.
“He’s a man of principle,” Lair said of her husband, recalling an instance in their early years of marriage when he told her to “stop writing checks. I suppose because we didn’t have any money.
“After three weeks I asked him if I could write a check. He said yes, and I’ve been writing them ever since.”
While Lair raised their four children she also sought “some outside interest,” she said. “I wanted a hobby.”
Her first exposure to politics was at Lincoln Days in Independence.
“It was so exciting,” she said of the experience of rubbing elbows with lawmakers.
Since the early 1960s, she’s had intimate working relationships with government bigwigs.
Had Bob Dole been elected president, Lair said “I could have had an ambassadorship.”
She refers to Brownback as “Super Sam,” and predicts he has a winning formula for not only the state, but his own political future.
“He won’t be popular for the first two years because he has so much to undo,” she said. “But by the third year, he’ll turn Kansas around and by the fourth year he’ll be able to tell other states what he’s done for Kansas.”
That success will pave the way to re-election as governor, and then onto the path for the presidency, Lair said.
“He sets goals and achieves them.”
As for the 2012 presidential election, Lair said she’s content to sit on the sidelines and watch which candidate will emerge.
“I go between Newt Gringrich and Mitt Romney,” she said. “I’m such a capitalist that I just want someone to beat Obama,” she said. “We have to have a balanced budget. Now I know the Republicans created a lot of the deficit, but it’s time to fix it.”
Lair cited those who “game the system” of social services for contributing to the ruin of the United States.
“I’m all for helping the poor and the handicapped, but I don’t believe in giving money to lazy people who are working the system. People need to earn their keep. I don’t trust some people who say they don’t have anything.”
NOT THAT SHE’S slowing down, but Lair has her sights on her replacement in Kansas politics — Iola’s Virginia Macha.
“I got her appointed to the State Fair Board,” Lair said, and is also helping Macha in her run as a national Republican delegate.
“We know we’ve been blessed,” Mary Alice said of her and her husband’s good health and business success. “It’s nice to be able to give back.”
