Mark Hastings, an Iola Register mainstay for nearly 45 years, is in search of a new routine.
The Register?s long-time advertising manager is stepping down next week, putting to bed a career that actually started years before he came on as a full-time employee in 1974.
But first, let?s back up a bit further, another quarter century or so, to get a better feeling for the impact the Hastings family has had on the Register ? and in helping shape Iola?s history.
Father Jack was a former movie theater owner ? he built 54 Drive-in 1952 and owned it until 1975 ? who came to town in 1949 with 20th Century Fox to take over the old Iola Cinema.
Jack?s duties would frequently bring him into the Register with assorted ads for upcoming pictures. He so impressed the Register?s higher-ups with his keen eye for design, savvy business smarts (and impeccable penmanship) that they offered him a job in the ad department in 1951.
Jack was by all accounts a renaissance man. He quickly found a niche in the local business community, and was active in the Episcopal Church.
That led Jack into the world of local politics. He served as Iola?s mayor for 15 years, still a record tenure, and was instrumental in drawing a number of industries to town, such as Gates Corporation, Berg Manufacturing (which later became Haldex) and Intercollegiate Press (later Herff Jones.)
It was in the mid 1960s when young Mark, 11 to be precise, first entered the Register?s employ as a part-time worker, doing assorted odd jobs, from folding and inserting advertising supplements, mowing the lawn and occasionally serving as a substitute paper carrier ? ?whatever they?d let me do,? he said.
But Mark hadn?t given working in the paper business much thought beyond childhood.
Mark also helped his father regularly at the Drive-In. There, he?d run the old projectors, man the concessions booth or do whatever was needed to keep the large crowds of movie-goers content.
?Dad loved it,? Mark said, ?and I did, too.?
As Mark grew older, he briefly considered a career in forestry, or some other outdoor vocation, to the point that he toured a college in Washington that specialized in forestry.
Those plans were put on the back burner for good in the summer of 1974, when Mark ? who had just completed his first year at Allen County Community College ? decided to join his father at the Register.
?I can never not remember coming here with Dad,? he said. ?It was just a situation where a job had opened, and they needed a third person in the advertising department, so I decided to give it a whirl.?
Like his father, Mark also developed a sense of community, but through different avenues.
He coached several youth ball teams, a natural byproduct of having four daughters and a son, with softball most often the sport of choice. Mark also served as president of his local water district, and was an officer with Iola?s now defunct ball association.
Mark, too, worked in league with local business owners ? scores of ?mom and pop? operations, entrepreneurs and others in and around Allen County.
