Sometime in the late 1950s, while tacking together yet another wooden window screen in his Kansas City shop, Gerald Myers envisioned the future.
He saw the day when mass-produced aluminum windows and doors would replace what he was making. Then and there, Myers decided he would catch the wave.
For reasons unknown, Myers selected Iola as a good fit for his expanding business. He found the old National Guard buildings in Riverside Park a good fit and jumped through a couple of legal hoops to acquire them through a lease with Iola Industries. The city owned the buildings then — still does — and leased them to Iola Industries for subletting to an industry. Iola attorney Tony Immel, then in the Legislature, had introduced legislation that permitted the double-lease agreement, said Jerry Skidmore, an Iola Industries spokesman. Cities weren’t permitted to lease directly to an industry.
Over the years Columbia has made improvements, including enlarging an octagon-shaped building that contained stalls for the Guard horses — it was a cavalry unit at one time.
In its 51st year, Columbia Metal’s Iola plant produces about 60,000 standard windows and 10,000 doors, as well as specialty sizes in each and insulated glass.
“That’s what we did last year,” said Harlan Cleaver, 68, who walked into the plant’s door in 1965 and has been its manager for years.
Cleaver has 25 employees and thinks in a year or two Columbia may see an increase in production.
“In the early 2000s we were running wall-to-wall, and had about 70 employees,” he said.
Then, two events, including one that might have spurred business had it happened elsewhere, occurred.
The Flood of 2007 filled the plant to a depth of 8 feet, 2 inches with muddy Neosho River water.
Initially, Cleaver figured the plant would be OK. Heavy rain had fallen before and areas of south and southwest Iola had flooded, but the levee, built in the late 1930s to protect the park, had kept water at bay — except for massive flooding in 1951.
He and a couple of employees were there that fateful Saturday morning in 2007 loading a truck with windows and doors for delivery Monday.
“All of a sudden the water started coming up,” Cleaver said.
Part of the reason for the deluge was that a check valve in a drain pipe at the south end of the park had been chained and locked open, an occurrence that never was fully explained.
As the water rose, Cleaver decided to move the company’s three delivery vans to a higher area north of the park, where they escaped damage, but left its semi tractor in the park. It and a car owned by one of the employees, trapped by flood water, were damaged beyond reclamation.
