Tom Schiff, son of Curtis and Mildred Schiff, was raised in Barber County. He
  attended all eight grades at the Walstead country school, one and one-fourth miles
  west of their farm.
     He was graduated Valedictorian of the Medicine Lodge class of 1961, then went
  on to obtain a Bachelor of Science degree in education from Kansas State University.
     After teaching in Clay Center and Pratt, Kansas, he enlisted in the United States
  Army. While at Pratt, he met his future wife. He and Arthena were married in 1968.
  one month before Tom left for Vietnam. He served there for thirteen months, with
  one leave back to the United States for a week and another leave of six days that
  they spent together in Hawaii, starting on Chritmad Day 1969. That was the longest
  Christmas Day that Tom had ever experienced - it lasted forty hours due to the
  crossing of the international date line. In fact, his plane arrived in Honolulu at
  5:30 a.m. after leaving Saigon at 10:30 a.m. - both on Christmas Day. The plane
  arrived five hours before it left Vietnam!
     After the Vietnam experience, Tom and Arthena were living on a farm one mile west
  of his parents when their daughter, Lori, was born. When Lori was three weeks old,
  the blizzared of '71 struck. The four counties of Barber, Pratt, Harper, and Kingman
  were hardest hit. Cattle in these counties were fed by hay delivered in planes that
  took on the hay at Schilling Air Base near Salina.
     Some of the memories of the farm, while growing up in Barber County, include a
  cow that Tom could ride like a saddle horse and a steer that would pull a sled. 
  Those ventures were successful. However just as fun, if not as successful, were the
  attempts to break saddle horses to pull a driving cart. None of these attemps were
  successful. But it didn't matter because the horses were good saddle horses. Tom
  and his friends derived a great deal of pleasure from horseback riding. Once, he
  brought two boys, who were his students, home from Clay Center to ride horses one
  weekend. Both boys had lost their fathers and they appreciated this experience a
  great deal.
     One of his favorite horses, "Joe," was named after a friend from Washington, D.C.,
  who graduated as a veterinarian from Kansas State University and spent several 
  school vacations at the Schiff farm the year the horse was born.
     Tom, Arthena, and Lori moved to Sawyer, where they presently reside, six months
  after Tom began selling life insurance with Victory Life of Topeka, a company that
  his family has had policies with for four generations.
               
     Source:Chosen Land - Barber County, Kansas,  pg. 403  
     Submitted by: Tom Schiff