Fontaines selected for Hall of Fame
The lives of Pat and Nancy Fontaine of Holton have always had some connection to the military, both of them being veterans of the U.S. Marine Corps, and in recent years they’ve been active in promoting the lives and work of their fellow veterans, holding flags at the intersection of U.S. Highway 75 and Kansas Highway 16 on patriotic holidays.
But the Fontaines’ volunteer work doesn’t end with their involvement in Holton’s Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1367 and Mary L. Bair Post 44 American Legion, as they’re also active with Holton’s First United Methodist Church, Holton Community Theatre and other organizations in the area.
They feel volunteering is the best thing they can do in response to the welcome they received when they moved to the area 16 years ago.
“I’ve found a home here,” Pat says of Holton. “I’ve moved around all my life, but right now, we’re living in our 22nd house, and this is my last one. This is it.”
The Fontaines are being honored for their volunteer work in the Holton area with a spot in the Holton/Jackson County Chamber of Commerce Hall of Fame, alongside fellow new inductees Beth Nelson, Dennis and Joni White and Rod and Shannon Wittmer.
And while they’re appreciative of the honor of being part of the 21st Chamber Hall of Fame class, Nancy said the honor made her feel “awkward” at first.
“Most of the people that we’ve seen inducted are long-time residents who’ve lived here their whole lives, three generations back,” she said. “And we’re just transplants into Holton. But I appreciate it.”
Pat, on the other hand, hopes that the honor doesn’t cause him to “lose whatever anonymity I have around here.”
“I’ve had my time in the sun,” he added. “I just want to be in the background, quietly doing things.”
Pat and Nancy both had a military upbringing, moving from place to place with fathers who were in the U.S. Navy. Pat grew up in Oakland, Calif., then moved to Norfolk, Va., where his father retired from the Navy and he graduated from high school before joining the Marines.
Nancy’s family also moved around a lot until her father retired from the Navy to Ainsworth, a small town in north-central Nebraska, when she was three-and-a-half years old. She grew up in Ainsworth, graduating from high school and heading off to college before she, too, joined the Marine Corps.
The two of them met in Washington, D.C.’s Marine Barracks, where they were stationed, and eventually they were both sent to California. They started dating around 2000, Nancy said, and were eventually sent back to Washington.
The Fontaines have previously spoken about their connections to the 9/11 attacks at the Pentagon, where Nancy was working on the north side of the building and where Pat’s longtime friend Gerald DeConto was on the west side when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the west side on that day in 2001. Nancy made it out of the Pentagon, but Gerald didn’t.
Almost nine months after that fateful day, on July 4, 2002, Pat and Nancy were married.
“We figured we’d always have the day off,” Nancy said of their chosen wedding date. “And we’d always have a party.”
Seven years later, in October of 2009, the Fontaines moved to Holton. They were tired of the busy-busy atmosphere of Washington and the attitudes of many people who, as Pat put it, “act as if they’re driving a big train,” and they came to northeast Kansas to find something close to family in the area — Nancy’s family in Nebraska and Pat’s daughters in Overland Park.
“In D.C., everybody’s got their head down and they’re going pretty fast,” Pat said. “Here, absolute strangers will wave at you and say hi. That’s not something you have in northern Virginia.”
They got involved in their new hometown, Nancy volunteering at Holton Community Hospital and Pat joining the local Rotary club, but they didn’t get involved with the local veterans’ organizations immediately.
“The last thing I wanted to do was have anything to do with the military or government,” Nancy said. “It took us a while. But eventually a friend invited us to a Legion meeting, so we went and signed up.”
That, Pat said, was “about five or six years ago.” They both got involved with both the Legion and VFW posts in Holton, Nancy serving as an adjutant with the Legion and Pat serving with the VFW first as a vice commander and then as post commander for three years.
In 2022, the Fontaines and three others attended the American Legion Leadership College in Concordia, discussing what they could do to help make improvements at the Veterans Club and promote veterans’ services in Holton, particularly in a time when membership in both posts was declining.
That’s when the five of them came up with the idea of hosting a weekly Saturday breakfast at the Veterans Club, where local veterans have been teaming up and serving thousands upon thousands of breakfasts in the last three years. The breakfasts have benefited the posts financially, in addition to providing funds to update the Veterans Club, where building improvements are ongoing.
“We’ve gotten a lot done, but we still need to take the kitchen down to the studs and upgrade everything in simplest terms,” Pat said of the Veterans Club.
“And there’s electrical and ventilation and a lot more that needs done,” Nancy added. “There’s always a lot to do, and even once the big stuff’s done, there’s building maintenance. We’re already getting to the point where some of the chairs are getting torn and everything’s getting a lot more use than it would have gotten otherwise.”
Pat has also taken over the club’s Medical Equipment Loan Program, fixing up mobility equipment such as wheelchairs and walkers for people who need them, averaging more than 250 pieces of equipment loaned out each year and salvaging more than 130 pieces of equipment a year.
“It’s to the credit of the community that we receive donations from time to time,” he said, adding that the program also receives financial donations that enable those involved with the program to purchase new equipment, such as scooters and lift chairs, when they’re needed.
Those who benefit from using the equipment are allowed to keep them just as long as they need them, Nancy added, saying, “if you get to a point where you don’t need it anymore, we’d appreciate it if you donate it back.”
Pat also got involved with Holton Community Theatre in 2021, helping to build a “Wonkavator” for the theater’s production of “Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory.” That led to more volunteer work for the Fontaines at HCT in its home at the former Central Elementary School, he said.
“We put one together with PVC pipe and had it on wheels, and that turned into, we need somebody to paint the hallway from the schoolhouse, whatever colar that was, to the blue theater color,” Pat said. “It’s a fun, magical place.”
Pat credits fellow Hall of Fame inductee and HCT director Shannon Wittmer with having a healthy imagination that benefits whatever production the theater is undertaking at any given time. One recent example, he said, was the set they built for the recent production of “The Shawshank Redemption.”
“That was the biggest set I’ve ever built — two stories, eight cells, four above four, bars, lights, racks, all that stuff,” he said. “All we can do is say, yes ma’am, challenge accepted, let’s go do this… Nancy and I have spent a good number of hours over there.”
“Pat’s not a talker,” Nancy added. “Pat’s a doer. And me being the spouse of a doer sometimes makes me a doer!”
They’ve also been involved in training for a wide variety of emergency preparations at Holton’s First United Methodist Church, where Nancy adds they’re also involved with “committees and trustee and staff parish relations,” among other things.
“We’ve also tried to do a little more if we can help people in a more specific way,” she said. “It’s not just about organizational assistance. I feel like we’ve tried to assist on a little more personal, individual level.”
Pat has also been instrumental in the success of the Holton Patriotic Banner project, in which military veterans from Holton have been commemorated on banners that hang throughout the city between Memorial Day and Independence Day.
