Print
E-mail
Rate
Harlow has been on both sides of the desk, from down-and-out to helping others get by
By Chris Faulkner/MVM News Network
FORT MADISON - Rich Harlow has worn many hats in his life - far more than the 16 that the salesman wore in the classic children's book, “Caps for Sale.”
But he only has one voice.
Fortunately, he has used that voice to impact countless numbers of people, whether through his profession at the Work Force Development Center, his 40 years of interviewing people and broadcasting local sporting events or the many different boards and civic groups he belongs to and previously served.
From a professional standpoint, his days with Work Force Development are almost through. He's retiring, as of Dec. 11, and the office at 610 Eighth St., Fort Madison, will have an open house, from 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., for friends and those he's impacted to wish him well in retirement.
Not that Harlow has any plans to stop working. He'll still drive the Trailways bus he's driven part time for the past few years; maybe he'll even drive more. He'll drive Holy Trinity Catholic High School sports teams to ball games as he has done for many years. In the early days, he drove a team to their game and then set up his radio gear and broadcast over the airwaves.
Newly-elected Lee County Board of Supervisor Gary Folluo, who works at KOKX radio station in Keokuk, called Harlow to see if would come back and work part time for the south Lee County station.
Harlow replied, “Let me get a breather.”
By that, Harlow said, “I want to slow down and learn how to play golf.”
He'll still be active in community projects of one sort or another, just as he once served with the Fort Madison Jaycees, belongs to the Elks, joined the Eagles, has worked at many God's Portion Days and continues to be a part of the United Way and the March of Dimes.
“I've touched a lot of lives, but a lot of people have touched my life,” he said. “You get out of life what you put into it.”
Truly Richard Lee Harlow has had a wonderful, rich life. Or so it seems.
Harlow was born in Des Moines in 1944. His father was an alcoholic, as was his grandfather. The family lived on welfare.
When he was 15, a rough life became tragic when his father killed himself. In sporting events, coaches often talk about how the team could have “folded the tent” when they fell behind in the game. But this was real life, and the Harlow family barely had a tent to fold.
Along came Sister Margaret Mary, a speech and drama teacher at Kuepmer Catholic High School in Carroll, where the family had moved. The teaching nuns at parochial schools of days gone by often get a bad rap.
But Sister Margaret Mary gave Harlow just the emotional boost he needed back in 1962.
Her simple statement, “You have a good voice,” launched a young teen-ager's career and gave him the notion that God gave him that voice to serve Him and others.
Radio seemed the natural place to start for the man with the golden baritone.
After graduating from the Brown Institute of Broadcast and Electric in 1964, Harlow began his career at KBOE in Oskaloosa. The next year it was on to KDSN in Denison, then KINC in Falls City, Neb., and back to Iowa for KRIB in Mason City in the fall of 1966.
Harlow could have earned a vagabond license to go with his broadcasting degree. He and his eventual wife, Elaine, went steady for five years during this unsteady career.
“Radio can be an unstable business,” Harlow said. “I was looking for better opportunities.”
While at KRIB, Harlow applied for a job at KSMN, another station in Mason City. That station didn't have an opening, but the management there did recommend another station. It was located in Southeast Iowa and had been started by a group of ex-G.I.s, hence the call letters, KXGI ... in Fort Madison.
Harlow and his new bride moved into their first home: an upstairs apartment above the Marquette building, which housed the radio station.
Rent was $40 a month until Harlow began to take out the trash from the radio station, and landlord Bill Napier agreed to cut $5 off the price. (For comparison purposes, Harlow made $90 a week at KXGI.)
Was this heaven? No, it was Fort Madison. But the wandering golden voice finally settled down. The Harlows lived above the station for four years until moving into a home of their own.
The radio years gave Harlow the opportunity to meet residents of Fort Madison, from the regular folk to the movers and shakers.
“I got to know (Daily Democrat publisher) George Fisher and (the paper's editor) Dick Fleckenstein,” Harlow said. “I got entrenched in the community.”
He took part in the Rodeo Parade, attended groundbreakings and even won an award for best-in-the-state coverage of industry. As production director, he spent the entire month of October interviewing plant managers and broadcasting the talks on the air.
He worked at KOKX in Keokuk from 1976-79.
“I'm very thankful for the opportunity to cross paths with all of these people,” Harlow said.
“It's not about me. It's about the good Lord using me and my voice to reach other people.”
Harlow would have been content to spend the rest of working life behind a microphone. But one day he interviewed Lions Club member Art Nelson about the local service organization's Fly-in Pancake Breakfast on Rodeo Sunday.
Harlow said that Nelson told him, “'I like your radio interviews. Would you like to be an interviewer for me at Job Service (of Iowa)?'”
Harlow accepted the offer. He moved from his radio office at 607 Eighth Street to the employment service office at 608 Ninth Street. The new job would eventually move to 610 Eighth Street. (After being a nomad around the state, Harlow became so entrenched, he couldn't get past a block in downtown Fort Madison.)
The voice was still the same voice, but Harlow in a sense switched focus and inadvertantly returned to his roots.
“My mother took me (to the welfare office),” when Harlow was growing up. He was surrounded by people of little means, including his own family.
“I got used presents,” he said. “I know the pain and anguish of alcoholism.”
At the Job Service of Iowa, which later changed its name to the current Iowa Work Force Development, Harlow found himself helping people file for welfare and also help them get unemployment benefits, with the ultimate goal of getting back in the work force.
He had gone from interviewing well-known residents on a public forum to interviewing the down-and-out in a private, confidential setting.
Harlow doesn't take appointments. He waits for clients to show up. Then he goes through a mixture of emotions.
“In a small community like this, you cross paths with all walks of life. They're happy that I got them a job or sad and depressed because they just got laid off or fired or quit.”
That leads to mixed emotions on Harlow's part.
“My job is incredibly stressful but very rewarding,” he said.
It doesn't help that his office went from seven full-time employees to Harlow, a workforce advisor, and Marcy Hyche, a workforce specialist.
But for Harlow, there's more to it than just getting a paycheck - his or the client's.
“I'm a Christian. I firmly believe that when people are down and out, either they turn down to alcohol and drugs or they turn up to spirituality,” he said.
Within the limits of his job, Harlow often tried to get people to seek out spiritual help as well as financial help.
“God permits negative things to happen to us, to draw us closer to Him. When everything is going well in a person's life, they don't think about (spiritual things); only when they get to the end of their rope.”
Having gone through cycles in his own life and watched the many cycles in the job world, Harlow is ready to turn over the reins of helping and counseling people to someone else. He and Lee County Engineer Denny Osipowicz will share a retirement party in January.
He'll set aside one of his many hats.
But he'll still have his voice.
But he only has one voice.
Fortunately, he has used that voice to impact countless numbers of people, whether through his profession at the Work Force Development Center, his 40 years of interviewing people and broadcasting local sporting events or the many different boards and civic groups he belongs to and previously served.
From a professional standpoint, his days with Work Force Development are almost through. He's retiring, as of Dec. 11, and the office at 610 Eighth St., Fort Madison, will have an open house, from 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., for friends and those he's impacted to wish him well in retirement.
Not that Harlow has any plans to stop working. He'll still drive the Trailways bus he's driven part time for the past few years; maybe he'll even drive more. He'll drive Holy Trinity Catholic High School sports teams to ball games as he has done for many years. In the early days, he drove a team to their game and then set up his radio gear and broadcast over the airwaves.
Newly-elected Lee County Board of Supervisor Gary Folluo, who works at KOKX radio station in Keokuk, called Harlow to see if would come back and work part time for the south Lee County station.
ADVERTISEMENT |
By that, Harlow said, “I want to slow down and learn how to play golf.”
He'll still be active in community projects of one sort or another, just as he once served with the Fort Madison Jaycees, belongs to the Elks, joined the Eagles, has worked at many God's Portion Days and continues to be a part of the United Way and the March of Dimes.
“I've touched a lot of lives, but a lot of people have touched my life,” he said. “You get out of life what you put into it.”
Truly Richard Lee Harlow has had a wonderful, rich life. Or so it seems.
Harlow was born in Des Moines in 1944. His father was an alcoholic, as was his grandfather. The family lived on welfare.
When he was 15, a rough life became tragic when his father killed himself. In sporting events, coaches often talk about how the team could have “folded the tent” when they fell behind in the game. But this was real life, and the Harlow family barely had a tent to fold.
Along came Sister Margaret Mary, a speech and drama teacher at Kuepmer Catholic High School in Carroll, where the family had moved. The teaching nuns at parochial schools of days gone by often get a bad rap.
But Sister Margaret Mary gave Harlow just the emotional boost he needed back in 1962.
Her simple statement, “You have a good voice,” launched a young teen-ager's career and gave him the notion that God gave him that voice to serve Him and others.
Radio seemed the natural place to start for the man with the golden baritone.
After graduating from the Brown Institute of Broadcast and Electric in 1964, Harlow began his career at KBOE in Oskaloosa. The next year it was on to KDSN in Denison, then KINC in Falls City, Neb., and back to Iowa for KRIB in Mason City in the fall of 1966.
Harlow could have earned a vagabond license to go with his broadcasting degree. He and his eventual wife, Elaine, went steady for five years during this unsteady career.
“Radio can be an unstable business,” Harlow said. “I was looking for better opportunities.”
While at KRIB, Harlow applied for a job at KSMN, another station in Mason City. That station didn't have an opening, but the management there did recommend another station. It was located in Southeast Iowa and had been started by a group of ex-G.I.s, hence the call letters, KXGI ... in Fort Madison.
Harlow and his new bride moved into their first home: an upstairs apartment above the Marquette building, which housed the radio station.
Rent was $40 a month until Harlow began to take out the trash from the radio station, and landlord Bill Napier agreed to cut $5 off the price. (For comparison purposes, Harlow made $90 a week at KXGI.)
Was this heaven? No, it was Fort Madison. But the wandering golden voice finally settled down. The Harlows lived above the station for four years until moving into a home of their own.
The radio years gave Harlow the opportunity to meet residents of Fort Madison, from the regular folk to the movers and shakers.
“I got to know (Daily Democrat publisher) George Fisher and (the paper's editor) Dick Fleckenstein,” Harlow said. “I got entrenched in the community.”
He took part in the Rodeo Parade, attended groundbreakings and even won an award for best-in-the-state coverage of industry. As production director, he spent the entire month of October interviewing plant managers and broadcasting the talks on the air.
He worked at KOKX in Keokuk from 1976-79.
“I'm very thankful for the opportunity to cross paths with all of these people,” Harlow said.
“It's not about me. It's about the good Lord using me and my voice to reach other people.”
Harlow would have been content to spend the rest of working life behind a microphone. But one day he interviewed Lions Club member Art Nelson about the local service organization's Fly-in Pancake Breakfast on Rodeo Sunday.
Harlow said that Nelson told him, “'I like your radio interviews. Would you like to be an interviewer for me at Job Service (of Iowa)?'”
Harlow accepted the offer. He moved from his radio office at 607 Eighth Street to the employment service office at 608 Ninth Street. The new job would eventually move to 610 Eighth Street. (After being a nomad around the state, Harlow became so entrenched, he couldn't get past a block in downtown Fort Madison.)
The voice was still the same voice, but Harlow in a sense switched focus and inadvertantly returned to his roots.
“My mother took me (to the welfare office),” when Harlow was growing up. He was surrounded by people of little means, including his own family.
“I got used presents,” he said. “I know the pain and anguish of alcoholism.”
At the Job Service of Iowa, which later changed its name to the current Iowa Work Force Development, Harlow found himself helping people file for welfare and also help them get unemployment benefits, with the ultimate goal of getting back in the work force.
He had gone from interviewing well-known residents on a public forum to interviewing the down-and-out in a private, confidential setting.
Harlow doesn't take appointments. He waits for clients to show up. Then he goes through a mixture of emotions.
“In a small community like this, you cross paths with all walks of life. They're happy that I got them a job or sad and depressed because they just got laid off or fired or quit.”
That leads to mixed emotions on Harlow's part.
“My job is incredibly stressful but very rewarding,” he said.
It doesn't help that his office went from seven full-time employees to Harlow, a workforce advisor, and Marcy Hyche, a workforce specialist.
But for Harlow, there's more to it than just getting a paycheck - his or the client's.
“I'm a Christian. I firmly believe that when people are down and out, either they turn down to alcohol and drugs or they turn up to spirituality,” he said.
Within the limits of his job, Harlow often tried to get people to seek out spiritual help as well as financial help.
“God permits negative things to happen to us, to draw us closer to Him. When everything is going well in a person's life, they don't think about (spiritual things); only when they get to the end of their rope.”
Having gone through cycles in his own life and watched the many cycles in the job world, Harlow is ready to turn over the reins of helping and counseling people to someone else. He and Lee County Engineer Denny Osipowicz will share a retirement party in January.
He'll set aside one of his many hats.
But he'll still have his voice.
 |
 |
|
| Salvation Army needs bell ringers | St. Barnabas Choir continues holiday tradition |
