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Marion's people person, Fern Palmer, enjoys the camaraderie of people

Staff writer

Anyone who's been around Marion for any length of time knows Fern Palmer.

She's the person who waves to everyone when she's out walking and hollers out, "hey kid," while making her daily stops at local restaurants or break areas.

"Everybody in Marion knows me because we had the Burger Shake," she said with a laugh. "Anytime anyone ever stuck their head into the Burger Shake I'd say 'hi'."

Even though the Burger Shake has been closed for more than 10 years, Fern said operating that small burger joint in downtown Marion was one of the happiest — and most trying — times of her life.

Fern and her first husband, Charlie Frans, owned the Burger Shake from 1971 through 1992, when the business closed.

"I met a lot of people there. I'd get cards and letters from people telling how much the Burger Shake meant to them," she recalled.

"People ask me what made our burgers taste so good," she said. "My burgers were made from real hamburger and I had a good butcher. Jack Beaston knew just how much tallow to put with his hamburger."

Although Fern may be best known for her delicious hamburgers she has also led a full private life — filled with both happy times and devastating losses.

Western Kansas roots

The oldest of four children, Fern Whisler was born in 1917 in Nebraska. Soon after, her family moved to Atwood.

"My mom was from Nebraska and she thought that's where the best schools were so when it was time for me to go to school I was sent to my grandparents to live," Fern recalled.

Clutching her lunch in an old syrup bucket, 7-year-old Fern was placed on a horse behind her aunt and sent off to school.

"I'd hold on for dear life as we galloped cross country to the one-room school house," Fern recalled.

School in Nebraska wasn't the happy experience Fern's mother hoped for.

"I was so homesick that every day I'd go outside the wash shed and cry," she remembered. "My grandma must have told my mom because she came up for my birthday in September and brought me home."

Fern graduated from high school in Atwood and taught one year before marrying Charlie Frans.

"Charlie was working in a butcher shop and he wanted to get out of it. He had a brother in McPherson with Farm Bureau so he went to McPherson and went to work with his brother," she said. "My oldest daughter, Bernadine, was born there."

The Franses had been in McPherson just a few years when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States entered World War II.

"I remember that day very plainly," she said. "We were living in the country west of McPherson. It was a nice, sunny Sunday. We were driving around looking at places when we heard the news on the radio."

Charlie went to work for a dairy delivering milk, until his name came up and he entered the service. By then, the couple had two children, Bernadine and Charles William ("Bill"). Fern moved the family back to Atwood to stay with her parents and Charlie entered the Navy where he was stationed at Okinawa.

"A formation of kamikaze planes dropped bombs on Charlie's ship. It was the last one in the convoy. He was the only one on the ship hurt. His vertebra in the back were injured in three different places," Fern said.

The crippled ship sailed back to the Philippines then on to San Diego. Charlie was sent back to Kansas and Fern returned to McPherson.

"Charlie got a job at a hardware store and I started my second family and had two more children, Roger and Myron," she said.

Soon after, Charlie decided he wanted to work on a farm and took a job with George Slocombe, southeast of Peabody. The couple had two more children, daughter Joyce and son Terry, and Charlie went to work as a policeman in Peabody.

"Then both Marion and Hillsboro were wanting police officers so he could have his pick," Fern said.

Choosing Marion, the Franses moved to Marion in late 1958.

"Our two oldest children had already graduated before we left Peabody so we had our four youngest when we moved to Marion," she said. "Most people thought we only had four children."

While Charlie worked as a policeman, Fern went to work for the nuns at St. Luke Hospital washing dishes and getting meals ready.

About that time the sheriff's office wanted to start a 24/7 dispatching service. So Fern left the hospital and went to work as a dispatcher on the midnight to 9 a.m. shift with Loren Kelsey and Squeak Frame.

After a time, Fern was approached by a man from Greeley Gas Co., who offered her job.

"I said I wouldn't know how to act if I wasn't working at midnight," Fern recalled with a laugh, but the Greeley man convinced her to take the job. "He said as a mother I should be at home at night with my kids."

While Fern was working for the gas company, the sheriff's job opened up mid-term and Charlie was appointed sheriff by the Democratic governor to take over the position.

"When the term was up, Charlie ran for sheriff, but June Jost beat him and Charlie was out of a job," Fern said simply. "So he bought the Burger Shake and we took that over in February 1971."

Although busy with her own job, Fern would go to the Burger Shake during her noon hour and help out.

"I'd write up the orders for the women who were cooking because my writing was a little better than Charlie's," she remembered with a laugh.

After 10 years, Fern and the gas company had a parting of the ways and she went to work full-time at the Burger Shake.

"And that's when things really started popping. We ran it seven days a week and would close about midnight. All we used our house for was to sleep," she said.

"I thought 'I gotta go home and get some sleep'," she said. "I went home and decided that if I walked around the block I bet I'd feel much better."

With that Fern began walking two miles a day. "That was rest for me," she said. "If I hadn't started walking, I would have died long ago. The smoke and grease would have gotten to my lungs sooner than it did.

"Exhaust systems didn't work so good then. I'd go home everyday smelling like a french fry."

The good and the bad

While working as a policeman, Charlie had his second life-threatening experience in November 1963, when he was in a bad automobile accident in the country near Hillsboro.

"He was riding with another officer when they hit a bridge abutment. Luckily, the accident shorted out the siren and it was wailing. A neighboring farmer heard it and came out to see what was going on," Fern said, shaking her head. "If it weren't for him Charlie would have bled to death."

Things went from bad to worse for the family. In 1964, Fern's mother died. "That was a shocker," she noted.

The worst occurred in the winter of 1965 when her middle daughter, Joyce, committed suicide.

"She was a senior in high school. She used Charlie's gun out at Marion County Lake. She only had a semester to go," Fern explained quietly. "That about killed me.

"After that Charlie kinda lost interest in being a policeman. I thought 'Good Lord, how much more are You gonna put me through?'

"But He never gives you more than you can handle." She said. "I survived it with a lot of prayer and a lot of friends."

Charlie died in 1980 with complications from an aorta problem and Fern continued to operate the Burger Shake.

Fern later married an old friend and widower, Delmar Palmer.

"Delmar was a policeman at Hillsboro and his wife had been a dispatcher. So Charlie and I knew them," she said.

In 1992 — after 21 years of spending untold hours over a griddle and deep fat fryer — Fern was told she needed to have caratoid surgery on the left side of her neck to remove plaque.

"I knew it was time to sell the Burger Shake," she said. "I advertised by word of mouth but had no takers so I closed it."

Fern spent her spare time working in another restaurant washing dishes until Delmar became ill and died in October 1995.

"I took him to an appointment at the clinic. He went into the hospital and never came out," she said.

After all those years of work, Fern says she now "takes it easy."

"I walk as much as I can with my breathing problem. I like to go twice a day with my dog," she said. "I used to work as a volunteer at the senior center.

Even though she doesn't miss the hard work involved with the Burger Shake, Fern said she misses the people.

"Now, I do my socializing when I go out," she recalled. "In the summer, I go every morning and afternoon Now that's it cold I go in for an hour or hour-and-a-half in the afternoon.

"Everyone needs camaraderie and everyone needs people," she said.

And people who know Fern look forward to a friendly greeting, a "hey kid," or a Burger Shake memory when she walks through the door.

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