Two Moline women have agreed to “team up” and write local news about their community for Prairie Star.
Cathey Cummings and Jean Knickerbocker said they will write “Moline Moments” each week in the newspaper, and anyone having Moline news should feel free to submit items.
Jean will actually collect most of the items then work with Cathey who will email them directly to editor Jenny Diveley at the Prairie Star office.
“I can’t tell you how excited we are to have both Cathey and Jean volunteering to provide this much needed service,” said editor Diveley. “They’re the perfect combination — and such good friends, too. It should be a fun project for them.”
Anyone wishing to contact Jean Knickerbocker with news should call her at 647-3227 or leave them in a metal box attached to Jean’s back door at 413 W. 2nd in Moline.
Diveley said the Moline community was left without local news coverage following the death of Pat McAlister in January 2008. “We’re not expecting Jean and Cathey to be exact replicas of Pat,” said Diveley. “They will have their own ways of collecting news and writing about their community.”
Cathey and Jean work closely as members of the Moline Christian Church. They both already provide news to the newspaper about their church on a weekly basis, working in conjunction with their pastor, Stan Rumbaugh.
Jean spent her youth in Moline then left after she and Kenneth Knickerbocker were married in 1939. After living in several locations where he worked for the Santa Fe Railroad, they came back to Moline from California in 1979 to a small farm located northeast of town.
He passed away in April 2008.
“I stay busy every day,” said Jean. “I still drive — and that includes driving many of my friends to doctors’ visits and other places. I go to the nursing home in Howard once a week to visit and to the one in Sedan once a week.”
She also enjoys quilting and doing crafts.
“I won’t be calling anyone for news,” she said. “You’ll have to call me, or just drop off your news items in the little box at my back door.”
Cathey Cummings and her husband, Lon, moved back to his hometown of Moline in 1994 for their retirement. He retired from Oklahoma State University where he was in charge of the campus power plant, and previously served a full career in the U.S. Air Force.
“We love it here,” she said. “And in recent years, Jean and I have become such good friends. We have coffee together every morning at the Swinging Bridge Cafe and, of course, we enjoy doing our church work together.”
Although she is a Kansas City native and never had lived in a small town, she has adapted to “country life” quite well. Their picturesque farmstead is located a mile north of Moline on Evergreen Road.
