Overland Park Kiwanis

• Directed workshops and helped develop curriculum for an education program sponsored by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.
• Worked in the Teacher at Sea Program on a NOAA research ship researching scallops.
• Worked with Project Learning Tree, a program sponsored by the American Forestry Association, for which, in 1999, she won the Project Learning Tree National Teacher of the Year award.
• Traveled eight summers as an advisor in an overseas program for secondary students.
• Taught a semester in Sweden.

Bonnie is the mother of five children. She holds a Bachelor of Education degree from Southern Nazarene University, Master of Education from Memphis University and a Ph.D from Kansas State University.

Loyd Crawford

I was born at home in the small Northwest Kansas town of St. Francis (population 2,500). St. Francis is located in the extreme northwest corner of the state, 15 miles from Colorado and 15 miles from Nebraska. I grew up with two older sisters and a brother who is two years younger. Like my grandfather before him, my father was a well driller. My mother was a homemaker. We lived next door to my grandfather and grandmother, my father’s parents. My mother’s father lived in the Ozarks and her mother died before I was born.

During my school years at St. Francis, I developed an intense interest in athletics, which has followed me all my life. While in high school, I lettered three years in track and two in football and basketball. The two major role models in my life were my wrestling coach and my brother-in-law. Upon graduation from high school, I followed my brother-in-law to KU. I was devastated in later years when he died from ALS. Two of the most memorable events of these years were when my brother-in-law had Phog Allen speak at his athletic banquet and when I was selected as a corner man for wrestlers at the 1952 Olympic Wrestling Regional, which was held at our high school.

It seems as though I always had a job. At 10 years old, my dad signed up for me and my first job delivering a weekly newspaper, The Grit. It sold for seven cents a copy. The paper company got four cents and I kept three cents a copy. With my younger brother’s help, we built the route to about seventy customers. That is when we decided we needed a bicycle. We bought a well-used bike from a neighbor and added two more papers to our route. We were the local carriers for the Topeka Daily Capital and the Topeka State Journal.

When I was 13, the local druggist offered me a job. Who could turn down a job that promised forty cents per hour?  The paper routes were turned over to my brother and I became a soda jerk. After about a year, basketball practice conflicted with my hours at the drug store so I quit and became just an ordinary jerk. During the summers of my high school years I worked two years for local farmers. My pay was four dollars a day and the day was from dawn to dark. This was followed by a job helping my dad on his well drilling rig. He told me that the pay would be small but the hours would be long to make up for it. One of my duties was to keep a log of the different geological strata and record the depth they were encountered in the drilling process. This job helped me developed an interest in engineering.

In 1959, I graduated from KU with a bachelor of science degree in Civil Engineering. The high point of my college years was in 1957.  On a tour to show my pledge son around the campus, we met two girls. One girl was short and the other one was tall. Since he was shorter, he walked beside the short girl and I was left with the taller one. When we came to the stairs, the shorter girl tripped and started to fall. I caught her before she fell. This was the beginning of a 53-year relationship. On September 10,1960, three years from the day of our first meeting, Patricia Joan Paul became my bride at the Village Church in Prairie Village.  After three years of marriage, Kim was born followed by Kevin three years later and Kamala three years later. In 1965, after three years of night school, UMKC granted me an MBA.

My post college working career consisted of five years with KDOT and 38 years with three different steel companies, where I served in capacities from plant manager to vice president of production.

I joined the Overland Park Kiwanis Club in April 1961. Outside of a two-year leave of absence while I finished my MBA, I have been active every since. Two terms as treasure in 1962 and 1965 served as training for a year as president in 1968 and various division and district chairmanships including Lt. Governor in 1969-70. The fellowship and friendships developed over the years are the high point of nearly 50 years of shared service.