For almost 60 years, Marsha Burris’s extended family has held biennial reunions.
The reunions celebrate her mother, Lois Weseloh Burris’s, side of the family, the descendants of John William and Martha Weseloh whose homestead was in Woodson County.
Because the 2026 reunion will be held in Iola, Marsha Burris is one of the chief organizers, and as such has already begun arranging activities, planning meals and securing accommodations for what she anticipates will be about 100 guests.
Marsha’s parents, Richard and Lois Burris, hosted the first Weseloh reunion at what was then their new home in the eponymous Burris Addition, in 1966. From there, reunions have been held elsewhere in Kansas as well as in Tennessee, Colorado, California, Oklahoma and Missouri. Across the years, only two reunions were canceled, including in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
It’s been almost 25 years, 2008, that Marsha’s family has played host.
Richard Burris passed away at age 89 in 2018; Lois at age 85 in 2021. They were married 64 years.
Back when Marsha was growing up, her mother’s generation carried the responsibility for the reunions.
Today, it’s up to the third generation to carry the torch. 
In addition to Marsha, age 70, are her brothers Dick and his wife Marsha, Mark and Deanne, and sisters Judy and Greg Lair, and Cindy and Gregg Stafford.
Marsha and Mark continue their parents’ business, N&B Enterprises, Inc., a natural gas company founded in 1994 by Richard and Edd Noland. N&B sells natural gas to the City of Iola from its 23 gas leases in Allen County, Marsha said. After their father’s death, Mark purchased Noland’s stock. As president of N&B, Marsha handles its accounts while Mark oversees its operations, she said.
Marsha also is the trustee of her parents’ trust, the J.R. Burris and Lois J. Burris Legacy Trust, which consists of farmland and residential acreage, including the Country Club Heights and the Burris Addition. Most recently, the trust sold some land to the Allen County Country Club so it could build an irrigation pond.
Mark, who now calls Manhattan home, continues to own Iola’s Precision International, which manufactures down-hole pumps for the oil industry.
“He still calls Iola his ‘home base,’” Marsha said, noting his schedule requires lots of travel, including international travel. Most recently he was in Brazil.
When in town, Mark stays with Marsha at her new home built on land west of the Burris Addition.
THE DECISION to carry on the tradition of family reunions was intentional, Marsha said.
“We didn’t want to just start meeting at funerals,” she said Friday afternoon.
