Synopsis
John Stanard's delightful story of his long life in nature illuminates the challenges facing a natural environment that is so essential to our welfare. Stanard's a great writer. Just buy the damned book and enjoy it!
Leigh Fredrickson, Ph.D., Wetland Ecologist
The Lake House is the story of the author's heartwarming boyhood experiences with grandparents who taught him about nature and life. Bugs, lizards and other critters were his toys at an old farmhouse in a wilderness setting.
Stanard learned about wood stoves and coal oil lamps. He was gently taught to visit the outhouse alone in the dark, unafraid of being eaten by a varmint. He loved bedtime, knowing a grandparent would read him a story about one of his wild playmates.
The author highlights extirpated animals restored by science-based conservation. More than 70 illustrations by his talented wife, Rose Anne, poignantly enliven his memories and authoritative insights into ongoing conservation issues: Are all "flood-control" dams worth destroying rivers?
As an outdoorsman and prize-winning writer, the retired newspaperman has spent a lifetime prowling the swamps, rivers and rugged Ozark Mountains of southern Missouri. Stanard's background and story-telling talent uniquely qualify him to blend his memoir with modern conservation successes and challenges.
About the Author
John R. Stanard, a native of Poplar Bluff, Mo., grew up in a newspaper family. His parents were journalists, and both grandfathers were editors. After editing his high school newspaper, he earned a journalism degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism, where the faculty voted him the "outstanding male graduate" in 1962.
Stanard was a news staffer on the Beaumont, Texas, Enterprise. After two years of service in the U.S. Army, he worked as a copy editor, makeup editor and page designer on the Minneapolis Star before joining the staff of his hometown daily, which his family owned.
Stanard was honored by the Associated Press (AP) for his coverage in words and photos of an extortion scheme in which a banker, his wife and teenage daughter were murdered. His dramatic photo of a drug raid was declared the top spot news picture of 1981 in the Missouri/Kansas division of the AP.
Stanard served on the board of directors of the Mid-America Press Institute, a mid-level editorial seminar for training of professional journalists across the Midwest. A longtime member of the Outdoor Writers Association of America, Stanard wrote a weekly outdoors column for many years. He also covered scores of Missouri conservation issues, and served on the statewide citizens committee that helped pass a one-eighth-cent Missouri sales tax dedicated to the Department of Conservation.
After the sale of his family's newspaper, which they owned for 72 years, Stanard wrote two volumes of Butler County: a Pictorial History. In 1997, he wrote Caring for America: the Story of Family Practice, commemorating the 50th anniversary of family medicine as a recognized specialty. He has two adult children by his late wife, Vida Loberg Stanard. He married Rose Anne Barbour Stanard in 2021.
Rose Anne Barbour Stanard was born in Poplar Bluff, Mo., where she graduated from high school in 1971. Her father was a family physician. Her mother was an accomplished artist and community leader, known especially as a longtime Girl Scout leader and active member of the First United Methodist Church.
Rose Anne studied graphic design and illustration at the University of Kansas, later earning a degree in art from the University of Missouri. After college, she began a long career in graphic design and marketing, working in Chicago and in Sacramento and Fresno, Calif.
After her career in advertising, she and her late husband returned to her Missouri roots, where she became an acclaimed fine artist in her hometown. She was a featured artist on the statewide Missouri Arts Council Website in the months of May and June 2026.
Rose Anne's fine art has been represented by galleries in Austin, Texas, St. Louis and Poplar Bluff. As a nature lover, she focuses much of her work on landscapes, painting scenes from her family farm and on the free-flowing, spring-fed creeks and rivers of her beloved Ozark Mountains.
"Nature feeds my soul," says Rose Anne, whose renderings of light and water are particularly notable. She also has an affinity for large-scale paintings and has produced several landscapes in triptych form.
Rose Anne's two daughters also are fine artists. She collaborated with daughter Samantha, the illustrator, to design a delightful children's book, the award-winning Twinkle: The Star Mouse, authored by fellow Poplar Bluffian E.E. Arrendale.
Rose Anne married author John R. Stanard in 2021 after each lost longtime spouses. It has turned out to be an amazing partnership of common interests: Nature, conservation, gardening, music, cooking, history, current events, reading, visual and performing arts, family activities, etc. Their families have been friends in their hometown for more than 100 years.
Not to say there are no differences. John has been a lifelong hunter. Rose Anne, whose father and two brothers hunted, "tolerates" the sport. She grudgingly confirms that hunters and fishers have been the backbone of science-based conservation.
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