Lew Anderson

May 7, 1922 – May 14, 2006

One of Fort Dodge’s many entertainers over 150 years, Lewis Burr Anderson was best known for his role as Clarabell Clown, the third and final clown in the Howdy-Doody Show from 1954 to 1960.

“Until I became Clarabell, I had no idea just how popular the show really was,” said the late musician in an old interview with The Messenger.

Never speaking on the program until its famous final episode, Anderson paraded around Doodyville with bicycle horns to toot "yes" and "no" responses. He could expertly operate a bottle of gushing seltzer water, much to the consternation of the show's host, Buffalo Bob Smith, and its star performer, a marionette named Howdy Doody, and the rest of the cast made up of humans and puppets. The program debuted in 1947 as the first network children's daily television show. Americans were just beginning to buy their own TV sets after the war.

Whether watching the show at home or sitting in Doodyville's Peanut Gallery at NBC studios in New York, children were captivated by the antics of the mischievous clown in the baggy, zebra-striped

outfit. By the 1950s, "Howdy Doody" was hugely popular, and children couldn't get enough of it. Adults enjoyed the fun, too.

The 1939 Senior High grad remained an entertainment mogul throughout most of his life, touring as an out-front leader of the All-American Big Band, which played each Friday night at the Red Blazer restaurant in New York City. Anderson also appeared in a number of studies and Broadway shows such as “Guys and Dolls,” “Damn Yankees,” and “Crazy for You.”

Anderson played the clarinet during high school and junior college in Fort Dodge’s municipal band, which became known as the Karl King band after its namesake, legendary director. Though he was a relative newcomer by that time in high school (his family moved to Fort Dodge just before his juni

or year in high school), he became well-established with his talents soon enough in the community. Karl King recommended him for a scholarship in the U.S. Navy Music School in Washington D.C.

“I have fond memories of Fort Dodge and especially of Senior High,” he told The Messenger in an archived interview. After graduating from Fort Dodge Senior High, Anderson won a music scholarship to Drake University in Des Moines, but quit in his junior year to join the Lee Barron Band in Grand Island, Nebraska. Later, he played in the Cliff Kyes Band, based out of Albert Lea, Minnesota, performing for dances in Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri.

Anderson enlisted in the Naval Air Corps in 1942 during World War II. He started a naval band between battles of the Pacific Theater. He headed a 15-man jazz band that played on carriers in the Pacific Ocean. Discharged in 1946, son Chris says, Anderson again toured the Midwest with such bands as the Carlos Molinas Latin Orchestra. He was a skilled composer/arranger. Discharged in 1946, son Chris says, Anderson again toured the Midwest with such bands as the Carlos Molinas Latin Orchestra. He was a skilled composer/arranger. Anderson, with a fine tenor voice, joined the Honey Dreamers vocal group in Chicago in the late 1940s, singing first on radio and then on early television, including such popular programs as "The Ed Sullivan Show."

After the program the “Howdy Doody Show” left the air, Anderson made many personal appear ances as Clarabell. "In the '70s, '80s and even '90s, he and Buffalo Bob would appear at malls and fairs," Chris Anderson says. "The show's fans, who had watched Clarabell as children and were now in their 30s and 40s, were mesmerized by him. It was as if the president was making an appearance." Tens of thousands of people showed up for these personal appearances. Through the years, Anderson remained faithful to his musical career, starting a band of his own in the 1960s. Lew Anderson was the vocal arranger for the Miss America pageant for 10 years. More recently, he led his 16-piece All American Big Band on Friday nights at New York City's Birdland jazz club. The band's members were expert musicians who normally played in Broadway orchestras and for recording studios sessions.

Chris Anderson, Lew’s son, believes his father's last visit to Iowa was in the early 2000s at a high school reunion in Fort Dodge. Chris Anderson says his dad retained a youthful outlook in his later years and enjoyed good health until 2005. Although he was quite ill two weeks before his death, Lew Anderson insisted on playing with his band, and his son accompanied him to his last Bird-land performance.

Anderson, who lived in South Salem, N.Y., died of prostate cancer at a hospice in Hawthorne, N.Y., on May 14, 2006. He had turned 84 the week before. He was survived by his wife, Peggy; three sons and two stepdaughters.

Anderson's All American Big Band continues his musical legacy, entertaining lovers of big band music under its new name, the Birdland Big Band.

Source:

*Decious, E. (2019). Celebrating 150 Years. The Messenger, 18.

* DesMoinesRegister.comdata.desmoinesregister.com › famous-iowans › lew-anderson

Samuel Arkoff

Film producer

1918-2001

Samuel Zachary Arkoff holds an important place in the history of cinema as a leading creator and originator of low-budget “B” films, targeted to young adults aged 16-24. With themes based on teenaged passion, fast motorcycles and cars, fugitives on the run, and science fiction with some horror, Arkoff’s movies were a hit with his targeted demographic and perfect as drive-in-movie fare.

Samuel Arkoff was born on June 18, 1918, in Fort Dodge, Iowa, to immigrant parents who came to Fort Dodge in 1905. As Samuel grew up, he attended Fort Dodge schools, worked at his father’s clothing store and spent a lot of time going to movies at the Rialto, the Iowa and the Strand, often sitting through several showings of the same feature.

At the age of 13, Arkoff won a contest for selling the most subscriptions to the Des Moines Sunday Register. The prize was a five-minute flight on an Autogiro. As a junior at Fort Dodge High School, Arkoff placed third in a state speech contest for an oration titled "I Am a Jew." After graduating from Fort Dodge High School in 1935, Arkoff enrolled at the University of Colorado then later transferred to the University of Iowa to major in Speech.

After being asked to leave the university because of poor attendance, Arkoff enlisted in the United States Air Force and served his country as a cryptographer during World War II. After the war, Arkoff married and moved to Los Angeles where he attended Loyola Law School, from which he graduated in 1948.

Arkoff started his career in the entertainment industry as a legal expert in producer-distributor-exhibitor cases. By 1950, he had become vice-president of Video Associates, for which he produced the Hank McCune Show, one of television's first series.

In 1954, Arkoff co-founded American Releasing Corporation with his partner, a film exhibitor named James H. Nicholson, and a $3,000 loan from Joseph Moritz, Nicholson's former employer. The company started with the intention of distributing films only, but Arkoff and Nicholson found that, because of the film recession of the 1950s, there was little product to distribute. Thus, they decided to produce their own films as well. They changed American Releasing Corp.'s name to American International Pictures (AIP) in 1955 and started to produce B-movies. Nicholson was president of the organization, Arkoff its chairman of the board.

In order to make AIP successful, Arkoff and Nicholson wisely determined that a youth market existed for action and sensationalistic pictures. The pair consequently directed and marketed their product to teenagers, a successful marketing strategy that earned them wealth and reputation.

The company's first release, The Fast and the Furious, was produced by Roger Corman for $66,000 and made a profit of $150,000, drawing audiences with its themes of fast cars and women, and fugitives on the run. The formula for the success of AIP was also tied to double-feature films produced on a low budget and built on lurid themes, skillfully illustrated by their titles and craftily marketed. Regardless of the type of movie, whether horror, biker, beach, or science fiction, AIP did not make one film that lost money and they never had a year in the red in the decades of the 1950s and the 1960s.

Arkoff helped launch the careers of a number of well-known actors and movie makers, such as Roger Corman, the director of his first movie. Others included: Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda, Woody Allen, Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello (in the beach blanket films), Francis Ford Coppola, Robert DeNiro, Nick Nolte, Bruce Dern and Martin Scorsese. Iconic of this trait of AIP and its market was I Was a Teenage Werewolf, released in 1957. Youthful Michael Landon was the teenage werewolf, and the sub-text of teenage alienation, coupled with the movie's horror theme, made the film a hit with teenagers, who flocked to see it- grossing over $2 million. Over 50 films were produced by Arkoff’s company.

Samuel Arkoff, known for smoking foot-long cigars, stayed out of the limelight and said he hated Hollywood cocktail parties. "God, what a phony town," he said. In 1992, Arkoff wrote his autobiography, "Flying Through Hollywood by the Seat of My Pants."

Arkoff was a smart, jovial man who never took his movies too seriously. Unlike most events sponsored by Hollywood studios, Arkoff's featured no press releases, no publicity handouts, no interview opportunities and only one speech. Arkoff, holding his trademark foot-long cigar, would stand up and say, "No business is discussed at this luncheon. The less said about some of my pictures the better. We're here to have a good time. Eat, drink and enjoy yourselves."

In 2001, Samuel Arkoff died at the age of 83, only months after the death of his wife.

Sources:

*Des Moines Register, Famous Iowans *Des Monies Register – Data Central

*rogerebert.com/inteviews

Major Lewis Armistead

Lewis Addison Armistead was born on February 18, 1817, in New Bern, North Carolina, and was raised in Fauquier County, Virginia, by a family related to United States presidents James Monroe, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, and Benjamin Harrison. His father and four uncles all served during the War of 1812, with one of those uncles, George Armistead, commanding Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Maryland, where the famous "Star Spangled Banner" flew.

Lewis Armistead, born into a military family of distinguished service and desiring to follow his father and uncles in an army career, was admitted on September 1, 1834 to the military academy. An untoward incident prevented his completing its courses. Another cadet, Jubal A. Early, later "a fire-eating soldier" for the Confederacy, is reported to have "insulted" him on the parade ground. At mess, in retaliation, Armistead cracked Early over the head with a plate and was, as a result, dismissed 15 Feb. 1836.

Still determined to carry on the family profession, he was graduated from a military school in North Carolina and on 10 July 1839 became a second lieutenant in the Sixth Regiment, U.S. Infantry, commanded by Zachary Taylor. He fought against the Seminoles under General Taylor and also under his father, Walter Keith Armistead, and in 1844 he was promoted to first lieutenant.Note: Major Lewis Armistead’s father, Walter Keith Armistead was in military service, as were his four brothers. A member of the second graduating class at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, Walter Keith Armistead took part in the War of 1812 and the Seminole War, became the army's chief engineer, and at the time of his death, with the rank of brevet brigadier general, was second in command of the army.

Armistead then served in Fort Towson, Arkansas and Fort Washita near the Oklahoma border. Serving in the Mexican War, he was appointed brevet captain for Contreras and Churubusco. He was wounded at Chapultepec, and was appointed a brevet major for Molino del Rey and Chapultepec. During the Mexican War, Lieutenant Armistead led the storming party at Chapultepec, participated in other battles, and won a reputation for bravery and aggressive fighting.

Armistead continued in the Army after the Mexican War, assigned in 1849 to recruiting duty in Kentucky, where he was diagnosed with a severe case of erysipelas, but he later recovered. In April 1850, Armistead assigned to an Army Unit in Iowa to establish a new military post at the fork of the Des Moines River and Lizard Creek. In winter of 1850, he had to take his wife Cecelia to Mobile, Alabama, where she died December 12, 1850, from an unknown cause. He returned to Fort Dodge following her death.

In 1850, under the leadership Major L. A. Armistead, the Quarter Master, and William Williams, the troops went to work to build a military post at the fork of the Des Moines River and Lizard Creek. Major L. A. Armistead, the Quarter Master, as soon as possible, brought on and put in motion a steam saw mill, also brought on a number of citizen mechanics, carpenters, masons, brickmakers from Keokuk and other Mississippi towns, there being but a few mechanics amongst the troops. The first three months all were employed very diligently at work. Great efforts were made to have the buildings up and habitable before the winter set in. They succeeded in putting up twelve of the buildings and making them habitable by the middle of November. The 20th of November of 1850, they struck their tents and took possession of the buildings. The following season the balance of the buildings, twenty-one in all, were put up and finished. On taking possession of the buildings in honor of General Clarke, then a Colonel of the 6th Regiment of the United States Infantry (to which Regiment the detachments belonged), the post was named Fort Clarke, (in 1851, the name was changed to Fort Dodge).The officers stationed at this post were Brevet Major Samuel Woods; Commandment of the Post, Brevet Major L. A. Armistead, Acting Commandary; Lieutenant Stubbs, Lieutenant I. L. Corley; Surgeon Charles Keeny, ranking as Captain, and Sutler William Williams.

In 1852 the Armistead family home in Virginia burned, destroying nearly everything. Armistead took leave in October 1852 to go home and help his family.On May 26, 1861, Lewis A. Armistead resigned his commission in the U.S. Army and bids an emotional farewell to comrades, including future Union general Winfield Scott Hancock. Armistead told a disconsolate friend, "I know but one country and one flag. Let me sing you a song and drive away your gloom." He sang "The Star-Spangled Banner." However, when the necessity for choice came, Armistead did not hesitate to prefer the Confederacy. At Los Angeles he presented his major's uniform to a friend, Winfield Scott Hancock, then a captain and brevet major, with the remark, "Some day you may need this." They met later at Gettysburg.

Resigning from the U.S. Army on May 26, 1861, Armistead joined General Albert Sidney Johnston and other officers who had resigned and journeyed with them across the continent from all the way to Richmond, Virginia. Armistead entered Confederate service as a colonel at Richmond.

As a Confederate officer displaying conspicuous gallantry, bravery, and coolness under fire at Seven Pines, Malvern Hill, Second Manassas, and Sharpsburg, he was appointed provost marshal of the Confederate army. General Lee noted that Armistead was well-suited for such duty because, according to a colonel in his brigade, Armistead was a "strict disciplinarian" who believed that "obedience to duty" was "the first qualification of a soldier." General Robert E. Lee personally thanked him for the ability and efficiency with which he discharged the duties of that position. On April 1, 1862 he was commissioned brigadier general.

On July 3, 1863, the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the guiding point for the Confederate charge was a clump of trees just beyond a low stone wall. Putting his hat on the point of his sword, Armistead mounted his horse and called in stentorian tones for the men of his brigade to follow him through a rain of shot and shell toward the Union position on Cemetery Hill. Famously known as Pickett’s Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg, Armistead helped lead the frontal assault on Union soldiers. General George E. Pickett, who directed the charge from a nearby house, was not present to lead his division. Two other generals were put out of action. Armistead automatically assumed leadership. His horse was shot from under him, but he dashed forward on foot and was the first to leap over the stone wall. Some thirty-odd yards beyond the wall, he laid his hand on a cannon, with the proud announcement, "This cannon is mine." But he was then riddled with bullets and fell, severely wounded. Armistead was carried to a nearby Union field hospital where he died on July 5 from a combination of blood loss and exhaustion.

The Union troops who fired the fatal shots happened to be commanded by one of Armistead's closest friends, Winfield Scott Hancock. His death was immortalized in the 1993 film Gettysburg and has come to symbolize the Lost Cause-influenced "brother versus brother" view of the war so celebrated in American culture.

His body was buried in a vault in St. Paul's cemetery at Baltimore, Md. A memorial plaque was dedicated there in recent years by the General Lewis Addison Armistead Chapter, United Daughters of the Confederacy, of Washington, D.C.

L.E. Armstrong

1877-1936

L.E. Armstrong was a man of many trades and an active community leader. Born in Malmo, Sweden, Mr. Armstrong settled in Fort Dodge in 1877 working as a clerk in a general store. His business ambitions led him to Minnesota for a few years, but he returned to Fort Dodge in 1886. This is when he opened Plymouth Clothing Store.

Mr. Armstrong was the first person in this area to own a “horseless carriage” or automobile. The car was a Winton and cost Mr. Armstrong $1000.

After Mr. Armstrong made Plymouth Clothing Store, the leading clothing store in Northwest Iowa, he took up and interest in the gypsum and clay industries. After buying up land with deposits of gypsum and clay, Mr. Armstrong sold his clothing store and became president of his own Plymouth Gypsum Company in 1903 and of the Plymouth Clay Products in 1910. Mr. Armstrong also bought some farm land to fulfill his interests in agriculture. He then opened the Plymouth Stoneware Company in Marshalltown.

In 1919, Mr. Armstrong organized the Hawkeye Fair and Exposition and served as president. In 1923, he became president of the Fort Dodge National Bank. In 1927, he established the Louis E. Armstrong Trust and in 1929, he established the L.E. Armstrong Realty and Investment Company.

At the time of his death, Mr. Armstrong was making plans to open a soybean and cornstalk processing plant. Always conscientious about the well-being of Fort Dodge, Mr. Armstrong took great pride in his community. He contributed to the building funds of 25 churches in the county, St. Joseph’s Mercy Hospital, the Lutheran Hospital, and the Hawkeye Fair and Exposition. He was also a member of the Masonic Lodge and president of the Chamber of Commerce.

Source:

*The People Who Made A Difference, Twist and Shout, January, 2000

Mary Crawford Armstrong

Not Available-1948

She has been recorded in Webster County history as “the first woman to.” She did a lot women weren’t expected to do. She kept her maiden name of Crawford after she married Edmund Armstrong, a well-known pharmacist.

She was a teacher of French, English, German, and Latin but gave it all up when she married. She didn’t stop working, though. She took over and ran the Fort Dodge Chemical Company that her father once owned, along with her father’s real estate business. Ms. Armstrong helped organize the Fort Dodge Plaster Company and served as vice president in 1902. She became the first woman to run for a county office. However, she lost the election for county superintended of the schools.

Ms. Armstrong was one of the founders of the local chapter of the Federated Women’s Clubs. She was also president of the Iowa Federation of Women’s Clubs and on the Board of Directors of the National Federation of Women’s Clubs. Ms. Armstrong was the first woman to serve on the Iowa Board of Conservation. She also served on the state Child Welfare Commission and on the Iowa Literacy Commission.

Mary Crawford Armstrong held strong beliefs about the higher education of women. Mary Crawford and her husband, E.F. Armstrong, gave Armstrong Park to Fort Dodge.

Source:

*The People Who Made A Difference, Twist and Shout, January, 2000

Dr. Edwin Barbour

1917-1993

Mr. Edwin Barbour moved to Fort Dodge in 1966. He served as president of the Iowa Central Community College. Mr. Barbour has been seen as a pioneer and developer of the college.

He was born in Garden Grove, Iowa and graduated high school in Beaconsfield. Mr. Barbour furthered his education at Parsons College, received his master’s degree from the University of Colorado, and received his doctorate from Iowa State University. He was superintendent of schools in Eagle Grove for a number of years.

Active in many civic circles, Dr. Barbour was a member of the Fort Dodge Rotary Club and the Chamber of Commerce. He served on the boards of North Central Sheltered Workshop and Friendship Haven. Some of his honors include the Sertoma Sundowners Service to Mankind Award and the Virgil S. Lafomarcina Distinguished Alumni Laureate Award for the College of Education. He was honored by the Webster County Advocates for the Handicapped in 1983. Dr. Barbour was named the state Volunteer of the Year for the Association for Retarded Citizens in 1983. Dr. Barbour was the president of Iowa Area School Superintendents and chairman of the State Executive Committee for the Community College Athletics.

Source:

*The People Who Made A Difference, Twist and Shout, January, 2000

Dr. Daniel Baughman

1867-1960

One of the most significant pillars of early Fort Dodge industry can be attributed to Dr. Daniel Baughman, who founded the Fort Dodge Serum Company, which was later renamed Fort Dodge Laboratories. During his career, Dr. Baughman was a leader in animal serum and vaccine manufacturing, and president of the Iowa Veterinary Medical Association in 1931. He was a member of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers' Industry Advisory Committee to the War Production Board during World War II and took great pride in helping veterinary students finance their education at Iowa State College in Ames.

Daniel E. Baughman was born April 18, 1867, on the homestead of his parents, John Baughman (Bachmann) [2](1833-1914) and Catherine Naffziger Baughman (1836-1914) located in Panola Township, Woodford County, Illinois. He attended the Flanagan Mennonite Congregation.

In 1892, Baughman graduated with a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine Degree from a two-year course of training at the Chicago School of Veterinary Medicine, one of the premier veterinary schools of its day. He set up a practice in the community of Danvers, Illinois, where his grandparents and number of his other relatives lived. Dr. Baughman, being fond of horses, became a sought after veterinarian in the area, but conflict with the Amish ways caused him to look for other locations to move his practice.

In 1892, Daniel’s father, John Baughman, and older brother, Jacob N. Baughman, purchased 720 acres near Manson, in Calhoun County, Iowa, becoming the first Mennonites to locate in this area. Dr. Baughman upon a visit to Manson in the fall of 1897 discovered an opportunity in nearby Ft. Dodge to move his veterinary practice. Thus, he moved his wife Anna and daughter Ethel Baughman to Ft. Dodge from Danvers the following January of 1898. He thereupon became the first licensed veterinarian in the northern half of Iowa to be a graduate of a veterinary college. His advice was sought from other veterinarians from a wide area.

Dr. Baughman was primarily a large animal practitioner with emphasis on horses. Small animal practice in those times was seen as a very low priority and somewhat unnecessary. Cats and dogs were an unnecessary appendage to the typical Midwestern farming enterprise. They shared the same skim milk that was used to slop the hogs. The veterinary care they received was performed gratuitously to the delight of the children of the farm family.

In 1912 an opportunity arose to manufacture, retail and counsel with respect to a new serum to cure hog cholera. Hog cholera was one of the most costly diseases to the economy of the state of Iowa and it was for that reason that it financed the research on this disease at a farm near Ames, Iowa. The anti-hog cholera serum was discovered in 1906 by employees of the United States Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Animal Industry and was first used on farms in 1907. The process was patented by the government. Dr. Baughman bought the serum from the government and started injecting it in swine at Ames, Iowa, through a business he established with a former employee of the Bureau of Animal Industry, a Mr. Hamilton, which they called the Ames Vaccine Company. Dr. Baughman hired Hamilton because of his experience in working with the manufacture of the serum for the federal government. Within a year he moved the business to Ft. Dodge where he renamed it the Fort Dodge Serum Company. Hamilton stayed on for four years before moving west.

Although there were other makers of the serum, Dr. Baughman became the dominant producer because of his excellent management capabilities. One of the keys to his success was the hiring of Howard Shore of the Bureau of Animal Industry to be his production supervisor in 1919. He held that position until his death in 1952. Shore, being a former employee of the Virus and Serum Division of the Department, played a key role in obtaining approval of the USDA of the serums developed by the company. In 1932, because of the addition of many biological and pharmaceutical products to its line, the Company’s name was changed to Fort Dodge Laboratories.

In 1919 he also hired Scott Barrett from Cutter Laboratories in Chicago as sales manager, who subsequently became president of the company when Dr. Baughman sold it in 1945 to American Home Products. Additionally he hired Dr. H. P. Lefler in 1919, also formerly with the Department of Animal Industry as the director of the production of hog cholera serum and virus. These three men-Shore, Barrett and Lefler—with Dr. Baughman, directed the affairs of the company until 1945 when it was sold. The success of the vaccination effort nationwide was realized in 1969 when hog cholera in the United States was eradicated even though the highest vaccination rate at any time in the past did not exceed 60%.

During the Depression, the business fell upon hard times when farmers simply did not have the money to have their hogs vaccinated. But the company had the good fortune in 1938 to develop a vaccine for sleeping sickness in horses, a disease that was plaguing the draft horse population in Iowa and southern Minnesota. It was a virus that affected the brain of the horse, causing it to walk to one side in circles and eventually go down and die. This development secured the company’s future, but it marked the beginning of the end for the draft horse as farmers now had an excuse to buy their first tractor.

There are few associates of Dr. Baughman still living, but many of those associates, including secretaries, who held even a few shares of stock in his company, benefited greatly financially when the stock as eventually converted to American Home Products stock.

Dr. Baughman passed away on July 8, 1960. He was widely known and regarded as a man of courage and unquestioned integrity.

Source:

*http://www.medical-mal.com/Daniel_E_Baughman_DVM_Founder_of_Fort_Dodge_Laboratories.htm

Dr. Edward F. Beeh - Surgeon

1888 - 1962

Edward F. Beeh is a native Iowan who has become a distinguished surgeon, and in that field his name is held in very high respect in Fort Dodge, and that section of the state. Doctor Beeh was born in Belle Plaine, Iowa, on October 15, 1888. His parents, Henry and Frances (Nowotny) Beeh, were also natives of Iowa, and both lived in Belle Plaine.

Doctor Beeh's grandfather, Henry C. Beeh, was a German that live about ten miles from the German frontier. He immigrated to America by board in the 1850’s and settled in Iowa. In Germany and Bohemia neither family had owned a great deal of land or other possessions, and the trip across the ocean required most of the money that he had, so he started in Iowa, like most immigrants, as poor as the poorest of the pioneers who came to this side of the Mississippi River in search of new homes and new opportunities. Henry Beeh was thrifty and industrious, ended up owning large farms before the first generation had passed from the scene of the living.

Dr. Edward F. Beeh was reared on a farm, learned its routine of work while attending school and in 1908 graduated from the Belle Plaine High School. From there he entered the University of Iowa, at Iowa City, took his Bachelor of Science degree in 1912, doing his pre-medical work while there, and in 1914 he was graduated with his medical degree from Northwestern University School of Medicine in Chicago. He spent his internship in a hospital in Denver, Colorado, and there came under the direction of the eminent surgeon Dr. Leonard Freeman.

Dr. Edward Beeh spent one year in the war service, being stationed at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and later at Camp Lee, Petersburg, Virginia, where he was on the Base Hospital staff. He gave his professional care to a great many of the returned veterans from overseas. He was discharged, with the rank of first lieutenant, March 1, 1919.

Doctor Beeh, in 1919, then located at Fort Dodge, and practically all of his time has been taken up with his practice as a surgeon. He is on the surgical staff of Mercy Hospital in Fort Dodge. Dr. Beeh was a member of the Webster County, Iowa State and American Medical Associations, the Austin Flint Surgical Society and was a charter member of the International Surgical Assembly.

Doctor Beeh married, in 1919, Miss Ann Barrett. She was born at Macomb, Illinois, was educated in Illinois schools and colleges and was teaching at Iowa City when she and Doctor Beeh married. They had one son, Edward F., Jr., born February 15, 1928. Doctor Beeh was a member of the Corpus Christi Catholic Church of Fort Dodge, a member of the Knights of Columbus, B. P. O. Elks, Rotary Club of Fort Dodge and in politics voted independently. Dr. Beeh passed away in 1962 and is buried in the Corpus Christi Cemetery in Fort Dodge.

Source:*

A Narrative History of the People of Iowa…by Edgar Rubey Harlan , Curator of the

Historical, Memorial and Art Department of Iowa Volume IV THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL

SOCIETY, Inc. Chicago and New York. 1931

Captain S. J. Bennett - Mayor, Supervisor, Businessman

Captain S. J. Bennett came to Fort Dodge from Boone in January, 1870, and ever since his arrival has been closely identified with all the activities of the city.

Born in Orleans county. New York, he came west when a young man, spending some time in Ohio and Illinois, and finally locating in St Louis, where he remained until the breaking out of the Civil war. His war service covered a period of four years and nine months. He first enlisted in the Twenty-third Missouri Infantry, and later in Company A, Twelfth Missouri Cavalry, of which he was captain. At the close of the war, the brigades of which Captain Bennett's troops formed a part, were sent against the Indians, who were committing depredations in Wyoming. The winter of 1865-6 was spent at Fort Laramie, and in April, 1866, Captain Bennett was mustered out at Fort Leavenworth. Soon after this the surveyor general of Kansas appointed him to conduct a survey of the Solomon river region. This occupied the summer of 1866. Failing by two days to secure a contract for the survey of No Man's Land, Captain Bennett gave up surveying. Having married at Lawrence, Kansas, he soon went to Boone, Iowa, and later moved to Fort Dodge.

For a number of years, Captain Bennett engaged in the tobacco business in Fort Dodge. Then in 1884, he went west to assist his brother. Nelson Bennett, who was doing construction work on the Northern Pacific, then being built through the mountains of Montana. No sooner did he arrive on the scene of operations, than Nelson Bennett was compelled to leave for New York City, and the entire responsibility of the work was thrown upon his brother. Although new to the work, yet he completed it satisfactorily and then assumed the superintendence of the construction of the Stampede tunnel through the Cascade range, a contract which his brother had secured in the east. The work was more difficult, with its approaches, two and one-half miles in length, yet Captain Bennett completed it five days ahead of time, thus saving a heavy penalty Later he superintended the construction of still another tunnel west of the Cascades.

His railway construction work completed, he became interested in real estate in Tacoma and Portland, and was for a time first vice-president of the Tacoma street railway.

In politics Mr. Bennett was a republican. He served four years in the city council in 1885-1886, 1895-6, and was four times elected mayor in 1889. 1901, 1905, 1909. He was a member of the Webster county board of supervisors in 1878, serving until April, 1884, when he resigned to go west. He returned to Fort Dodge sometime in the mid-1890’s.

In 1898, Captain Bennett was appointed to fill the supervisor vacancy caused by the death of Mr. Julius and served until 1901. During this period he was chairman of the board of supervisors and was most instrumental in the building of the badly needed new court house. The successful completion of the new building was due to the efforts and splendid leadership of S.J. Bennett. He devoted practically his entire time to the task; and in the efficient public work, which he did, he won the approval of every loyal citizen and taxpayer of the county. In 1909, S.J. Bennett was again elected mayor, serving for a term of two years; at the close of the term he was talked of for reelection, but on account of ill health it was not deemed advisable for him to again enter the race. Mr. Bennett died at his home in Fort Dodge, May 24, 1911.

Captain S.J. Bennett gained the recognition as a loyal community servant and a man of great executive ability and generosity.

Source:

*IowaGenWeb Project…. Chapter 12 - The Mayors of Fort Dodge

Charles Blanden

1857-1933

Charles Granger Blanden was born in Marengo, Illinois in 1857. Blanden arrived in Fort Dodge in 1874, knowing little of the ties that would bond him to the town. He came here to live with his uncle, “Colonel” Blanden, who made his home where the Carver Building now stands. Charles married Elizabeth Mills in 1884 and together, they made their home in Fort Dodge for six more years. During his time in Fort Dodge, Charles Blanden was associated with the First National Bank as a teller, assistance cashier, and cashier. In 1887, he was elected mayor of Fort Dodge at the young age of thirty (30). He served as mayor for two years. During his time as mayor, Blanden was referred to as the “Baby Mayor” because of his young age.

In 1890, Charles Blanden and his wife Elizabeth moved from Fort Dodge to Chicago. Charles became Secretary of the Rialto Trust from, 1891-1923. Charles also took up an interest in the real estate business. Blanden also helped start a bank in Chicago that later became Continental Bank.

It was while he was living and working in Chicago that he gained fame as a writer and poet. Blanden became a regular contributor to the Chicago Post newspaper. He was widely known and respected as a poet, and often sponsored national poetry contests. Mr. Blanden wrote poetry for a number of years under a pen name that appeared in the Chicago Tribune and other publications. They moved to California sometime after 1927. Mrs. Elizabeth Blanden passed away in 1929, and Charles decided to build the Blanden Art Museum in her memory. It was Mrs. O.M. Oleson who persuaded Mr. Blanden into building the museum in Fort Dodge, where the couple first met. Mr. Blanden donated $40,000 to help start the construction of the art museum. E.O. Damon, a Fort Dodge architect, designed the building.

Mr. Blanden passed away in 1933 and is remembered for his devotion to literature, poetry and art.

Ed Breen

Attorney, Broadcaster, State Senator

1899-1978

Edward J. Breen was born in Estherville, Emmet County, Iowa on March 18, 1899. He became a resident of Fort Dodge in 1903 and graduated from Fort Dodge High School in 1916. Mr. Breen later attended the University of Wisconsin from which he obtained his bachelor’s degree, and Drake University from which he obtained his law degree. He married Elizabeth Loomis in 1923, who preceded him in death in 1960. In 1963, Mr. Breen married Mrs. Amelia Byram of Alexandria, Louisiana.

Active throughout his entire life in a variety of civic and cultural affairs, Edward Breen was a promoter of the Belle Kendall Memorial Playhouse, charter member of the Webster County Conservation Board, member of the Fort Dodge Betterment Foundation, member of the Fort Dodge Chamber of Commerce, member of the Fort Dodge Historical Association and chairman of the Community Chest.

Mr. Breen entered the practice of law in 1930 with his older brother, the late Maurice Breen, in Fort Dodge. He ran for and was elected to the post of Webster County Attorney in 1932 and served in that position until 1936. He also founded radio station KVFD in 1939 and the Northwest Television Company and station KQTV in 1953, an NBC affiliate.

Throughout the station's history, it competed against Des Moines NBC affiliate WHO-TV. The station changed its call sign to KVFD-TV in 1966. It moved to channel 50 in early 1977 after selling its Bradgate, Iowa transmitter and tower to Iowa Public Television (IPTV).

After only a few months of operation on channel 50, the KVFD-TV studio and transmitter were struck by a tornado on the evening of May 4, 1977. Part of the roof was torn off of the KVFD-TV studio building, and the 600 foot tower, while still standing, suffered damage at the 200 foot level. As it was no longer safe, the tower was razed later that month. Breen made plans to rebuild the transmission facilities, but he died in 1978 before any new construction began. Apparently, his heirs (or the executors of his estate) chose not to pursue his rebuilding plans, since the station's call sign was deleted by the FCC in 1981.[14] The building previously used by KVFD-TV was later sold to Iowa Central Community College.

Edward Breen was president of the Young Democratic Clubs of Iowa during the years 1933 and 1934, and was a national committeeman from 1935 until 1937. In 1936, he was elected to the Iowa Senate and served as Minority Leader during the latter portion of his first term.

Mr. Breen died at the age of 79 on June 15, 1978. In addition to his wife, he was survived by two sons, Alan V. Breen of Topeka, Kansas; Fred E. Breen of Fort Dodge; three daughters, Diane Burch of Fort Dodge; Cynthia Warner of Cedar Rapids and Susan Breen of New York City; a stepson, Dr. James Byram of Massachusetts; eleven grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

The Senate of the Sixty-Seventh General Assembly of Iowa recognized Edward Breen as an honored citizen and faithful and useful public servant, and expressed its appreciation for his service to his community, state and nation. He was also one of the first two people to be inducted into the Iowa Broadcasters Hall of Fame.

Please click the links below for Ed Breen's This is Fort Dodge, Part 1 and This is Fort Dodge Part 2 videos.

This is Fort Dodge, Part 1

This is Fort Dodge, Part 2

Ed Breen of KQTV in Fort Dodge produced these videos highlighting the businesses and people of Fort Dodge, Iowa. The production date is circa 1958 . A reference is made to the construction of the "new" Fort Dodge Senior High School, which was completed in 1958.

Please visit our Industry Page on this website for additional information about the television and radio stations.

Sources:

*Text above from 67 GA (1978) Senate Journal Memorial Resolution

*Twist and Shout, January, 2000, Wikipedia

Please click here for more information about the television and radio stations:

KQTV, later renamed KVFD-TV, was a television station in Fort Dodge, Iowa, which operated from November 23, 1953 to May 4, 1977.

Bob Brown

1928 - 2012

Bob Brown spent decades telling readers of The Messenger which teams won and who reeled in the latest trophy bass.

Brown, the paper's sports editor for nearly four decades, delivered the scores and highlights of area high school and college games. But the award-winning writer also reported on hunting and fishing in his column, Inside on the Outside, which he wrote for years after his 1993 retirement.

Bob was an avid fisherman who thoroughly enjoyed writing stories about his experiences in the great outdoors. His outdoor column, “Inside on the Outside,” was the best read and most valued outdoors column for outdoor sports enthusiasts and that went on for years after he retired from his daily duties at the newspaper.

Brown worked at the paper from 1956 to 1993, and for all but about three years of that time he was the sports editor. From 1976 to 1978, he was the paper's editor. During his stint as the Messenger’s editor, Brown interviewed two former presidents: Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. ''But none of this had the pizzazz of an Iowa-Iowa State football game, so I went back to the sports editor's job,'' Brown said in a 1993 article. ''Bob did an amazing job attending high school games and reporting Messenger and sports for 37 years,'' said Larry D. Bushman, the former publisher of The Messenger.

During his tenure at The Messenger, Brown won Associated Press sports writing awards for 11 consecutive years. He was also named the Iowa Sportswriter of the Year in 1964, 1974 and 1975. He also won the National Sportswriter of the Year Award from the Catholic Youth Organization and the Iowa High School Athletic Association Media Award. Bob Brown was very proud of his induction into the Fort Dodge Senior High School Hall of Fame. He was also a charter member of and the University of Iowa's Media Wall of Fame.

His sports column, Crowd Noise, was a North Central Iowa favorite. He passionately chronicled the exploits of hundreds of high school and college athletes. As sports editor, Bob really opened up the pages of The Messenger to sports teams from all over the area. Brown was determined to provide coverage for all sports events in northwestern Iowa. To do that, he recruited 30 to 40 correspondents who reported on games for the paper. Bob was old-school when it came to journalism. When covering the games, he wanted his part-timers to stick to the facts (who, what, where, when and why) and nothing fancy.

Bob Brown had to be the hardest working sports writer in Iowa. During football season, his routine would be to cover the Fort Dodge Dodgers, home and away, every Friday evening. He would then drive back to the office and write the article for the next day’s sports page. Then Bob would get up early the next morning and drive three hours to Iowa City, watch the Hawkeyes from the media location in the press box. Then drive three hours back to Fort Dodge and write the article on his beloved Hawkeyes for the Sunday sports page in the Messenger. He did this for decades.

Bob Brown had great enthusiasm for northwest Iowa sports and many recognized him as a true sports icon in the north central and northwest Iowa, if not the whole state. Many coaches knew him as a real promoter of the positives in athletics and a strong supporter of the athletes in the Messenger region. These coaches and sports enthusiasts in the Messenger area all held Bob in high regard. People that knew Bob or worked with him at the Messenger realized how much he cared about people whether they were athletes or not.

Bob Brown had the status of a sports editor of a major statewide newspaper but he elected to stay in Fort Dodge his whole career. He loved his community. Many knew him as a friend and an incredibly positive and loyal person.

Brown was certainly a treasure trove of information on people involved in athletics in Fort Dodge, but sports were not the only thing that interested Brown. He was also intrigued by the history of the region. He frequently visited the Webster County Historical Society archives in the Fort Dodge Public Library. Brown authored two history books, ''The Spirit Lake Massacre: Northwest Iowa's Greatest Tragedy'' and ''Echoes from Middle Iowa's Historic Past.''

Bob Brown was born in Omaha, Nebraska on May 13, 1928. Shortly after, his parents moved to Fort Dodge when Bob he was 6 months old. He attended Fort Dodge Senior High School, where he played football, basketball and baseball and where he humbly stated; ''I played football, basketball and baseball with a notable lack of ability.''

After graduating from high school in 1946, he enlisted in the Army and served in Korea. Upon returning to civilian life he attended Fort Dodge Junior College; Cornell College, in Mount Vernon; and William Jewell College, in Liberty, Mo.; before attending Drake University from where he and graduated.

His first Fort Dodge job was with TV station KQTV. He also worked for radio station KVFD in Fort Dodge. Brown joined The Messenger in April 1956, as sports editor. He retired in 1993.

Brown, whose final column appeared in The Messenger in 2011, died at Tompkins Memorial Health Center at Friendship Haven in Fort Dodge on January 10, 2012. He was survived by Nan, his wife of almost 60 years, sons Rick Brown, Randy Brown, and Roger Brown, and daughter Renee Brown.

Terry Hersom, retired sports editor of the Sioux City Journal and good fishing friend of Bob Brown said it best. “No one, and I do mean no one, will match what Bob did for the Fort Dodge Messenger or Iowa sports writing in general. Maybe someone has covered as many high school and college games as this Korean War veteran, but no one has done it with the panache and skill and respect of his readers that Bob Brown, Master Angler, has done.”

Sources:

*The Fort Dodge Messenger-News - By Bill Shea, Editor and Eric Pratt, Sports Editor

*Sioux City Journal – by Terry Hersom, Sports Editor

Jane Burleson

1928-Present

Jane Burleson is the first woman and the first African-American to serve on the Fort Dodge City Council. She has worn all the titles well as one of the best-known, respected and beloved residents in Fort Dodge’s history. No one has served on the City Council longer than her 24-year tenure.

Jane was a union activist a volunteer, a church leader, a civil rights leader, a City Council member and a lifelong Democrat. She was also known as a great cook, according to those who know her well — especially those who have enjoyed her sweet potato pie.

Jane Burleson believed very strong in the important of voting and was a very strong advocate for getting people out to vote and do their constitutional duty. As a lifelong Democrat, who, at the age of 88, worked a 12-hour shift on the last presidential election day, helping people register to vote. Jane stated, “You need to keep pushing, your vote does count. It’s like playing the lottery; you can’t win if you don’t play.” She also served as a Democratic caucus leader. Both are roles in which she has served for decades.

Calvin Coolidge was in the White House when Jane was born in Fort Dodge to Otavia Bivens Jones Dukes and William Kelly Jones. She was born in 1928 — as she is quick to point out, the year before Martin Luther King. She grew up in what she still calls “The Flats” in southwest Fort Dodge, attending school at Pleasant Valley, Wahkonsa, Junior High and Senior High.

She left high school to marry at age 17 (later earning credits to get her diploma). After separating from her husband, Charles Turner, she moved to Chicago to work in a packing plant. They had a son, Charles, who tragically died in 1974.

In 1948 Burleson returned to Fort Dodge to care for her ailing father. He died soon after, and she was hired that year by the Tobin Packing Plant, which Hormel purchased five years later. It was a good fit. In her 33 years at Tobin and Hormel, she worked in the sliced bacon department, sausage production line and eventually on the cut floor, and became involved in union activities, serving as secretary for the Local 31, United Packinghouse Workers of North America.

“In looking back about Jane, she always had a sense of identity and purpose in life and at work,” said Gary Ray, who joined Hormel in Fort Dodge in 1968, rose to corporate positions in Austin, Minnesota. “Her good nature and attitude at work would carry over to the other people on the line. Jane always had a lot of positive energy and excitement about her that you enjoyed being around.”

Jane married Walter Burleson at First United Methodist Church in 1954. He had been in the restaurant business and also worked at the state liquor store, and was the first black person to serve on a jury in Webster County. He died in 2011.

Jane Burleson has been heavily involved in civil rights, locally and nationally, for more than five decades.

“Jane devoted a substantial part of her life seeking justice and fairness for all individuals of this great country of ours regardless of the color of that person’s skin or religious beliefs,” said Al Habhab, who met her in 1960 soon after he was first elected mayor of Fort Dodge.

“Jane came to my office to call to my attention specific instances of discrimination,” said Habhab, who served 14 years as mayor and later was a District Court judge and Iowa Court of Appeals justice. “Her presentation was excellent and meaningful and directly to the point. I looked into discrimination in housing and based on state and federal legislation, our City Council adopted anti-discrimination legislation that is still the law of this land. Jane’s perseverance hastened its adoption. But this is but a small part of her accomplishments.”

When the Hormel plant closed in 1981, she joined the Fort Dodge Community School District as a special education teacher’s aide. That was the year of her first foray into elective politics when she ran for a seat on the Fort Dodge City Council.

Jane lost her first attempt, but she ran again in 1983 and was elected. On the council, she recalled with a smile, “there were seven of us and six of them were men. They gave me hell but I gave them hell right back.”

“Today, Fort Dodge is much more receptive to black residents than it was then. We’ve come a long way. We are much more open today.” she said.

Burleson was a role model for young people in Fort Dodge especially blacks, recalled Charles Clayton, executive director of Athletics for Education and Success. “When I was growing up, she was one of the few we had who was an advocate for you — just as long as you do the right thing.” Clayton recalled a time when he was “running my mouth” as a seventh- or eighth-grader while attending a football game at Dodger Stadium. “Here comes Jane, marching right up to me and reading me the riot act. She even knew my mom’s name and I straightened up right away. Jane was always somewhere around, always to give good advice.”

Sherry Washington, an organizer of Black History Month in Fort Dodge, shares the feeling: “Mama Jane is such a beautiful woman. She inspires me in so many ways. Her strength, knowledge and nurturing is superb. Her guidance and encouragement directed some of my political involvement — always encouraging and conversing on so many topics. I always love hearing her funny stories — there is never a dull moment. And I love her for loving me — dear Mama Jane, there will never be another.”

Washington said she was encouraged by Burleson to run for the Democratic Party’s 4th Congressional District Affirmative Action Chair and State Platform Delegate, both of which Washington is currently seated.

During her years of political involvement, Burleson has been active as a volunteer at the polls and during the caucuses and has attended numerous district and state Democratic conventions. She was selected to be an at-large delegate at the Democratic National Convention in New York City in 1980, but injuries from a car accident prevented her from going.

She recalls the many presidential candidates who have visited the city, including John F. Kennedy’s visit in 1960. She’s met Jimmy Carter, Jesse Jackson and Bill Clinton. After Clinton spoke in Fort Dodge, Burleson said, she moved forward toward the stage to get his autograph. A Secret Service agent intervened and said she could go no further. She recalled with a smile, “I told the agent, ‘I’m his maid, ask him to sign my card.’ And he did.”

Jimmy Carter came to Fort Dodge as president and had prescribed the 55 mph and other energy-saving programs to conserve energy. He encouraged Americans to turn down the heat and wear sweaters in their homes as he was doing so in the White House to set a good example. His mother, Lillian, accompanied him and Burleson got a chance to meet her, recalled Daryl Beall, former state senator. “Jane got a kick out of Miss Lillian, who was chilled at an event and wanted a sweater. ‘I don’t care what Jimmy says. Turn up the heat,’ Lillian Carter quipped to Jane.”

Judge Brown, who taught at Iowa Central Community College and Fort Dodge Senior High, has admired her greatly since he came to Fort Dodge in 1977. He said Burleson has played key roles locally in the Martin Luther King birthday celebration and Black History Month.

“She obviously enjoys being a public servant,” he said. “She loves politics. She wants people to be involved in politics. Don’t sit back, she’ll tell you, get out there and act.”

In 2013, Burleson was inducted into the Iowa African American Hall of Fame. She helped to launch Fort Dodge’s Martin Luther King Scholarship Committee, served as president of the Fort Dodge A. Philip Randolph Institute, and has been involved with the League of Women Voters and the Democratic Party. She has served her church, Coppin Chapel African Methodist Episcopal, for more than 50 years. She received the Cristine Wilson Medal for Equality and Justice in 2006. In 2002, she was named the Citizen of the Year in Fort Dodge.

After spending the majority of her life in Fort Dodge, Jane Burleson moved to Arizona in the Spring of 2017. She looked forward to her next adventure in Arizona, where she is relaxing in the sunshine and continue her passion of doing crossword puzzles.

Said Beall, “Frankly, I cannot imagine our community without Jane. She has been such an integral part of Fort Dodge for years in her church, city government, schools, labor, and Democratic politics.”

“Jane always had discerning tastes for people. She has always met people of all social, economic, ethnic and spiritual strata equally well. She is as at home at the country club as she is at the union hall. Jane is a beautiful human being.”

Jane Burleson said goodbye to the city she loves and has served so well. But when she departed her native Fort Dodge for the warmer climate of Arizona, where she is living with relatives, it will be with the promise that she will one day return.

“It’s going to be kind of hard, but I’ll do it,” she said. “Life is about new experiences. Here I am 88 years old and I need new experiences. I’ll miss the people and my friends, but I’ll get a chance to come home sometime.”

Source:

*The Messenger … March 5, 2017

J.B. Butler

Settling in Fort Dodge with his family in 1868, J.B. Butler brought to this town devotion for public welfare and relentless effort for the betterment of our community. J.B. Butler taught country school in his early years and served as a county superintendent. After studying law, Butler was admitted to the bar in 1897. In 1898, he founded a farm loan and real estate business which he ran in Fort Dodge for 48 years until his death in 1940.

Butler was a member of the Fort Dodge school board for 27 years and was one of the first presidents of the Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber of Commerce recognized his efforts by making him an honorary president in 1938.

Mr. Butler also served on the state board of control of state institutions and as chairperson of the board for two years. Although deeply dedicated to the public realm, Mr. Butler cherished the time he spent with family. Butler Elementary School was named in J.B. Butler’s honor.

Source: The People Who Made A Difference, Twist and Shout, January, 2000

Chief Justice Mark Cady

July 12, 1953 – November 15, 2019

Mark was born July 12, 1953, in Rapid City, South Dakota to Kenneth and Suzanne Cady. Mark had an older brother, Roger Cady, and two younger sisters, Katherine Schroeder and Karen Kochis. Because Mark’s father was a manager of many Sears stores, Mark and his family moved throughout the Midwest during their upbringing. Mark graduated from Austin High School in Austin, Minnesota in 1971. After high school, Mark followed his older brother, Roger, to Drake University where he earned both his undergraduate and law degrees. He was on Drake University’s wrestling team as an undergraduate student. During his college years, Mark worked in an ice cream factory in Cleveland, Ohio, where his parents lived. He often worked the overnight shift. This job provided necessary funds to support Mark’s education, as well as providing Mark with very valuable real-world work experience. He appreciated his co-workers and the hard jobs they had.

Mark worked in the Iowa Attorney General’s office during his law school years. It was in law school where Mark met great friends who were with him the remainder of his life, including the love of his life, Rebecca (Becky).

Mark’s first job was as a caddie at the Austin, Minnesota Country Club during his high school years. Playing golf remained a favorite pastime throughout his life. As an Iowa Supreme Court Justice, Mark often played in the annual “Dean’s Cup” - Drake Law School vs. U of Iowa Law School Golf Tournament. This tournament raised funds for Iowa Legal Aid, helping to provide legal services to low income Iowans. Following Justice Cady’s death, the tournament was renamed the “Cady Cup” and the friendly rivalry continues to raise much needed funds for Iowans.

Mark moved to Fort Dodge, Iowa in 1978. Mark and Becky married May 22, 1982, in Des Moines, Iowa, and Becky joined him in Fort Dodge. Mark and Becky raised their two children Kelsi Fraser and Spencer Cady at their home in Fort Dodge.

Mark’s first job as an attorney was clerking for District Court Judge Albert Habhab in Fort Dodge. Judge Habhab recognized the exceptional qualities Mark exhibited and was a life-long supporter of Mark. Mark later joined the Mitchell, Coleman, Perkins and Enke Law Firm in Fort Dodge , where he practiced law for a number of years.

Mark started his thirty-seven years as a public servant at the young age of twenty nine, when he was appointed as an Associate District Judge in 1983. At that time, he was the youngest judge ever appointed to that position in Iowa. Because Mark was such a talented, smart and hard-working judge, he quickly gained the respect of his colleagues and ascended up the ranks in the Iowa Judicial System. Within three years he became a District Court Judge, and later, a Court of Appeals Judge; then Chief of Court of Appeals. In 1998, he was appointed an Iowa Supreme Court Justice, and ultimately appointed Chief Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court by the members of the court in 2011.

Mark was a thoughtful and fair jurist who dedicated his profession to the pursuit of fair and equal justice. He often took the Iowa Supreme Court “On the Road”, holding actual court hearings in different cities throughout Iowa so that all Iowans had the opportunity to see firsthand how the court system worked. He also established specialty courts that focused on helping businesses, people who struggle with drug addiction or family problems and improving the judiciary system technology.

Mark was a humble, caring, and kind individual to everyone he encountered. The main love of his life was his family. Mark was a proud and loving husband to his wife Becky, father to his children Kelsi and Spencer, and grandfather to his four granddaughters, Brynn and Kinley Fraser, and Corah and Cameryn Cady. He coached his children’s athletic teams, often making the drive from Des Moines to be at their games and then driving back to Des Moines late at night in order to be at work early the next morning. Mark was a caring neighbor and friend to many in the community of Fort Dodge. Even when Mark was serving as the Chief Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, in Fort Dodge people just knew him as Mark. He had a naturally modest nature and was the kind of man who displayed no sense of superiority or hubris.

Mark was an accomplished amateur “Do-It-Your-Selfer”.

He was known for his excellent carpentry, construction

and renovation skills. He was also a die-hard Iowa Cubs baseball fan, supporting them throughout the years.

Justice Cady also deeply appreciated the Bar Association of Webster County. He attended almost all of its meetings, despite working in Des Moines the majority of the time. Justice Cady felt very strongly that the Webster County Bar Association’s support enabled him to progress throughout his career. He and his wife Becky maintained their Fort Dodge home until after his death.

Chief Justice Cady led the Iowa Supreme Court through some very tough times for the judiciary with grace, honor, humility, wisdom and compassion. He was recognized by his peers as one of the most careful decision-makers during his time on the court. Justice Cady would ponder every case, often questioning his colleagues on the court to gain greater insight and understanding. He was usually the last to cast his vote. Chief Justice Cady cared only about achieving greater justice in the state of Iowa. He didn’t mind who got the credit – in fact, he wanted the credit dispersed among everyone in the judiciary. Justice Cady had a way of appealing to basic principles of justice while maintaining that the “spirit of the law” not be lost in the application of the law. For Chief Justice Cady, it was “no Iowan left behind.” This wasn’t just something he championed in his legal rulings- he lived the same way. No matter what one’s job or position in life, Justice Cady always saw people for their value. His mantra was “Equal Justice for All,” and he followed the Constitution and espoused the belief that every person is entitled to fair and just treatment. His fellow justices praised him as a thoughtful jurist; one who examined and researched all sides of the issue and how the issue is addressed by the Court. As the Chief Justice for the Iowa Supreme Court, Mark Cady was a champion of the Constitution and strongly believed that the Iowa courts had to be the primary guardian of the civil rights of all Iowans.

The Drake University Cady Law Opportunity Fellow Program selects five high achieving first year students from underrepresented backgrounds to participate in this program. Sponsoring firms and businesses provide internships and mentorships to the Cady Fellow. This program is dedicated to increasing diversity in Iowa’s legal and business community.

Perhaps the most noteworthy of Justice Cady’s writings was the opinion on the Varnum v Brien case. This was a 2009 Iowa Supreme Court case in which the Court unanimously held that the state's limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples violated the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution. The case had the effect of legally recognizing same-sex marriage in Iowa. Justice Cady wrote the Iowa Supreme Court’s opinion. At the time, the ruling made Iowa only the third state in the nation to permit same-sex marriage.

Before the ruling was announced, it wasn’t known who was writing the opinion (not even his Mark’s wife). Justice Cady worked on the opinion for over six months, knowing it was a controversial case, he treated the issue with the utmost respect, fairness and jurisprudence. The opinion was supported unanimously by all the Supreme Court justices. Unfortunately, because the ruling was so emotionally and politically charged, Justice Cady and his family were barraged with negative criticism, including threats from individuals who vehemently disagreed with the ruling. Many of Mark’s colleagues greatly respected him for his leadership, valor and willingness to take the “slings and arrows” from the antagonists who adamantly fought against gay marriage.

On November 15, 2019, Justice Mark Cady suffered a heart attack and tragically died while running with his dog, Lucy, in his Des Moines neighborhood. Mark Cady was just 66 years of age when he passed.

At the time of his death, Justice Cady was serving in the prestigious role of President of the Conference of Chief Justices. Just days after Mark passed away, he and his wife Becky were to have attended an event in Washington DC that honored U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist.

Justice Cady was presented with many awards, both during his life and posthumously. He also served on many local and national boards and led initiatives for justice during his career.

The Cady Initiative for Family Justice: This initiative guides courts toward improved outcomes for families while managing costs, controlling delays and facilitating healthy outcomes. This initiative recognizes the evolving nature of the family it the family’s changing needs. It also addresses a somewhat high turnover rate for court personnel who work on challenging family cases. The Cady Initiative also identifies automated processes, assisted forms and alternative legal representation models that equip families with the understanding to navigate the legal process. By providing families the services they need so they sped less money on litigation and less time in court, parties will feel more satisfied with the justice system when it serves them more efficiently.

The Cady Cup: Annual golf tournament between Drake Law School graduates and University of Iowa Law School graduates; raised funds for Iowa Legal aid to support low income Iowans

The Cady Day of Public Service: Hosted by Drake University, this event honors the life and legacy of Justice Cady and his commitment to public service, access to justice and civil rights. Attorneys and others throughout the state are invited to join in pro bono service or service to the public

Iowa State Bar Association Award of Merit 2020

Iowa Department of Human Rights 2020 Cristine Wilson Medal for Equality and Justice

Friend of the First Amendment Award: presented posthumously by the Iowa Freedom of Information Council (First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances).

Friend of the County Award: Presented by Iowa County Supervisors

Chairman of the National Center for State Courts Board of Directors.

President of the Conference of Chief Justices.

Chair of the National Center for State Courts board of directors.

Adjunct faculty member at Buena Vista University: Justice Cady taught Business Law at Buena Vista University’s Fort Dodge campus (where students often said to state that his class was their favorite).

Helped establish the Iowa Access to Justice Commission

Annual Rebuilding Justice Award. Presented by the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, recognizing Justice Cady for establishing practices in family courts that led to better pathways for families across the country.

Published articles in Drake Law Review

Polk County Women Attorney’s Award (PCWA) Willie Steven Glanton Award. Willie Glanton was the 2nd black woman to practice law in Iowa.

Hero of the Week Award

Iowa Association for Justice 2016 Judicial Achievement Award

Justice Cady was recognized for bringing forward new ideas, such as digital messaging for defendants and law enforcement, and rotating Supreme Court hearings around the State of Iowa.

Justice Cady received numerous achievement and leadership awards from Drake University, Buena Vista

University and additional recognition from legal entities such as the Iowa State Bar Association, American Bar Association, Iowa Judges Association and Iowa Academy of Trial Lawyers, among many others.

Sources:

The Fort Dodge Messenger

The Des Moines Register

The Drake Law Review

Freeman Journal

Iowa Judicial Branch

Drake University

Drake Law School

Becky Cady

Cyrus C. Carpenter

Cyrus C. Carpenter was Iowa's eighth governor. As a county land surveyor, military officer, governor, and U.S. congressman, Cyrus Carpenter was a prominent figure in Fort Dodge history. Born in 1829 to Asahel and Amanda Carpenter in Hartford, Pennsylvania, Cyrus was one of eight children, of whom only 4 survived past infancy. The Carpenter name was renowned in the Hartford area due to Cyrus’ grandfather being regarded as one of Hartford’s “founding fathers.”

After the death of Cyrus’ parents – Asahel in 1842 and Amanda in 1843 – Cyrus and his brothers lived with various relatives in the Hartford area. Cyrus Carpenter was educated in the common schools in Pennsylvania and at the Hartford Academy. He attended school for three to four months a year, teaching in the winters and working on a farm in summers to pay the Hartford Academy where he attended school. Education was always a necessity for Mr. Carpenter. In 1849, Cyrus taught school at the Hartford Academy. He left the academy in 1851 and moved westward, out of Pennsylvania. He stopped in Johnstown, Ohio, where he taught in a nearby country school. By 1854 Carpenter had grown restless, and like many other Ohioans, he packed his belongings and left for Iowa.

Carpenter’s journey to Iowa included traveling by foot and stagecoach across Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois; by steamboat to Muscatine; by stagecoach to Iowa City; and by foot to Fort Des Moines.Although Fort Des Moines was regarded as a growing community, Carpenter was unable to find employment. Despite the promise of the growing community at Fort Des Moines, he found jobs scarce. After hearing of Fort Dodge 85 miles to the north, he struck out on foot for the northern fort. He found work as a surveyor on his first day in the small Iowa frontier town that would remain his home for the rest of his life. In 1854, an effort was made to have a school and C. C. Carpenter was employed as Fort Dodge’s first school teacher and he helped opened the first school in Fort Dodge. During this period, Carpenter also studied law with hopes to land in the profession one day.

In 1855 Carpenter won his first public office as county surveyor. In addition to his surveying work, he soon became involved in the activities of the expanding Iowa Republican Party. In March 1857 Carpenter offered his assistance to the relief expedition to aid the settlers who had been attacked by Sioux renegades near Spirit Lake. By the conclusion of the relief expedition, Carpenter had become a fixture in the community's social and political life. In the fall of 1857 the Republicans of the district that included Fort Dodge had taken notice and nominated Carpenter as their representative to the Iowa General Assembly. Despite strong competition from Democrat John F. Duncombe, Carpenter won the election.

​During the Civil War, he was commissioned a captain, and rose through the ranks to colonel. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Carpenter was appointed Commissary of Subsistence, responsible for feeding Union troops. His orders included supervising the feeding of the Army of the Mississippi under the direction of General Pope in preparation for the advance on Corinth. He also served under Generals Rosecrans, Dodge, Grant, and Logan. On a 20-day furlough, he married his longtime sweetheart, Susan Kate Burkholder, in Fort Dodge on March 14, 1864.

At the conclusion of the Civil War, Carpenter was elected register of the State Land Office and served two terms dealing with public domain and land title issues. With the Republican Party well entrenched in Iowa after the Civil War, Carpenter's political capital grew, culminating in his nomination for governor at the Republican Party State Convention in 1871. Carpenter won the election by a majority of over 40,000 votes. He was reelected in 1873. A highly popular governor, Carpenter is remembered for pushing to produce more industry in the state. He advocated for education at the State University and its great department in agriculture. As Governor of Iowa, he risked alienating powerful forces in his party by promoting railroad regulation, and he signed Iowa's Granger Law of 1874. The "Granger laws" which regulated railroad legislation were passed, and problems involving farmers and discriminating rates were also dealt with by Governor Carpenter.

After leaving the Governor’s office, Carpenter continued to stay active in public service. He accepted an appointment as Second Comptroller in the U.S. Treasury Department and subsequently, in 1878, as railroad commissioner. He also served two terms as a U.S. congressman (1879-1883), one term in the Iowa General Assembly (1884-1885), and several years as Fort Dodge's postmaster. As a congressman, he was a vocal supporter of an unsuccessful effort to raise the Department of Agriculture to cabinet level and a successful effort to divide Iowa into two judicial districts. Otherwise, he seldom participated in House debates.

After retiring from public service in the later years of his life, Cyrus Carpenter was engaged in the management of his farm and in the real-estate business in Fort Dodge. Cyrus Clay Carpenter succumbed to a recurring kidney ailment at his home in Fort Dodge at the age of 68. Governor Cyrus C. Carpenter died on May 29, 1898, and was buried in the Oakland Cemetery in Fort Dodge, Iowa.

Sources:

*University of Iowa – Iowa Press Digital Editions

Steven & Demetra Constantine

Steve: 1894-1991

Demetra: 1912-2004

Steve Constantine was born in 1894 in Niata, Greece, (near Sparta); one of ten children. At the age of 15, traveling alone and speaking no English, he immigrated to the United States in 1910. Constantine travelled by horseback from his home to Leonidion where he boarded a small boat that took him to the port city, Piraus. Then, an 18-day trip on the steamship Athena brought him to Ellis Island where he entered the United States. Unable to speak a word of English, Steve Constantine then travelled by train for eight days on the Great Western railway wearing an identification tag around his neck. Steve ended up in Omaha and spent a few days with distant Greek relatives before moving on to Fremont, Nebraska, to live with his brother.

Steve stayed in Fremont for a short period of time, then returned to Omaha where other family members had settled. He worked in his relatives’ candy and ice cream store in Omaha for two and a half years. He learned English with the help of a school teacher who spent her summers working in the store.

In 1913, Steve and his brother, John, from Fremont, Nebraska, learned of the availability of a store in Fort Dodge. They saw an opportunity and together they bought the store and set it up to make candy and ice cream. The first store was named “Olympia.” They also sold fresh fruit.

During their early years in Fort Dodge, Steve and his brother John were young men far away from their family and friends in Greece. They suffered from loneliness. Many believe it was these feelings of loneliness and memories of family that made Steve a very considerate and kind person. He was known in Fort Dodge as a friend to people of all ages and a “listening post” for many troubled people. He never violated a confidence.

Nine years later in 1922, the Constantine brothers were joined by a third brother, Chris, who had recently arrived from Greece. The three brothers moved the store’s location to the southeast corner of Central Avenue and 9th Street and changed the name to “Constantine’s”.

In 1925, Steve became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

Demetra Gearas Constantine was born in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1912; the daughter of Greek immigrants. She graduated from Morningside College with degrees in English and literature. She also took summer courses at the University of Southern California and the University of Colorado. Following graduation, Demetra taught elementary school for eight years and then became a case worker for the Dallas Chapter of the American Red Cross in Texas during World War II. She was later transferred to the national headquarters in Washington, D. C., where she served as an employment officer until six months after World War II. Demetra returned to Sioux City after the war and worked for the T. S. Martin Company, a department store and dry goods store.

Highly educated, Demetra enjoyed teaching and especially enjoyed children. She wrote numerous children’s stories and she was particularly fond of writing poetry.

Demetra married her husband, Steve Constantine in 1949. They had known each other for many years, having met at events at the Greek Orthodox Church in Sioux City. They joked that all the Greeks in Iowa knew one another. After they married, she joined Steve and his family in the restaurant.

As Constantine’s restaurant grew over the years, it eventually employed other family members. Constantine’s sold homemade chocolates, English toffee, and ice cream and baked goods. The restaurant was also known for its delicious lunch counter meals, especially their delicious French fries and cherry phosphate drinks, which made it a populate hangout for teenagers after school. Demetra believed the business grew and was successful because they lived by the mantra “the customer is always right”.

Demetra was always sorry that Steve and his brothers weren’t able to further their education, but Steve pointed out that in his youth in Greece, and again as an immigrant in America, it was a case of “Go to school and starve, or go to work and eat!” He chose to eat – and to help others eat.

Demetra, besides working in the restaurant, was very active in the community, serving on numerous organizations and boards including the Civic Music Club, the Women’s Club, the American Association of University Women, American Red Cross, Ingelside, P.E.O. and the Blanden Memorial Art Museum board of directors. Her priorities were St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, family and friends. She considered her church her first priority because she believed her faith would be with her forever. She and her husband Steve had no children of their own, and because of that, they treasured their extended family and friends all through their lives.

Steve passed away in 1991 and Demetra died in 2004 at the age of 92 and was buried in North Lawn Cemetery in Fort Dodge.

Constantine’s was an iconic restaurant in downtown Fort Dodge for over five decades. It closed in 1970. A restaurant at the location then operated for another ten years as Gill’s, under the ownership of Floyd Gill.

Sources:

*Fort Dodge Messenger

*Des Moines Register

*Fort Dodge Today Magazine

Fred N. Cooper1896-1947

Fred Cooper had an exceptional ability to work with people, and his ability earned him great respect from the community. Fred N. Cooper was born in Detroit, Michigan. He graduated from the Indianapolis College of Physical Education and then enrolled at the University of Michigan where he studied for a few months until he left to join the army during World War I. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant. Cooper served 28 months in the field artillery, 14 months of which was overseas in France. Following the war, he was employed briefly in a Detroit automobile plant and then returned to school.

In 1923, Mr. Cooper settled in Fort Dodge to take the job of physical director and athletic coach. He coached football, wrestling and track, producing many winning teams during his years with Fort Dodge High School. Coach Cooper coached the Dodger wrestling team to 9 state championships and 8 state runners-up. He coached 28 individual state champions, numerous collegiate all-Americans and Olympians. He remained in Fort Dodge until 1945. While in Fort Dodge, Cooper also served as vice commander of the eighth district American Legion and commander of the Fort Dodge Legion post.

Many of Coach Cooper’s athletes were named to All-State teams. In researching Coach Cooper, athletes last names such as Gargano, Muhl, Kuhn, Isaacson, Flowers, Brokaw, Gawtry, Castignoli, Heileman, Messerly, Bickford and Pickett often appeared. These are names of athletes who excelled for many generations to follow.

Mr. Cooper received his master’s degree through a summer program offered by the University of Iowa. Mr. Cooper was named athletic director of FDSH and the junior college in 1930. When named Athletic Director, newspapers stated of Cooper that he was:

“One of the best wrestling coaches in America, and president of both state and national high school mat associations, Mr. Cooper will meet the unanimous approval of students, parents and Dodger athletic fans. He is a competent football coach and has a thorough knowledge of all sports. Not only is he respected and admired, but he is immensely popular with hundreds of boys in his gym classes and on his teams, by his fellow faculty members, and by everyone else with whom he has come into contact during his seven years in Fort Dodge.”

Cooper also served as football and wrestling coach and physical training instructor. Under Cooper’s leadership as Athletic Director, lights were added to the football field (Duncombe Field) in 1930 at a cost of $4,250 (approximately $65,000 in 2019 dollars), which allowed the games to be played at night. Also in 1930, 170 boys (1/3 of the total enrollment in the high school), went out for Fort Dodge High School and Junior College football.

Coach Cooper was a strict disciplinarian. He required attendance at all practices and in order to ensure players were at practice, he had each player sign in with his thumbprint next to his name on the roster. This prevented players from signing in for a team member. The consequences of forging a thumbprint were probably more severe than being absent from practice. The Associated Press got hold of this story, and it was carried nationally. Local Fort Dodge resident John Haire, in school in Pennsylvania at the time, reported reading this story in Pennsylvania.

Another story that is part of the Fred Cooper “lore” involved a student athlete who had misbehaved in class. His teacher called Cooper, then Athletic Director and coach, to the classroom to discipline the boy.

Coach Cooper took the student out in hall and began reprimanding him. The students left behind in the classroom suddenly heard a loud banging against the lockers in the hallway. They knew their fellow student was really in trouble with Coach Cooper, and also knew that they had better behave in class. As time went on, it turned out that all Coach Cooper wanted to do was set an example with the misbehaving student – Cooper hadn’t banged the student up against the locker, but had banged his own hands against the lockers to create a loud ruckus and to let the other students know that “he meant business.”

Each year, a charity football game was held, often manned by former football players who had graduated from Fort Dodge High School. Proceeds from the game would benefit the Community Chest, the welfare association, the school administration and other local charitable organizations in order to provide food, clothing and shelter to the needy. Tickets were fifty cents; the local team would play local freshmen football college teams. It was reported that no complimentary tickets were given out, and the event played to a full house. At the 1931 Charity football game (played against Drake University’s freshmen team), French dignitaries presented the Croix de Guerre to the Fort Dodge American Legion Drum Corps. The Croix de Guerre was a medal that honored the million French heroes of WWI and was presented to French military allies. 3,367 people attended this game, and raised $1,700 for charity ($32,355 in 2019 dollars).

Coach Cooper knew how to “get the job done”. He was a “do-er”, and his students and athletes knew they could depend upon him. Coach Cooper always wore a suit, further emphasizing the respect he held for his position and the level of respect he expected from his students and athletes.

Sometimes, transportation for the athletes wasn’t available for sporting events. Coach Cooper coached during the Great Depression, and resources were scarce. In 1934, for example, Coach Cooper appealed to the public to drive the wrestlers to a meet in Sac City. The school would provide the gasoline and oil for the trip and admittance to the meet for the drivers. He was often known to be “in the trenches” with his athletes. One year, Coach Cooper broke two ribs while wrestling with a student during practice!

In 1945, after the Boys Training School in Eldora experienced a riot following the beating death of one of its boys and the escape of 179 of its residents, Iowa Governor Robert Blue implored Cooper to take the position of Superintendent of the Boys Training School, knowing that Cooper’s ability to work with youth would be a great benefit to the troubled boys who had been sent there. Cooper accepted the position; there were 500 boys in residence when Cooper became superintendent.

Cooper immediately began enacting changes in protocol for the school. He understood that many boys often got into trouble because of very difficult home lives, lack of parental care and lack of any sort of guidance as they were growing up. He cited examples of the “toughest of the toughies” who broke down and cried when they never received a letter. Cooper also stated that the communities from which these boys hailed should not forget them. He complimented those community members who would take these troubled boys on outings and give them a reprieve from the difficulties they were experiencing.

Cooper immediately banned corporal punishment at the school and asked that a psychiatrist be available to the boys. He also noted that due to WWII, many of these boys were from homes where the father had lost his life in the war, causing poverty and often dysfunction in the homes with a single mother raising children alone. He believed that the communities and society owed it to these children to help them grow up.

Cooper made many positive changes in the Eldora facility in two short years: he changed it from its basic military format to a civilian format; boys were allowed to attend church, those boys whose rehabilitation was considered to be hopeless were sent to the Anamosa reformatory; instructional and recreational programs that were instituted gave boys the opportunity to participate in more activities. Awards in these activities included trips to state athletic events, circuses and other entertainment features. Cooper was frequently praised for his work in these areas by judges and other officials.

Mr. Cooper stood firm on the belief that “there are no truly bad boys.” Mr. Cooper worked all hours, hardly having any time for sleep. In the first three months in the position in Eldora, Mr. Cooper’s weight dropped from 192 to 178 pounds. It is thought that Mr. Cooper’s relentless devotion to his job triggered his premature death from a heart attack in 1947.

In 1952, The Fred N. Cooper Elementary School in Fort Dodge was named in his honor. Mr. Cooper was married and had three children: Fred Cooper, Joe Cooper and Carolyn Mulholland (of Fort Dodge). Sixty-four years following his death and in honor of his amazing success as a wrestling coach, Coach Fred Cooper was elected to the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2015.

Sources:

*The Messenger

*The Des Moines Register

*Little Dodger

*www.fdschools.org

Lorenzo Stephen Coffin

(April 9, 1823–January 17, 1915)

Lorenzo S. Coffin became known as one of the most honored sons of the Hawkeye state because of his leadership and efforts as a reformer and as a man of great integrity who was committed to helping his fellow man.

Lorenzo Coffin was a successful farmer, agricultural leader, social reformer, and humanitarian. He was born on April 9, 1823 in Alton, New Hampshire. The son of a farmer and Baptist clergyman, he was educated at a local academy and went on to Oberlin College in Ohio. His religious upbringing and his exposure to the social reform ideas that dominated at Oberlin during the 1840s molded his thinking and activities for the rest of his life. Coffin’s home in Ohio was a station on the famous Underground Railroad when slavery existed in the land and his strong abolition principles led him to ally himself with the Republican Party when it was formed to prevent the further extension of slavery.

In 1854 Coffin decided to move to Iowa to pursue the economic opportunity afforded as lands were just being opened for white settlement. Coffin acquired 160 acres by preemption near Fort Dodge. The new land was not kind to Coffin. His wife died shortly after his arrival, and he lost his first crops to prairie fires and grasshoppers. For 17 years he lived in the same small cabin.

With the outbreak of the Civil War, Coffin, moved by abolitionist fervor, volunteered for service and was assigned to the 32nd Iowa Infantry. He advanced rapidly up the ranks from private to sergeant, receiving special recognition for his bravery and leadership. Later he was appointed regimental chaplain.

After the Civil War, Coffin returned to farming. His farm, Willow Edge, became one of the showplaces of progressive farming. He achieved great success in stock raising, introducing pure-bred varieties of hogs, sheep, cattle, and horses, and he was recognized for his efforts by being elected president of the Iowa Breeders Association.

While successfully conducting his private business affairs, Mr. Coffin never confines his efforts selfishly to his work. From 1859 to 1876 he used to leave his home Sunday mornings very early and on horseback would ride to different parts of the county, where no minister was sent, and preach the Gospel. He would often ride forty miles and in return never received a dollar in pay, doing it all for the benefit of his fellowmen, during which time he also conducted a great many funerals.

In 1872 he became one of the first farm editors for the Fort Dodge Messenger. When Iowa organized farm institutes, Coffin was one of the first to travel around the state giving lectures on agricultural topics. When farmers began to organize politically, Coffin held leadership roles, first in local and state agricultural societies, and later in the Grange and farmer Alliance movements. He was instrumental in organizing farmer-related cooperatives: creameries, a farmer mutual insurance company, and a farmer-owned barbed wire factory.

Coffin's interests broadened when the state, in an attempt to attract settlers and to encourage economic growth, established an immigration board in 1870. Coffin was chosen as one of the board's first recruiting agents. In the 1870s he became a land agent for the Des Moines River Navigation Company and later for the Des Moines and Fort Dodge Railroad.

In 1883 he was appointed to the Iowa Railroad Commission. It was in this role that he first became aware of the safety problems that railroad employees faced. Railroading in the post-Civil War period was the nation's most hazardous occupation. According to Coffin, in 1881 alone more than 30,000 men were either killed or maimed in rail accidents. Coffin's personal observation of a brakeman losing his fingers in the act of switching cars led him to become a self-proclaimed spokesman for workers' interests. For 10 years Coffin spent much of his time speaking to influential groups of people at the state and national level lobbying for the adoption of state and federal safety legislation. In 1893, President Benjamin Harrison signed a bill requiring automatic couplers and air brakes on railroad cars. As an acknowledgement to Coffin for his years of dedicated work to get this law passed, President Harrison gave Coffin the pen with which he signed that bill.

Coffin's railroad reforms did not stop with the safety laws. He advocated, without success, a Sunday no-work law; he organized the Railroad Men's Temperance Association; through his efforts a railroad men's retirement home was established in Highland Park, Illinois; and he worked to create a railroad men's Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) as an alternative to the street life and saloons.

In the 1890s Coffin became interested in the problems of ex-convicts and unwed mothers. In 1901 he organized the Iowa Benevolent Association and, donated 20 acres of his own land along with $10,000 to establish Hope Hall, a halfway house for released convicts. In 1910 he established a home for young unwed mothers. This home could house 30 mothers and over the course of its operation, it cared for and assisted over 1,300 unwed mothers.

Coffin's reform interests naturally took him into politics. Like most Iowans of the time, he was a staunch Republican, but the party's failure to address some issues drew him to third parties. In 1907 he was the Prohibition Party's candidate for governor. The following year he was the nominee of the United Christian Party for vice president.

Mr. Coffin was a great friend to the poor and needy, the oppressed and the suffering; believing that the spark of divinity is in every individual and may be fanned into flame, he was ever ready to extend a helping hand to those in need of either material or moral assistance. Quiet and unostentatious in manner, seeking not self-aggrandizement in any direction, Lorenzo S. Coffin became known as one of the most honored sons of the Hawkeye state, not because he had won distinction in politics, or even because he had attained exceptional success in business, but because his efforts were unselfishly given for the benefit of his fellowmen.

Lorenzo Coffin died on January 17, 1915. His burial site, a mile west of Fort Dodge, is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Sources:

*The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa

*The History of Fort Dodge and Webster County… by H.M. Pratt

*Railroads in the 19th Century…. Robert L. Frey

*The Encyclopedia of American Business History and Biography (1988)

*Lorenzo S. Coffin – Farmer…. Palimpsest (1941) pages 289-92… contributor: Roger Natte

*Annals of Iowa 5 (1903), 626–29; “Mr. Coffin’s Great Reforms

June 9, 1923 - June 5, 2010

Gilbert “Gil” Copper was born in Orchard, Iowa to Edwin and Catherine Copper, the second of five sons. As a very young man, Gil was a person of iron resolve: before his teenage years, the untimely death of his father led him to leave school for one year in order to help maintain the family farm. While his peers were able to transition gently from adolescence to adulthood, Gil became a man overnight. For one year, he helped on the farm and helped with the household and family. When he returned to school, he was in the same class with his brother Clare. When he did graduate from Colwell High School in 1943, Gil promptly joined the armed services to defend the United States, and the free world at large, from the menace of fascism.

Following basic training, he served in an infantry regiment, where he volunteered for an unknown and top-secret mission in an army commando group. He didn’t know where he would be sent nor the purpose of the mission.

The mission was to be in southeast Asia. Initial training was in Bombay, India; ultimately, the unit of army rangers became known as “Merrill’s Marauders”, serving under commanding officer Frank Merrill. 3,000 volunteers had signed up for this secret mission to infiltrate Burma and China to fight the Japanese army that had invaded. The men were equipped with weapons, machetes, special clothing and shoes designed for jungle warfare, mules and horses. Of this unit of 3,000 men, 434 suffered battle casualties (wounded or death); 1,970 suffered disease casualties and only 596 remained active in Merrill’s Marauders when the mission was complete. Gil Copper was one of the men who complete the entire mission.

Weight was critical to the Marauders, and the need for a compact, lightweight field ration was essential; unfortunately, the best solution, the dry Jungle ration, at 4,000 calories per day, had been discontinued for cost reasons in 1943. On the advice of Army supply officers in Washington, staff determined that a one-per-day issuance of the U.S. Army's 2,830 calorie K ration (one K ration = three meals) would be sufficient to maintain the Marauders in the field. The K rations were not enough for the men undertaking this arduous journey. There were many times the men had to forage for food in the wild jungle, eating whatever they could find. Insects, plants, animals – whatever they could find. The average high temperatures in Burma during the months of Merrill’s Marauders’ campaign ranged from 85 degrees to 100 degrees, with humidity averaging around 75 %; the months of this mission were also the rainy season, often receiving up to 20” per month. Miserable, challenging conditions for the campaign to defeat the Japanese.

After receiving special training in Ramghar, India, Gil and the Marauders set out to march hundreds of miles behind enemy lines, through stifling jungles so dense that their foliage blocked out the sun. The Marauders were beset not only by enemy fire and booby-traps, but also by disease and hunger. Every person in the Merrill’s Marauders unit contracted malaria; many others suffered from typhus, dysentery and other tropical diseases. The jungle, monsoon rains, malaria, jungle rot, leeches, and the enemy caused many problems. Many developed infected wounds on their shoulders from carrying the heavy packs through the jungle. Grandson Cameron Leehey remembered his grandfather Gil telling him that he overcame fatigue on the long and dangerous marches by just “taking one more step.”

During the War, Gil proved his courage time and time again. He was awarded a Silver Star for going out under enemy fire to rescue a wounded member of his company, and he received a Bronze Star for independently partnering up with another Ranger to take a Japanese pillbox (a compact guard post set low into the ground, usually made of concrete and equipped with a machine gun or anti-vehicle weapons, built to defend a position of military importance). The distinction conferred to him by those medals meant little to him; he viewed his acts of heroism as a matter of duty. The real heroes, he said, were the men who died in defense of their country and one another. He did take great pride, however, in his Purple Heart, which he was given after taking a shrapnel blast to the face. He lived the rest of his life with a chunk of shrapnel lodged behind his left eye. Gil vowed to never surrender, to never to be taken prisoner. He fought on, no matter what, even when every other member of his battalion was mowed down in a hail of bullets right before his eyes. Maintaining a level head, he hid amongst the bodies of his fallen friends and waited patiently for cover of night to return to his company.

Gil Copper in Burma

As soon as he did, Gil found the commanding officer whose foolhardy order to charge had resulted in the deaths of his battalion. It took the strength of several men to deliver that officer from Gil’s righteous fury.

Gil’s rank would fluctuate up and down during his time in the War, reflecting whether he had most recently defended the men in his company from the enemy or from a commanding officer. Gil Copper followed his moral compass without compromise, regardless of the consequences. This was a theme to be repeated throughout his entire life.

The Japanese were continually surprised by the heavy, accurate volume of fire they received when attacking Marauder positions. Its combat-experienced officers had carefully integrated light mortar and machine gun fires, and virtually every Japanese soldier was armed with a self-loading or automatic weapon. The marauders worked their way through the dense Burmese jungle, cutting trees and foliage with machetes in order to make a path to surprise and fight the enemy.

Merrill’s Marauders eventually defeated the Japanese in Burma, through persistence and dogged determination. The unflinching bravery of Merrill’s Marauders and their ultimate victory against the Japanese in Burma helped turn the tide for the Allies in the Pacific Theater. Merrill’s Marauders served as the naissance of the elite U.S. Army Rangers.

When the War ended, Gil found himself in China. For a while, he fought alongside Chinese Nationals against the Communists. He rescued discarded baby girls from trash cans and rivers and delivered them to orphanages. He worked on boats along the Ganges River, and when he fell out of one boat, he worked on the boat that fished him out of the water. One step at a time, he made his way home to Iowa again, and enrolled at Loras College in Dubuque.

While he was attending college, Gil’s journey took a new turn. At the time, he was living with about fifty other young men, all of whom were in college. One of them, Gaylord, was in the kitchen talking with his sister, a beautiful woman who happened to be in town to interview for a nursing program. It was love at first sight, for both of Colleen and Gil. Gil convinced his buddy Gaylord to make a trip home the next weekend, and to let Gil tag along. That weekend was Gil’s first date with Colleen Henry. After a year-long courtship, they married in 1949. The couple eventually had ten children, five girls and five boys. Money was always tight for Gil and Colleen when they were raising their ten children, but Gil was never short on ideas for fun activities to be enjoyed in the great outdoors. Camping, horseback riding, softball games, bonfires (these were especially popular, with many stories told around the fire), ice-skating, camping, games of kick-the-can, and more camping were all Copper staples. One time he took the children camping after waving to Colleen outside of the hospital after Colleen had given birth to another baby. In the summer, Gil would take the family on vacation, acquiring fresh fruit and vegetables along the road the whole way. In the winter, Gil would hitch a train of sleds to the back of the car and take the kids on wild rides through the snow. It wasn’t easy for Gil and Colleen to raise their children with tight finances, but they shared a strong love, and it always kept them going.

Through the years, Gil and Colleen attended many reunions of Merrill’s Marauders. These were very special for the couple. It was an extraordinary group of brave men who helped bring peace and stability to the world in the 1940’s.

Gil taught in schools in northeast Iowa and later worked for the Farm Bureau. In 1968, the Copper Family moved to the Fort Dodge area where Gil taught science at St. Edmond Catholic School and also served as a boxing coach in Fort Dodge. He was a favorite of the students, often regaling them with his stories of his time with Merrill’s Marauders. Students also state that he was quite the specimen of a man – very strong – and could twist an apple in two with his bare hands. One student said he saw Mr. Copper split an apple in two using two fingers – never quite knowing how he did that.

Gil Copper (in white) coaching at St. Edmond's

In order to support his large family, in addition to teaching, Gil often worked with local farmers with their livestock, dairy cattle and farming activities. While in Fort Dodge, he also worked nights at the County Home and Mercy Hospital after a full day of teaching.

Copper served as the moderator of the Teenage Young Republicans, and supported a few members who were delegates to the Republican State Convention and Republican National Convention. He was a staunch conservative and a strong supporter of the Liberty Amendment (The Liberty Amendment states that the Federal Government shall not operate business-type activities unless they are specifically authorized by the Constitution). Copper was a teacher who was able to help students find their talents and help them excel, using their natural abilities.

Gil was active in Kiwanis in Fort Dodge; he entertained children with making animal balloons while in his clown outfit in parades in Fort Dodge; he also helped to select scholarship recipients for St. Edmond High School. He was a 4th Degree Knight in the Knights of Columbus.

Gil was also a strong supporter of Right to Life. He frequently marched with pro-life demonstrators, not in judgment of women who would seek abortions, but in the defense of unborn children. Consistent to his moral compass, Gil practiced civil disobedience, chaining himself up to the doors of abortion clinics, refusing to leave until the police arrested him. He did this over and over, and he was proud of the time he spent in jail as a result. Gil desisted only when faced with a long prison sentence for his next violation. Gil started a boxing club in Fort Dodge, working with young men who successfully competed at state and national levels. One student, Kevin Bestick, was a Golden Gloves Light Heavy-Weight champion. And unlike some people back in those days, Gil refused to exclude minorities from his team; at one point, he was coaching an all-black boxing team.He was not deterred from his activism, however. Gil continued his political involvement at a grass-roots level: marching in parades, handing out literature, writing letters to the editor, attending rallies, meeting the governor… you name it, he did it. Even in his final years, Gil remained politically involved and politically informed. He lived the kind of public life that the Founding Fathers envisioned for all Americans, and he utilized his freedom of speech in ways that few people ever do.

He was an icon to his grandchildren. His grandson, Sam Copper, described him as someone who was always fighting for what he believed in his heart was the right thing to do. He would take trips to Alaska to visit a gold mine he had a small interest in; he told Sam that he plotted to become a nurse and go to Nicaragua to serve with the Contras. Sam said his grandfather ate every meal like it was going to be his last meal – not surprising, considering the starving period he served with Merrill’s Marauders.

The Copper Family lived on a farm and had a riding stable south of Fort Dodge, fondly named “Copper Ranch”.

Gil Copper with the family horses at Copper Ranch

His grandchildren remember him as the man who could enjoy life the way a kid does. They remember him driving so fast on country roads that they’d fly - airborne - over the hills; he would make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches using a machete; he was tougher than nails; he would demonstrate how to survive falling through ice in the winter by literally falling through the ice. He had a hip replacement when he was eighty years old and rode horses following that surgery. He built an Indian sweathouse for his grandchildren (a heated, dome-shaped structures used by Indigenous peoples during certain purification rites and as a way to promote healthy living); he took them hunting, fishing and camping; he took them to sell asparagus he had collected in fields and county ditches; he made snowmen with them and taught them how to ride horses and how to shoot guns.

During his retirement, Copper often worked as a substitute teacher and as one of his children said, “he was still riding and falling off horses” well into his eighties!

Gil Copper loved his family and his country; he believed that each person should be responsible for him/herself; he believed in hard work and little government; he believed in freedom and the need for each person to be self-sufficient. He was truly one of the Greatest Generation.

Copper Family and grandchildren 2010

Sources: FD Messenger

Special Forces Roll

of Honor

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrill%27s_Marauders

https://www.specialforcesroh.com/index.php?threads/copper-gilbert-f.53558/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLedXt1tqs4

Sam Copper (grandson)

Cameron Leehey (grandson)

John Copper

Jed Eide (former student)

Daniel Novak website

Robert Crawford

1846 - 1932

Robert Crawford was a druggist in Fort Dodge’s early days. He was known as an entrepreneur and a keen business person, as well as a trusted friend. Mr. Crawford organized the Fort Dodge Chemical Company. In 1882, Crawford opened a drug store downtown. He built a large building at the corner of Central and Sixth, that was remembered as the Crawford block, where he located his business of wholesale and retail drugs. The building burnt down in 1956 after a devastating fire.

As a highly respected pharmacist, Robert Crawford served as Vice President of the State Commission for Pharmacy in 1880 -1884.

Mr. Crawford engineered a product known as “Gopher Death,” which he made and distributed through the Fort Dodge Chemical Company. The product was known and distributed all over the nation. It was a popular solution to a familiar problem across the nation at the time. Its production continued when the company was sold to Jewell Johnson. The Fort Dodge Chemical Company still exists today. It is located in Lompac, California.

Mr. Crawford, being a profound entrepreneur, also invented a new and useful metal and-wood railway-tie that would retain all the advantages of the resiliency of wood as a base for track rails in a railroad and would secure the strength and utility of metal in the main portion of a cross-tie.

As a very successful businessman, Robert Crawford developed personal wealth who gave back to his community. In 1910, Robert Crawford along with the Snell family donated land to the City for the development of the Snell-Crawford Park.

It’s easy for drivers along North 15th Street to miss the stately brick columns bearing the Crawford name that mark the original entrance to this wooded park with its winding streams. These days entrance to the park is gained from Williams Drive by car. Walker and bicyclists are able to access the park via a paved trail off of 15th Street. While the people behind the names of Snell-Crawford Park are no longer familiar to present-day park users, the gift they left behind has endured and continues to be a vibrant city park and recreational asset for families and people of all ages.

Robert Crawford died in 1932 and was interred at the Oakland Cemetery in Fort Dodge.

Sources:

*The People Who Made A Difference, Twist and Shout, January, 2000

*The Iowa Living Magazine…. September 11, 2013

Leo Felix Crimmins

Born February 1, 1932, Barnum, Iowa

Died June 10, 2008, Fort Dodge, Iowa

Married Genevieve Elizabeth Wagner Crimmins

Leo Crimmins was worn in Barnum, Iowa in 1932. He was educated in the Barnum School System. His first job was doing farm work for local Barnum farmers. Later, he worked for Bob and Evelyn Croden at White Transfer and Storage Company. In 1959, he was working as a truck driver and later progressed to sales and management.

Leo married Genevieve Elizabeth Wagner; they had seven children: Karen Crimmins Stucky, David Crimmins, Dennis Crimmins, Kevin Crimmins, Mark Crimmins, Mary Jo Crimmins Friederich, Mike Crimmins (deceased).

Leo and his wife Genevieve bought the White Transfer & Storage Co. as well as White Furniture Co. from the Crodens in 1969.

In the early 70's they decided to close White Furniture Co. and concentrate solely on growing White Transfer and Storage. As a charter agent for Allied Van Lines, the company worked primarily in the moving and storage industry. At that time, the storage aspect

of the business was shipments of personal household shipments in transit. The company operated out of its only facility, a 50,000 sq. ft. multi story building in downtown Fort Dodge.

Leo soon realized the storage division of the business had great potential for growth in the storage and distribution of commercial goods. This new direction proved to be a great move for the business. The company was outgrowing the downtown facility and in 1970, Leo and Genevieve decided it was time to expand. They purchased land west of Fort Dodge and built their first 100,000 square feet state of the art warehouse.

That success was short lived as shortly after completion, they lost the main customer they had built the building to service. The brand new building now stood empty. This led to long periods of weekly trips to the bank to borrow payroll.

Many weeks Leo did not cash his own payroll check so that his employees could cash theirs. During last trip to borrow payroll, the banker told Leo that he could not buy a pack of cigarettes without asking the bank first. This was a comment Leo would never forget. He left the bank and swore if he ever got the loans repaid, he would never borrow another penny again.

He worked endless hours and found new customers to keep his company and his new building afloat.

That was far from the last challenge the Crimmins had to overcome but it taught Leo a valuable lesson that he used to guide him through the rough times.

Leo and Genevieve first paid off the Crodens for the business, then the new warehouse. By the mid 1980's the company was finally operating unencumbered. They would eventually add three more facilities on the west Fort Dodge property where the company headquarters is still located. They eventually purchased two more locations in Fort Dodge, three locations in Webster City Iowa, and another location in Forest City Iowa.

By this time, Leo and Genevieve had three sons working in the business, David, Dennis and Kevin. They wanted to keep White Transfer & Storage Co a family business (as it had been since 1900). That was one of Leo's proudest accomplishments. After Leo's death in 2008, Dennis Crimmins purchased the business from the family and carries on the tradition on White's being a family business today.

During Leo's time at the helm, White Transfer grew from a single location of 50,000 square feet to an industry leader in the commercial warehousing and distribution corporation with nearly a million square feet of state of the art warehouse space

spread over several locations, servicing some of the largest corporations in the world. The small moving and storage company grew to be a global distribution center.

Through the massive expansion of the property and equipment, one thing remained true: Leo Crimmins never borrowed another penny.

Leo operated his company and his personal life

by a few simple standards.

1. God & Family first, always

2. Be honest and have integrity in all you do.

3. Be a good citizen and pay your taxes, what's left over is yours

4. Give back to the community.

Leo and Genevieve have supported many charitable organizations through the years. They have been major contributors to Holy Trinity Parish,

St. Edmond Schools, Iowa Central Community College, Hospice and Unity Point Cancer Center.

Leo's legacy is first and foremost is one shared with his wife Genevieve, his family. His legacy to the community is that he was a proud veteran and a successful businessman who respected his employees and credited them for much of his success. A man who believed in education and community and generously supported those through his philanthropic efforts. A man who made great contributions to the industry he loved and became a respected figure in both the business world and in his community.

E.O. Damon

1876-1948 E.O. Damon was a widely acclaimed architect from Massachusetts. Mr. Damon came to Fort Dodge to marry Georgia Mason. He graduated from Amherst College in 1899. He studied naval architecture at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. He also traveled in Europe and the British Isles in 1900 and 1901. He and his wife moved out east while he worked for the Bureau of Constructions, becoming superintendent of construction in the Bureau of Lighthouses from 1908-1910. From 1910 to 1912, Mr. Damon was supervisor of architects for the treasury department in Alabama and Mississippi. Mr. Damon came back to Fort Dodge in 1912 to open his own practice in domestic architecture. He drew the plans for buildings such as the Carver Building, the Blanden Art Museum, the Corpus Christi Convent, and many others. He collaborated with Frank Griffith in building a junior high school. At the time of Mr. Damon’s death, he was working on designs for Friendship Haven. Mr. Damon was responsible for the building of many schools and churches in this area. He was a member of the American Institute of Architects, Chamber of Commerce, the Rotary Club, Ashlar Lodge, and the A.F. and A.M. Elks club. Mr. Damon directed the Rotary Club and the Chamber of Commerce for a time.

Source:

*The People Who Made A Difference, Twist and Shout, January, 2000

Catherine Vincent Deardorf

Catherine Vincent Deardorf established the Charitable Foundation bearing her name late in her life. Her family had acquired wealth in early Fort Dodge, and she chose to acknowledge and thank the community via the foundation. She selected professional advisers and trusted friends to serve as the first directors at the foundation’s establishment in 1993.

After graduating from Fort Dodge High School, Catherine attended Radcliffe College for two years before graduating from Columbia University’s School of Journalism in 1929. Catherine was the social editor of the Fort Dodge Messenger for a number of years, and its owner from 1959 to 1963.

In 1936, she married architect John Deardorf. The couple made their home in San Diego until 1958 when they moved to Catherine’s Aunt Helen Vincent Roberts’ home across from the Blanden Art Museum in Fort Dodge. Catherine referred to the home as the Roberts House throughout her life, but it is now often referred to as the Deardorf Home. The house was part of the bequest Mrs. Deardorf left her Charitable Foundation. Because she wished the home to benefit the Blanden Art Museum, which she had served as a trustee, donor, and volunteer, its ownership and funds she had designated for its maintenance were transferred to the Blanden Charitable Foundation in 2006.

Initial foundation holdings were exclusively American Home Products stock. We are told that Catherine was advised by her father to invest in the local Fort Dodge Serum Company, which at the time of her establishing the foundation had become part of the Animal Health Division of American Home Products. Foundation directors soon began to diversify the portfolio, which continues to provide funds for the grants made annually.

The Catherine Vincent Deardorf Charitable Foundation has provided financial support for many arts projects in Fort Dodge, including “Over the Treetops”, a mosaic mural at the Fort Dodge Regional Airport, “Axiom”, a sculpture at Iowa Central Community College, “Stargate 6”, a sculpture at UnityPoint Regional Medical Center, “Parade”, a sculpture at the corner of Kenyon Road and south 8th Street in Fort Dodge and “DNA Strand”, in the BioScience Building at Iowa Central Community College.

Catherine Vincent Deardorf passed away March 7, 1994, and is buried at the historic Oakland Cemetery, Fort Dodge, Iowa.

Henry Dodge

1782-1867

In 1851, the military post, Fort Dodge, was name in honor of Colonel Henry Dodge.

Henry Dodge was born in 1782 in Indiana and was raised in Kentucky. At age 14 Dodge moved to Missouri to live with his father, who ran salt and lead operations.

In 1805 Dodge was appointed deputy sheriff, reporting to his father. In 1806 Dodge was recruited by Aaron Burr to participate in Burr's spurious attempt at creating a new country in the southwest, an incident known as the Burr conspiracy. Dodge and a companion went so far as to report to a concentration point for the affair in New Madrid. However, when they learned that Thomas Jefferson had deemed it a treasonous act, they immediately abandoned the effort and returned home. Dodge was indicted as a participant in the conspiracy, but the charges were dropped.

In the War of 1812, Dodge enlisted as a captain in the Missouri State Volunteers. He was part of a mounted company. He finished the war as a major general of the Missouri militia. His crowning achievement was saving about 150 Miami Indians from certain massacre after their raid on the Boone's Lick settlement in the summer of 1814.

Dodge emigrated with his large family and slaves inherited from his father to the U.S. Mineral District in early July 1827. He served as a commander of militia during the Red Bird uprising of that year, and in October settled a large tract in present-day downtown Dodgeville, known then as "Dodge's Camp."

Dodge rose to prominence during the Black Hawk War of 1832. As colonel of the western Michigan Territory Militia, Dodge brought a credible fighting force into being in a very short time. Dodge and the mounted volunteers, with four companies of Territorial militia and one of Illinois mounted rangers, took to the field as the "Michigan Mounted Volunteers." Dodge and his men saw action at the battles of Horseshoe Bend, Wisconsin Heights, and Bad Axe. In June 1832, he accepted a commission as Major of the Battalion of Mounted Rangers, commissioned by an Act of Congress.

The ranger experiment lasted a year, and then, in 1833, was replaced by the United States Regiment of Dragoons. Dodge served as colonel; one of his captains was Nathan Boone, Daniel Boone's youngest son. Dodge was the colonel of the United States Regiment of Dragoons which was the first mounted Regular Army unit in United States Army history. From 1833 to 1836 he commanded a contingent of U.S. dragoons to protect the U.S. frontier against the Indians, and made several expeditions to the western plains.

In the summer of 1833, Colonel Dodge engaged on First Dragoon Expedition and made successful contact with the Comanches. He was an Indian fighter, most noted for his 1835 peace mission commissioned by President Andrew Jackson, who had called out the U.S. Dragoons to assist.

In 1833, the Black Hawk Purchase opened Iowa for settlement by American settlers moving west into Iowa. To make the area safe from Indians and prepare it for eventual settlement, Colonel Dodge commissioned Lieutenant Colonel Stephan W. Kearny to command and lead the 1st U.S. Dragoons through Iowa. Kearny’s three company commanders were Captain Nathan Boone, Captain E.V. Sumner, and Lieutenant Albert Lea. (Note: Colonel Kearny military career was very notable as he eventually became the brigadier-general of the Armies of the West and ultimately became the Governor of Californian in 1847).

The 1st United States Dragoons explored Iowa after the Black Hawk Purchase put the area under U.S. control. In the summer of 1835, the regiment blazed a trail along the Des Moines river and established outposts from present-day Des Moines to Fort Dodge. The size of the U.S. Regiment of dragoons was fixed at 34 officers and 1,715 men.

Henry Dodge became the first Territorial governor of Wisconsin Territory from 1836 to 1841 and again from 1845 to 1848, an area which encompassed (before July 4, 1838, when Iowa became a territory) what became the states of Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota. In between his two terms as governor, Dodge was elected as a non-voting Democratic delegate to the Twenty-seventh and Twenty-eighth Congresses (March 4, 1841 – March 3, 1845) representing Wisconsin Territory's at-large congressional district.

Dodge declined the opportunity to have his name put forward for the Presidency of the United States at the 1844 Democratic National Convention. He was loyal to Martin Van Buren and both men opposed the annexation of Texas. Despite their efforts, James K. Polk, the Democrat who favored annexation, became President.

Upon Wisconsin being admitted to the Union, Dodge was elected one of its first two senators. He served two terms. He turned down the appointment of Territorial Governor of Washington from Franklin Pierce in 1857.

Fort Clark, the U.S. Army post built at the present-day location of Fort Dodge, Iowa, was renamed Fort Dodge in 1851 in honor of Senator Dodge. Dodge died in 1867 in Burlington, Iowa. He is interred at the Aspen Grove Cemetery in Burlington, Iowa.

Sources:

*State Historical Society of Iowa

*Wisconsin Historical Society – Henry Dodge (1782-1867) U.S. Senator, Frontiersman, Soldier

*military.wikia.org/wiki/Henry.Dodge

James I. Dolliver

U.S. Congressman

1894-1978

James I. Dolliver was born in Park Ridge, Illinois, on August 31, 1894. He was born to Rev. and Mrs. Robert H. Dolliver. He was the nephew of U.S. Senator Jonathan Prentiss Dolliver, a U.S. Senator from Fort Dodge from 1900 to 1910. James I. Dolliver’s son, James M. Dolliver, was born and raised in Fort Dodge, and after WWII, moved to the state of Washington and eventually became a highly respected State Supreme Court justice.

James I. Dollver received elementary education in Illinois schools at Lanark, Pawpaw, Eochelle, Lockport and Joliet before moving to Hot Springs, South Dakota. He graduated from Morningside College, Sioux City, Iowa, in 1915. He taught school at Alta, Iowa, and Humboldt, Iowa, until 1918, when he enlisted in the U.S. Army and was enrolled in signal officers' training school at New Haven, where he was stationed when the First World War ended.

Following the conclusion of his military service, Dolliver attended the University of Chicago Law School where he became a member of the Delta Chi Fraternity, graduating in 1921. He was admitted to the bar the same year and commenced private practice in Chicago.

One year late in 1922, Dolliver moved to Fort Dodge, Iowa. He served as the County Attorney for Webster County, Iowa from 1924 to 1929, then returned to private practice. He served as member of the school board of Fort Dodge School District between 1938 and 1945. He also served a term as commander of the Iowa American Legion.

In 1942, Dolliver ran against Governor George A. Wilson and two others for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. In the primary election, Dolliver finished a distant third.

Two years later, Dolliver ran for the U.S. House for a seat held by Fred C. Gilchrist, an incumbent member of Dolliver's own party who was then completing his seventh term in office. In a primary characterized by light turnout, Dolliver defeated Gilchrist in a close race. He then ran against Democrat Charles Hanna in the general election, defeating him handily. Dolliver was re-elected five times to the U.S. House of Representatives before losing in 1956 to Democrat Merwin Coad, in an extraordinarily close race. Coad won by 198 votes, out of over 129,000 cast. In all, Dolliver served from January 3, 1945 to January 3, 1957.

After his loss, James I. Dolliver served as regional legal counsel for International Cooperation Administration in the Middle East from 1957 until his retirement in 1959. In retirement, he resided in Spirit Lake, Iowa.

On December 10, 1978, James I. Dolliver died in Rolla, Missouri. He was interred in Oakland Cemetery, Fort Dodge, Iowa.

Sources:

*University of Iowa Special Collections - University of Iowa Libraries

*Biographical Directory of the United States Congress

*Wikipedia

James M. Dolliver

1924-2004

James M. Dolliver was born and raised in Fort Dodge, Iowa, in 1924. His mother, Elizabeth Morgent, died of polio when he was a newborn. James graduated from Fort Dodge Senior High School in 1942 and then joined the Navy Air Corps. In 1944, Dolliver's father, James I. Dolliver, a University of Chicago-trained lawyer, was elected to Congress from the Sixth District of Iowa, serving the Fort Dodge area in the House of Representatives for twelve years. James M. Dolliver’s great-uncle, Jonathan P. Dolliver, a Fort Dodge citizen, had been a United States Senator from Iowa from 1900 to 1910.

After the end of World War II, James M. Dolliver attended Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where he graduated with honors in 1949. His father had been elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, so James often visited him there. He married fellow student Barbara Babcock and they moved to the state of Washington so James could attend University of Washington Law School. He graduated from law school in 1952 and began private practice in Washington State.

Dolliver took up private practice in Port Angeles and later in Everett. In 1953, Dolliver became the administrative assistant to Congressman Jack Westland (R-Everett), then became an attorney for the state House Republicans. In 1964, Dolliver managed the campaign of Daniel J. Evans, who was elected governor. Dolliver became Evan's chief of staff and political advisor. On May 6, 1976, Evans appointed Dolliver to the Supreme Court. Soon after a re-election in 1992, Dolliver suffered a severe stroke in January 1993, but was able to continue working. In 1998, Dolliver announced he would retire at the end of his term.

In 1993, Dolliver received the "Outstanding Judge of the Year" award from the Washington State Bar.

In 2000, an endowed professorship was named in honor of Dolliver at the University of Puget Sound, for which he had served as a trustee.

James M. Dolliver died on November 24, 2004.

Sources:

*Wikipedia

Jonathan P. Dolliver

Attorney, U.S. Representative and U.S. Senator1858-1910

Jonathon Dolliver, attorney, political activist, and U.S. congressman and senator from Iowa—was renowned as a gifted orator, skilled mediator, and model of integrity. So spellbinding was his oratory and so spotless his reputation that he was chosen by the Republican National Committee to stump the nation for every Republican presidential candidate from James G. Blaine in 1884 to William Howard Taft in 1908. In 1910 he was chosen by political opponent William Jennings Bryan to give the dedication speech at the Abraham Lincoln Memorial in Springfield, Illinois. Strongly urged to run for vice president in both 1900 and 1908, Dolliver refused because of his distaste for the position and his lack of financial resources. Although initially an orthodox Republican who favored the gold standard, a high protective tariff, and overseas expansion, Dolliver grew to become one of the leading lights in the Insurgent Republican movement, led by Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin, Albert B. Cummins of Iowa, and Albert Beveridge of Indiana, who challenged the policies and leadership of President Taft and the GOP's probusiness "Standpat" Eastern establishment. Upon Dolliver's premature death at age 52, Beveridge eulogized him as "our best, our most gifted man, our only genius."

Born near Kingwood, Preston County, Virginia, on the eve of the Civil War, Dolliver was the son of James Jones Dolliver, a Methodist circuit rider of Welsh descent, and Eliza Jane (Brown) Dolliver, whose Scottish American father, Robert, and uncle William were among the founders of the Republican Party and instrumental in the formation of the state of West Virginia in 1863. William Brown was among the first congressmen from the new state. From both parents and their respective families, young Jonathan imbibed a lifelong devotion to the Union, the Republican Party, and evangelical Protestantism. During the Civil War, he and his older brother Robert served as lookouts and scavengers who disrupted the activities of occupying Confederate soldiers. In 1868 the Dollivers and their five children moved to Granville, West Virginia, on the outskirts of Morgantown, where Jonathan entered the preparatory department of West Virginia University at age 10.

Three years later, at the age of 13, he began his collegiate studies at the university, where he concentrated on literary studies, taking his B.A. in 1875. His major extracurricular activity was in the Columbian Literary Society, which met each week to conduct oratorical contests and debates and listen to student essays. Upon graduation, he was chosen as the "philosophical orator" of his class. While teaching school in Iowa and Illinois from 1875 to 1878, he studied law under the direction of his uncle, a West Virginia state senator. Although he attended the 1876 Republican National Convention in Cincinnati, Ohio, in support of James G. Blaine, Dolliver enthusiastically switched his allegiance to Rutherford B. Hayes, for whom he campaigned vigorously. Like most Republican speakers of the day, Dolliver delivered scathing attacks on the Democrats as the party of secession, treason, and violence against African Americans.

In the spring of 1878 he obtained his law license and moved to Fort Dodge, Iowa, with his brother Robert. Just two years later he was elected city solicitor, a position that gave him visibility, political contacts, and a reliable supplemental income. At the same time, his growing reputation as a public speaker attracted the attention of northwestern Iowa politicians, including former governor Cyrus C. Carpenter. In part through Carpenter's influence, Dolliver was chosen as the keynote speaker for the 1884 Iowa Republican Convention, where he delivered a rousing political address. Because of that oratorical success, he was chosen to stump the eastern United States for Blaine.

After failing to secure the Republican nomination for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1886, Dolliver won the endorsement in 1888. Defeating his Democratic opponent, Dolliver entered the House in 1889 and remained there for the next 11 years. There he earned a reputation as an orthodox Republican who favored high protective tariffs, the gold standard, and colonial expansion. He was unusually close to Iowa's preeminent legislator, Senator William Boyd Allison, who nurtured the younger man's political career. Dolliver, however, maintained harmonious relations with all factions of Iowa Republicans. He was a good friend of sometime Allison critic Governor William Larrabee, a leading proponent of railroad regulation. (Dolliver's younger brother married Larrabee's daughter.) In 1895 Congressmandolliver married Louise Pearsons. They had three children.

In 1900 Dolliver benefited from the death of Iowa Senator John Henry Gear. Iowa's governor appointed Dolliver to succeed Gear in the Senate; the 1902 session of the Iowa legislature seconded the governor's choice, electing Dolliver to fill out the remainder of the term. In January 1907 the legislature elected him to a full six-year term.

As a senator, Dolliver remained unswerving in his loyalty to the conservative Allison, but he also became a staunch supporter of Theodore Roosevelt's reform agenda. He was the principal figure in guiding the Roosevelt endorsed Hepburn Act of 1906 through the Senate. That act empowered the Interstate Commerce Commission to fix maximum rail rates and was especially popular among Dolliver's midwestern constituents, who had long chafed under discriminatory railroad rates. As late as 1908, however, Dolliver fought a bitter battle against Iowa's leading progressive reformer, Albert Cummins, when the latter sought unsuccessfully to defeat the dying Allison in the state's first senatorial primary election.

In 1908 Republican William Howard Taft won the presidency after a campaign in which he promised to lower tariff rates. During the first decade of the 20th century, many midwesterners and westerners, who had previously accepted Republican protectionism, grew increasingly critical of high duties, believing that the tariff protected monopolistic eastern manufacturers while raising the cost of living for heartland consumers. Dolliver's belief in the necessity of a high tariff also waned as he became increasingly concerned about the privileged status of big business. When Nelson Aldrich, the Standpat Republican leader of the Senate, proposed a tariff that did not sufficiently decrease many rates, a number of midwestern lawmakers, including Dolliver, were outraged. Even more infuriating was the apparent complicity of President Taft in this plot to maintain high duties.

Together with Robert La Follette and Beveridge, Dolliver led the fight against Aldrich and Representative Sereno Payne on the tariff schedules, earning themselves reputations as "Insurgents." Unleashing his ample speaking skills, Dolliver berated Aldrich and his supporters, presenting a series of widely acclaimed speeches against what eventually became the Payne-Aldrich Tariff. "I do not propose now to become a party to a petty swindle of the American people," Dolliver told his fellow senators. He also spoke of his "indignation" at being "duped with humbug and misrepresentation" by the regular Republican leadership.

Despite Dolliver's dramatic attack, the Payne-Aldrich Tariff passed both houses of Congress and was signed by the pliant President Taft. Thoroughly disillusioned with his party's Standpat leadership, Dolliver moved decidedly into the Insurgent camp, caustically observing that Taft "is an amiable man, completely surrounded by men who know exactly what they want." Dolliver and the other Insurgents sided with Gifford Pinchot, chief of the U.S. Bureau of Forestry, who charged that Taft's secretary of the interior, Richard Ballinger, allowed private exploitation of government-owned natural resources. At the same time, Dolliver and his allies opposed the Mann-Elkins Bill as originally proposed by the Taft administration, claiming that it would weaken the Interstate Commerce Commission.

Exhausted by his battles against Aldrich and Taft, Dolliver returned to Fort Dodge, where he died of a heart attack on October 15, 1910. By that time, he had broken completely with the GOP establishment and won a reputation as the most powerful and persuasive speaker among the Insurgents. Even Taft acknowledged that "the Senate has lost one of its ablest and most brilliant statesmen, the country has lost a faithful public servant." Thousands stood in the rain outside "the jam-packed armory building" in Fort Dodge during the funeral ceremony. Famous journalist Mark Sullivan proclaimed Dolliver "the greatest Senator of his time."

Dolliver Memorial State Park south of Fort Dodge, was named in honor of him of this great senator.

Sources:

*Biographical Dictionary of Iowa…. University of Iowa – Contributor: John D. Buenker

*Dolliver's papers are housed at the State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City.

*The definitive biography is Thomas Richard Ross, Jonathan Prentiss Dolliver: A Study in Political Integrity and Independence (1958).

*For the early development of Dolliver's speaking skills, see Gordon E. Hostettler, "Jonathan Prentiss Dolliver: The Formative Years," Iowa Journal of History 49 (1951), 23–50.

*An entire issue of the Palimpsest 5 (February 1924) is devoted to Dolliver.

*Sketches devoted to Dolliver in Annals of Iowa 29 (1948), 335–65.

*Memorial addresses on Dolliver, - Congressional Record 46 (1911), 2832–43.

*An obituary is in the New York Times, 10/16/1910.

Charles F. Duncombe

The history of Fort Dodge bears evidence of the professional and commercial activity of Charles Duncombe, who since 1884 has been identified with journalistic interests here and at the same time has become a factor in the manufacturing and financial circles of the city.

Charles F. Duncombe was born in Fort Dodge, February 20, 1864 to John and Mary Duncombe. The father, John Duncombe, was a prominent and influential resident of Fort Dodge, where he settled in April, 1855, becoming a pioneer lawyer of frontier village. Charles attended school at Racine College, Racine, Wisconsin, and later at the University of Iowa. He intended to become a lawyer, but before he could finish his course, he was compelled by ill health to give up his school work. He then began work as reporter on the Fort Dodge Chronicle, then a once-per-week printed newspaper and was considered one of the best known and leading journals of the state. In 1884, Charles acquired the ownership of the paper and began printing daily editions. Retaining sole ownership until 1887, Charles sold one-half interest in the newspaper to his brother. Charles then went to St. Paul, and with two others started the St. Paul News. Then he sold his interest in the St. Paul News in 1890 and returned to Fort Dodge to take charge of the Duncombe Stucco Company plaster mills. The mills being sold to the United States Gypsum Company on February 1, 1901, Mr. Duncombe became their district manager, a position he held until November, 1903. In all, he was connected with the gypsum business fourteen years.

Like his father and grandfather before him, Charles took great pride in service to his city. He was postmaster from 1894 until 1898 and mayor from 1906 until 1908, when he declined to become a candidate for reelection. In 1908 he was honored by the democrats of Iowa by being named as one of the four delegates-at-large to the Denver convention. Duncombe also served as president of the school board, a director of the Chautauqua Association and a director of the Country Club. His military history covers service as first sergeant of the first company organized in Fort Dodge. His political allegiance has always been given to the Democratic Party and he is well known in fraternal relations, holding membership with the Red Men, the Moose, and the Knights of Pythias to which he was chancellor commander and keeper of the records and seals.

Duncombe School was named after Charles F. Duncombe.

Sources:

*History of Fort Dodge and Wester County Iowa Volume II

State Senator John Duncombe

1831- 1902

As a prominent attorney, political figure and industrialist, John F.

Duncombe was an influential community leader in early Fort Dodge and a person of major significance in Fort Dodge history.

John Francis Duncombe was born in Wattsburg, Pennsylvania, October 22, 1831. He was raised and acquired his early education in his native town. Duncombe remained at home until he was sixteen, working on the farm in the summers and attending the district school in the winters. He went to Meadville, Pa., for his preparatory studies, then attended Allegheny College.

Duncombe taught in the public schools in the winter season to earn money to cover his college expenses. Duncombe went on to graduate from both Allegheny College of Meadville, PA, and Center College at Danville, Kentucky before taking up the study of law in his home town in the office of Marshall & Vincent. He was admitted to the bar of Pennsylvania in 1854 then relocated to Fort Dodge in April of 1855 and continued practicing law. His admirable career of self-help and self-reliance began early. He pursued his legal studies after his college days in Meadville and Erie, and was admitted to the bar at the latter place when he was 22 years of age. From the date of his settlement in Fort Dodge, there were few men in any community that led a more active or useful lives.

Duncombe managed a large and successful law practice and was known for his in depth understanding of the principles of the law and his ability to express his legal positions and arguments in a very clear, precise and convincing manner. He served as the attorney of the Illinois Central railroad in a district embracing seventeen counties, for a period of over thirty years. He also served in the same capacity for the Mason City & Fort Dodge, the Des Moines & Fort Dodge and the Cherokee & Dakota Railroads. Having a reputation as a very intelligent and shrewd attorney, Duncombe took pride in being known for the care with which he counseled amicable settlements out of court where such methods were possible.

In political and public life Mr. Duncombe was equally prominent. In 1857, when the news of the Spirit Lake massacre reached Fort Dodge, he took an active part in raising the troops which were sent against the Indians, and he acted as captain of Company B. The expedition was under the command of Maj. William Williams. Governor C.C. Carpenter, once stated about Duncombe: "Of the three captains, two are living - Messrs. C. B. Richards and John F. Duncombe. Their subsequent careers in civil life have been but a fulfillment of the prophecy of the men who followed them through the snow-banks of Northwestern Iowa in 1857."

A year or two after he settled in Fort Dodge he became the editor of The Sentinel, the pioneer journal of northwestern Iowa. Duncombe was a vigorous and outspoken editor, fearless and aggressive. Later he published and edited the Democrat, of Fort Dodge, a paper of large influence in the party politics of the state. Always a democrat, Duncombe soon rose to a commanding position in his party, which coveted his counsel and leadership. As a speaker he possessed rare ability. He was equally at home before a jury or arguing a case in front of the Iowa Supreme Court. As a legislator and lawyer, Duncombe’s logical grasp of the facts and principles of the law applicable to them has been another potent element in his success, and his remarkable clearness of expression and precise diction were counted among his conspicuous gifts and accomplishments.

Politically his party had no more effective campaigner in the State. But he was never happier than when speaking at a re-union of pioneer settlers. On such occasions he was always a favorite, and his ready wit and rare good humor never failed to elicit the heartiest applause. Mr. Duncombe was chosen to the State Senate in 1859, and served in the sessions of 1860 and 1862. He was twice elected to the House—1871 and 1879. In 1862, the Ninth General Assembly formed and Senator Duncombe was given place on the Judiciary Committee and on the Committee of Military Affairs - two of the most important committees, the second especially so at that time.

Reared in the school of old-time democracy, Mr. Duncombe while heartily supporting President Lincoln in his efforts to put down the rebellion, was sure he saw in the trend of affairs a purpose to precipitate a movement for the emancipation of the slaves. In an honest endeavor to put his state upon record as adhering to the original purpose of the President and Congress, on the 22d of January he offered a resolution, which, after reciting the causes of the War of the Rebellion as he saw them,

“Resolved, That the Senate of the State of Iowa hereby pledges cordial support to the President of the United States in a patriotic effort to put down all rebellion against the Constitution and laws of the United States, and in resisting secession, abolition and negro emancipation from whatever source it may come, by every constitutional means in the power of the Government.”

During his career in the State Legislature, eight years, Duncombe was considered one of the most influential men of his party in each branch. As a legislator he was well-informed, resourceful, bold and aggressive, and generally successful. His influence was always used along the lines of reform and progress. Had the democrats been in power there was no position in the Statehouse to which he might not have aspired with an assurance of success.

In 1872 Duncombe served as chairman of the Iowa delegation to the national democratic convention at Baltimore. The Iowa Pioneer Law Makers chose him as president of their association on February 25, 1886.

From 1881 to 1889, Mr. Duncombe enjoyed the distinction of being lecturer on railroad law on the law faculty of the University of Iowa; and many are the graduates of the Law School at Iowa City who can testify to the thoroughness of his research and the vigor and clearness of his expositions of the law. He was for eighteen years a regent of the University of Iowa.

In addition to Duncombe’ s career in law and political office, he was also a large farmer, a dealer in lands, and one of the foremost Iowa coal mine operators. In conjunction with C. B. Richards, Duncombe developed the coal mines in Fort Dodge and Boone, and he served as secretary for both the Fort Dodge Coal Company and the Rocky Ford Coal Company of Wyoming Territory. His most successful business enterprise was the manufacture of stucco and other products from the gypsum beds adjacent to Fort Dodge. Because of his public energy and progressiveness, Duncombe was associated with a number of the institutions of early Fort Dodge and was a major factor in persuading large railroad companies to extend their lines into Fort Dodge. In 1872, Duncombe purchased a building and repurposed it into the Duncombe Hotel. The property remained in the Duncombe family until 1913, when L.D. Eilers bought it and renamed it the Eilers Hotel. No trace of the hotel remains today. The ground on which it sat now serves as the site of the Fort Dodge Public Library on the City Square.

John Duncombe was descended from an old English family, the names of many of whose members are worthily embalmed in the famous "Dictionary of National Biography." Some of them were knighted and elected to the British Parliament. His great grandfather was a soldier of the Revolution, and his grandfather bore arms in the war of 1812.

John Duncombe was twice married. His first wife, Miss Carrie Perkins of Erie, PA, died in 1854. On May 11, 1859, he go remarried to Mary Williams, the daughter of Major William Williams, the patriot-pioneer of Fort Dodge. They had seven children- most notably, his son Charles, who would later become the mayor of Fort Dodge; and his daughter Mary, who would become the wife of Senator W. S. Kenyon. In 1862, Duncombe acquired land and built his family home called Fair Oaks, which was considered one of the finest residences in the community. The house was demolished in 1930 and is now the location of the former Fair Oaks Middle School (South Junior High).

As an active member, citizen and leader of his community, Duncombe was a charter member of the chapter and commandery of the Masonic fraternity of Fort Dodge and also attained the thirty-third degree of the Scottish Rite.

Mr. Duncombe’ s death occurred August 2, 1902. Upon his death, it was noted by many in his community that John Duncombe was a public-spirited citizen who recognized the opportunities for reform, progress and improvement, and was very successful in achieving what he could for the benefit of his fellow man.

Duncombe Elementary School in Fort Dodge was named after him in honor of his distinguished service to his community of Fort Dodge.

Sources:

*State Historical Society – Annals of Iowa…. Volume 5 – Number 7 - 1902

*History of Fort Dodge and Webster County Iowa, Volume II.. 1913 - by Charles Larrabee

*Iowa: Its History and Its Foremost Citizens - Original Edition. 3 Vols. Des Moines, IA: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1915-1916.

Carl Feelhaver

1898-1993

The students and their schools were in Carl Feelhaver’s best interest during the years he served as a school administrator. Recognized

as one of Fort Dodge’s finest educational professional and leader, Carl Feelhaver served as superintendent of the Fort Dodge Community School System for over twenty years. Born in Nebraska, Mr. Feelhaver attended school and college in his native state. He moved to New York City to receive his master’s degree in education from Columbia University. He served in the army during WWI. He returned to marry Agnes Korbel and pursue his career in education. Mr. Feelhaver was superintendent of the Fort Dodge Community School District from 1947 to 1967 after he had been principal of Fort Dodge Senior High from 1933 to 1947. Many of the school district’s buildings were built or remodeled during the time Mr. Feelhaver served as superintendent. The biggest project was the erection of the current FDSH. Mr. Feelhaver helped work on the transition of Fort Dodge Junior College to Iowa Central Community College. ICCC is no longer part of the Fort Dodge school district. Some improvements Mr. Feelhaver helped invoke were the expansion of the adult education program at the college, a more permanent recording system and use of microfilming all school records, the creation of special education programs, hot lunch, and central libraries at all elementary schools. After retiring as superintendent, Mr. Feelhaver went to ICCC to serve as the coordinator of instructional services. At the end of the 1966-1967 school year, the Fort Dodge public school systems honored Mr. Feelhaver with “C.T. Feelhaver Week.” During this week, the naming of the Feelhaver Elementary School was revealed, a new car was given to him and his wife, and Mr. Feelhaver received the Lions Club annual Community Service Award. In addition to this work as a school administrator, Mr. Feelhaver served as president of the Fort Dodge Noon Rotary Club. He also served on the boards of the YMCA, Webster County Red Cross, United Way, Blanden Art Gallery, Fort Museum, Chamber of Commerce, and a lay advisory board of St. Joseph Mercy Hospital. In the late 1960s, he served on Governor Harold Hughes’ Commission on Intergovernmental Cooperation.

Source:

*The People Who Made A Difference, Twist and Shout, January, 2000

Charles V. Findlay

1866-1951

Charles V. Findlay was born at Pawpaw, Illinois, on September 18, 1866. He came to Iowa with his parents in 1870 in a covered wagon drawn by a yoke of oxen. The Findlay’s homesteaded in Clay County, and in 1877 moved to Webster County. Mr. Findlay received his early education in the rural schools of Clay and Webster Counties, and taught school in and near Kalo in Webster County for several years.

He was graduated from Highland Park College in Des Moines in 1891 as a member of the first class, with a Bachelor of Science degree. In 1898 he received his master’s degree. Mr. Findlay was Webster County superintendent of schools from 1892 until 1900 when he became president of Tobin College in Fort Dodge. He served in that capacity until 1931. He was married on June 29, 1899, to Miss Mabel Southwick of Lake Mills, whom he met while both were students at Highland Park College. Mr. and Mrs. Findlay both taught classes at Tobin College where hundreds of young men and women from northwest Iowa farms and communities were their pupils.

Mr. Findlay was a member of the House of Representatives from Webster County in the Thirty-seventh, Thirty-eighth and Thirty-eighth Extra sessions of the General Assembly. He was elected State Senator from the Webster-Calhoun district and served in the Forty-ninth, Fiftieth, Fiftieth Extra, Fifty-first and Fifty-second General Assemblies. He was elected mayor of Fort Dodge in 1923, and served ten years in that office. He was a member of the National Association of Parliamentarians, and was also editor and publisher of a textbook, “Parliamentary Law Made Easy.” He was a member of the First Congregational Church of Fort Dodge, and served as a deacon of the church.

In 1903 Mr. Findlay became a member of the board of trustees of the Fort Dodge Public Library. He served as president of the board from June 15, 1911, until August of 1950 when he resigned because of ill health. He was a member of the Iowa State Library Association and served as president of that group in 1928. For many years a member of the board of directors of the Y.M.C.A., he was also on the board of directors of the Fort Dodge Chamber of Commerce. He spent several terms as a member of the local Boy Scout Council. Mr. Findlay also belonged to Ashlar Masonic Lodge, Delta Chapter of Royal Arch Masons and Calvary Commandery of Knights Templar. A farm owner, he had a great deal of interest in agriculture and his hobbies included gardening and outdoor sports.

Mr. Findlay, one of Fort Dodge’s best known citizens, died March 3, 1951 at the age of 84.

Source:

*History of Fort Dodge and Webster County Iowa

Gus Glaser

1910-1997

Gus Glaser can be described as a very successful entrepreneur and businessman who started with nothing and built significant wealth for his family and provided hundreds of people in his community with gainful employment.

Gus Glaser was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1910 and attended school there, but never graduated from high school. He was one of two children born to German immigrants whose childhood was typical of a child of first generation immigrants. As a young man, Glaser was known as a very hard worker and a very good boxer, at the 132 pound level. The values that he learned from boxing of hard work, competitiveness and persistence were traits that helped him succeed throughout his life as a businessman.

Glaser started working in his uncle’s meat packing plant in Omaha, Nebraska at a young age. In the early 1930’s, he decided he needed more education and enrolled in St. Benedict’s Academy in Atchison, Kansas. It was during that time period that he met the woman who was soon to become is wife, Eileen Wolters, and later, business partner. Eileen Wolters was the youngest of eleven children who was raised on a farm near Atchison, Kansas. Her family had much security, warmth and “everyone knew everyone.” Gus and Eileen were married in Atchison, Kansas, on April 12, 1932 and moved to San Antonio, Texas, where Gus took a meat packing plant position for one year. They then returned to Omaha, where Gus again took a job at his uncle’s plant. Part of Gus’s job was a relief rout salesman in Iowa. While working for his uncle, he discovered that he loved the state of Iowa and decided he wanted to work and raise his family in Iowa.

In 1937, Gus and Eileen and family moved to Carroll, Iowa. They used the family car, Model A Ford, as a down payment on a truck which was pressed into service brokering meat. Gus told the story that they bought their first order of meats with a check which was not to be cashed for two days.

In 1938, the Glasers began operations in Fort Dodge in a rented building. The business continued to grow, and in 1946, Gus Glaser built a new meat processing and manufacturing plant at 2400 5th Avenue South (Old Highway 20). At the time, he then had 11 trucks and a sales force of 12. Eileen did all the accounting for the company and even helped driving trucks for deliveries when necessary. Eileen worked for the company until the birth of their fourth child. It was then that she stayed home to raise her family. his original plant was expanded nine times, and when their children grew up, two sons, Robert and John, became involved in the business. Robert managed the Fort Dodge location and John managed a plant in Wilber, Nebraska, “Gus Glaser Meats”.

The key to the success of Gus Glaser Meats was the freshness of its meat. The company had truck salesmen who met regularly with customers, taking orders and delivering the product. Products included luncheon meats (50 varieties), wieners, sausages, cooked hams and bacon. Glaser had developed new methods of packaging and display, which added to the products’ appeal. Gus Glaser Meats also had an operation in Sioux City, - Glaser Dressed Beef, as well as warehouses in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids. Subsequently, Gus Glaser Meats added full product lines of cheeses, fish and poultry items. The company also expanded to sell its products to institutions.

The Gus Glaser company was one of the largest corporations in Iowa at one time, and perhaps the largest privately owned company - owned by one family (Mr. and Mrs. Glaser and their five children and grandchildren).

The Glasers expanded their investments to include real estate and farmland. In 1960, the Glasers founded the Glaser Foundation, through which charitable donations were made to projects and charities in Fort Dodge. One of the largest donations was a $40,000 gift toward the construction of the St. Edmond Convent in 1962.

Gus Glaser was a member and director of Beaver Creek Distillery, and on the boards of First National Bank of Fort Dodge and Mercy Hospital. He was director of the Chamber of Commerce and a member of Corpus Christi Parish. In 1965, Gus participated in the “Sell Iowa” tour to Europe and later, in another “Sell Iowa” tour to the Far East.

Glaser was a charter member of the Fort Dodge Betterment Foundation, which was responsible for much of the development in the Friendship Haven region. He was also president of the Mud Lake Fur Farm, an organization made up of 20 sportsmen who hunted the 400 acre lake in Iowa. Gus was an avid fisherman – he even fished at Great Bear Lake on the Arctic Circle.

In 1970, Gus Glaser Meats was sold to a Minneapolis resident Robert D. Husemoller. Husemoller and his family moved to Fort Dodge to run the company. At the time, Gus Glaser Meats had annual sales of $8 million. It was just two years later when the company declared bankruptcy and closed down in Fort Dodge due to mismanagement by the new owners.

Gus Glaser’s life story was often called a Horatio Alger story. He rose to success from his very humble beginnings and through hard work, determination, courage and honesty, Gus Glaser became a wealthy and prosperous business leader and generous contributor to his community.

Sources:

*The Glaser Family

*Fort Dodge Messenger

*Des Moines Register…March 24, 1972

*Meat Magazine, 1946

Walter Goodrich

1808-1901

Walter Goodrich and his wife Minerva and their seven sons where pioneers who traversed their way across the uncharted wilderness of the Des Moines valley and arrived in Lehigh in October of 1855. Goodrich was a jack of all trades and a man of exceptional ability along mechanical lines, and during his early residence here followed various occupations. As a cabinet maker and carpenter, Goodrich manufactured furniture, "looms, spinning wheels and wagons and built houses for the early settlers. As a blacksmith he made their tools, sharpened their plows and shod their horses and oxen ; and as a cooper he made tubs and barrels in his shop. Walter Goodrich also manufactured coffins and caskets and did a general undertaking business. He did some dentistry, and although he did not practice medicine he doctored his neighbors with simple remedies when they were ill.

From the age of twenty-one, Walter Goodrich was also a preacher and untiring worker in the Methodist Episcopal church, and attended to the spiritual wants of the people as well as their physical necessities. He christened the babies and as they grew up taught them to live; he married them when they were grown ; and when death came he preached their funeral sermons and comforted the mourning friends. His life seemed entirely devoted to others. He took considerable interest in public affairs, and at one time served as a member of the county board of supervisors. After a useful and well-spent life, Walter Goodrich passed away quietly on July 7, 1901.

Source:

*The Biographical Record of Webster County

Clemmon Granger

1850-1900

Mr. Clemmon Granger ran many successful business adventures in Fort Dodge. He was remembered for his promotion of public utilities.

Mr. Granger was born in Michigan and attended Crown Point Academy. After his work in Illinois, he came to Fort Dodge in 1879. As a successful businessman, Mr. Granger opened his own business. It was an implement and seed store that Mr. Granger ran with George Wise called “Granger and Wise.” Later, the partnership was formed between P.M. Mitchell, hence, changing the name of the company to Granger and Mitchell. For a few years, C.E. Brown took a financial interest in the store and the company name was changed once more to C.L. Granger and Company.

Mr. Granger was elected mayor five different times. During his time as mayor, the city voted for the installment of a waterworks system, and he was in office when the street railway franchise was granted. Mr. Granger was a big supporter of public utilities. In his civic activities, Mr. Granger belonged to Ashlar Dodge, the Calvary Commandery, and Fort Dodge Lodge.

Source:

*The People Who Made A Difference, Twist and Shout, January, 2000

Frank W. Griffith

1878-1953

Frank Whitecombe Griffith was one of the most eminent architects in the Midwest. He came to Fort Dodge in 1901, opening his own architectural office. He designed many gypsum industry buildings in the Dakotas, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Iowa. He also designed processing machines for gypsum. While still owning his own architectural business, Frank Griffith held the position of works manager at the United States Gypsum Company.

Mr. Griffith designed more than 100 churches throughout the state. He was the architect responsible for Lutheran Hospital, Friendship Haven, and many of the public school buildings.

Mr. Griffith also served as civilian representative of the U.S. government in the construction of naval air operation training corps facilities.

As a member of the St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Mr. Griffith was Sunday School Superintendent, parish lay reader, member of vestry, and he served as the senior warden for a number of years. He served on the school board and was the chairman of the building committee for FDSH.

Mr. Griffith was a member of Ashlar Masonic Lodge, the Delta Chapter of Royal Arch Masons of Cavalry, Za-Ga-Zig, Kiwanis, and the Chamber of Commerce. The most important club to Mr. Griffith was the Boy Scouts of America. He won an award for his efforts in 1933, and h eserved as a member of the National Advisory Committee of Boy Scouts of America.

Source:

*The People Who Made A Difference, Twist and Shout, January, 2000

Judge Albert Habhab

Albert Habhab was born in Fort Dodge on September 6, 1925. The son of Lebanese immigrants, the Fort Dodge native has devoted a lifetime of service to his fellow man — as an Army private in World War II, as the city’s mayor for 14 years and as a judge for 23 years. As a judge, Albert Habhab was appointed to the District Court in 1975 and the Court of Appeals in 1987 and served as chief judge of the Court of Appeals in 1997.

Few have played a larger role in the history of this city than the man born to Dea and Moses Habhab, who both entered the United States through Ellis Island as newly married teenagers and found their way to Fort Dodge to settle and raise a family.

Albert Habhab attended school in Fort Dodge and graduated from Fort Dodge Senior High in 1944. Young Albert was 18 when he was drafted into the Army on Jan. 25, 1944, just after graduating early from Fort Dodge Senior High. He served with distinction during World War II.

Habhab was discharged from the Army in early 1946 and began classes at Fort Dodge Junior College that fall. After two years, he entered the University of Iowa and graduated with a law degree in 1952. He returned to Fort Dodge and started his own law practice. Ten years later, attorney Alan Loth invited him to join his law practice. He practice law for 23 years.

Habhab was 34 years old when he was elected in 1960 to his first two-year term as mayor, deciding to run for the nonpartisan position because he thought there were “things that needed to be done” in Fort Dodge. Many thought he was too young; previous office-holders were much older. But he won election and then re-election six more terms. Habhab was active in the Republican Party but took a non-partisan approach to governing as the mayor of Fort Dodge.

Judge Habhab served as mayor of Fort Dodge from 1960 to 1974; the longest tenure of any Fort Dodge mayor before or since. During his tenure as mayor, Habhab saw his city grow in population and in land area. The city reached its highest population of 31,263 around 1970. The territory of the city expanded from 5.2 square miles to 16.4 square miles. Much of the infrastructure that Fort Dodge and area residents value today had its formative roots during the span of Habhab’s career as the city’s mayor.

Judge Habhab counts as his greatest accomplishment the urban renewal improvements made in the 1960s to address constant flooding from the Des Moines River, working with then-U.S. Sen. Harold Hughes to secure the necessary federal funding. He supported during his term as mayor the building of both Williams Drive and Veterans Bridge (on First Avenue South and over the railroad tracks), creating more efficient traffic flows through Fort Dodge.

Harlan and Hazel Rogers Sports Complex had its roots during his tenure — thanks to land donated by the Rogers family — and continues to bring recreational and financial (state girls softball championship) benefits to the city. As mayor, Habhab dug the first spade of dirt for the present site of Iowa Central Community College, which had been located in a wing of Fort Dodge Senior High, and which he considers one of northwest Iowa’s greatest assets. To expand the Fort Dodge Regional Airport, he worked through condemnation proceedings to double the size of the land on which the airport is located. Also during his mayoral tenure, the fire station was moved from the Fort Dodge Municipal Building to its present location, land was acquired for the present city landfill, the Airport Commission was created and the city limits were expanded to control and encourage home building. Albert Habhab when speaking about all of the things accomplished during his tenure as mayor of Fort Dodge always gives the credit to the City Council and the good working relationship they had, noting that it always took a team effort to get things done.

On September 22, 1960, John F. Kennedy, then a senator from Massachusetts seeking the presidency of the United States, spoke to an estimated 15,000 people on the City Square. Mayor Habhab introduced Senator Kennedy that day and later received a thank you note from him.

In 1965, union workers at the Fort Dodge IBP plant went on strike and the walkout became violent. Mayor Habhab reached out to Governor Harold Hughes for assistance. A meeting was convened in the Governor’s office with Mayor Habhab along with union representatives and IBP management to his office in the State Capitol Building in Des Moines. After contentious discussion and after the Governor evicted Mayor Habhab and the lawyers representing the two parties from his office, a deal to resolve the strike was finally reached.

Like so many men and women of the “Greatest Generation.” Albert Habhab served his country in World War II. Al was 18 when he was drafted into the Army on Jan. 25, 1944. Nine months later, his unit of the 87th Infantry Division fought in the Battle of the Bulge and the date of Dec. 16, 1944, was indelibly seared forever in Habhab’s mind.

Facing intense German fire on that day, Habhab’s squad was ordered to take out a machine gun nest. One of the men, Arthur Kingsberry, was hit by bullets and, Habhab recalled, was lying in a field “yelling and screaming, ‘I don’t want to die’ and ‘help me, help me.'”

“I told the guys if they would cover me, I would go back and get Kingsberry. So I got rid of my pack but kept my rifle and ammunition belt and crawled on my belly to where Kingsberry was. He was shot up bad and was bleeding profusely. I had my first-aid packs, and I patched him up the best I could. The Germans kept shooting. We could hear the zing of bullets. Finally, the Germans stopped firing. Perhaps they thought we were both dead. There was indeed divine intervention. I threw Kingsberry’s arm over me. He was a big fellow and I was a little guy, I weighed 100-125 pounds. I then dragged him to where the other guys were.”

Habhab developed trench foot a week after rescuing Kingsberry in the frozen conditions of France and was evacuated to a hospital in Paris, and then to England, where doctors were able to save his feet from amputation. Habhab was awarded the Bronze Star, three battle stars and the Combat Infantryman Badge.

Habhab was discharged from the Army in early 1946 and began classes at Fort Dodge Junior College that fall. After two years, he entered the University of Iowa and graduated with a law degree in 1952. It was at the University of Iowa that he met and fell in love with Janet and the two were married in July 1953.

After practicing law for several years, Albert’s long ambition to become a judge was fulfilled when he was appointed a judge in the Second Judicial District by then-Governor Robert Ray in 1975 and served for 13 years. Habhab was then appointed to the Iowa Court of Appeals by then-Governor Terry Branstad in 1988 and later was selected by his fellow judges as chief judge. He left the court in 1997 and served as a senior judge for eight more years.

Albert Habhab also served his community by serving on numerous organizations. The list of organizations he has served is long. And so, too, is his list of honors. His commitment to service and to leadership is reflected in his statement: “If you don’t think things are going the way you should, get involved. If you really, truly believe in what you’re doing, that’s the major part. You’re going to be subject to criticism along the way, that’s true. But you need to be calm about the criticism. You need to believe in what you’re doing.”

Janet Habhab has also been a strong community supporter and has stood with her husband in the fulfillment of many endeavors to make Fort Dodge a better community in which to live and raise their family. Mrs. Habhab has also advocated for programs that promote strong family values, higher education and assistance for the disadvantaged members of the community.

Few are bigger cheerleaders for his community than Albert Habhab, who said, “I think Fort Dodge and Webster County are forging ahead. I think Fort Dodge has grown by people giving of their time and talents. Frankly, it has exceeded my expectations.”

Albert Habhab and his wife Janet have been married for more than six decades and they still lead an active lifestyle with close friends and are proud of their two children (Robert and Mary Beth), two grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. The Habhabs continue to live in the same house overlooking Snell Park since 1963.

Sources:

*Messenger Spotlight – April 2, 2017 …. by Paul Stevens

*Messenger Newspaper Editorials…. by Walt Stevens

Alice Hackett

1886-1975

Alice Hackett was a prominent music teacher. She was born in Fort Dodge (the former Alice Wright) and was placed in the home of her two aunts and uncle as a child after her mother died. She began studying piano as a child and later took piano lessons from Mrs. Jennie Ringland Smeltzer and with E. Robert Sohmitz of the Paris Conservatoire. She married John Hackett, a prominent real estate man.

Mrs. Hackett studied at the University of Chicago and later received a bachelor’s of music degree from the MacPhail School in Minneapolis and then a master’s of music in voice in 1929. She also studied at the University of Madrid and the University of Menendez Pelayo in Santander, Spain. She made frequent annual trips to Europe to study and to attend music festivals. She taught music in Texas, Los Angeles, the Chicago Musical College and later, many years in Fort Dodge. Her pupils received the highest ratings in the Iowa State and National Guild Piano Auditions and in competitions to play with orchestras throughout Iowa.

Her favorite composers were the classicists: Bach, Beethoven, Mozart; Romanticists: Chopin, Schumann, Schubert, Liszt and the modern composers Prokofiev, Copeland, and Stravinsky.

Mrs. Hackett received many honors through the years, including Master Teacher of Iowa Music Teachers Association, and was placed in the Hall of Fame by the National Guild of Piano Teachers. She was a member of the Fort Dodge Community Concert Board and the Fort Dodge Symphony Board.

Mrs. Hackett expected perfection from her students. She required that each student practice for one hour per day (with a parent) and that they memorize many pieces of music each year. She had many accomplished students – probably the most well know were Fort Dodge natives Steven Zehr, who became a concert pianist in Europe, and Scott Dunn, a former ophthalmologist who changed careers to become a conductor, pianist and arranger-orchestras.

Source:

*The People Who Made A Difference, Twist and Shout, January, 2000

The John Haire Family

Growing from a fledgling village to a bustling and prosperous city in Iowa, Fort Dodge has benefited greatly from so many entrepreneurs and business leaders since its beginnings in the mid-1850s. The John Haire family is a prime example. For over 130 years and three generations, the John Haire family of successful entrepreneurs, businessmen and community leaders made very significant contributions to the economic and civic vitality of their community of Fort Dodge . Their businesses were instrumental in the retail and construction sectors during the years when Fort Dodge experienced tremendous growth and expansion.

John and Mary Haire, 50th wedding anniversary

John Haire, I

1818-1904

John Haire came to America from Ireland as a young man. He first lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he worked in the dry goods business. He then moved to Fort Dodge in 1856, where he quickly became a leader in the community. He was a member of the school board, was elected auditor of Webster County in 1879 and was also elected clerk of the district court. He contributed financially to the construction of Corpus Christi Catholic Church around 1879/1880. John Haire opened one of the first mercantile establishments in Fort Dodge in 1856. He started a grocery store, which he ran for several years, later going into the clothing business. As a successful merchant, he had a reputation of being very honest and trustworthy. He and his wife, Mary, had fifteen children, four of whom died in infancy and one in early childhood.

Some of his children became clerks in businesses John Haire I owned: Haire Clothing Company, Sacket & Haire Drug Company. Other children were successful in their own business enterprises. Mary Haire, John I’s wife, was known as a devoted wife and mother, always finding time to aid and assist those in sickness and distress.

John Haire, Sr.

John Haire, Sr

1877-1963

John Haire, Sr. was born on November 12, 1877 in Fort Dodge, Iowa. His parents (John Haire I and Mary Haire) were early settlers in the Fort Dodge area. John Haire Sr. graduated from Corpus Christi Elementary School, Fort Dodge Senior High School and then attended Des Moines Pharmacy College. As a registered pharmacist, he joined his brother W.W. Haire and Robert Sackett in operating the Sackett and Haire Drug Store near the City Square in Fort Dodge.

Mr. Haire was very active in the business community in Fort Dodge, and throughout Iowa. In 1909, he founded the Fort Dodge Lumber Company, which he owned and managed for 43 years. That business was later sold to Joyce Lumber Company. Mr. Haire served on the boards of directors of The State Bank, The Fort Dodge Serum Company (later to become Fort Dodge Labs), Fort Dodge Telephone Company and the Marso & Rodenborn Manufacturing Company. He also founded the Fort Dodge Wholesale Distributing Company and owned lumber yards in Clare and Barnum. He was a long time member of the Rotary Club and was also a member of the Elks Lodge.

Mr. Haire married Margaret Mason of Fort Dodge in 1907. Margaret Mason Haire was a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. George W. Mason one of Fort Dodge's early business leaders and founder of the Mason and O'Connell Lumber Company which later became the Fort Dodge Lumber Company. George W. Mason also developed commercial property on central avenue in downtown Fort Dodge. Margaret Mason Haire was a graduate of Fort Dodge High School and Smith College. She was involved in many community projects including teaching in the Fort Dodge School System and serving on the School Board. She also volunteered for the Red Cross and the Drama League for Fort Dodge. She handled her own business affairs including farm land. Mr. and Mrs. John Haire, Sr. had three sons George Mason Haire, John Haire, Jr. and Mason Haire.

John Haire, Jr. and wife Betty Haire

John Haire, Jr.

1913-2006

John Haire, Jr., was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa to John Haire Sr. and Margaret Mason Haire.

He graduated from St. Thomas Academy (high school), Mendota Heights, MN and then went on to graduate from the Culver Summer Naval School in Culver, Indiana. John Haire Jr. was also a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. Following college, he worked in the Bahamas and Haiti for several years before returning to Fort Dodge where he worked with his father at the Fort Dodge Lumber Company.

The Haire Family owned and operated the Fort Dodge Lumber Company for many years. It was located just west of the former Carnegie Library on 1st Avenue South.

John Haire Jr. married his wife, Betty Hagerman in 1941 at Corpus Christi Church (a church his grandfather had provided financial support for during its construction in the 1870’s). Betty Haire, who was born in Canada, moved to Fort Dodge when her father was an executive with the Tobin Meat Packing plant. She graduated from Fort Dodge High School. Following their marriage, Betty and John moved to California, where John joined the U.S. Immigration Service. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, John completed officer candidate school and was commissioned in the U.S. Navy, where he worked for the office of Naval Intelligence.

After WWII, John and Betty returned to Fort Dodge to work in the lumber business. He formed the George Mason Land Company and was actively involved in that business for the rest of his life. He was a trustee of the Iowa Lumber and Building Materials Dealers, a district representative of the Iowa Retail Lumbermen’s Association and vice-president of Iowa Lumber and Material Dealers Association.

John and Betty relocated to Vero Beach, Florida, but always maintained and treasured their Iowa roots and passion for Iowa farmland. The Haire Family continued to support projects in Fort Dodge, including St. Edmond Catholic High School, UnityPoint Cancer Center and the Fort Dodge Public Library. John Haire, Jr. and family were also members of Corpus Christi Church.

George Mason Haire

1909 - 1979

George Mason Haire, son of John Haire, Sr. and Margaret Mason Haire, lived in Fort Dodge, went to Scared Heart and Corpus Christi grade schools and graduated from Fort Dodge High School. He then attended Notre Dame and the University of Wisconsin. George married Georganne Sittig who was also from Fort Dodge. George was active in the community and jointly owned and worked with John Haire, Jr. at the Fort Dodge Lumber Company. George was the first baby born at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Fort Dodge (Mercy Hospital later merged with Lutheran Hospital and become Bethesda Hospital and now is called Unity Point Hospital). He served on the Board of Mercy Hospital; Vice President of Home Federal Saving and Loan Association which later merged with First Federal Savings and Loan where he was a Director, also Director of the State Bank, member of the Elks Club, American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars and Corpus Christi Church.

Mason Haire

1915-1984

Mason Haire, the youngest son of John Haire, Sr. and Margaret Mason Haire, was raised in Fort Dodge, moved away from Fort Dodge after attending Fort Dodge High School then graduated from Swarthmore College and received masters and doctorate degrees from Harvard. He taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard and University of California Berkeley. Mason was a prolific author and consulted with countries and companies around the world in the field of industrial psychology.

Sources:

*Fort Dodge Messenger, 11/11/1904

*The Family of John Haire I

Thomas Heggen

1918-1949

Thomas Orlo Heggen was in the right place at the right time - Okinawa Bay during World War II - to begin the novel that would bring him fame. Heggen was a communications officer on a Navy attack cargo ship when he began writing the funny vignettes that would evolve into the novel "Mister Roberts," about the goings-on aboard a warship headed by an eccentric captain. Heggen was born in Fort Dodge and showed writing talent during junior high school. He moved at age 15 to Oklahoma, when his parents had to relocate because of the Depression. The family later moved to Minneapolis, where young Heggen received his B.A. degree in 1941 from the University of Minnesota School of Journalism, and with it he traveled east to secure a job on the editorial staff of Reader’s Digest. His initial tenure with Reader’s Digest was short-lived, for soon after Pearl Harbor he enlisted in the United States Navy, serving in World War II until October, 1945, and spending the greater part of his tour of duty in the Pacific observing and experiencing at first hand the actions and reactions to shipboard life that he began transforming into sketches and short stories.

When the war ended, he returned to Reader’s Digest, but again his stay was short. At the advice of his cousin Wallace Stegner, Heggen fashioned several short stories based on his Navy experiences into a novel, which he planned to call “The Iron-Bound Bucket.” In 1946, the novel was published to universally strong reviews as Mister Roberts; it was praised for its portrait of a naval officer who fights the tedium and pointlessness of war with compassion, understanding, and a comic subversiveness drawn from Heggen’s own personality. The war novel was an immediate success, and the subsequent Broadway play starring Henry Fonda brought Heggen fame and fortune and a Tony Award presented for Best Play.

Heggen’s four-year marriage to Carol Lynn Gilmer ended the same year. With the success of the stage adaptation of Mister Roberts, which he wrote in collaboration with Joshua Logan in 1948, Heggen seemed to have embarked upon a promising career in writing, but he never completed another work.

Heggen was very shocked by his instant fame and put himself under much pressure to turn out another bestseller. Unfortunately, he found himself with a crippling case of writer's block and never completed another work during his final tempestuous months in New York. During this time, Heggen developed insomnia and tried to cure it with increasing amounts of alcohol and prescription drugs. On May 19, 1949, Heggen was found drowned in his bathtub at age 30 after an overdose of sleeping pills.

Years after Heggen’s death, his wildly successful novel (which can still be purchased on Amazon and other online bookstores) and Broadway play was made into a feature film, television series and a television movie. The film version with Henry Fonda, James Cagney and Jack Lemmon is one of the most well-known movies of WWII.

Sumner Heman

1917-1995

Sumner Heman, a Fort Dodge artist and art teacher, was self-taught. His pen and ink drawings were inspired by a boyhood trip to Minnesota, where he was inspired lakes, loons and nature. He observed what other artists were doing and learned to create texture to help capture an America that was disappearing – an old railroad depot, farms, Indians, airplanes, design, people and homesteads. He would often begin with a photograph and expand his art by depicting what he believed the subject was feeling in his artwork.

One of Heman’s most recognizable works of art is the highly identifiable public art mural painted on the wall on Central Avenue in downtown Fort Dodge depicting a scene of old Fort Dodge.

Heman was also a draftsman and a carpenter, creating furniture for his own use; he also worked with Indian beading and costumes. Heman received the 1990 “Friend of Education” award, presented by the Iowa State Education Association. He had been an artist in residence in the Fort Dodge Schools, giving demonstrations and organizing art fairs. Copies of his art were published in various art magazines. He also created letterheads for companies as well as medallions for various Iowa counties Centennial celebrations. Although he worked in various mediums, his favorite was preserving art on canvas. He often said that he didn’t create his art to sell, but to preserve Iowa scenes from yesteryear.

Source:

*Des Moines Register

Walter Crawford Howey1882 - 1954

More than a century has passed since the emergence on the national journalism scene of one of the most famous journalists to hail from Fort Dodge – Walter Crawford Howey.

Said the New York Times, "One summer day in 1903, Walter Crawford Howey came out of Fort Dodge, Iowa, determined to make a tumultuous impact on journalism. He did. Young, flamboyant, with an iron drive, he descended on Chicago, his arrival signaling the beginning of one of the most raucous eras in Midwest newspaperdom."

The famous Broadway play, “The Front Page,” was based on his life and still is performed in theaters throughout the country and as a feature-length movie shown on late-night television.

This is the story of his life.

Hildy Johnson, a crack reporter for the Chicago Herald-Examiner, has said his farewells and moves to the door of the press room. He and his fiancée’ are leaving Chicago to be married in New York. But the voice of Hildy’s boss, managing editor Walter Burns, stops him.

"Hold on! I want you to have something to remember me by," Burns exclaims.

He gives Hildy his watch, which has Burns’ name inscribed on it.

"If you’ll look inside, you’ll find a little inscription: ‘To the Best Newspaperman I know.’ When you get to New York, you can scratch out my name and put yours in its place, if you want to."

Protesting at first, Hildy finally accepts the gift and a lump comes to his throat: "Well, this is the first and last thing I ever got from a newspaper."

The couple leave, and when they are well out of earshot, Burns calmly walks to the telephone, heaves a huge sigh, and speaks:

"Duffy," he says to a subordinate at the newspaper’s office, "Listen. I want you to send a wire to the Chief of Police at La Porte, Indiana ... That’s right ... Tell him to meet the 12:40 out of Chicago ... New York Central … and arrest Hildy Johnson and bring him back here ... Wire him a full description ... The son of a bitch stole my watch!"

This scene brought down the curtain on "The Front Page," a Broadway hit of the late 1920s, and sent many shocked theatergoers on their way vowing that they would never allow their sons or daughters to become journalists.

How true-to-life was the play’s portrayal of the irascible Walter Burns and a rowdy band of newspaper reporters? Very accurate - if you’re speaking of cut-throat Chicago journalism in the early 1920s. And Walter Burns. Was he real, or was he a fictitious character dreamed up by playwrights Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur?

Answers MacArthur, "I worked for him for 10 years in Chicago. His real name is Walter Howey."

Howey is one of the great legends of American journalism. His bombastic carryings-on while managing editor of the Chicago Herald Examiner inspired Hecht and MacArthur, two former Chicago journalists, to dramatize him in their play. Indeed, he was the ruthless, unpredictable Walter Burns who outsmarted his star reporters and rival newspapers and who could finagle with the best of politicians.

"When the play opened on Broadway," said MacArthur, who worked under Howey at the Herald-Examiner, "a newspaperman questioned its authenticity and also complained that no mother would ever let her son be a newspaperman if she saw the way editors and reporters carried on in the play. I replied that the play was an understatement of the times."

Likewise, Howey was a man of the times. He was flamboyant, opportunistic, ruthless, and all the other adjectives one attaches to the "stop the presses" image of a Walter Burns. Yet he was a journalist whom MacArthur called "the greatest newsman ever," whom Newsweek magazine termed "a quiet, coldly efficient worker," and who, according to a Hearst associate, "was a genius whether it was on big plans, electronics or getting the most out of one news story."

Howey’s sixth sense for smelling out a news story was first displayed while working in Fort Dodge, where he was born Jan. 16, 1882. As a teenager, Howey became editor of the Fort Dodge Chronicle, which competed with the city’s other daily newspaper, the Messenger. His first journalistic coup was scooping the state’s press on the death of President William McKinley in 1901.

The president had been shot by an assassin in Buffalo, N.Y., and stayed alive eight days before dying from the wound. During this period, Howey wrote the story of McKinley’s death in advance, and the life story of his successor, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt, and had them set in type.

"I got hold of a servant at the house in Buffalo," said Howey, "and told him I’d give $10 to the first person there who would telephone me the minute the president died. The call came through as I knew it would. In a few minutes the pages were on the press, and we were out on the street hours ahead of our opposition."

Howey enjoyed being the first with the news. In 1902, he joined the staff of the Messenger and claimed credit for originating in Fort Dodge the newspaper stunt of running off two editions, one with a "Guilty" line and one with a "Not Guilty" line, in a famous murder trial. He held both editions in the pressroom until he received a flash from the courtroom (usually by a reporter signaling to another at a window), and then let boys rush out hawking the verdict even before the judge had dismissed the court.

Howey left his hometown with a flourish in 1903.

The Iowan, just 21 years old, bluffed his way into his first job in Chicago. In his own words, he describes how he accomplished it: "The Daily News was my first stop. I went in and said to the editor, ‘I hear George Ade is sick.’ That was the first big writer I could think of. ‘There’s nothing the matter with George Ade,’ said the editor. ‘Never mind,’ I said, ‘is anybody else sick? I’m a versatile writer.’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘but I could use a reporter who knows the town. Do you?’ ‘Every alley in it,’ I assured him. ‘Then do you know the corner of Madison and Monroe?’ ‘Who doesn’t?’ ‘Fine!’ he said. ‘Get going.’ I ran out and asked the first cop, ‘Where’s the corner of Madison and Monroe?’ ‘Not in this world,’ he answered. ‘They both run east and west!’

Undaunted by this technicality, Howey later returned to the newsroom with a hair-raising description of events he had seen - at Madison and Monroe - complete with full names and addresses. The editor was impressed.

"You’re hired," he said. "I don’t want you to be too honest, anyway."

Reporter Howey stumbled onto a story later in 1903 that turned out to be one of the biggest in Chicago’s history - the Iroquois Theater fire of Dec. 30, in which about 600 were burned and trampled to death. How he discovered the fire was a matter of luck, but how he handled its coverage was a brilliant display of skill.

Returning to the office on that winter day, he was startled when a manhole in the street opened and out popped a knight in armor and three elves with wings. They turned out to be a group of actors who had escaped the burning theater by way of an underground passage. Howey, showing remarkable poise for a young reporter, established a city desk in a nearby store, from which he telephoned his paper the first news on the disaster and directed the efforts of other Daily News reporters. It was a preview of the talents that were to make him one of the most sensational news editors in America.

Howey later worked briefly for the Chicago Evening American, and then moved to the Inter-Ocean, where, as city editor, he made newspaper history with a daring first - a full page of photographs. His reward, when the bills came in, was being fired.

When Howey joined the Chicago Tribune as its city editor in 1907, the mood of journalism in Chicago was beginning to change. A man who worked as a cub reporter during this time described the atmosphere: "In those days there was a fresh, frontier approach to public morals which reached a high point in the fang-and-claw ethics of the daily press. It was commonplace for newspapers to plant spies in rival editorial offices and saboteurs in pressrooms; to kidnap and jail rival reporters on trumped-up charges; to highjack murder suspects and key witnesses from one another - and from the police."

MacArthur only mildly exaggerated when he said that "The Front Page" was an understatement of the times.

The play, which opened on Broadway in 1928, was a melodrama set in the pressroom of the Chicago Criminal Courts building.

Hildy Johnson, who comes to bid his reporter cronies good-bye, is delayed when Earl Williams, an escaped murderer whose stay of execution has been ignored by corrupt officials, falls in through the window. With the help of Walter Burns, Hildy hides Williams in an old roll-top desk until the paper can expose the civic corruption. They are caught by the sheriff, but Burns blusters their way out of the predicament. Such a set of circumstances was not only totally believable, but actually mild when compared to events that occurred in Chicago.

Money spoke big in those days, and press lord William Randolph Hearst, publisher of many large newpapers, had plenty to spend. After Howey quit the Tribune in 1917 following an argument with the paper’s owner, Hearst offered him a job as editor-in-chief of his Chicago Herald-Examiner. Howey’s new salary of $35,000 a year was four times what he made as city editor of the Tribune.

The arrival of Howey marked the beginning of a competitive news conflict between the morning rivals, the Herald-Examiner and the Tribune.

Howey’s first move was to declare war on the Tribune, which he called "The World’s Greatest Snoozepaper." He then shanghaied Frank Carson, the Tribune’s day city editor, by inviting him out to dinner, getting him drunk, and then guiding his hand while he signed two papers - his resignation from the Tribune and a contract with Hearst.

The Herald-Examiner reached its peak of power in 1919 when it was the only Chicago paper to support the winning mayoralty candidate, William "Big Bill" Thompson. MacArthur describes the aftermath:

"Mr. Howey’s reward was a newspaperman’s dream. Two city patrolmen and a sergeant were stationed in our city room and were subject to the orders of the paper’s reporters. We went out and arrested people whenever we had to. Our private interrogation headquarters was at a nearby hotel.

"Our policemen would keep rival photographers from taking pictures at the scene of a crime, and we got one exclusive story after another.

The other papers howled with rage but what could they do? Walter had the resignations of half a dozen city officials in his desk to be used at his convenience."

A legion of legends exists about Howey and his bold actions as editor of the Herald-Examiner.

"Howey would sit at his desk and make monkeys of all of us," said Hecht, who worked for the Tribune. "If he couldn’t scoop us, he’d invent a switch or an angle for the story that outfoxed us."

In one incident, a little girl was reported to be locked in a bank vault in Galena, Ill., the time lock on.

Howey knew that time locks could be picked, so he called the warden of the state penitentiary at Joliet and said, "Have you any good safecrackers?"

The warden replied with pride, "Certainly. The best!"

Howey persuaded the warden to lend him the safecrackers. He rushed four of his best reporters and photographers to Joliet, where they joined the safecrackers on a privately hired train that roared into Galena. The safe was opened in no time, but there was no girl to be found inside. Others may have shriveled away in embarrassment, but not Howey. He played up the Herald-Examiner’s role, centering his lead story on how the hardened criminals fell down on their knees and gave thanks when the little girl was not there. The newspaper’s bold headline proclaimed: "Humanity is a Wonderful Thing."

The Tribune took the bait when Howey, on another occasion, planted a well-documented story that an Indian heiress was in Chicago and had to marry an American by midnight in order to inherit a fortune in Bombay.

Howey even arranged to have her married to a dying bum (a made-up stooge). After the Tribune and others splashed the story, the Herald-Examiner explained the stunt and gave thanks for the plug on its upcoming Sunday serial about a Bombay heiress.

He often employed subterfuge to embarrass his paper’s rivals. Howey once wrote an editorial lavishly praising the Herald-Examiner’s enterprise and humanitarianism in sending relief to an Illinois town struck by a cyclone. He had a deadpan copy boy take it directly to the Tribune composing room with the instructions; "Must. Colonel McCormick." (McCormick was publisher of the Tribune.) The tribute led the Tribune’s editorial page for half the press run before being discovered.

At the Herald-Examiner, Howey often followed the practice of grabbing the first edition and boarding an elevated train. Once aboard he would open the paper and comment to a train passenger about a particularly "hot" front page story. He would get reader reaction from one or two men and the same number of women, and then would take another train back to the Loop. At the newspaper office, he would often have his staff rewrite the story, stressing or clearing up points that his elevated train friends had mentioned in discussing the story.

"Humanity is a Wonderful Thing." This was a formula for news that Howey practiced throughout his career. Another formula was the repentance of "wayward souls."

"It is the simplest thing on earth to create circulation but it took me years to discover the secret," Howey said. "People are more interested in the repentance of a wayward soul than they are in themselves."

The repentance theme was employed by Howey when Hearst sent him to Boston to become editor of the faltering Boston American in 1922. Hearst told Howey to add 50,000 circulation to the American and he gave him six months and a generous budget to do it.

Howey found a familiar wayward soul - a woman who, in a holdup, had killed a policeman and was awaiting execution. Howey convinced her to that she should repent her sins - exclusively for the American - in return for a handsome sum of money for her daughter. The story of her life of crime and her repentance unfolded daily in Howey’s paper, and its circulation shot up by 54,000 in six days.

Howey was managing editor of the American for two years, and in 1924 he went to England for Hearst to study newspapers published by Lord Northcliffe. Upon his return later that year, Howey’s ideas for a picture newspaper led to the establishment of Hearst’s New York Mirror.

Unlike newsman Walter Burns, Howey was a solid production man. He carried a printer’s union card and owned 17 patents, including inventions for making engravings and covering methods of transmitting pictures and messages by wire. In 1931, his invention of an automatic photoelectric engraving machine was unveiled in Washington in the presence of Hearst editor Arthur Brisbane and officials of the Federal Bureau of Engraving.

Howey developed the sound photo for Hearst in 1935; this machine transmitted halftones by ordinary telephone. His inventions, an outgrowth of his belief in the importance of pictures, hastened the nationwide use of wire photos.

The remainder of Howey’s years was spent supervising Hearst publications and working as Hearst’s editorial assistant. Howey was editor-in-chief of Hearst’s three Boston papers - the Evening American, Daily Record, and Sunday Advertiser (1939); supervising editor of American Weekly magazine in New York (1940); and editor of the Chicago Herald-American (1942). He divided his time among these three jobs. In 1944, Howey was appointed special editorial assistant to Hearst.

Howey’s life ended on a tragic note. In January 1954, he was badly injured in Boston when a skidding taxi pushed a mailbox onto him. Ten days later, his wife died of pneumonia. Howey was slowly resuming his duties as editor of Hearst’s Boston newspapers when he died of the auto injuries on March 21, 1954. He left one son, William Randolph Howey, whose name was evidence of the high regard he had for Hearst.

Source: *Paul Stevens…. retired Associated Press Chief of Bureau in Kansas City and AP's regional vice president for newspapers in 15 states.

Libbie Hyman(December 6, 1888 – August 3, 1969)

Fort Dodge native, Libbie Hyman, didn’t have the liberty of choosing her career, but that didn’t stop her from doing what she wanted.

Libbie Hyman was born on December 6, 1888, in Des Moines, Iowa, the third of four children and the only daughter. Her parents were Jewish immigrants; her father, Joseph Hyman, came to the United States from Konin, Poland, at age fourteen, and her mother, Sabina Neumann, was born in Stettin, Germany.

Hyman's childhood and youth were spent in Fort Dodge, Iowa, where her father kept an unsuccessful clothing store. Her home life was strict and without affection. Her father twenty years older than her mother worried about his declining fortunes and ignored his children, although he did have scholarly inclinations, keeping volumes of Dickens and Shakespeare, which Hyman read. In her brief autobiography, Hyman remembered her mother as being "thoroughly infiltrated with the European worship of the male sex." Her mother required her to do "endless housework" caring for her brothers, whom Hyman believed were "brought up in idleness and irresponsibility."

Libbie Henrietta Hyman earned an international reputation for her monumental six-volume work on the classification of invertebrates. Although she considered her invertebrate treatise essentially a "compilation" of the literature, others have called it a remarkable synthetic work. Compiled by one independent woman with enormous knowledge of the field and a great facility for translating European languages, it represents a textbook of the invertebrate animal kingdom that whole academies might have attempted. Hyman's treatise consists of judicious analysis and integration of previously scattered information; it has had a lasting influence on scientific thinking about a number of invertebrate animal groups, and the only works that can be compared with hers are of composite authorship. Hyman also influenced the teaching of zoology classes nationwide with the publication of her laboratory manuals.

From an early age, Hyman demonstrated an interest in nature. She learned the scientific names of flowers from a high-school botany book that belonged to her brothers, and she made collections of butterflies and moths. She remembered being initially puzzled by classification, until she suddenly realized that the flowers of a common cheeseweed were the same as the flowers of a hollyhock. In 1905, she graduated from Fort Dodge High School. She was class valedictorian but had failed to attract the attention of her science teachers.

Although she passed the state examination for teaching in the country schools, she was too young to be appointed to a teaching position and so returned to high school during 1906 for advanced studies in science and German. When these classes ended, she took a factory job, pasting labels on oatmeal cereal boxes.

On her way home from the factory one fall afternoon, she met Mary Crawford, a Radcliffe graduate and high school language teacher who was "shocked" to learn what she was doing. Crawford arranged for Hyman to attend the University of Chicago with scholarship money that was available to top students. "To the best of my recollection," Hyman said, "it had never occurred to me to go to college. I scarcely understood the purpose of college." At the university, she began a course in botany, but was discouraged by anti-semitic harassment from a laboratory assistant. Instead, she majored in zoology and graduated in 1910 with a B.S. degree. Professor Charles Manning Child, from whom she had taken a course during her senior year, encouraged her to enter the graduate program. As Child's graduate assistant, she directed laboratory work for courses in elementary zoology and comparative vertebrate anatomy.

Hyman was not free from family responsibilities, however. Her father had died in 1907; her possessive mother moved to Chicago with her brothers, and Hyman was again required to keep house for them and endure their continuing disapproval of her career.

Hyman received her Ph.D. in 1915, when she was twenty-six years old, for a dissertation entitled, "An Analysis of the Process of Regeneration in Certain Microdrilous Oligochaetes." She then accepted an appointment as Child's research assistant, a position she held until he neared retirement. Her work in Child's laboratory consisted of conducting physiological experiments on lower invertebrates, including hydras and flatworms. It was during this time that Hyman realized that many of these common animals were misidentified because they had not been carefully studied taxonomically. She became a taxonomic specialist in these invertebrate groups. Hyman's interest in invertebrates had a strong aesthetic component; she confessed a deep fondness for "the soft delicate ones, the jellyfishes and corals and the beautiful microscopic organisms."

During her time as a laboratory assistant, helping Child direct his classes, Hyman had felt that a better student guide book was needed, and now she wrote one. A Laboratory Manual for Elementary Zoology was published in 1919 by the University of Chicago Press. The first printing quickly sold out, and in 1929 she wrote an expanded edition. She also published, in 1922, A Laboratory Manual for Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy, which also enjoyed brisk sales. The second edition of this manual was published in 1942 as Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy. She was never excited about vertebrates, however, and she refused to consider a third edition. (The third edition was published in 1979, the work of eleven contributors.)

By 1930, Hyman had realized she could live on the royalties from the sale of her laboratory manuals, and she resigned her position in the zoology department, leaving Chicago in 1931 to tour Western Europe for fifteen months. She never again worked for wages. When she returned from her travels, she settled near the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where she lived modestly, close to the museum's "magnificent" library, determined to devote all of her time to writing a treatise on the invertebrates. In 1937, she was made an honorary research associate of the museum. Although unsalaried, she was given an office, where she placed food and water at the window for pigeons. The first volume of The Invertebrates appeared in 1940.

Hyman had always wanted to live in the country and indulge her interest in gardening. In 1941, she bought a house in Millwood, Westchester County, about thirty-five miles north of Times Square. She commuted to her work at the museum until 1952, when she sold the house and returned to New York City. Although she said that gardening and commuting had taken time away from her treatise, during those years of residence in the country she completed the second and third volumes, which were both published in 1951. At the museum, Hyman spent most of her time in the library. She read, made notes, digested information, composed in her head, and typed the first and only draft of her books on her manual typewriter. She also taught herself drawing, and her books contain her own illustrations. She apparently never had a secretary or an assistant.

The fourth volume of the treatise was published in 1955, and the fifth in 1959.

Hyman loved music and regularly attended performances of the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic. Her physical appearance had been altered by a bungled sinus operation in 1916, and to many she presented a brusque and formidable exterior, but she was not a recluse. She carried on a lively correspondence with scientists who sent her specimens or consulted her. She encouraged young scientists and contributed to charitable causes. She acquired a small, but valuable art collection, and made summer collecting trips to marine laboratories.

Hyman's recognition began with publication of her first invertebrate volume. The University of Chicago awarded her an honorary doctor of science degree in 1941, and honorary degrees followed from other colleges. She received the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal of the National Academy of Sciences in 1951, the Gold Medal of the Linnaean Society of London in 1960, and the American Museum presented her with its Gold Medal for Distinguished Achievement in Science in April 1969, a few months before she died.

Hyman served as president of the Society of Systematic Zoology in 1959, and she edited the society's journal, Systematic Zoology, from 1959-1963. She was vice president of the American Society of Zoologists in 1953 and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, as well as Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi, the American Microscopical Society, the American Society of Naturalists, the Marine Biological Laboratory of Woods Hole, the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography, and the Society of Protozoologists. In addition to her books, she published 135 scientific papers between 1916 and 1966. Her early papers represent contributions to Child's physiological projects; her taxonomic and anatomical papers began to appear in 1925.

In the last decade o Hyman's life, her health was poor and her work on invertebrates had become more difficult. In 1967, at the age of seventy-eight and suffering from Parkinson's disease, she published the sixth volume of her treatise. She announced in its preface that this would be the last volume of The Invertebrates from her hands, although McGraw-Hill intended to continue the series with different authors. "I now retire from the field," Hyman wrote, "satisfied that I have accomplished my original purpose— to stimulate the study of invertebrates." She died on August 3, 1969.

Sources:

*Encyclopedia of World Biography. Copyright 2010 The Gale Group, Inc.

*Decious, E. (2019). Celebrating 150 Years. The Messenger, 21-22.

Dr. Herbert Jonas, Veterinarian

Herbert Jonas was born in Borken, Germany on January 9,1925. He was part of a large Jewish family that for many generations lived in the region of Westphalia in northwestern Germany, near the Dutch border.

Herbert had a normal childhood until Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass), November 9, 1938. On that night, synagogues and Jewish owned business across Germany were burned and destroyed by the Nazis, including the Borken synagogue and many of the local Jewish businesses. The Jewish adults, including Herbert’s parents, were arrested and jailed.

After several days, with the condition that they leave Germany immediately, the local police chief released the Jews from jail. Herbert and his family escaped to Holland, but the family was separated. Herbert, who was 13, and his younger brother Richard were sent to a children’s school in Aalten and were required to report to the police twice a day. His mother was sent to live with her sister near Amsterdam, and his father was interred in a camp in Roermond.

After nearly two years in Holland and still separted from each other, a cousin living in Santa Fe, New Mexico signed an affidavit that enabled the family to obtain permission to immigrate to the United States. Herbert and his family sailed to the US on a ship that left Holland just weeks before the Nazis invaded. The Jonas family arrived in Hoboken, New Jersey on March 13, 1940.

After arriving in the US at the age of 15, Herbert had escaped the Nazis, endured separation from his family, immigrated to a new country and learned enough English to complete high school in New York City. Upon graduation, just three years after arriving in the US and not yet a citizen, he was drafted into the US Army to fight in WWII. He was eager to return to Germany to fight the Nazis who had torn apart his family’s life and murdered many of his family members in concentration camps.

In 1944, Herbert was sent to Italy and France for airborne training and in December 1944, he fought in the Battle of the Bulge in Houffalize, Belgium. There, he was wounded and earned a Purple Heart as well as a Bronze Star for bravery for when under heavy enemy fire he pulled one of his injured buddies 150 yards to safety.

In March 1945 Herbert participated as a paratrooper in the allied invasion of Germany in Operation Varsity. It was the only combat mission to ever use Gliders.

As thousands of Gliders crossed the Rhine River into Germany, they landed in Hamminkeln outside the town of Wesel, just 10 miles from Herbert’s hometown of Borken. Once again, Herbert was wounded in the intense close fighting and was awarded a second purple heart medal.

At Herbert’s funeral in July 2005 an elderly gentleman approached his family after the service. He said that he had been in the glider with Herbert when they landed near Wesel. The man remembered Herbert saying that the field they landed in had once belonged to Herbert’s grandfather and that he remembered playing in that field as a child.

Herbert was very excited at the prospect of going back to visit his former home. As the war came to an end, Herbert was granted leave from his unit and was driven by jeep to his hometown. Upon his return he walked through the streets of his now bombed out hometown. He passed the flattened business district where his father once had a wholesale textile business. He visited the street where he once lived and walked by the house where he had been born. There he encountered a former neighbor, Frau Roetger. When she saw Herbert, she called out to him saying, “Herbert, you are back. How are your mother and father? You know, I can’t understand why you (meaning the Americans) destroyed our church.” Herbert replied to Frau Roetger, “I can’t understand why you destroyed our synagogue”.

After the war, Herbert Jonas returned to the United States on December 30, 1945. He attended Middlesex College for two years and then was admitted to the University of Berne Veterinary School in Berne, Switzerland. While in Switzerland, Herbert met Miriam Lachs, a pharmacy student and German Jew whose family had emigrated to Israel before the war. Herbert and Miriam were married in Switzerland and their eldest daughter, Edna, was born there. Upon completion of his veterinary studies the young family moved to the US.

Dr. Herbert Jonas began his career as a veterinarian in Maine, Illinois and Missouri. In 1956 he learned of a veterinary practice for sale by Dr. Wardahl in Fort Dodge, Iowa. Deciding whether to move to a small town in the Midwest was a difficult decision. As German Jewish immigrants, they feared being isolated from family and friends with whom they had much in common as new European immigrants and with whom they had the shared experience of surviving WWII. In addition, they feared that the prevalence of antisemitism in the US in the 1950’s would create further obstacles.

Nonetheless, Dr. Jonas approached Mr. Peter Garatoni, at the Union Trust and Savings Bank in Fort Dodge and was delighted and grateful when the bank was willing to extend this German Jewish immigrant a small business loan. The loan enabled Dr. Jonas to purchase Dr. Wardahl’s veterinary practice and begin his own business.

Dr. Jonas’ East Lawn Animal Hospital was first located at 702 South 30th Street. The practice initially treated large farm animals as well as small domestic pets. As the practice grew, Dr. Jonas discontinued treating farm animals and focused solely on helping dogs, cats and other household pets.

In the 1960’s Dr. Marvin Farley joined the practice for 5 years. In 1973 the hospital moved to 2930 5th Avenue South. Several years later, Dr. Tom Neuzil joined the practice and Dr. Jonas and Dr. Neuzil practiced together for many years. In 1985, Dr. Neuzil left Fort Dodge and Dr. Jonas sold East Lawn Animal Hospital to Dr. Mike Bottorf.

Herbert and Miriam Jonas and their family lived in Fort Dodge from 1956-1989, raising their four children, Edna, Debbie, Lenny and Fay.

During this time, they joined Beth El synagogue, which was a small congregation of about 40 Jewish households from Fort Dodge and several neighboring communities. Herbert, who had a strong Jewish education while growing up, frequently conducted religious services on the Shabbath and Jewish holidays. He also worked tirelessly and passionately to hold the Jewish community together for many years.

Herbert Jonas was a very active member of the community, serving on the Fort Dodge School Board for 12 years. He was the founder of the Fort Dodge Animal Humane Society and was a lifetime member of the Kiwanis Club. He also was active in the Boy Scouts of America and received the Silver Beaver Award in 1969, the highest award for distinguished service given by the local council.

After several heart attacks Herbert Jonas’ health began to decline. In 1987, he received a heart transplant at the University of Minnesota Hospitals in Minneapolis. Following his recovery, Dr. Jonas worked for Quality Plus SR (S was for Tom Schmoker, R was for Irv Robinson), a Fort Dodge-based company that manufactured generic pharmaceuticals for the animal industry. Dr. Jonas oversaw pharmaceutical bioequivalence studies until the company was sold to Sanofi, a multinational pharmaceutical company.

In 1988, on the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the city of Borken, Germany invited many of the surviving former Jewish residents to return to their hometown for a reunion. Herbert Jonas, along with his wife Miriam, their son Lenny and many cousins, made the trip to Germany. The current residents of Borken had worked for several years to come to terms with their history and now worked hard to form lasting friendships with the returning survivors. Over the subsequent years, Herbert continued to work with them on projects and exhibits in an effort to preserve the history and honor the memory of the Jewish community that once lived in Borken.

He returned to Borken annually to speak to students in middle and high schools about the life of the Jewish community in Borken before the war. Herbert Jonas did not hold the students responsible for the sins of their parents and grandparents. He worked to fight antisemitism through education and the teaching of tolerance.

In 1989 Herbert and Miriam moved to Minneapolis where they spent their final years near their daughters Debbie and Fay, their husbands and four of their six grandchildren.

Herbert Jonas was a very unpretentious man and got along well with people from all walks of life. Despite everything he endured in his life, he was very forgiving and believed that most people are basically good.

Herbert Jonas died on July 11, 2005 in Minneapolis, Minnesota at the age of 80.

Miriam Jonas

(November 1, 1924 - September 6, 2011)

Miriam Jonas (neé Lachs) was born on November 1, 1924 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Her given name was Gertrude Marion Lachs, but she went by Marion. Like many other Jewish families in Frankfurt, Marion, her older brother Wolfgang and their parents Ruth and Oskar Lachs, were acculturated and assimilated into German society.

In the early 1930’s, antisemitism was rising in Germany, and Hitler’s Nazi Party was coming into power. On April 1,1933 all Jewish children were sent home from school for the day and Germany instituted the first national boycott of Jewish businesses. Shortly thereafter, all government jobs, including teachers and other professionals, became restricted to Aryans only. As a result of these and other antisemitic measures, Marion’s parents decided that it was time to leave Germany, and the Lachs family began to prepare to immigrate to Israel.

As a child, Marion usually walked to school with her brother and there had never been any problems. Yet, as antisemitism continued to grow, that began to change. One day Marion was returning home from school and a group of teenage boys began to follow her. They seemed gigantic to an 8-year-old girl as they chanted, “Jew-Jew-Jew”. Soon they caught up to her, crowded around her and forced her up against a stone wall. One of them reached his arm over her shoulder and against the wall pinning her there. He asked, “Is it true that you are going to Israel?” Many thoughts raced through her mind, but out of fear she lied and told them, “No”. Only then did they let her go. Her knees were still shaking as she continued her way home. On other occasions, children followed her from school and threw rocks at her. Her brother was beaten-up by older boys on several occasions. Finally, knowing that they would soon be leaving Germany, Marion’s parents took her and Wolfgang out of school for the remainder of their time in Frankfurt.

Marion’s close friends Renate and Ursula lived next door. Suddenly, they stopped playing with her and even stopped talking to her. She was too young to understand that this was a part of the growing anti-Jewish fervor throughout Germany. For Marion, it was all confusing and sad. The days were long, and she very lonely.

Finally, the day of the family’s departure from Germany arrived. In January 1934, the Lachs family stood on the train platform at the Frankfurt Railroad Station with what appeared to Marion (age 9), a sea of people.

Everyone was crying as they said their goodbyes, not knowing if they would see their family or friends again. For Marion, there was a sense of both sadness and excitement as her mother held her hand and she and her family boarded the train. As the train traveled toward Trieste, Italy, there was a palpable sense of relief when the train crossed the Austrian border and they were finally out of Germany. Once in Trieste, the family boarded a ship with other Jews escaping Germany, all ready to start a new life in Israel.

Upon arrival in Israel, Marion began to use her Hebrew name, Miriam. She was enrolled in a school for new immigrants and was in class with other children from Germany learning to read, write and speak Hebrew. As Miriam grew-up, she made many friends, joined the Atid youth sports group and later joined the Haganah. The Haganah, considered illegal by the ruling British, was an underground army fighting Arabs who launched terrorist attacks against Israelis.

As a youth member of the Haganah, Miriam witnessed the arrival of boats carrying Jewish immigrants from Germany and other countries in Europe that had managed to break through the British blockades of Israel and land on the beaches of Tel Aviv. She was assigned to a team of young people that at night secretively fastened informational posters and notices to trees and poles around the city. Often these placards had a black border and bore the names of people killed in the struggle against Arab terrorism.

Though grateful to be out of Germany, life in Israel was difficult. Like most Israelis at the time, the family struggled financially. Because of this, and in the pioneer spirit of building the land and making the desert bloom, many Israelis sent their children to live in the countryside for a short time. At the age of 15, Miriam moved by herself to a village north of Tel Aviv, Ramot HaShavim. There she lived with a family on an egg farm, and soon thereafter, she moved to an agricultural school for girls in Nahalal. While there, in September 1940, Italy bombed Tel Aviv and friends of Miriam were killed.

After years of financial struggles as a house painter in Tel Aviv, Miriam’s father, Oskar, became a graphic artist. He was part of a small group of German Jewish artists who became well-known for their commercial designs. Many of Oskar Lachs’ posters and designs from the 1930’s and 1940’s are still sold online, in Israeli shops today and are included in collections such as at the Israel Museum.

In 1942, at the age of 18, Miriam joined the British Army. She was assigned to work as an aide in pharmacies in Sidon, Lebanon, and in Alexandria and Suez, Egypt. She was then transferred to Jerusalem where she was assigned to work as a nurse’s aide in a TB hospital. After contracting and being hospitalized for Amoebic Dysentery, Miriam was discharged from the army.

Following the Allied victory in WWII, like many whose education had been interrupted by the war, Miriam began to study on her own for the London Matriculation exams and college entrance exams. At the same time, she worked at a pharmacy in Tel Aviv. In April 1948, Miriam left Israel and went to the University of Berne in Berne Switzerland to study and become a pharmacist.

While studying at the University of Berne, Miriam met another German Jewish student, Herbert Jonas. Herbert’s family had escaped Germany after Kristallnacht and immigrated to New York City. Herbert served in the US Army in WWII and came to Switzerland after the war to attend Veterinary school. Miriam and Herbert were married in Switzerland and their eldest daughter, Edna, was born there. At that time, pregnant women were not allowed to continue their studies, so Miriam did not finish hers. After Herbert’s graduation in early 1951, the young family moved to the US. It was the first time Miriam had set foot in the United States.

When Dr. Herbert Jonas began his career as a veterinarian, the family moved across the US from Maine, to Illinois, and then to Missouri. In 1956 they learned of a veterinary practice for sale by Dr. Wardahl in Fort Dodge, Iowa. Deciding whether to move to a small town in the Midwest was a difficult decision. As German Jewish immigrants, they feared being isolated from family and friends with whom they had much in common as new European immigrants and with whom they had the shared experience of surviving WWII. In addition, they feared that the prevalence of antisemitism in the US in the 1950’s would create further obstacles.

Nonetheless, Dr. Jonas approached Mr. Peter Garatoni, at the Union Trust and Savings Bank in Fort Dodge and was delighted and grateful when the bank was willing to extend this German Jewish immigrant a small business loan. The loan enabled Dr. Jonas to purchase Dr. Wardahl’s veterinary practice and begin his business in Fort Dodge.

Miriam and Herbert lived in Fort Dodge from 1956-1989, raising their four children, Edna, Debbie, Lenny and Fay. During this time, they joined Beth El Synagogue, a small congregation of about 40 Jewish families from Fort Dodge and several neighboring towns. Miriam was very involved in Beth El Synagogue and for many years worked passionately along with Herbert to strengthen and enrich the Jewish community.

Each Spring, the Beth El Sisterhood hosted an annual dinner-dance gala at the Fort Dodge Country Club. The women of Beth El prepared traditional Jewish foods, such as hand-made cheese blintzes and other Jewish delicacies for the event. For many years the dinner-dance was a must-attend event among business and community leaders of Fort Dodge.

Miriam served as president of the PTA of Highland Park Elementary School which her children attended. She was also an active member of the Fort Dodge Camera Club, with several of her photos winning top honors.

In 1973, at the age of 50, Miriam enrolled in the Nursing program at Iowa Central Community College. She earned an Associate degree as a Registered Nurse and then worked for 10 years as a Medical-Surgical nurse at Trinity Regional Hospital in Fort Dodge. Following her retirement Miriam worked as a Hospice volunteer.

In 1978, Herbert’s mother moved to Fort Dodge from New York City. She was followed two years later by Miriam’s mother who moved from Bradford, England. Miriam cared for both mothers for several years, while at the same time caring for Herbert, who by then had had several heart attacks. As his health deteriorated, he was placed on the waiting list for a heart transplant at the University of Minnesota.

Miriam’s mother passed away in the spring of 1987. Because Herbert was on the waiting list for a heart transplant, Miriam was unable to accompany her mother’s body to England, where she was to be buried next to her husband. Miriam and Herbert’s son Lenny flew to England instead. Just as they were landing in England, Herbert received a phone call telling him a donor heart was available and that he should come immediately to the University of Minnesota Hospital.

Miriam, who had endured hardship and painful changes all her life, now faced more challenges. She had just lost her mother and now, only a few days later, her husband was undergoing risky heart transplant surgery. Fortunately, Herbert’s transplant was successful. His recovery was slow and long, and Miriam’s dedication and loving care was vital.

After long months of recuperation, Herbert gradually regained his strength and was able to

return to work and live in Fort Dodge. In 1989 Herbert retired, and he and Miriam moved to Minneapolis to live near their daughters Debbie and Fay, their husbands and four of their six grandchildren.

Miriam enjoyed picking up her grandchildren from school, driving some of them to dance classes, attending piano recitals, athletic events, and being involved in their lives. Miriam also worked as a volunteer helping feed elderly residents at Sholom Home, a Jewish nursing home in Minneapolis.

Miriam Jonas was a strong and vibrant woman who escaped the Nazi horrors of WWII, was a part of the founding of the State of Israel, and came to America in her mid-20’s to raise a family and become an American success story. Miriam was devoted to her family and loved caring for them all until she was eventually slowed by Parkinson’s Disease. Miriam died on September 6, 2011, in Minneapolis at age 86.

George E.Q. Johnson

1874 - 1949

George E.Q. Johnson, one of the sons of a Swedish homesteader, was born July 11, 1874, on a farm near Lanyon and Harcourt, in Webster County. Johnson’s boyhood was lived on a modest farm in the southern part of Webster County. He attended a rural one-room school house through eighth grade. He continued his education graduating from Tobin College in Fort Dodge in 1897.

He moved to the northern area of Chicago to attend law school and received his law degree from Lake Forest University in Illinois in 1900. Then he quietly began practicing law in Chicago, continuing until 1927. He was a Master in Chancery for the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois from 1923 to 1927. He was the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois from 1927 to 1932.

Johnson's embellished name - with the middle E. to help him achieve his own identity in college, but when he started practicing law, the city directory was overflowing with George E. Johnsons. So he put in the "Q," which stands for nothing. It just separated him from the pack.

In 1927, Johnson was appointed U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, which was basically the city of Chicago. At the time, the City of Chicago was overwhelmed with organized crime. With the start of Prohibition in the United States, organized crime syndicates saw an opportunity to make money and further expand their criminal empires.

The appointment of a new U.S. attorney Johnson in Chicago marked the beginning of a fresh effort to prosecute the mobsters of organized crime. At first glance, the changing of the guard in the federal prosecutors’ office seemed an event of little consequence, and the appointee, George E. Q. Johnson, appeared as unlikely an adversary of Al Capone. Even though he arose from the ranks of the prosecutor’s office in Chicago, the man from little Harcourt, Iowa, at first did not appear to be a person to fear. Yet, President Calvin Coolidge insisted Capone had to be dealt with once and for all and U.S. District Attorney, George E.Q. Johnson, was just the man to do it. In February 1927, President Coolidge appointed him a U.S. attorney. At age fifty-four, Johnson was tall, wiry, and slightly rumpled. With his unruly hair parted in the center, his round wire-rimmed spectacles, and his tweedy suits, he might have been mistaken for a poet or a perhaps a drama critic – that is, until he opened his mouth, when it became apparent that he combined a scholarly demeanor with an unlimited capacity for indignation in the face of injustice. That last quality set him apart from nearly every other cynical, battle-weary veteran of Chicago’s futile war on gangsters, and it came directly from his rural, frugal background.

The “Roaring Twenties” – prohibition era in Chicago, led to the expansion of criminal activity and influence, via organized crime syndicates in Chicago. The Chicago Outfit (also known as the Outfit, the Chicago Mafia, the Chicago Mob, the South Side Gang, or The Organization) was an Italian-American organized crime syndicate based in Chicago, dating back to the 1910s. It was part of the American Mafia originating in South Side, Chicago. The Outfit rose to power in the 1920s under the control of Al Capone, and the period was marked by bloody gang wars for control of the distribution of illegal alcohol during Prohibition. The Outfit expanded into other criminal activities including loansharking, gambling, prostitution, extortion, political corruption, and murder.

When Alphonse "Scarface Al" Capone implemented his memorable St. Valentine's Day Massacre, slaughtering rival gang members, it was the last straw for the people of Chicago - and the federal government. The legendary Prohibition-era massacre, which over the decades has become the subject of countless articles, books and films, took place the morning of Feb. 14, 1929. It was the culmination of the ongoing feud between the South-Side Italian gang run by Capone and a North-Side Irish-German gang led by George "Bugs" Moran.

In a plot hatched by Capone henchman Jack "Machine Gun" McGurn, six Capone gangsters, two of whom were dressed as Chicago policemen, converged on a garage and gunned down seven confused Moran gang members.

From the moment he took office, it was apparent that U.S. Attorney Johnson took his responsibilities with the utmost seriousness. Unlike his predecessors, he refused to fight his battles against the racketeers in the press. In addition, he refused to tolerate Chicago’s traditional complicity in underworld activities. He distanced himself from the corrupt elements of law enforcement – the police captains, aldermen, and assistant district attorneys who participated in the profits of the Capone organization in return for protection. Instead, he began to educate himself about Chicago’s underworld by reading newspaper accounts covering the last several years. Chicago’s dailies provided highly reliable information on all the players and their rackets, better information than the police had collected. He retained a journalist to compile an index-card file of all the men and their organizations, and with this database at his fingertips, Johnson, a man of keen analytic powers, became the first person in a position of authority to gain a thorough knowledge of Chicago’s gang structure and gang warfare.

What particularly galled Johnson about Capone and his organization was their pretense and respectability. Organized crime was a business and the gangsters worked with a great deal of arrogance. Some of them posed as political leaders and they had the temerity to go to public banquets where public men were. Above all there was Al Capone, whom Johnson described as a man of unbelievable arrogance, his brother Ralph, who, Johnson learned, handled most of the organizations brothels. Jake Guzik, Capone’s right-hand man, was a hard-nosed thug, and like Capone, wanted to be viewed by the public with respect and prominence. This arrogance was very upsetting to Johnson and it offended him deeply, so much so that he reacted on a personal level. Johnson lived in a quiet neighborhood where there are homes and respectable, home-owning people. Jake Guzik, ironically, just lived around the corner from the Johnson home. In fact, most of the gangsters were married and raising families. Guzik was the conniver and corrupter of the crowd and Al Capone represented the force and spectacular leadership. . It was bad enough that Al Capone wanted to control Chicago’s government and Ralph Capone managed its brothels, but to have Jake Guzik and family living around the corner from Johnson was the ultimate indignity, an affront to all right-thinking citizens. For all these reasons, George E. Q. Johnson made every effort to expose these men to the scrutiny of the law.

During his tenure as U.S. Attorney, Johnson received constant death threats and had bodyguards around the clock to protect him and his family. Johnson regularly made headlines for busting gangsters and crooked politicians during the “Roaring 20’s in Chicago. Despite numerous death threats from the criminal world, Johnson ended up getting indictments against Capone and 68 of his henchmen. With Johnson's focused and diligent work, Al Capone was convicted of tax fraud and sentenced to an 11-year term at the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. Also put behind bars were his brother, Ralph "Bottles" Capone, Frank "the Enforcer" Nitti and gambling chief Jack Guzick, among others. Years later after being released from prison, Al Capone died of complications of syphilis in 1947.

After the Capone era and following Johnson’s success in prosecuting the famous mob leaders, Chicago's gangland was unable to stage a comeback. Even though gangs still operated, none could gain a real foothold in Chicago.

After successfully prosecuting Capone, things looked up for Johnson, and he was rewarded for breaking up Chicago's gangs. On Aug, 3, 1932, President Hoover appointed Johnson to be a federal judge. But confirmation of his appointment was delayed by a lame-duck Congress, and his service ended March 3, 1933. Johnson was saddened by the blow, and he returned to private practice until he passed away of natural causes on September 19, 1949, at the age of 75, at his home in Chicago.

In the legal annals of Chicago robust history, George E.Q. Johnson, from a small Iowa farm in Webster County, is long remembered as an honest, unintimidated and hard-nosed prosecutor who brought down the infamous organized crime syndicates of Chicago.

Sources:

*Des Moines Register

*Chicago Tribune

*Get Capone – The Secret Plot That Captured America’s Most Wanted Gangster… by Jonathon Eig… Simon and Schuster…. April 2010

*Wikipedia

Captain W.H. Johnston

1837-1911

Captain W.H. Johnston is considered the founder of the Fort Dodge Public Library.

W.H. JOHNSTON was born in Sidney, New York, July 24, 1837. Johnston was from a well-respected and prominent family. His parents were highly educated people of New England birth. Mr. Johnston was educated in the common schools of New York and at Franklin academy. He spent a year in Wabash college at Crawfordsville, Indiana.

After devoting some time to school teaching, he enlisted in the 144th New York infantry. His regiment participated in the battle of James Island, South Carolina, February 10, 1865, where Captain Johnston was severely wounded. Upon being discharged from the hospital he returned to Binghamton, New York, where he finished his law study and was admitted to the bar. He soon moved to Fort Dodge where he began the practice of law, continuing until his appointment to the deputy clerkship of the United States district court for the Northern District of Iowa, central division, at Fort Dodge, which office he held for many years.

Captain Johnston performed his greatest public service through an unselfish and untiring application of his talents to library interests. He was first to establish a private library association in Fort Dodge and induced others to help him in the creation of a small library and reading room in his office. He served gratuitously as the librarian for many years. Out of this grew the present Fort Dodge public library which largely through the labors of Captain Johnston, has become more than merely a beautiful edifice housing a collection of books, but has developed a deep and genuine taste by the public of Fort Dodge for library advantages.

His influence extended far beyond the limits of Fort Dodge, into and through the work of the Iowa State Library association, of which he was one of the founders, its president, and, at the time of his death, an honorary president. He was a molding influence in the Iowa library commission of which he had been a member for many years, and was rewarded for his arduous and effective work by his appointment as president of that body.

The Fort Dodge Public Library Foundation was named the W.H. Johnston Foundation in honor of Captain Johnston and his service in advancing library science, intellectual freedom and the attainment of knowledge through books.

Captain Johnston was also remembered as being a devoted Christian. He served as Sunday School Superintendent in Fort Dodge.

Captain Johnston died in Fort Dodge, June 6, 1911.

Sources:

*Annals of Iowa -- Webster County Bar Association = Volume 31 | Number 2 (Fall 1951)

*The People Who Made A Difference, Twist and Shout Publication, January, 2000

Denis M. Kelleher

1872-1964

Very few attorneys in Iowa served with the distinction of Denis Martin Kelleher. Denis Kelleher was a well-known and highly respected Fort Dodge attorney and citizen. He graduated from the State University of Iowa Law School in 1893. As an “A” student, one of Kelleher’s law professor noted that even though Denis was the youngest student in his law school class, he had the best memory and was the brightest in the class.

Denis Kelleher began practicing law in Des Moines and also Pomeroy. Mr. Kelleher arrived in Fort Dodge in 1902 and practiced law for sixty years. He was a partner in the Kenyon, Kelleher, O’Connor and Price Law Firm located in the First National Bank Building (now the Bey Building) in Fort Dodge. Even at the age of 90, Kelleher would often be seen walking from his apartment in the Warden Plaza Building to his downtown law office. During his career as a trial lawyer, Kelleher tried more than 1,000 cases. Among his peers, Kelleher was known as a very well prepared attorney who burnt “the midnight oil,” going to work early and working late after dark.

During WWI, Kelleher was appointed by President Woodrow Wilson to the War Trade Board in Washington D.C. He helped draw up a treaty that was followed by neutral nations during the war. In later years, Mr. Kelleher was named solicitor for the Bureau of Internal Revenue. He was also named special assistant to the United States Attorney General in charge of tax litigation. As such, he tried federal cases around the country before at least 50 different U.S. district judges. Kelleher was also the author of the country’s basic income tax statutes. From 1943 to 1944, he served as president of the Iowa State Bar Association. Denis Kelleher was often described as a kind and considerate man of integrity and honor, and a precise, well prepared and careful lawyer.

One story about Denis Kelleher that that has been passed down through the Kelleher family recounts the time that the famous Chicago mobster Al Capone came to Fort Dodge seeking Kelleher’s counsel in helping him fight Capone’s income tax evasion charges. Kelleher had previously represented Al Capone’s older brother, Ralph. When Al Capone met with Attorney Kelleher, the story goes that Capone told him he didn’t really need his assistance because he “had the judge.” It evidently didn’t matter because Kelleher refused to get involved in the case.

An interesting footnote; legal documents do show that in 1931, Denis Kelleher, as a private practice attorney in Fort Dodge with extensive tax litigation experience, represented Ralph Capone in his attempt to appeal his tax evasion conviction. The appeal by Capone was denied by the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

Another fascinating annotation; the opposing prosecutor who successfully convicted Al Capone and his brother Ralph, was George E.Q. Johnson, a highly respected prosecutor and U.S. Attorney for the Chicago District. George E.Q. Johnson was raised on a farm in southern Webster County and received his Bachelor’s Degree from Tobin College in Fort Dodge.

Kelleher married Mary Stella Donahoe on April 17, 1912. Mary was an active leader in the women’s suffrage movement and gave several speeches throughout Iowa in favor of the cause. She served as committee member from the 10th Congressional District from 1925-1940; secretary of the Iowa Democratic Central Committee from 1928-1934; vice chair of the committee from 1934 to 1940; and Iowa’s Democratic National Committee member from 1940 to 1944. Mary also served as the treasurer of the Webster County Central Committee for many years and was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1936 and 1940. In 1950 and 1952, she ran as the Democratic candidate for Secretary of State. In 1967, Mary Kelleher was recognized as one of three “Democratic Women Doers of Iowa.” Mary Kelleher passed away in January of 1979 at the age of 91.

Denis Kelleher was an active member of Corpus Christi Church. In recognition of his personal service to the Holy See and to the Roman Catholic Church, through unusual labors, support of the Holy See, and excellent examples set forth in his community and country, Denis Kelleher was named Knight of St. Gregory – one of the highest honors of the Roman Catholic Church – by Pope Pius XII.

Denis Kelleher’s great grandson, Darren Driscoll, also graduated from the University of Iowa Law School and is an attorney in Fort Dodge, currently serving as the Webster County Attorney.

Denis Kelleher died on May 13, 1964, at the age of 92. He is interred at Corpus Christi Cemetery in Fort Dodge.

Sources:

*"A tough act to follow," Iowa Advocate – University of Iowa College of Law – Spring/Summer 2002…. by Ann Scholl Boyer

*Who’s Who in Law… Page 502

*Des Moines Register…. May 12, 1964

Msg. Gerald Kelly

1918-1984 Msg. Gerald Kelly was St. Edmond’s first superintendent, and he was one of the Catholic community’s most remembered leaders. Gerald Kelly was born in Estherville and lived in Graettinger and Sioux City. Mr. Kelly attended schools in Sioux City and attended Trinity College. After graduating, he attended St. Paul Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. Msg. Kelly was ordained at the Cathedral in Sioux City in 1944. Kelly came to Fort Dodge in 1954 and assisted in the building of St. Edmond’s Catholic High School. After facing many roadblocks, construction was completed and students entered the high school in the fall of 1955. In 1962, Father Kelly became rank of papal chamberlain, attaching the title of “Very Reverend Monsignor.” It was ten years later that Msg. Kelly was invested as prelate of honor. In 1965, Kelly became the pastor at Sacred Heart. In 1968, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Msg. Kelly remained in good spirit and retained his memory and wit for a number of years before his death in 1984.

Source:

*The People Who Made A Difference, Twist and Shout, January, 2000

William S. Kenyon

1869- 1933

William Squire Kenyon, son of Fergus L. and Hattie Squire Kenyon, was born in Elyria, Lorain County, Ohio on June 10, 1869. His father, a Congregational minister, had been a professor of Greek at Princeton before he was called to an Iowa City church. Young Kenyon, after graduating from the Iowa City schools, attended Grinnell College, with the idea of following in his father’s footsteps by entering the ministry. Instead he came back to Iowa City where he completed a course of law at the University of Iowa Law School in 1890. Kenyon was admitted to the bar in 1891.

In 1890, Kenyon decided to come to Fort Dodge and work in the law office of John Duncombe, who had been a visiting lecturer on railroads at the University of Iowa Law School. Fort Dodge was an attractive place for a new law school graduate because it had some very high-powered lawyers and was a political center for the state. Its population numbered some 5000. Fort Dodge had produced three congressmen, a governor, a senator, a director of the United States Mint, and a Solicitor for the Treasury Department. In addition, Duncombe was a leading Democrat in the state.

Within two years of arriving in Fort Dodge, Kenyon had married Duncombe’s daughter, Mary. It is interesting to note that while Kenyon was a Republican, the Duncombe family were very strong Democrats. Later, when Kenyon was elected senator, Fort Dodge had a great celebration for him complete with a parade, speeches, and flags flying. Kenyon’s mother-in-law was kidded by a reporter about a flag flying for a Republican. Her curt response was, “I’ll have you know that this is the first time a flag was flown over this house for a Republican, and it will be the last time!”

Kenyon’s wife was even more of a diehard Democrat than her mother. But the marriage appeared to have worked. It speaks to Kenyon’s personality and his ability to get along with those with whom he did not agree.

When Kenyon first got married, his father-in-law invited him to become a partner in the Duncombe law firm. Kenyon, only 23, said no. It would look like he received the position because of his wife, not because of his own ability.

In 1894, at 24 years of age, he was elected county attorney and served five years. In 1900, he was elected state district court judge, serving another two.

He returned to private law practice because a judge’s pay was so low. His new partners were Dennis Kelleher and Maurice O’Connell.

In 1906, Kenyon changed jobs again to become the General Counsel for the Illinois Central Railroad. One would expect the railroad’s top lawyer to defend it in all cases, but instead he was more concerned that justice be done for both sides, a position which the railroad apparently was able to live with.

In 1910, he was appointed by President Taft as an assistant to the Attorney General of the United States, in charge of antitrust cases and interstate commerce regulation. Since he had been a railroad lawyer, one might have expected him to be sympathetic to business. In fact, Kenyon took seriously his responsibility of enforcing the legislation against business trade abuses and protecting the rights of the public.

William Kenyon established himself as a highly principled, extremely dedicated and hardworking, competent and honest; a person who was not moved by political pressures.

In 1910, U.S. Senator Jonathan P. Dolliver (from Fort Dodge ) died and it looked like he would be replaced by a conservative in the Senate. Kenyon was encouraged to run to carry on Dolliver’s progressive policies. At that time, Senators were still elected by the state legislatures, and Kenyon received the support of both Republicans and Democrats, and was elected in 1911 to fill Dolliver’s unexpired term. He ran again in 1912 and in 1918, by then a general election, and easily won the popular vote.

Even though Kenyon was a Republican, he governed more as a progressive which meant that he believed the government should act to address problems and that peoples’ rights had to come before property rights, special interests, and profits. He also believed that he should take principled stands even though, at times, they went against his party. Kenyon was considered a maverick and many in his party wanted him removed.

Senator Kenyon was a foe of lobbyists and he hated special privileges. He was a defender of labor and supporter of unions. He championed the rights of children and was a leader in trying to pass child labor laws.

Kenyon headed a Senate committee to investigate labor conditions in the coal mines of West Virginia where there was a history of violence. He promoted legislation to fight greed that had brought deplorable and un-American conditions in the coal fields. He advocated for government regulation for the benefit of all of the people.

Kenyon also showed an early concern for the environment. Around 1915, there was an increasing awareness of pollution of the Mississippi River. People were buying land along the river and opening it to agricultural development. Backwaters and fish and animal habitats were being lost. Kenyon sought to protect the integrity of the Mississippi by having the federal government acquire a half-million acres for fish and wildlife reserve—an upper Mississippi national park—but was unsuccessful.

In 1919, the country suffered a major steel strike, and again he headed a Senate special committee to investigate. The committee concluded that the strikes were justified in their actions. This was at a time when the Republican party and the country were very anti-labor and thought that communists were active everywhere.

Senator Kenyon is most famous for prohibition. A co-sponsor of the Eighteenth Amendment, he was a lifelong teetotaler. When the amendment passed, he authored the Webb-Kenyon Prohibition Law which provided means of reinforcement.

Members in his party weren’t particularly happy with his stand. They told him that it could damage the Republican Party and his actions were political suicide. Kenyon responded, “Do you think that I wanted to be a senator? I would rather go down to defeat than compromise my principles.” He was always moved by what he thought was right, not by political ambitions.

Senator Kenyon was also the chief architect of the Farm Bloc. During World War I, farm prices were sky high and farmers really profited. After the war, the farm economy collapsed in a major depression. The Harding administration was quick to help business with tax breaks and tariffs, but agriculture was left to suffer.

Farm leaders met with Kenyon who brought in eleven other farm state senators, both Democrats and Republicans, and organized the Farm Bloc. They built a well-disciplined coalition which stuck together on farm issues and support for favorable legislation to agriculture. Despite strong opposition, the Farm Bloc was successful in passing laws regulating stockyards, meat packers, and grain futures trading, and got an exemption from federal taxes for farm cooperatives.

Senator Kenyon opposed American entrance into World War I, especially opposing the arming of American merchant ships. Later, he opposed entrance into the League of Nations and demanded modification of the peace treaty. He believed that such momentous decisions should not be left solely to the president, but required input from elected representatives.

In spite of his opposition to entrance into the war, once the country went to war, Kenyon gave his support. He supported the draft, but he believed that if men could be conscripted, so should wealth and also industry should share the burden as well.

In 1922, President Harding appointed Kenyon to the Circuit Court of Appeals, the second-highest level in the federal court system. He readily accepted and resigned from the Senate, serving as judge until his death. Kenyon was never comfortable as a politician. He hated hypocrisy and trickery and behind-the-scenes dealings as well as all the corruption that was associated with politics. He had run for the Senate to serve his country, promote human rights and values, and to promote social justice. All of these issues he felt were being sacrificed to exploitation by the privileged classes.

Kenyon turned out to be an excellent choice for judge with the Circuit Court of Appeals. He was hard-working, conscientious, independent in character, highly principled, committed to human rights and justice.

Kenyon sculpture, located near the Webster County Court House, 701 Central Ave, Fort Dodge

He proved to be an outstanding judge, best known for his Teapot Dome decision. Teapot Dome was an oil reserve in Wyoming which had been set aside to insure supply of fuel for our Navy in case of war. In 1921, Secretary of Interior Albert B. Fall transferred drilling rights to Mammoth Oil Company (later Sinclair Oil Co.). A similar reserve in California was given to another company. Then it was discovered that Fall had been given a $250,000 loan from Harry F. Sinclair and another $150,000 from another company. Obviously, this became a major public scandal. The case went to court and a Wyoming judge decided that there was no evidence of fraud. The case was appealed and was assigned to Kenyon’s court, the assumption being that Kenyon, the new kid on the block, would be appreciative of his new appointment and would make a decision that would take favor the administration. To the administration’s surprise, Judge Kenyon reversed the lower court’s decision. Fall and Sinclair were sent to prison. Judge Kenyon’s opinion was characterized as “bristling with such words as deceit, falsehood, subterfuge, and bad faith, held the entire transaction was ‘tainted with favoritism, collusion, and corruption, defeating the proper and lawful function of government.’” (Fort Dodge Messenger & Chronicle, Sept. 9, 1933, p. 1, col. 2)

In 1924, Kenyon was approached and asked to consider running for Vice President under Calvin Coolidge. In early voting, he was in second place, and he decided to withdraw. He was contacted again in 1928, but refused. Twice Kenyon was offered a Cabinet position and twice he refused. In each case, he felt that the Vice Presidency would have removed him from having much influence.

In 1929, President Hoover was facing all the problems of prohibition and the crime connected with it. The public demanded investigation. President Hoover was opposed to the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment since he believed that it would be politically disastrous for him and the party.

President Hoover appointed the Wickersham Commission (officially named the National Commission of Law Observance and Enforcement) to study the issue. Kenyon was chosen as a member of this commission, as a safe bet, because he had sponsored the amendment and most of the early legislation including the Webb-Kenyon Law. Kenyon was highly respected and it was thought that he would support President Hoover. To the surprise of many, he did not and there was a falling out. Uncharacteristically, Kenyon commented afterward that Hoover dictated to Chairman Wickersham how everything was to be handled and that all the hearings should be held in secret.

Kenyon, on the other hand, believed that the hearings should be public because it would give the people an understanding of what had gone wrong , why it was failing and what was necessary to make it succeed. Kenyon believed that keeping things secret would just contribute to more mistrust and further the belief in a cover-up.

Kenyon submitted his own separate report—a devastating attack on the whole law enforcement system filled with political corruption. He continued to believe that prohibition was good, but government and management had failed. Kenyon suggested releasing of all the information to the public and then have a national referendum. Kenyon believed that his position and his report ended any possibility of his appointment to the Supreme Court.

During his service in Washington D.C., Kenyon maintained his official residence in Fort Dodge and returned frequently. He stayed with his sister at 1215 Second Avenue North. His best friend in Iowa was a man who farmed the Kenyon family land. Kenyon’s wife, Mary, preferred living in the east and never returned to Fort Dodge.

Kenyon’s other home was in Sabasco, Maine, where he often spent his summers. Kenyon was not much for socializing as he preferred to spend his time in quiet study. He also enjoyed golf and loved playing horseshoes and bridge.

William Kenyon suffered a heart attack on July 27, 1933, while playing golf on a course near his summer home. He died six weeks later on September 9, at the relatively young age of 64. Funeral services were held in Maine and also in Fort Dodge at the First Congregational Church, after which he “was laid to rest…beside his father and mother in the Kenyon family plot in beautiful Oakland cemetery.” (Fort Dodge Messenger & Chronicle, Sept. 15, 1933, p. 1, col. 2-3).

The St. Louis Post Dispatch grieved his loss by writing, “ if we feel that his death leaves us a poorer people, we may also take comfort in the fact that America still breeds men like William S. Kenyon.”

Source:

*Fort Dodge Historical Society Newsletter July, 2008

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