HUMBOLDT — Lois Squire lives in a modest home she built about 50 years ago on an idyllic little spread at the east edge of Woodson County. IN FEBRUARY 1923 with wind-driven snow whipping across the countryside, Henry Baeten carefully tucked his pregnant wife, Mary, in a Ford touring car and drove 14 miles through the storm to Iola. He didn’t want her to give birth without a doctor. LOIS AND George Squire were married in July 1941, a little over a month after she graduated from Humboldt High. THE OLD GRADS reunion has been a big part of Lois’ life.
On the backside is a deck, where she can look out over a plush, neatly mown lawn that blends into a pasture where deer and turkeys often venture. A pastoral scene, and one Lois, 90, takes in frequently.
Lately, she has been distracted, and this week slipped by slower than usual. She has been eager to attend tonight’s biennial “old grads” reunion at Humboldt High School.
For the first time, she will be joined at the 6:30 banquet in the community fieldhouse by her three sons, George, Middleton, Idaho, class of 1961, Curtis, Joplin, class of 1966, and Jean, Westfield, Ind., class of 1971. George and Jean are chiropractors; Curtis is a school administrator.
Lois graduated from HHS in 1941, and hasn’t missed an all-class reunion since her class qualified in 1981. Graduates of 40 years or more are eligible.
At her grandmother Estella Thompson’s home, 418 Campbell St., Lois Baeten was born, with Dr. R.O. Christian at bedside. She and her mother stayed a few days, giving each time to get a good grip on the world.
“Back then, and when I had my sons, mothers stayed in the hospital (or at grandmother’s home) for several days, not like now when they have a baby and go right home,” Lois said. “I think it helps the mother” recover and gives her and child time to bond.
Growing up on a farm in the 1920s and during the Great Depression included all the chores expected of a child.
She attended grades one through eight at Prairie Center, a tiny country school, and had a teacher who took time to tutor the kids in social sciences as well as the three Rs, so when they went into Humboldt for testing they could perform well.
“We had to take tests at the end of our seventh- and eighth-grade years,” Lois recalled, before they could move to the next grade.
The first day of her freshman year at Humboldt High, she took a seat in the back of the room in A.J. Trueblood’s Kansas history class.
Another Prairie Center transplant was bolder.
“Gerald McCall sat on the front row,” she said, and immediately was met with razing from a town kid: “You’re a country hick, get to the back of the room.”
The teacher would have none of that; the bully was reprimanded.
Her time in high school went smoothly, with an event in her senior year memorable.
“The teachers asked if I’d represent the school as its queen in a parade at Pittsburg,” Lois said. “Well, I had to talk to my folks first, and Mom asked what I had to wear.”
An outfit quickly came to mind, knowing that buying a fancy new dress was out of the question.
“Mom had made me a suit (skirt and jacket) from an old man’s suit,” Lois said. “It was shark skin and was beautiful.”
She wore it in the parade and drew second looks from boys who had never seen her before.
That didn’t impress; there was a boy at home.
He was farming near Bottineau, N.D., and Lois joined him 10 days after their first son, George Jr., was born in Chanute. Their farm was near enough to Canada “if you went out and wandered around you might cross the border.”
They cleaned up an old farmhouse, but soon decided a place in town would be more comfortable. Curtis was born there and Jean was on the way when the Squires divorced.
“I moved back to live with my parents,” Lois said.
After her third son’s birth, she worked for an oil company for a while and she and a friend went to the state fair in Hutchinson to work in a ticket booth for extra money.
One evening a Highway Patrol captain came to pick up ticket money. Lois asked if the Highway Patrol ever hired women.
“Sure, as secretaries,” he said, and told her she should apply.
“I did, got hired and spent the next 31 years working for the Highway Patrol in Chanute,” Lois said.
Did she ever consider remarrying?
“I didn’t have time,” Lois huffed. “I was raising three boys and working all the time,” either at her full-time job or on the farm with her parents. “When we put up silage, I’d take vacation to help cook for the men.”
After her parents’ deaths in the early 1960s, she mortgaged 80 acres she owned and built the home where she lives today.
“I paid off the mortgage in two years,” she said.
She served as an officer several years, including two terms as president, and remembers long evenings baking cookies before organizers decided to go commercial for refreshments at Friday evening’s get-together.
“Every class was responsible for 10 dozen cookies,” she said. “Sometimes we’d have leftovers, but they didn’t last long.”
Otherwise, the reunion hasn’t changed all that much, other than being moved from the old school gym to the new community fieldhouse.
Former students flock to the event. About 500 have made reservations for tonight’s fete and a few stragglers are likely to slip in.
My Three Sons HHS reunion reunites family
