Brett Tarr graduated from Newton Community High School in 1989, expecting to become a pilot. An Air Force recruiter had an appointment at the house. Then the recruiter called to cancel — his mother said — and rescheduled, and then June came, and being eighteen, Brett didn't follow back up.

Years later, he found out the truth. His mother had called the recruiter herself and told him Brett was sick. She fielded every follow-up call. He never knew until long after the fact, by which point his life had already become something she probably could have imagined, but he couldn't have.

He tells the story with a laugh.

From there, he went to Olney Central College and took general studies his first year, then moved into business and accounting, and by his third year was running out of reasons to transfer. That summer, he met a young woman named Lori. Her father was a chiropractor in Olney. Brett got curious. In his final semester at OCC, he asked a counselor if he could take anatomy as an elective. She asked why. He said he was thinking about chiropractic school.

Brett had floated through school without ever really needing to try until he started thinking about becoming a Chiropractor. Once he actually tried, he did very well and thought maybe ‘I can do this.’  What changed wasn't his ability. It was the stakes.

He graduated from OCC on a Friday night and was in Bettendorf, Iowa, on Monday morning, enrolling at Scott Community College to pick up the three prerequisite science courses Palmer College of Chiropractic required. A year later, he came home, married Lori, and three weeks after the wedding, started chiropractic school.

Palmer ran on a trimester calendar — three semesters a year, 29 to 31 credit hours each, three weeks off in summer, ten days between terms. A five-year curriculum completed in three and a third years. Brett's class, number 963, started with 283 students — still one of the largest in Palmer history. His first-semester professor, Dr. Bahati, addressed the room early: a lot of you are probably used to straight A's. I want to tell each of you — "C stands for chiropractic. You need a C to pass this class. You don't need an A." Dr Bahati explained that when he was in first trimester, the stress from trying to make straight A's caused him to have a stroke.

Later that semester, Dr. Bahati had a stroke. The stress of trying to maintain perfection had caught up with him.

Brett studied hard. He had a wife counting on him to graduate.

He finished in October 1996, joined Lori's father's practice in Olney, and in 1998 opened his own chiropractic office in Newton. The following year, a radio ad mentioned a local businessman named Richard Stipp was building a car wash in Olney. Brett got curious again. He started asking questions, found his way to Jim McDaniels — who owned several car washes and ran a company called Dirt Buster — and McDaniels offered both a piece of property in Albion and a willingness to guide Brett through it.

When Brett mentioned he'd have to borrow against the chiropractic office and the house to make it work, McDaniels didn't flinch. "You're 29 years old. You own nothing. If you're gonna go belly up, now's the time to do it."

Brett thought the man was nuts. He built the car wash anyway.

The Albion location opened in 1999. Brett and Lori sold it in 2003 and used the proceeds to build a second wash in Fairfield. Lori was nine months pregnant. She was down at the site painting cinder blocks. Andrew was born on December 9th. The Fairfield car wash opened on December 26th. In 2017, Brett purchased the Newton location from Dirt Buster.

He and Lori raised both sons — Andrew, now 22, in travel and studying worship ministry; Grant, 20, driving a semi — in the same county where Brett grew up, two miles from where he lives today. His parents passed away a few years ago. He sold their house. That was hard.

He could have gone elsewhere. A friend wanted him to come practice in Michigan. "We just didn't want to leave our family and leave Newton," he said.

What would he tell his freshman self? The same thing he tells anyone starting out: every step is a platform. Use it. "Always, always take what you're doing now and try to figure out how you can use it for a springboard to something else."

His mother figured that out before he did.

Brett closed with, “I want to thank God for every opportunity he has given me, the courage to walk through the door when it was open and the knowledge to know when to turn around. I thank God for a beautiful supportive wife that went on each journey with me, a mother that changed my plans when I thought I knew what I wanted and parents that taught me to work hard and not give up. God has blessed us more than I could ever have imagined.”