For the past 45 years, Iolan Glen Cunningham has worked as an engineering technician senior — a fancy way of saying a highway materials tester — for the Kansas Department of Transportation.
Most of that time has entailed commuting each day to the KDOT lab in Chanute.
Putting pen to paper, that means Cunningham has traveled more than 400,000 miles, just to get to work.
So, yeah, he has a vested interest in doing his part to keep highways safe.
“I really like the variability,” Cunningham said of his job. “I don’t like just sitting behind a desk.”
It’s Cunningham’s responsibility to ensure that materials used to build (or rebuild) the road, from the sub-base materials to the asphalt or concrete, and even the striping paint — are up to par when building or repairing a highway.
“We’ll even look at the soils,” Cunningham said.
He spends roughly half his time in the Chanute KDOT lab, and the other is doing on-site work.
“What I like most is I’m able to be home every night,” he noted. “A lot of construction jobs don’t allow that.”
IT WAS a career Cunningham hadn’t really even considered, until he found himself in need of a job back in 1980.
The Spring Hill native’s first jobs were as a music teacher at Baker University in Baldwin, followed by stints at public schools in Drexel, Mo., Troy, Kan. and Crest schools in Colony.
When Cunningham landed the position in Colony, he couldn’t find a place to rent mainly because of construction of the Wolf Creek nuclear power plant in nearby Burlington.
A conversation with a Realtor convinced Cunningham he’d have better luck finding a place to buy. In short order, he found a suitable home on East Street in Iola.
“It was actually cheaper to buy a home than rent, because of the way the market was,” he said.
While in Iola, Cunningham shifted gears, taking on a job at Midland Berg, until a round of layoffs left him scrambling.
That’s when he saw an ad for a KDOT engineer technician.
