New Members
Marie Elder was born and raised in Southern California. She and her family moved to Arkansas City in 1973 and then to Wichita in 1983. Marie has one daughter in St Louis (and three granddaughters) and another at Fort Benning, GA (and two grandsons). She also has two sisters in California. Marie worked in a medical office from 1983 until she retired in 2019. As she puts it, she did everything in the office except treat patients. Most of her career was spent in an office at the Wesley Rehab Hospital. Marie was baptized a year ago while visiting one of her daughters whose Army chaplain husband was stationed in Hawaii. She says she doesn’t have any hobbies, but she must enjoy travelling, because she recently returned from a two-week trip to the Holy Lands with a side trip to Rome.
Zacharias Bones & Running White Fawn were baptized at Northside on December 28. He was born in Eureka and raised mostly in Derby, graduating from Derby High School in 1962. After graduation he served in the Army for three years in West Germany. After the Army, Bones worked as a machinist for Boeing and worked for the High Plains Journal in Dodge City in the print shop, as a reporter, and as a sales executive. Fawn was born in Cheyenne, WY, where her dad was stationed at Fort Warren Army Base. They moved a lot as she was growing up and Fawn graduated from Southwest High School in Kansas City, MO, in 1957. Later Fawn worked as a dress model at Harzfeld’s Department Store in Kansas City. She met Bones when he had his tipi set up at a Mountain Man Rendezvous, and they were married during a later one in 1984 in a dry river
bottom. As Bones tells it, “She came down a hill riding a white horse led by five Indian maidens.” The couple has given talks on the Old West for the past 40 years. They have participated in rendezvous in seven states and shot black powder guns and primitive bows in competitions. They participated in the Medicine Lodge Peace Treaty pageant for 15 years. In their words, their marriage has been an adventure! Bones served as president of three historical organizations. He has written 11 books, eight on the Old West, and all are in the Wichita Public Library. Fawn is a self-taught artist and illustrated all his books. She wrote a play about Calamity Jane and the two of them performed it in many Kansas towns for 15 years. For decades after they were married, the couple spent every weekend they could camping out in their 20-foot Cheyenne tipi. They kept that up for 30 years until Bones was diagnosed with cancer. His doctor told him he had just a few months to live, but that was 12 years ago! Bones has also endured seven back surgeries for degenerative spine disease. He has two sons from a previous marriage and she has a son and daughter from her first marriage. (Her son recently passed away.) When they were in their 50s, Bones & Fawn attended Barton College in Great Bend and graduated in 1991. Her degree was in psychology and his was, as you might guess, in Old West History.