“I get my photo in the newspaper too much,” Donna Houser lightheartedly lamented this week, after a photo Monday showed her leading a tour of improvements at the football complex in Riverside Park.
If anything, Houser probably doesn’t get enough recognition for all she does. She is a workhorse for the Allen County Historical Society, designing and arranging window displays and conducting well researched and informative tours of any number of historical things by way of the trolley. Recently she raised $44,000 for the football stadium project.
The football gig was special. Husband Ray, who died March 20, 2015, was the love of her life, and special to scores of kids who played football for Iola High School — perhaps even more so with his captivating presentations in the classroom. He coached the Mustangs nine years and also had a hand in basketball and golf.
I’ve known Donna and Ray since they moved here in the 1960s, at first because I then wrote sports for the Register and later because they were good friends. So good, in fact, that Ray, much more skillful than me, installed a cabinet top and sink in our kitchen when we lived just a stone’s throw from each other on the east side of town.
We also were invited to get-togethers for coaches and their wives after home games on Friday nights. We felt honored.
Donna has always been very much her own person and involved with community service. She was a dental technician — the first licensed in Kansas after attending Temple University — before becoming an English teacher at the middle school.
Her activities in school should have been a dead give-away to what was to come with retirement. Not only did she prepare students for the transition to high school, she also organized and put on stage productions that opened a window for many kids to embrace that facet of education.
With retirement the Housers traveled before Ray’s health became an insurmountable hurdle, and she always was eager to share their experiences from far-off lands.
The stadium project is nearing its conclusion — at least the first phase. What’s next is yet to be decided, but you can bet your bottom dollar Donna will come calling in her charming and persuasive way. It’s next to impossible to say no.
We need more folks like Donna.
