A West Liberty couple who has provided area residents in the areas of health, education, the environment and community service was honored Sunday in the annual Muscatine County Fair parade.
Jan and Bill Koellner, who have been in West Liberty since 1965, rode as Grand Marshalls in this year’s fair parade after being selected by a committee of the West Liberty Chamber of Commerce.
The 78-year-olds say they didn’t want the limelight, humble about what they’ve accomplished in the community since moving to West Liberty after graduating from the University of Iowa nearly five decades ago.
“It’s a matter of seeing what needs to be done and stepping up to do something about it,” said Bill Koellner, a retired civil enginner after serving the Rock Island chapter of the Corp of Engineers for 37 years as a hydraulic specialist. ”That’s really what it’s all about,”
The couple has risen to the occasion time and time again through the years, but this past year, took it upon themselves to help seniors not well acclimated with navigating the Internet, to get appointments for COVID-19 vaccines.
Many knowing the couple aid the elderly in driving them to appointments when others can’t, found out that they could find locations dishing out the vaccine when others could not, sometimes rising out of bed as early as 4 a.m. to register a friend.
They helped more than 600 area seniors get vaccinated, many times even driving them to the appointment.
When the pandemic started and there was a huge shortage of face masks to protect people, Jan put together a group to sew dozens of masks for local residents and even her daughter Jill’s Horace Mann Elementary School class.
Bill worked with Deepak Giri to buy 500 masks distributed by Rotary and helped put up signs at entrances in the community asking residents to “Stop the Spread: Wear a Mask.”
But that’s just one of the voluntary actions the couple has tackled over the years, many of the services coming right on the fairgrounds where they created a bluebird birdhouse trail after a birdhouse-building clinic for youths, helped plant 144 trees and another 100 in the community at the Dutton Sports Complex and the Heritage Foundation park/trail area.
Serving as superintendent of the horticultural area at the fairgrounds, the Koellners have planted dozens of hostas and flowers around fair buildings and Koellner, a native of Davenport, was instrumental in helping create the armed services memorial at the fairgrounds two years ago with Gretchen Nollman.
But what they’ve done at the fairgrounds doesn’t compare to what they’ve accomplished in the community. A trained hospice volunteer, Bill helps friends whenever possible while he also has served as a trustee on the Muscatine General Hospital (Now Unity Point Health) for 27 years. He served on the senior resources board for nine years and is Chairman of the Muscatine County Board of Health.
A member of the Rotary Club of West Liberty for the past 40 years, Bill is a three-time president and has served on leadership committees for the past 21 years including taking on a state-wide project this year on bettering the environment, from setting up tree planting projects to cleaning up highway ditches and more.
A Master Gardener since 2000, Bill also started the flower basket program in the downtown West Liberty area, watering the plants for six years before giving up the job.
He’s also an elder and a deacon at the First Church United in West Liberty where he’s a member, as well as a past Sunday school teacher.
Education is another aspect of his volunteerism, a 37-year member of the Muscatine Mississippi Bend Area Education Agency and a volunteer reading tutor for three years at the West Liberty Early Education Center.
Jan may not have as many accomplishments, but, as they say, behind every good man is a great woman.
Also a Master Gardener in Muscatine County, Jan volunteers for garden and community beautification projects all over the county.
A retired early childhood educator, Jan has volunteered in various areas to support and establish quality early childhood learning settings. After serving the West Liberty School District as an elementary education teacher, she operated her own Peter Pan Pre-School in the early 1970’s in the community before going back to teaching and later taking a role as a special education teacher at Iowa City’s Horace Mann Elementary, where she finished her career as a professional educator.
She’s also had various church leadership roles including serving on the First Church United governing board and providing youth Christian education teaching.
A Marshalltown native, Jan also serves as a volunteer tutor for adults studying to get their U.S. citizenship, once a French and English instructor.
The couple also has two children including Jill, an elementary school teacher in Iowa City and Todd, a cellular phone engineer in Overland Park, Kansas. The couple also has three college age grandchildren.
“Volunteerism is the core of what makes communities grow and develop, “ said Jan Koellner. “The Muscatine County Fair is a prime example of how volunteers can team together and make an event successful.” As part of the event, the Koellners say they are “humbled to be honored” in the Fair Parade.