HUMBOLDT — When Jennifer Unruh and her husband, Arthur, moved to Iola last summer they were anxious about the transition from city life to that of rural.
“We wondered what it would be like to live in a small town. Would it mean sitting around watching paint dry?” she said.
Turns out both have rewarding careers, growing friendships and outside interests that keep them not only busy but also satisfied.
Arthur works as a dentist with the Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas, in the same building as The Family Physicians and the drive-through facility of Iola Pharmacy.
“He likes the staff and the freedom the job affords him,” Unruh said of her husband’s career.
Jennifer, meanwhile, has “a dream job,” of working in the marketing department of B&W Trailer Hitches in Humboldt.
“Oddly enough, my job now is a culmination of all I have learned from other jobs. It’s the best job ever, ” including video production, graphic design, research, marketing and advertising, she said. “We just wrapped up a new commercial and now we’re buying spots on cable, primarily in Texas because they’re big on trucks.”
Unruh works in a spacious office at the B&W headquarters along with Christina Ulrich, marketing coordinator, and Beth Barlow, marketing manager.
The three women laugh that they work in a male-dominated field of turn-over ball hitches, gravel graders and other mechanisms that deal with heavy equipment.
“I immersed myself in hitches,” when she came on staff late last summer, Unruh said.
That said, her varied background made her a good candidate for the position.
A NATIVE of Valley Center, Unruh, 31, majored in mass communications with an emphasis on radio and TV as a student at Kansas State University. After graduation, she moved to Kansas City where she took a job with Platform Advertising.
“I started out doing grunt work,” Unruh said. “I was the low man on the totem pole. But hey, I needed a job and after four years I worked my way up to eventually becoming an editor.”
Unruh credits her parents for instilling in her the importance of getting not only a college degree, but also a well-rounded education to better prepare her for the job market.
“They taught me not to be afraid of trying new things,” she said.
“It’s important to be able to do more than just one thing. College teaches you to learn how to teach yourself, to be able to figure things out.
