School advocate, farmer dies at 81
Dean H. Stoneback, a lifelong advocate for the advancement of education and township rights in the Wakarusa valley, died Wednesday. He was 81.
A Lawrence area resident for most of his life, Stoneback was instrumental in the consolidation of nine rural, one-room schools near what is now Clinton Lake into the Wakarusa Valley school district in 1960.
He served as director of the Wakarusa Valley school board for a number of years after the school’s inception.
Stoneback’s former seventh-grade teacher at Sigel Grade School in 1934 and friend, 90-year-old Margaret Wulfkuhle, said Friday that Stoneback always put the well-being of others before his own and was concerned with civic affairs.
“He was such a role model for the younger boys,” Wulfkuhle said. “Dean was one of my favorite people — a fine gentleman.”
Stoneback farmed most of his life, raising sheep and dairy cattle at the southwest edge of Lawrence.
He was a 1938 graduate of Liberty Memorial High School, which now houses Central Junior High School, and attended Kansas University.
Stoneback served on the Clinton Township Board for a number of years after returning from overseas service in the U.S. Army Air Corps from 1943 to 1946.
In addition to his civic efforts, Stoneback was an avid parishioner at the Clinton Presbyterian Church, where he frequently served as a Sunday school teacher and church organizer.
“His main goal in life, next to his family, was to keep the church alive,” said Bill Stoneback, Dean’s son.
Bill said his father was a conservative man who believed in keeping with tradition of little tasks like taking annual vacations, preserving family albums and helping him build his first soapbox derby racing car.
“Those are the kind of values the family is going to miss,” he said.
During the early 1970s, Stoneback fought Douglas County contractors and builders to save much of his 160-acre estate from efforts to build the Clinton Lake dam. The area was eventually developed to include the Youth Sports Inc. complex, Clinton Parkway and the South Lawrence Trafficway.
Stoneback’s late brother, I.J. Stoneback, served as a Douglas County Commissioner from 1972 to 1976.