Categories
Bio

Haskins Songer, Janice

Haskins-Songer, Janet '60JANICE HASKINS SONGER

After graduating from Enid High in 1960, I went to OSU for the next 2 years.  After my freshman year there, I met Richard Songer and we married in August of 1962.  We then moved to Wichita, KS where we still live, recently celebrating our 48th anniversary. My husband and I have owned and operated a graphic design business for the past 37 years.  After being a commercial artist and graphic designer himself,  Richard now strictly deals with the management of our company. I’ve done all the accounting and taxes all these years, except for the year-end tax returns which our CPA handles for us. I had no idea at the time how important those bookkeeping classes at Enid High with Mr. Lynch would be for me.  We’re hoping to retire before too much longer, but have found it’s harder to get out of a business than it was to get into it in the first place. It’s been very good to us, but we now hope for more of a personal life, including some vacation time.  That’s been hard to come by all these years.We have been blessed with 3 children. Jennifer, 43 is now married to Jim Roman, a banker, and they live in Wichita. They have 3 great girls, Lyndsey, 17, Lauren, 13, and Kylie 10.  Our son, Jeff, 40, is in the Financial Dept at Kansas City Southern Railway and is married to Ann, who is a partner in Shook, Hardy and & Bacon law firm in KS City.   They have a 3 yr old daughter, Amelia, and a 7 month old  little son, Jacob, aka Jake.  Our youngest daughter, Melissa (Missy), 33,  is married to Brock Ainsworth —no children yet.  Both our daughters are teachers.  Jennifer is an all day pre-K teacher of 4 yr olds in the Wichita Public School system.  Missy is a Special-Ed teacher in grades K-2 in KS City, where Jeff and his family also live. Jennifer graduated from Wichita State University, and Jeff and Missy both graduated from KU.   I’ve loved being able to do part of my job at home, which has allowed me to be home with our children when they were young, and then part time with our grandchildren too.

It just doesn’t seem possible that so many years have now gone by. I’ll not be able to attend the reunion, much as I would like to. I’ve recently reconnected with some of our classmates via email  (jansonger@aol.com) and loved “catching up” with all of you.  Many thanks to all of you who have worked so hard to establish this web site, and made so many efforts for the reunion!  Please know I so appreciate the time and effort you have all put in to making it possible for the rest of us to reconnect with our former classmates and friends. I’ve loved reading the bios from several of you and would love to hear from you as well.  Please know I have so many fond memories of the Class of 1960 and wish you all good health and much happiness always!