Fillies JV splits in Burlington See B1
The Weekender Saturday, April 23, 2016
Locally owned since 1867
www.iolaregister.com
Renee’s passes rolling pin to new owner By RICHARD LUKEN The Iola Register
Dan and Regina Cochran, outgoing owners of Renee’s Bakery, were getting their car serviced recently when a bakery customer spotted Regina. “Who’s with you?” the woman asked. Regina identified her husband, with whom she’s worked alongside for 40 years. “Oh really,” the customer replied. “What’s he do?” Dan, 66, the source of Renee’s tasty confections since 1976, revels in his anonymity. While he’s been a mainstay at the bakery for nearly as long as wife Regina, 65, he’s done so under the cloak of early morning hours, and in the back kitchen area, where customers aren’t allowed. “We don’t work together all that much,” Regina notes with a smile. “His day starts about 1. My day starts at 6.” Their hours will become much more relaxed in the coming days, as the Renee’s Bakery rolling pin is passed to Nikki Damron. Damron acquired the bakery April 1, began working there Monday, and assumes full-time control May 1. Regina will remain in a support role through May — one of the bakery’s busiest
8 people shot to death in rural Ohio PIKETON, Ohio (AP) — Eight people were found dead Friday at four crime scenes in rural Ohio, and at least most of them were shot to death, authorities said. No arrests had been announced, and it’s unclear if the killer or killers are among the dead. Seven of the victims, including two children, were slain in “executionstyle killings” at three homes along a rural road, authorities said. Details on the death of the eighth person weren’t immediately available, but the body was found in a fourth location, said Jill
“It’s not going to be anything fancy,” Damron said. “The one thing I’ve learned, you have to keep it simple.”
Dan and Regina Cochran, outgoing owners of Renee’s Bakery, talk glazed twists with their successor, Nikki Damron, who assumes control of the Iola-based shop next month. REGISTER/BOB JOHNSON times of the year due to graduations, Mother’s Day and related events. “Regina knows May’s not a good time for me to be on my own,” Damron said. WITH the new owner, little else will change at Renee’s. “I’m not changing any-
thing, as of now,” Damron said. “Maybe in the fall, we’ll see how comfortable I am with things.” She’ll keep the Renee’s name, the same hours, and even the same recipes for a vast array of doughnuts, cookies, cakes and other goodies.
“She gets the clientele, the recipes,” Regina said. “We’re in the process of sorting everything now.” Damron is considering, perhaps as early as fall, selling coffee alongside her daily doughnuts. Not much point in starting coffee sales in the summer, she noted.
A BAKERY on the west side of the square has been a mainstay in Iola since the waning days of World War II, and a part of Cochran’s family since 1963. Frank Michels, Regina’s grandfather, emigrated to New York City from Italy as a child, before starting work at a bakery. He wasn’t much for longevity. Michels would work hard, learn all he could, and gather up every recipe he could find. “But if he got tired of a place, he’d pack up and leave,” Regina said. Michels worked at bakeries from Wyoming to the Oklahoma-Texas border. “He had five children, all born in different states,” Dan noted. Eventually, the family made it to Arkansas, when Michels, then 71, heard of a bakery for sale in Iola. He asked son-inlaw Bill Hinde — Regina’s father — to consider moving up with him. “Dad said no, he was tired of moving,” Regina said. Hinde later relented. He See BAKERY | Page A3
Recycle-bot
Jefferson Elementary School second-graders celebrated Earth Day Friday by making robots out of recyclable materials. Among the young robot inventors were, seated from left, Madison Joyce, Kinsey Ryman, Stephanie Fees, Kendrella McCullough and Rourk Boeken; second from left, Aaron Gagne, Mason Peeper, Rori Parker Collins, Briggs Sharon and Carly Kramer. In addition, the students took advantage of Friday’s storybook weather conditions to pick up litter surrounding the school and learned other ways to “reduce, reuse and recycle.” REGISTER/RICHARD LUKEN
See OHIO | Page A6
LaHarpe group bets on bats — nature’s exterminator By RICHARD LUKEN The Iola Register
LAHARPE — If you’re out and about around sundown, and see what appears to be a small bird fluttering around a streetlight, chances are it’s probably not a bird at all, Floyd Thompson said. “It’s probably a bat,” Thompson said. “They’re around here.” Thompson, wife Sharlyn and other LaHarpe PRIDE Committee members are hoping to make the bats feel right at home, as a means of pest control. Bats, the Thompsons explain, are natural mosquito predators
Sharlyn and Floyd Thompson, and their homemade bat house.
Quote of the day Vol. 118, No. 124
A single bat can consume up to 1,200 mosquitoes in an hour, “and you’re not spraying a pesticide into the air,” Sharlyn explained. The Thompsons recently donated a bat house to the city. It was to be erected this week near LaHarpe’s sewage lagoon. The birdhouse-sized structure is noteworthy for its simple yet crucial design. The cedar exterior is divided into three, narrow openings, with a pair of boards dividing the chambers. The bats nest in the house, keeping a grip on the side of the board, or comparable netting, Floyd explained. Then when it’s time to
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started .” — Mark Twain, riverboat pilot 75 Cents
leave, they simply let go, falling through the air. House placement is essential to attracting bats. The houses should be placed on the southwest side of poles, but not trees, and within a quarter mile of a body of water — lagoon, pond, drainage ditch, etc. — and 15 to 20 feet off the ground. Builders can paint the houses black if they wish, but those tend to absorb heat, “and it can get too hot for the bats,” Floyd said. “We prefer thick cedar because of the insulation.” “If a bat falls, and hits the ground, it probably won’t be See LAHARPE | Page A6
Hi: 81 Lo: 57 Iola, KS