Ten of the 12 individuals who signed up for the Deep Dive Tour of Ensor Park and Museum scheduled for Saturday, June 20 showed up at the historic site in Olathe at or before 2 p.m. and were raring to go when Howard Cripe, N0AZ, and I briefly met with the group in the kitchen of the two-story Ensor home.
Howard had five of the visitors go with him and headed off in one direction while I took the other five visitors and went in a different direction. Howard's quintet included a man, Gary Richardson of Olathe, and a woman, Janice (Schlagel) Claerhout of Princeton, who had been students of Marshall Ensor, W9BSP, during the final years of his long career as the Manual Arts instructor at Olathe High School (now Olathe North High School). Gary graduated from OHS in 1957, Janice in 1965, the year Marshall retired.
In the photograph accompanying this story, Howard is pictured on the far left as he, Janice, Gary, far right, and another man view the 1875 ox yoke (not pictured) in the north room of the Peg Barn.
While there were no former Ensor students in my quintet, it did include two relatives of the late Don Bonar, who was a student of Marshall at OHS. Don is the one who made the lovely spinning wheel that can be seen in the master bedroom on the second floor of the Ensor home.
Last month's Deep Dive Tour was organized by John Gray, KD0VRS, and gave the participants a chance to see both the basement of the Ensor home and the 1899 pole barn where members of the Ensor family milked the cows back in the day, these being two locations that are not part of a regular tour of Ensor Park and Museum.