Barbara Jean (Farlow) Bennett
Class of 1952
Rolfe, Iowa
After graduation in 1952 from Rolfe, Iowa I also worked for Dr Ranney and for the
Rolfe School library until I married Don DePew. He was in the Army during the Korean War. We lived in Ft Smith, AK while he was in Basic Training.
Connie was born in ‘53-born in Ft Dodge, Iowa. She now lives in Honolulu, HI and is office manager of a company that sells Hawaiian Souvenirs. Joyce (daughter #2) was born in ’55 in Ft Lewis, WA at Madigan Army Hospital. She lives in Riverview, FL and is a salesman for a pool co.. Annette (#3) was born in Denver, CO in ‘57; she lives in Iowa, and is an assistant manager of the Alco in Emmetsburg. She has one son, Michael, my only grandson, who was born in Boulder, CO in 1982. He is at the present time in the Army in Ft Hood, Texas, waiting to be deployed. He’s married to Lydia, who has two children, which makes me a great-grandmother. Her husband is Jerry Kathman. My mother and Annette lives in the same town of Ayrshire. Mom is almost 87 years old and is in good health. She’s good on the computer and has written a couple of books. My 4th is Douglas who was born in ‘60 in Denver, CO. He lives in Lutz, FL and works at a dot com co.. His wife is Jane. Bekka, their daughter is almost 9 years old.
After returning to Iowa after Washington I had severe asthma attacks so we decided to move to CO where we were for several years before moving to FL in the early ‘60s. I was a photographer on the ‘Jungle Queen’ which is a tourist cruise boat. Don and I broke up about this time so I got a job at a steel company as a keypunch operator.
After almost 5 years there I started my career at the Post Office as a letter carrier.
After a couple years I took leave and moved to Costa Rica to a coffee farm. It was about four miles from town (San Ramon) and although we had a jeep it didn’t always run very well so often we walked. My son would ride the horse to town to go to school and I would walk in and get groceries in large cloth bags and put them over the horses back and walk back home. Our house was a little wooden house made of green lumber without any finished inside walls (just the 2 X 4‘s showing). We had no electricity but we did have running water. On the roof there were black pipes, which heated water for the shower. Every 20 minutes when the sun was shining we had hot water. I did all the washing of cloths by hand on a pela, which is a flat part of the sink. We then moved into San Jose where I worked in a ceramics shop pouring molds and helping the customers. I was having attacks of asthma because of all the rain (7 months of the year) so I moved back to FL and resumed my career at the Post Office. After two years I moved back to CO, working at the Boulder Post Office, staying there until I retired in ‘97 after 21 years.
In ‘96 I married Chuck Bennett. We decided to get out of the city so we moved to Mission, SD on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation, which is where we are at this time. I’m a sub in the Todd County School System and have taught in both Grade Schools, the Middle School, the Day Care, Pre School and the High School kitchen. It’s a whole new career. In the summers we go to the Pine Ridge Reservation to teach at a summer school for a month. We live in a tent, shower and cook in a doublewide trailer nearby. Two of the years we went on a trip with some of the students. The first year we took 16 Native American students to Canada for 10 days. The second year we took 14 youth to Minn./St Paul for 6 days. Last year after summer school I went to Mobridge SD as a cook during a conference for a couple weeks, also living in a tent.
I would say that life has been interesting. I made a trip to India a few years ago. Traveled across the country by myself. I flew into New Delhi, then onto the middle of the country on a small Indian plane and then by train to where there are only small villages. Then by bus for four hours to Kawarda. I stayed in a palace and went on several journeys and met lots of different native peoples. Of coarse I got lots and lots of pictures. What an experience!
The greatest thing that has happened to me is that I found the Baha’i Faith almost 32 years ago. It’s a religion that believes in World Unity, that there is one God, that mankind is one and that all religions are one. God sends Messengers to us so that we will never be left alone. If Mankind follows these Messengers we would keep out of trouble, live in harmony and become a unified world.