Chester L. Krause (1923–2016)

At the age of 19, Chet was drafted into the U.S. Army in February, 1943. He served as an auto mechanic with the 565th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion, part of Patton's 3rd Army, in Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany through the end of World War II.

Following his release from the Army in 1946, Chet returned to Iola where he worked on the family farm and set himself up as an independent builder. Through the early 1950s he constructed two dozen houses, two churches and a 105-foot ski jump in the Iola area.

In 1950, Chet’s father sold the family farm and moved into the Village of Iola with his wife, sons Neil and Chet and daughter Grace, residing in a large Victorian home at the corner of Jackson and Iola Streets.

In October, 1952, Chet published the first issue of Numismatic News. The paper was meant to fill a niche he had identified to serve coin collectors nationwide who were far removed from metropolitan areas. He was the prototypical customer for his new venture: a serious coin collector who was geographically cut off from that hobby's mainstream.

For the next five years the publication grew in advertising volume and circulation as Chet nurtured it on evenings, weekends and when inclement weather kept him away from current construction projects. In 1957, Chet finished the last building he would ever construct, a 40’ x 40’ brick and glass office a block off of Iola's Main Street. That would remain, with occasional additions as expansion dictated, the offices of Krause Publications for nearly two decades as Numismatic News and Krause Publications expanded through acquisitions and start ups of periodicals to fill identified needs in the coin collecting community.

When the coin collecting hobby suffered a serious downturn in the mid- 1960s, almost forcing the demise of his publishing business, Chet recognized that diversification was key to insure its survival. In 1971 he founded Old Cars, and began to develop a parallel line of periodicals for antique auto enthusiasts.