For a business whose livelihood depends on current events, we at The Register realize it is our history that helps put today’s news in its proper context.
The recent development of bike paths crisscrossing the county, for example, takes on added significance when one realizes it was the dissolution of local train service that paved their way.
At one time, Iola served as a bustling depot for the Santa Fe and the Missouri Pacific Railroad. The Santa Fe’s overnight Oil Flyer streaked through Iola on its route from Tulsa to Kansas City. The passenger train made the 256-mile trip at an average 51 mph in about five hours. The Oil Flyer was taken to its celestial roundhouse in 1968.
Passenger service in these parts ended in 1971.
It wasn’t until 1983 that the Sante Fe depot was torn down.
Local tracks for the MoPac were taken up in 1988 and for the Santa Fe in 1990.
IT’S THE desire to keep news items like these preserved, and yet at the forefront, that has led, eventually, to a third volume chronicling the events of Allen County.
The first two volumes,“The Annals of Iola and Allen County, 1868-1945,” were compiled by husband and wife Emerson and Mickey Lynn and published in 2000. The third volume, renamed “The Chronicles of Allen County,” carries forth from 1946 to 2000.
It’s safe to say ever since the first two volumes were printed in 2000, the work began almost immediately on a third.
Up until her death in 2009, Mickey Lynn continued to avidly research Register archives for book-worthy items. Emerson Lynn, publisher of the Register from 1965 to 2001, carried on the project until his passing in 2013. By that point the book was midpoint in the editing stage.
And then the torch flickered. For which I take the blame.
Over the next couple of years it was a hit-and-miss project as I struggled to find the time to devote to the book.
A number of things spurred me to go for the final push.
First, is the fact that its publication meant the world to my parents and nothing short of following through would satisfy the responsibility I feel to their memory.
Second, is that 2017, the release date for the third volume, coincides with the 150th anniversary of The Iola Register and the book’s publication will help mark the occasion.
Third, is that all along this project has never rested solely on my shoulders. Over the last 16 years several have spent countless hours viewing roll after roll of Register microfilm depicting the past 70 years of Allen County. After mother died, Charlene Levans and former Iolan Phyllis DeTar, now of Carl Junction, Mo., were hired to help scan and rewrite news clips. When Dad died, former Register reporter Bruce Symes stepped up to the plate to help edit.
