Chiles named HHS Alumnus of the Year

Even though it’s been 55 years since he graduated from Holton High School, John Chiles still has a wealth of memories about the sights, sounds and even smells from his alma mater.

“I was one of those people who used to walk down the hall and smell Zoe Dunn’s cookies baking in her home economics class,” Chiles said. “Then I would get to the other end of the hall, and there would be Harold Haber doing wood work and leather products. People were making their own leather belts and billfolds. Those were some of the memories that were so precious to me.”

Following the announcement that Chiles had been named the Holton High School Alumnus of the Year at the annual HHS alumni banquet on Saturday, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a billfold to show how those memories have stayed with him.

“This is one of the billfolds that’s precious to me because this is the leather I bought from Harold, and this was his pattern that I used to make this billfold after I got out of school,” he said.

Chiles noted he’s still got the same tools he had in high school to make leather items.

“It could be a hobby,” he joked, “if I had time enough for hobbies.”

Indeed, Chiles is a busy man, looking after his 46-year business, Chiles Upholstery, and Holton’s landmark Hotel Josephine. He’s also been involved with several activities that are associated by many in the region with Holton, such as his work with the Jaycees and the annual Glory Days car show.

On Saturday, he was also remembered as one of a handful of students who stayed together all the way from first grade — there was no kindergarten at that time, he said — through graduation in the spring of 1961. It was in those formative years that he was inspired to “do more for myself than I did.”

Specifically, he remembered the likes of his fourth-grade teacher, Dorothy Hamilton, and his sixth-grade teacher, Paul Stone, a man who Chiles said “a lot of people didn’t like him, but he liked me, and I got along excellent with him” — but those teachers were just a few among the many who inspired him.

“There were so many people who helped me when I was a kid,” he said. “Nobody really shut me out. Holton just took me under its wing and helped me, and it made a big difference.”

After a stint in the military, Chiles opened his upholstery shop in January of 1970, then moved it to its present location at 218 E. Fifth St. in 1979. He’d noted in the past that the business was used for more than just upholstery work — he and his co-workers also sold cars and trucks, rented U-Hauls, repaired radiators and did tax work.

He also took time for other activities in the community, such as volunteer firefighting and community work with the Jaycees. It was with the latter group that Chiles was involved in building the shelter house at Linscott Park and securing the property upon which the Chandler Park baseball and softball diamonds were built, it was reported.

But for more than two decades, Chiles was especially well-known throughout northeastern Kansas for his and his family’s involvement with the Glory Days classic vehicle show on the Saturday before Memorial Day. The show grew tremendously under his guidance after he took it over from Dale Coffman in the early 1990s, it was reported.

Today, however, he stays busy at the upholstery shop with his wife, Glenna, recalling how they took their whirlwind courtship in 1963 and turned it into a marriage that’s lasted more than 52 years.

He’s also helping out his daughter, Lori Ford, whenever and wherever needed at the Hotel Josephine, which he helped bring back from the bring of permanent closure in the spring of 2011.

“Lori was the one who was really interested in it, because she had worked there before, and I thought the price was pretty reasonable for the place,” Chiles said of his bid for the historic hotel. “I just didn’t want to see it go out of town and be wasted, because it’s really such a nice place and it’s a landmark. They’ve supported a lot of businesses in there.”

These days, he and Lori do their best to keep the Hotel Josephine a profitable business, noting that it draws its biggest crowds over Memorial Day weekend, and it also helps with family overflow from area weddings and funerals.

Chiles has also been reaping the respect of his fellow Holtonians in recent years, particularly in 2006, when he was among the first round of Holton/Jackson County Chamber of Commerce Hall of Fame inductees. Now, he’s the latest HHS Alumnus of the Year honoree, which he said was humbling.

“I’m not a lawyer or a doctor, and I was really shocked,” he said. “I guess there was somebody who thought that much of me to want to put my name forth, so it just makes me want to do more than I’ve done. But I’m getting too old to do some of the things I used to do!”

And yet, as long as he can continue to do things for the community — particularly its young people — Chiles said he will put forth his best effort, doing for others what others have done for him.

“It all starts out with my childhood and all the people who helped me up through my high school years,” Chiles said. “There were still people who helped me after I got out of high school. I would not have gone to work for myself until I had a friend tell me one day, ‘You need to make that choice.’

“Holton High was really a good place to start from,” he added.