News article leads to reunion between "runaway" and Holton family

For Julee Ware, reuniting with Jim Lovvorn and Clara Ann Lovvorn of Holton, who helped her more than 50 years ago, is a “dream come true.”

Ware of Austin, Texas, put a call out in a recent edition of The Holton Recorder looking for “Jed and Clara,” who allowed her and her then-boyfriend to spend the night in their hay shed in 1972.

Ware and her boyfriend were 14 at the time and running away from their homes in Bellevue, Neb. to a friend’s home in Clay Center. The young couple left their homes one day that summer and hitchhiked part of the way into Kansas and then started walking when they couldn’t get a ride.  

By nightfall, they were walking west on Kansas Highway 16 just a few miles west of Holton when Jim spotted them. Jim brought the kids home to his family, and the family fed them and let them stay in a hay shed overnight. In the morning, Jim and Clara fed them breakfast, packed them lunches and took them back out to the highway where they hitchhiked the rest of the way to Clay Center. 

The children’s parents had tracked them down to Clay Center by this time, and Ware spent the night in the Clay Center Jail until her father picked her up the next day. 

Ware said she has tried to find Jim and Clara ever since to thank them again for their help.  

“Every few years I would call the Clay Center jail, the Clay Center Chamber, the Holton Chamber and Holton jail. I put it on Facebook, and I just didn’t get anywhere at all,” she said. 

She said finding the family who helped her was a “bucket list” item for her and never gave up. 

After contacting the Holton/Jackson County Chamber of Commerce, Janette Hammack, assistant Chamber director, told her to reach out to The Holton Recorder. The day after an article was published, “Jed and Clara” had been found.

“Within a few hours (of the Wednesday, Jan. 3, edition being distributed to newsstands), I got an email from their daughter, Katrenia,” Ware said. “When I saw her email, I was doing backflips.”

For more on this and other stories, please log in to your holtonrecorder.com account and select “Jan. 17, 2024” under “E-Editions.”