Former Chamber administrator Dianna Wilson named to Hall of Fame

Ten years ago, Dianna Wilson, then administrator of the Holton Area Chamber of Commerce, was getting ready for the Chamber’s first Hall of Fame banquet.

Today, as a retired administrator who spent 17 years putting together such events as the French Market, the Holton Home and Garden Show and the annual Fourth of July cele­bration at Prairie Lake, Wilson is getting ready to be inducted into that same Hall of Fame.

“I was floored,” said Wilson of being part of the Holton/Jackson County Chamber of Commerce Hall of Fame’s class of 2016. “I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding’… Part of me thought, ‘Why now?’ I had such mixed feelings about it. But the more I thought about it, I thought, ‘No, I feel honored.’”

To Wilson, who retired from the position in 2006, the honor stands as a reward for seemingly endless, sleepless nights invested in the work it took to put on those events, as well as make sure that new busi­nesses felt right at home in the community that she and her family calls home.

“I don’t know if a lot of people were aware how much that job meant to me,” she said. “I loved it. I put my everything into it. Be­tween my family and my job, that was my world. I loved working with people, and I still do to this day, because with our business, I still get to see people and visit with people.”

Wilson had originally set out to be more of a family person, and that began on Nov. 27, 1965, when she and Willy Wilson were mar­ried. She took on small jobs as her family grew, staying focused on such activities as the Holton Ball Association, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and anything else that wouldn’t keep her from being a good mother.

“Anything they had going on, I tried to be involved with,” she said of her seven children’s activities. “Willy said to me when we got married, ‘If we’re going to have a family, I want us to be the ones that raise them, so I want you to be at home with them.’ So many parents don’t have the option, because they both have to work.”

By September of 1989, most of the children were grown and able to look after themselves, Wilson said. It was then that she was contacted by her friend Kathi Kimmi about taking on a position with the Chamber — one that wouldn’t in­terfere with her duties as a mother.

“The Chamber needed a director and a secretary,” Wilson said. “Kathi contacted me and said she was thinking about becoming the director, and would I like to be­come the secretary. I still had Matt and Terry at home, and she said it was supposed to be like a part-time job. I thought that would probably work OK.”

After getting Willy’s blessing to take on the Chamber secretary’s position, she traded her day care job — a difficult decision, she said, because the children she looked after “were like my kids, and my world revolved around children” — for the secretarial job. Working with Kimmi, she began to learn different aspects of the director’s job.

That knowledge would come in handy later, after the Chamber saw three directors coming and going in a short amount of time.

“I thought, ‘This is ridiculous. I’m having to work all this time to fill in until they found another director and train them,’” she said.

She went to the Chamber’s board of directors and proposed to take on the duties of both the director and the secretary with an increase in salary and a new title — administrator — and the board granted her wish. And from there, Wilson settled into a job that gave her a great deal of joy but also required a great deal of commitment.

Thankfully, she had her family to back her up in that commitment.

“So many of those events, I could not have done them without my family,” she said. “They knew that if they wanted to spend the holidays or the times with me, they had to be working with me, because those events just took over my holidays, every holiday event we did. Even with the holiday figurines — Willy was right there helping to put them up or repairing them when they needed to be repaired.”

Willy also stepped up to help make one of the Chamber’s annual events, the Home and Garden Show at the former Jackson County Fair Building, a memorable event, in addition to making it less work for her — something she’s appreciated for the last half a century, she said.

“Willy would help get the booths set up, when all the vendors were coming in, and he was always there to help me clean it up after it was over,” she said of her husband’s help on the Home and Garden Show. “It wasn’t just 50 years of marriage. It was 50 years of part­nership in everything I did. And he supported me, 100 percent, even though he knew how tiring it was.”

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, another member of Wilson’s family who could be seen lending a great deal of support was her daughter, Donna Pool, occasionally helping out in the Chamber office and acting as “welcome ambassa­dor” for new businesses coming into the city.

“Donna helped me a lot,” Wilson said. “She’s such a people person. She loved what she did. Anything that she could do to help out, she loved it.”

Wilson was also grateful for the support of the community that she calls home in starting and growing the events that were part of her job with the Chamber. In fact, fellow Hall of Fame 2016  honorees Jan and the late Harold Hodge were cited by Wilson for their dedication to the annual Chamber event that they helped originate, the French Market.

“They brought that idea back here, and after Jan got it going, she just kind of stepped back and we took it over,” Wilson said of the Hodges. “That was an awesome idea, and it went so well. I would honestly say the French Market was probably the biggest event we had here for many years.”

Another annual event that drew big crowds was the Fourth of July event at Prairie Lake with its fire­works and talent show, and two more of this year’s Hall of Fame honorees — Dorothy and the late Joe Rogers — were cited by Wil­son for their financial contribution to the event.

“I always received a nice contri­bution from them, bless their hearts,” she said of the Rogers. “It was people like that who made this job so rewarding, and they did it without even asking.”

In 2005, Wilson’s mother died, and at that point, she said it was hard to keep a good focus on the job. But she continued to soldier on with the Chamber — even when it was suggested a year later by some members of the Chamber board that she consider retiring.

To say that Wilson was reluctant to act on that suggestion redefines the term “understatement,” she said. Indeed, she said she was “floored” by the retirement sugges­tion — and she still feels a consid­erable amount of regret for fol­lowing through on it.

“I don’t think they would ever understand how much that job meant to me,” she said. “There’s a lot of mixed feelings there. But it’s over, and I try not to think about it.”

Over time, Wilson has also seen some of the events that she played a major role in building and pro­moting go through changes — and not always for the better, she said. The two-day French Market, now a one-day Fall Fest, was cited as one particular example.

“They asked me to make the French Market bigger, and I did,” she said. “The last one I did, we had 110 vendors… To me, it was like working with one big family.”

But Wilson remains a “people person,” and she still gets involved whenever she can. She’s still in­volved with the Holton Ball Asso­ciation, starting in concessions 37 years ago and working today as its treasurer, and she continues to help Willy with his shop just west of Holton’s Town Square.

And, of course, retirement allows her to spend more time with her children. She and Willy are proud to note that today, they have 21 grandchildren and a great-grand­child.

“I love those babies,” she said. “My grandkids told me, ‘You really need to work at the hospital so you can just sit and rock babies!’”

Wilson also has her memories of the work she’s done for the Cham­ber, and every now and then, someone comes up to her to remind her of the great things she did as its administrator.

“They knew it was devastating for me when I couldn’t do it any­more,” she said. “I miss that job so much. But I’m glad to have made so many friends from every event that we had.”

Wilson is also glad to become a part of the Hall of Fame, another aspect of the Chamber that began to grow from an idea that took root during her days as its administrator.

“People have told me this was a long time in coming,” she said. “Part of me didn’t want to accept it. But another part of me was just thrilled to know that people still think of me that way, and I feel really honored. I’m grateful.”