After having retired a couple times, Don Bauer is working as hard as ever and hopes to add to his responsibilities later this year.
Bauer, 71, is a candidate for the District 3 seat on the Allen County Commission. Jim Talkington, Iola insurance agent, also has filed for the Republican nomination in the district, which will be decided at the Aug. 7 primary election. The seat will be filled in the Nov. 6 general election.
Gary McIntosh, the district’s first-term incumbent, announced earlier he would not run again.
Bauer, who hasn’t sought public office previously, said he was encouraged “by several people to run. I’m looking forward to the opportunity.”
Bauer said he was eager to have a role in seeing Allen County’s new hospital operate at a profit. Wife Donna, who worked many years in the hospital business office, will be “a great source of information,” he said.
Bauer said he also wants to ensure Allen County and Iola, with their public offices less than a block apart, “establish a better relationship.” He was an independent insurance agent here for 25 years and because of that exposure “I’ve been on both sides of the fence,” and should be helpful in smoothing rough edges.
Bettering relations also would mean reaching some resolution of the “ambulance situation,” which today has Iola answering calls in Iola and county crews dealing with all of the county outside of Iola. Two ambulances operated by each are stationed half a mile apart in Iola.
Bauer said running for a commission seat had been tucked “in the back of my mind for some time,” and with Talkington already filed, he hopes “to make a little race of it.”
In addition to his business experience, Bauer thinks having grown up on a farm along Big Creek west of Elsmore, farming part time through the years and now in the fields full time with brothers Darrell and Duane gives him a good feel for what rural Allen Countians think and want from their governing body.
The brothers Bauer have been close since childhood, when they worked on the family farm they now operate, along with five or six others in the area that “older farmers gave us when they were ready to quit,” Bauer said. Today, they have about 3,000 acres. “The home farm has been in the family 100 years — my mother was born there — and I hope it is in the family another 100 years.”
The Bauer brothers are graduates of Elsmore High School. Duane, a retired teacher, lives in Fort Scott; Darrell, an Erie contractor, is mayor of the Neosho County’s seat.
“We were all close enough to the same age that we all started together in football and basketball at Elsmore,” said Bauer, who likes to reminisce about catching two area baseball standouts, Don Dennis, Uniontown, and Paul (Junior) Lindblad, Chanute, when he played for the Bronson town team. Dennis and Lindblad played in the major leagues several years.
AFTER RETIRING as an insurance agent Bauer worked at Gates Rubber for 10-plus years, before hanging up his hat for good.
Though farming is labor-intensive, it gives some independence, which Don and wife Donna use to drive “probably 30,000 miles a year to watch our grandchildren play sports.”
