Biography

Patti Husak Barker was born in 1957 in Marshall, Iowa. She graduated from Tama High School in 1975, and Mount Mary College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1979 with a bachelors degree in Business Administration. After graduation, she moved to Marshalltown with her sister and worked for three years as an administrative assistant. She met and dated a Tama County farmer for a year and a half. She married him in 1982, left her Marshalltown job and moved to his 300 acre farm near Vining, Iowa. They had three children, John, Nicholas, and Joleen in 1983, 1985, and 1988 respectively. The marriage was unhappy, and ended in divorce in 1992. She moved with her children to Chelsea, Iowa, where she began working for an independent contractor and selling products for Amway. In 1996, she took a full time job at the State Juvenile Home as a security officer. She met Willard Barker and married him in 1996. She continued to work as an independent painting contractor, but could not make enough to buy a home. In July 2000, she began full-time work at Central Iowa Pork. In 2001, she and Willard Barker bought a small acreage near Tama where they raise small livestock.

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