As I turned over my treasurer’s duties at The Active Age last month, I thought back to my shaky start with numbers.
It was in the seventh grade when Sister Catherine traumatized me over my failure to do a math problem on the blackboard. Two years later, I barely passed Sister Edwina’s ninth-grade algebra class.
By the time I graduated high school, the nuns had me convinced I’d never make it in college. So, when Sister Irene announced in my Secretarial Practice class an office job opportunity, I was all over it. Got the job paying $1 an hour. With time-and-half working all day Saturday, $52 a week! I bought my first car for $400 — a 1953 green Chevy Bel-Aire — and hung out with my girlfriends at Dearmore’s, The Flame and the Penthouse. Mostly we used up our 19-cent-per-gallon gasoline by dragging Douglas from the Continental to the T & C on South Hillside.
Marriage and two kids came along so I gave up shuffling paper in various office jobs. But in 1975, I started working again for Wichita Area Vo-Tech, teaching shorthand to adults at nights at South High. Soon, I was doing the same at East High. Then they needed an accounting teacher, so I did that, too. I decided this was fun, so I began classes at WSU at age 33 and graduated nine years later with an accounting degree.
Along the way, I got divorced, became a single mom for several years and then remarried. My new husband was also an accountant and tax preparer. I think he must have won me over with our romantic conversations about accruals, depreciation and liquidity…sigh. He encouraged me to start doing accounting for small businesses. Since I had nothing else to do besides attend college, teach night school and keep track of my kids, I thought “why not?”
My nighttime teaching soon turned into full-time for the Wichita Area Technical College, teaching business classes with accounting as my forte. Oh, if the nuns could only have seen me then. I went on to get a Masters in Human Resource Development from Pittsburg State.
In 2003, I retired from teaching. Most of my accounting clients had either retired or died. This freed up much of my time and, after my husband’s death, I had to learn to live by myself for the first time in my life. I focused on three areas: physical health by going to aerobics or yoga every day; spiritual health by attending church regularly and doing lots of volunteer work there; and social and mental health by sticking close to family and friends (my two kids and two step-kids have blessed me with six grandchildren), going to lots of wine tastings and attending Shocker basketball games.
Then in 2014, I accepted Elma Broadfoot’s invitation to become treasurer of The Active Age’s volunteer board of directors. I like to think those nuns underestimated my interest in numbers.
Speaking of numbers, readers were incredibly generous with their donations to The Active Age in 2024. As of mid-December, we had received about $126,000. But please don’t think we don’t need your help in 2025. Our cost of doing business, especially postage, will certainly go up in 2025. If you enjoy the newspaper and can manage a donation, please do make one. And thank you on behalf of The Active Age. Diana Wolfe is treasurer of The Active Age’s board of directors. She can be contacted at dcwolfe2000@yahoo.com.
