New era started for Klaassen

I thought this would be farther down the line, but I have been sending out the following letter this past week as an email and as a letter. If you haven’t yet received the email or letter, you will at some point, if we have done business in the past:

This may come as no surprise to most of you who know me. I am now almost eight years past retirement age having sold my share of the business on April 1, 2014, to Joey and Lindsey Young. I agreed to stay on three years as a mentor and consultant to them and was planning to stay on a few more years, but this crazy rare motor neuron disease that has a hold on me (PLS—Primary Lateral Sclerosis, no cause and no cure, and is progressive) is making it extremely difficult to carry out my duties at the company day to day.

You are receiving this email/letter because we have done business in the past. I have appreciated working with all of you a great deal and want you to know this.

Therefore effective at the end of this year I will be retired at home with my wife to watch after me. Your contact at Kansas Publishing Ventures will be majority owner Lindsey Young lindsey@kspublishingventures.com 620-947-5702 office, cell: 620-474-9523 along with majority owner Joey Young and IT manager Tommy Hornbeck or with whomever you are dealing with now at Kansas Publishing Ventures. I will still be available to them via email and phone and text for guidance. They are ready to finish any current projects we have started and any new projects you have quoted for the future.

They will be backed up by our main graphic designer Shelley Plett and computer expert Kevin Hower. I assure you that you are in very good hands with the folks that I mention “because I trained them.”

With that said I will continue to write my weekly column “Partly Nonsense” which I have written continuously since the inception of the Hillsboro Free Press in 1998.

My wife read the letter and asked who wrote it because she said that I ramble a lot more usually.

This year we spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and part of the next with our good friends, the Ranneys in Lawrence along with John and Judy Johnson who went to church with us on Christmas Eve and shared a brunch with us at the Ranneys on Christmas Day. Since none of us had our kids and grandkids around for the exact day of the holiday we couldn’t think of a better way to spend the time.

So Dave found another joke book for me at the library donation bin. I wasn’t allowed to read it on the way home because I had already exposed myself as to what happened when I read it when I first got it.

If you wish to share your comments or ideas, my e-mail address is joel@hillsborofreepress.com.

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