Fort Dodge, Iowa

Here are some of the members of the Trinity Nurse Honor Guard Back row (left to right): Emily Larson, Gail Smith, Linda Whaley, Mary Swalin, June Engel, Christina Fevold, Ellen Vanderhoff Front row (left to right): Nadine Schlienz, Janet Meyne, Alyce Ann Lawler, Dorothy Griffin, Linda Lynch, Kari Jones, Kathy Nash

By PAUL STEVENS

As funeral services for Gladys Meier neared an end at Grace Lutheran Church, five nurses, wearing their nursing caps and red and navy-blue capes draped over their white uniforms, walked to the front of the church for a final farewell to their fellow nurse.

One of the nurses went to the podium and talked about Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing, and how she became known as the Lady of the Lamp from the time she was seen in the dark alleys with a lamp while caring for the injured soldiers of the Crimean War in the 1850s.

After the group of nurses recited the Nightingale Pledge, an oath taken at nursing graduations, the Nightingale Lamp was lit — a ceramic lamp that represents the light nurses bring to their patients, offering hope and comfort, especially in the face of suffering and illness.

The pledge:

“I solemnly pledge myself before God and in the presence of this assembly to pass my life in purity and to practice my profession faithfully. I will abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous and will not take or knowingly administer any harmful drug. I will do all in my power to maintain and elevate the standard of my profession and will hold in confidence all personal matters committed to my keeping and all family affairs coming to my knowledge in the practice of my calling. With loyalty I will endeavor to aid physicians in their work and devote myself to the welfare of those committed to my care.”

Then another nurse beckoned Meier to her Final Call to Duty:

“This is the final call for Gladys Meier who has served selflessly and given her life for the good of her fellow man. Would Gladys Meier, license number 22275, please report for duty.”

This was repeated two more times before the candle was extinguished and the nurse said,

“Her tasks are complete, her duties are done. Gladys is going home.”

The nurses then presented the lamp to Meier’s daughters, Joan Drewes of West Babylon, New York, and Martha Kersbergen, of Fort Dodge.

The nurses who honored Meier at her funeral services on Feb. 23 are part of the Nursing Honor Guard at Unity Point Health – Trinity Regional Medical Center in Fort Dodge.

The Nursing Honor Guard has been conducting such ceremonies at the funeral services for registered nurses and licensed practical nurses in a 50-mile radius of Fort Dodge since 2006, when it first formed for the funeral of Jan Tasler at Corpus Christi Catholic Church.

Before her death at the age of 54, Tasler, who was employed at Trinity Regional Medical Center and with Home Health Care and Hospice, had requested that there be a nursing honor guard at her funeral. She knew of such honor guards in other cities. Nurses at Trinity honored her request and decided to make nursing honor guards available for similar services in the future when requested by a family.

The coordinator of the program, Emily Larson, manager of Oncology & Infusion Services at Trinity Regional Medical Center, assumed the role with Christina Fevold, Quality Department nurse manager, in 2020 from Deb Shriver.

Larson said, “Nursing is a very demanding career. It’s an honor to do something for those who have done so much for other people.”

When a request for the Honor Guard is made by a deceased nurse’s family, usually conveyed through a funeral home or church, Larson goes to her email distribution list of about 80 nurses and puts out a call for volunteers who would be available.

“I like to have a minimum of four people at a funeral,” she said. “On average, we have six to 10 at every funeral. Normally we don’t do gravesite services unless a family requests. Sometimes we’re asked to be at a visitation only. It’s getting more common that people have visitations right before the funeral rather than the day before, and in those cases, we stay through both if requested.”

What members of the Honor Guard wear is important to the ceremony. Their white caps and white uniforms harken back to an earlier era when both were standard for nurses – before colored nursing scrubs replaced them. The woolen capes, red on the inside and dark blue on the outside, are also vestiges of a past era.

“Initially we had no capes, except for a few nurses who had their own,” Janet Meyne said. “I am not sure when capes were discontinued. Initially they were in place because the women stayed in a nursing dorm close to the hospital and wore their capes over their uniform when they went to and from the hospital for their training. As the years have gone by, families have donated capes to the hospital after we were present for their family member’s funeral. We have found one at a garage sale, on eBay or through a donation. We are always on the lookout for nursing capes.”

The Honor Guard participated in 13 funerals in 2023 and 13 in 2024, and so far in 2025, it has taken part in 10. In all, the Honor Guard has taken part in well over 100 funerals since its formation. All of the nurses are volunteers, and donations to help with expenses for the program come through the Trinity Foundation, Larson said, most often from families whose loved ones were honored.

“I have participated in this since 2006,” said Meyne, a retired nurse who recently moved from Fort Dodge to Ankeny. “It is one of my greatest honors to recognize the nursing profession and give tribute to those nurses who have served their community. As nurses we spent many weekends and holidays caring for those that required our services, so this meant time away from our own families on days when many others who worked were at home. The Nursing Honor Guard recognizes those individuals who have dedicated their lives to the profession of nursing.”

Another who has been part of the Nursing Honor Guard since its inception is Alyce Ann Lawler — one of the longest-serving nurses in Fort Dodge history who played a major role in forming the first critical care units at Mercy Hospital and Bethesda Hospital. The two hospitals merged in 1974 to form what would become today’s Trinity Regional Medical Center. Lawler remained in critical care and retired in 2013 after a 47-year career. Her daughter, Jennifer Lawler Hansch, is a registered nurse who is day supervisor at Trinity.

“It’s such an honor to take part in the Honor Guard,” Alyce Ann Lawler said. “What strikes me is how the families are always so impressed. I think what the ceremony does is make them realize even more what their mother or sister or daughter did to help others as a nurse. Once you see how much the family appreciates it, it makes you want to do it more.”

Nineteen cities in Iowa have Nurse Honor Guard organizations, said statewide coordinator Deb Ivis, who also coordinates the MercyOne Nurse Honor Guard in Des Moines. Another near Fort Dodge is the Calhoun County Nurse Honor Guard in Rockwell City.

At her mother’s funeral, Kersbergen said that when she first saw the Honor Guard nurses, she burst into tears. “There standing before me was my ‘Mom’! White uniform, white cap, navy wool cape with red lining, and white shoes! Just the way I remember Mom looking each day she went to work.

“Each of them greeted my sister and I. I mentioned to one of them that I liked that they draped the cape open on one side exposing the rich red satin lining. She told me that it was intentional so they could greet with a courteous handshake.

“Then the Nurse Guard positioned themselves staggered down the center church aisle on ‘guard’ for the funeral attendees. They remained in this formation as the casket passed by and the family was seated. To me, this incredible show of respect was what my Mom deserved. She always felt her registered nurse title was not a career choice, it was her sacred ‘calling’ to be of humble service to God.”

As the entire Honor Guard recited the Nightingale Pledge, Kersbergen said, “I turned and looked at my daughter, who has her BSN from the University of Iowa, and she was saying the pledge with them.”

Drewes said she was able to hold herself together for her mother’s funeral…until the Honor Guard’s last call for duty.

“It broke me wide open, and I wept with my entire soul,” she said. “This moment was so deeply emotional — and a true honoring for Mom. There aren’t many words to describe what this ceremony did for us. It was the ‘last call to duty’ and ‘Gladys is going home’ that truly broke my heart wide open. After the service, the Honor Guard stood at the exit of the nave to wish us all well. I hugged them all with joyful tears of gratitude.”

By PAUL STEVENS

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, widely recognized as the end of the Vietnam War, and for the families and friends of 16 Webster County men who died for their country, it is far more than a historical event.

“On the anniversary,” said Rich Lennon, of Fort Dodge, a U.S. Army veteran of Vietnam and Iraq, “it is fitting that we honor not only those that lost their lives during the Vietnam War, but also to honor the families of those whose loved ones made the ultimate sacrifice in service to this great nation.”

Families like that of Raymond and Joyce Olson, who got that dreaded knock on their door on March 28, 1968, from their pastor and a military soldier, there with the news that their son Roger, a hospital corpsman with the U.S. Navy, was killed two days earlier when he stepped on a land mine.

At the time, Dayle Olson was a 15-year-old sophomore at Fort Dodge Senior High School and stood quietly in the background as they delivered word of Roger’s death at the age of 20.

“Fifty years!” said Olson, who lives in Merritt Island, Florida. “Today I look at the Vietnam War as a ‘different war.’ Now, 50 years later, I look back at this war that seemed to create a division in America. Some saw the war as necessary, others saw it as serving no real purpose. I don’t focus on those issues anymore. I focus on what this war did to over 58,000 families who had that knock on the front door with a military person standing on the other side holding a large brown envelope. As that envelope got handed to a family member, the words, ‘I am sorry for your loss,’ were quietly whispered.

“That image is cemented in my mind to this day! Families, like mine, were then and still today are faced with that division. Some saw this loss as a hero who had sacrificed their life for this country. Others saw it as part of ‘the unnecessary.’ I feel the same today as I did 50 years ago. Every person who was a part of Vietnam is an American hero who deserves our respect and gratitude.”

The names of the 16 Webster County men killed in the war are etched on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington and at the Terry Moehnke Veterans Memorial Park north of Fort Dodge. The photos with this story are also on display at Fort Dodge’s Walter Porsch Post 1856, Veterans of Foreign Wars.

The men and women who served in the Vietnam War era were faced with adversity both on the battlefield and at home, said Moehnke, a U.S. Navy veteran for whom the park is named.

“It was an unpopular war that had no clear objective for many in the Heartland,” he said. “I recall the turmoil on the college campuses and the somber scenes of caskets being unloaded off the transport planes. Men and women of my generation were called on to serve and the draft was disrupting plans for many of them. It was a war in a faraway place that most did not understand the significance of.

“Walking through Veterans Park provides an opportunity to reflect on the men and women who served and the impact of their service on their families and our community. The 16 young men from Webster County had their lives cut short, but there are hundreds more who returned and lived with their experiences with little support of their neighbors or our government. It took several years for the public to recognize that the battle didn’t end with their return. We can only hope that we learned to appreciate the efforts of others to preserve our freedoms.”

TJ Martin, academic dean — distance learning at Iowa Central Community College, headed a project in which students interviewed the families and friends of 55 men who died in the Vietnam War. They were from the nine counties that make up Iowa Central’s region — Buena Vista, Pocahontas, Humboldt, Wright, Sac, Calhoun, Webster, Hamilton, and Greene counties.

The result was a book titled, “Before They Were Soldiers,” and as its title states, the stories of those 55 attempted to capture the essence of their lives before they began their military service.

On April 22, the college hosted a book exhibition, attended by about 250 to 300 people, as a way of honoring the families and friends who contributed their stories to the project and who were presented a copy of the book.

“One thing we noticed from interviewing family members of those who died in Vietnam was that each of the families has a void or hole in their heart from the loss of their brother,” Martin said. “In two situations, we interviewed mothers and this was even more apparent in the information they gave us. Most of our interviews led to a situation where tears flowed down their cheeks as they remembered where they were when they got the news. Even though we did not ask that question, it always came up … I remember clearly the day or night that we got the call, or when the military car come driving up our lane, or when mom collapsed when they told us the news.”

Martin shared his personal experience of how such loss results in life forever changed, growing up in rural Palmer.

“In my situation, my mother gets married in the fall of 1967 and her husband is sent to Vietnam in January ’68,” he said. “He is killed in action May 29, 1968. A few years later she meets my dad, has us three boys and life marches on. However, if Henry Claussen does not die in Vietnam, I am not here today. The trajectory of life is forever altered by a war that is on the other side of the globe. One can overthink this, but it does not change the fact that this happens with each and every one of the guys who died over there.

“It is also true about those who came back altered from the young man who left compared to the man they were when they returned. In some cases, these guys had a full family when they were called to go over there. That changed how the kids had to live with that void of a dad and only had the memory of their dad instead of a father to play catch, wrestle, walk their daughter down the aisle, etc. One can really over think this … ”

Two of those who died are remembered at their respective high schools.

The memory of U.S. Air Force 1st Lt. Terry Griffey has been honored annually at St. Edmond High School since 1968 by recognizing a senior boy judged outstanding in athletics, academics, citizenship and leadership with the Terry Griffey Award. Griffey, a 1958 St. Edmond graduate, died in 1966, at the age of 25, when the F-4C Phantom fighter jet he was piloting burst into flames after a bombing run and disintegrated near Qui Nhon in South Vietnam. His body was never recovered.

In November 2019, a plaque was dedicated at Fort Dodge Senior High School in memory of 1st Lt. William L. Peters, a U.S. Marine killed in action on June 21, 1969, when his helicopter crashed during rescue operations in Quang Nam Province. He was awarded the Navy Cross and two Silver Stars for his heroism. The Fort Dodge Veterans Council presented the plaque on behalf of Peters, a 1961 graduate, and it is displayed in a place of honor at the high school.

At the dedication, Peters’ sister Portia Peters Bauchens said:

“Lee Peters was a real war hero. He lost his life piloting a helicopter back into battle so that no wounded would be left behind. If you have been to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., you know that uniformed men are there to help you find the name on the wall. When I asked for William Lee Peters Jr., he quietly asked ‘from Fort Dodge, Iowa?’ I surprised myself and burst into tears. I want Lee remembered as the kid from Fort Dodge who loved his family, loved to swim, loved his friends and to have fun … I hope the plaque at the high school will inspire kids to do their best when called upon. That was what Lee did.”

National Vietnam War Veterans Day is observed on March 29 — the date in 1973 when the last U.S. combat troops left Vietnam.

“To me when we (all combat forces) left Vietnam on 29 March is definitely more significant than when we left Vietnam in April of 1975,” Lennon said. “April of 1975 was a political date for the end of the war.”

Tom Dorsey, who served as an Army artillery forward observer in Vietnam in 1967, agrees: “For me the Vietnam War ended with the Paris Peace Accord in 1973 and the withdrawal of the U.S. combat forces. The RVN armed forces held on without U.S. assistance until the communist forces overran Saigon on April 30, 1975. As was everything else in the Vietnam war, the chaotic withdrawal of embassy staff and Vietnamese friendlies was controversial. Also subject to controversy was the resettlement of orphans as well as families.”

The last U.S. servicemen killed during the war, U.S Marines Charles McMahon and Darwin Lee Judge, died on April 29, 1975, in a North Vietnamese rocket attack one day before the fall of Saigon. Judge was a 19-year-old lance corporal from Marshalltown. In all, 55,280 U.S. service members died in the war — 869 of them from Iowa.

On May 7, the 27th Brushy Creek Area Honor Flight will transport 165 veterans to Washington to see the nation’s war monuments — two of them Korean War veterans and the rest Vietnam veterans, according to organizer Ron Newsum, who said, “To me, each flight makes me so grateful for what our country is and was and will be, one of freedom and respect.”

In his remarks at Iowa Central to families who lost loved ones in the Vietnam War, Martin said:

“For many of you, the pain is still raw. The absence is a constant ache. The questions linger, unanswered, in the quiet corners of your hearts. We understand that time may pass, but the love, the memories, the profound impact of your loss, remains. In a number of interviews that I assisted in completing, I witnessed this pain, agony, and that part of your heart that just didn’t heal.

“Your loved one — your brother, husband, son, father, or best buddy — answered the call to duty. They served with courage, with conviction, and with unwavering patriotism. They faced unimaginable challenges, endured hardships others can only try to comprehend, and in the end, they made the ultimate sacrifice. They gave their lives in service to their country, and their names are etched forever on a granite wall in our nation’s capital and American history.

“But their story doesn’t end there. It lives on in you. It lives on in the stories you tell, the memories you cherish, and the love that binds you together. They live on in the values they instilled, the lessons they taught, and the legacy they left behind.”

By PAUL STEVENS

Joan Johnson Drewes is proud to be part of Fort Dodge’s First Family of Music, among six talented members of the Johnson family — her parents, Gladys and Dick, and her three sisters Karen, Donna and Martha.

She moved away from her hometown decades ago, but continues the family music tradition, composing choral and vocal music, after retiring from 20 years as an elementary school music teacher and choral director. And she’s never forgotten her family roots.

“When we were kids, we used to sing at our church, Grace Lutheran,” she said. “Martha is still a member there, in the choir and bell choir. We were billed as The Johnson Girls and dad would write arrangements for us.”

When they vacationed, she added, “the six of us would be in dad’s station wagon singing pieces in four-part harmony. Donna and I sang alto, mom and Martha soprano, Karen tenor and dad would sing bass.”

Of the six, only the two youngest survive – Joan, of West Babylon, New York, and Martha McColley Kersbergen, of Fort Dodge.

On Feb. 13, their mother Gladys Johnson Meier, an accomplished musician and singer who was highly regarded as a registered nurse, died at Friendship Haven.

Their father was one of Fort Dodge’s most famous entertainment figures — Richard “Dick” Johnson, an avid barbershopper who was beloved for his 1960s local television show “Uncle Dick’s Fun House” that put smiles on the faces of hundreds of Fort Dodge girls and boys during its six-year run on KQTV. He died in Montana in 2024 at age 95. Karen was 64 when she died in 2015 of ovarian cancer and Donna was 68 when she passed away in 2020 of complications following surgery.

“There is nothing closer to the soul than the sound of the human voice singing” are words Joan believes in. She lives in West Babylon with her husband, Billy, a professional saxophone player in the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra that performs weekly at the Village Vanguard in New York City. She has been active in the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) and recently returned from a four-day conference in Dallas that was attended “by 3,000 choral geeks, conductors, performers, ensembles and composers from all around the world. I enjoyed every moment.”

In addition to her studies at New York University and The Juilliard School, she holds a bachelor of music degree from Berklee College of Music in Boston and a master of science in education from Hofstra University in Nassau County, N.Y.

Drewes has toured with jazz ensembles in Europe and on the East Coast and recorded several albums which included her original compositions and vocals. Her choral compositions (“Tacit”, “Three,” “Lift My Soul” and “The Star”) were premiered under the baton of David Fryling, national president of the ACDA and director of choral activities at Hofstra University.

“Lift My Soul” and “Distant Murmurings” were accepted into the prestigious PROJECT: ENCORE Catalogue. Her compositions have been performed by the Evergreen and Oak Trio in conjunction with the Iowa Composer Forum. She won first prize in the 2024 Choral Series Composition Competition at Mount Holyoke College and received Honorable Mention for her piece “Lift My Soul” in the 2022 HerVoice Composers Competition.

Fryling said, “Joan’s music is a delight to sing and a joy to conduct. Her musical language is sophisticated yet accessible, she treats her texts with great care, and her approach to the voice is effortlessly idiomatic.”

She worked for 20 years at Saltzman East Memorial School in Farmingdale, New York, where she taught general music and choruses for students in kindergarten through fifth grade.

Joan and Billy have two daughters — Grace, who works for Google and lives in Brooklyn, New York, and is married to Chris Scheben, and Amalia, who is a visual artist, works for a traveling Native American museum and lives in West Babylon, New York.

“Both sang and played instruments through high school, and were involved in choir, orchestra and musicals,” Drewes said.

Drewes credits “an amazing music department” at Fort Dodge Senior High School for forming her music foundation — particularly Larry Mitchell in choir, John Groethe in jazz band and James Huffman in orchestra. She was the first female president of the FDSH a cappella choir. Barbara Rector was her piano teacher in Fort Dodge until her junior year.

“I always felt (and I still do to this day) that the Iowa work ethic, the commitment to values and having community support, were all foundational forces to my success,” she said. ”Dad and I had many parallel talents. He conducted choirs, so did I. He was a composer/arranger, so am I. I’m grateful for the gifts passed on to me.”

All four Johnson girls graduated from FDSH. Karen excelled in dance and Donna is still remembered for playing the role of Dolly in the high school’s musical “Hello Dolly,” a performance that set the stage for a life that took her to show business work in New York City, London and Minneapolis.

“I was in ninth grade when Donna did Dolly. I think it worked in my favor, there were certain expectations, oh, you’re Karen and Donna’s sister. Luckily, I had the talent to meet those expectations.”

“When Martha got married, Karen, Donna and I were living in New York City and as a wedding present, I wrote an arrangement for us to sing at her wedding. Karen sang tenor, Donna alto and I sang soprano. Our dad was completely blown away by my arrangement. That meant the world to me. We did it in a barbershop way and that was his genre.

“I was a normal classmate until someone realized I was the daughter of Uncle Dick. It gave me a sense of notoriety and also a sense of responsibility – don’t do anything stupid! Not only my dad, but to follow in the footsteps of Karen and Donna — well, they were not easy acts to follow.

“Dad used to write arrangements of hymns for the Johnson Girls to sing in church. Martha was too young to join us – but Karen, Donna and I sang beautifully together – we thought we were identical to ‘The Lennon Sisters’. Our house had a huge backyard. We put on plays, acrobatic acts on the swing set, and one year made a parade around the neighborhood and invited neighbors to come watch us perform. Donna made a stage of an old door supported by cinder blocks. Yeah — the whole lot of us, born to perform! Mom played piano and sang, but she was a nurse so if anything happened to any of the neighborhood kids, we brought them home to Mom for ‘fixing’ — mostly the application of Band-Aids.”

Drewes graduated from FDSH in 1973 and received a music scholarship to attend Morningside College in Sioux City — “but it wasn’t a good fit.”

Her sisters Karen and Donna were living in New York City at the time, and she was accepted at Berklee College of Music in Boston where she was a composition major and sang in a traveling ensemble.

”Donna had already forged a path by going to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in NYC, so me going to Boston was doable,” she said.

Karen worked in New York City as a legal secretary.

“The legacy of my mom is that she never clipped our wings,” Drewes said, “She never discouraged us from going where our talents would take us. It was never no, that’s dumb, too far, too expensive, not a good career. When I said I wanted to go to Boston, she said fine – it will either make you or break you.”

Her mother Gladys (Pauline Wilson) was raised and educated in Harcourt and graduated in 1949 from St. Joseph’s Mercy Hospital School of Nursing in Fort Dodge. She worked as an R.N. at Iowa Methodist Hospital in Des Moines and provided private duty nursing in Sac City and Carroll before marrying Richard “Dick” Johnson in 1950.

The couple lived in Emmetsburg and Carroll before establishing their home in Fort Dodge. She put her career on hold for 14 years, raising their four daughters, and returned to nursing in 1965. In 1968 Gladys was a charter member of the opening of the Intensive Care Unit at Lutheran Hospital (now UnityPoint Health — Trinity Regional Medical Center.) She immersed herself in studying coronary heart disease and attended lectures, symposiums and workshops for nursing in these critical care arenas. In 1975 she taught courses on electro-cardiology at Iowa Central Community College. She and Johnson divorced in 1970, and in 1976 she married L. Lester Meier and the couple lived in Fort Dodge.

Gladys traveled to the jungles of eastern Honduras in 1988-91 to assist in conducting health clinics and hands-on nursing for the people along the Patuca River. She was a self-made speaker who gave community talks on her trips to Honduras, the Iowa Corn Show and Heart-Health. She left hospital nursing in 1975 and worked for Webster County Public Health as a public health nurse, retiring in 1991.

Martha remembers her mother for her stage presence when speaking in nursing classes or about her experiences in Honduras. And for her wisdom.

“I remember she would always say — ‘You have two choices in life, to laugh or to cry. If you choose to cry, you’re going to have a miserable life. But if you learn to laugh at yourself, you’ll have a great life.'”

Martha and her first husband, Jim McColley, started a cleaning business in 1982 — “we started up with a bucket of cleaning supplies and a vacuum, and five accounts,” she said with a laugh. Clean All Inc. was incorporated in 1984 and at the time of its sale to her best friend and 10-year employee Robin Smith, in 2022, it had 20 employees and five vans.

“I sold it so I could retire and take care of my grandkids,” she said. She and Bob Kersbergen were married in 2014.

She and McColley have four children: Rose, like her grandmother a registered nurse, working in an Orlando, Florida, emergency center; Scott, who has Downs Syndrome and lives at a house staffed by One Vision in Fort Dodge and works at Applebee’s; Rachel, who has lived and worked in the Des Moines area the last 12 years as a tattoo artist and recently purchased a home in Slater with her fiance as they are expecting a baby in September, and Matthew, a paramedic at the Humboldt County Memorial Hospital.

As with Joan’s family, the Johnson Family music gene is implanted in Martha’s family as well. Martha sings in the Grace Lutheran choir and plays in the bell choir, and while she no longer does musicals, she performs in plays at the Hawkeye Community Theater and helps with sets and props.

Matthew has returned to performing at HCT. Martha said, “His goal is to win the Best Actor award and have his name on the board in the lobby with his Mom and Aunt Donna! He accomplished this on his second play ‘CAHOOTS’ written by Rick Johnston, as the character Al Shields.”



And, she said, Scott “thinks he is a rock star, can’t carry a tune in a bucket, has serious pitch issues…he not only posts his masterpieces on Facebook but goes out with his guitar to the mausoleum at North Lawn Cemetery where Karen and Donna are interred and sings a song he wrote for Aunt Karen and Aunt Donna.”

What is your New Year’s resolution for your company or organization to help the Fort Dodge community grow in the coming year? The Messenger recently asked dozens of community and business leaders to rub their crystal balls and answer this question. We received 27 responses and bring them to our readers as the first Messenger Spotlight of the new year. One who I surely would have asked is former mayor and judge Albert Habhab. 2025 is the first year since 1952, when he opened a law practice in downtown Fort Dodge, that one of the city’s most famous citizens didn’t usher in a new year. He died a year ago at the age of 98. “The Judge” had long made it known he would host a birthday party on his 100th on Sept. 6, 2025. He may have fallen short, but some of his closest friends plan to mark that 100th anniversary on Sept. 6 at Community Orchard. I know I reached only a small percentage of the city’s leaders with my question for the new year. I apologize for that. If you would like to contribute your thoughts in about 100 words on how your company or organization will help the Fort Dodge community grow in 2025, please drop me a note — paulstevens46@gmail.com — and we will publish them in a followup to this Spotlight. With that, here are our responses: Joel Allen, director, ISI (Iron Sharpens Iron), Team Camps At ISI Team Camps, our New Year’s resolution is to continue driving growth and opportunity in the Fort Dodge community. Last year, our camp brought over 1,500 participants and their families to Fort Dodge, boosting the local economy and highlighting the incredible businesses that make your city special. We are deeply appreciative of Iowa Central Community College and its phenomenal campus, which provides the perfect environment for athletes to grow and thrive. This year, we aim to strengthen those connections, increase camp attendance, and showcase all that Fort Dodge has to offer, solidifying its reputation as a premier hub for youth sports and community excellence. Kraig Barber, market president, First State Bank At First State Bank we strive to work with community businesses and organizations to help facilitate their goals of growing and being successful each year. In order to help understand how a company wants to grow takes a concerted effort of asking and listening what their company is about and what goals they have, what goods or services it produces, how their operation is run, who their customer base is, and knowing about what resources are in the area and then try to put all of this together to facilitate a plan to help them be successful in the coming year. We do this one company at a time and each of these businesses then helps propel this area into a sustaining and growing place to work and live. Happy New Year! Matt Bemrich, mayor of Fort Dodge As I reflect on my final year as mayor, I recognize the incredible progress we’ve made as a community and the important work that remains. Over the past year, we’ve focused on strengthening infrastructure, supporting economic growth, and enhancing quality of life for all residents. However, there is still much to be accomplished. Key priorities include finalizing long-term infrastructure projects, fostering partnerships to attract new businesses, and addressing housing shortages to meet the needs of a growing population. It is also essential to continue building on our efforts to create a more inclusive and connected community. As we approach the end of this chapter, I remain committed to working diligently with city leaders, residents, and stakeholders to ensure a strong foundation for the future. Terry Christensen, Iowa Group publisher As the Messenger approaches 170 years serving readers and advertisers in North Central Iowa, our resolution for 2025 is to remain committed to providing the best in local news and sports coverage. We are greatly appreciative of our numerous relationships with businesses, organizations and civic groups throughout the area, most of which are our friends and neighbors. The Fort Dodge region has experienced so many positive improvements over the past decade, thanks to the countless number of people willing to help lead the way. We look forward to reporting even more success stories in 2025. Charles Clayton, director, Athletics for Education and Success (AFES) AFES New Year’s resolution is to continue Supporting and Believing in Fort Dodge! Even though we have been hit with negative news over the last few years, we believe Fort Dodge is greater than those negative things and has great people here and is still a great place to live and raise a family! Don Decker, chairman, The Decker Companies For nearly a century, The Decker Companies has been proud to be a part of the Fort Dodge community. Each year, our resolution has been to continue to build on the success of our company since my Uncle Loren Decker started it 93 years ago with a single Model B Ford truck. Last year we donated $1 million for the renovation of Decker Auditorium on the Iowa Central Community College campus and expect to continue to be a contributor to ICCC in the future. The Decker Development Park on the east side of Fort Dodge, part of the Cross-Town Connector Improvement Project, includes MidAmerican Energy; Moeller Furnace & Air, a longtime Fort Dodge company, who plans to move into their new facility in 2025; FORCE America, a hydraulic company, who is building a new manufacturing facility in the Park; and a new sale to a multi- national company who is currently in the due diligence process for building a facility as well. Not all of our contributions are as visible, but important to us and to the community. We just committed to a $100,000 contribution for a new surgical center at UnityPoint Health– Trinity Regional Medical Center; and we will continue to support local organizations, contribute food to food pantries, and sponsor a family through employee contributions during the holidays, just to name a few. Dave Flattery, market president, Availa Bank and member of City Council At Availa Bank, our New Year’s resolution for 2025 is to continue to strengthen our commitment to the Fort Dodge community by offering financial products and services that meet the local needs. Additionally, we will continue to support local organizations, including the Greater Fort Dodge Growth Alliance to promote economic growth. For 2025, at Availa Bank we will continue to encourage our team to be involved in the community to foster a thriving Fort Dodge and region. Leah Glasgo, president, UnityPoint Health New Year’s Resolution for UnityPoint Health — Trinity Regional Medical Center: “Promote Health, Wellness, and Community Collaboration to Foster a Stronger Fort Dodge and surrounding communities in 2025.” We will continue to focus on accessibility in rural Iowa to key services such as cardiology, surgery, family medicine, oncology and women’s services, retain and recruit talented and caring healthcare workers, develop partnerships that help us meet the needs of our community, and provide excellence in patient-centered care. This work will not only strengthen the hospital’s mission but also contribute to the broader growth of Fort Dodge, creating a healthier and more resilient community. Wishing you all a healthy, Happy 2025 from all of us at UPH Fort Dodge! Mary Green-Warnstadt, executive director, Main Street Fort Dodge The New Year’s resolutions for Main Street Fort Dodge include long- and short-term goals. With this holiday season winding down, we recently launched a fundraising campaign for downtown Christmas lights. We want to enhance our festive Merry on Main Street activities by reimagining the light displays along Central Avenue for the 2025 holiday season. Looking long-term, our Main Street program will develop Community Transformation Strategies for downtown. The process will rely on the input of property and business owners as well as residents and local leaders to determine our future priorities. Interested in joining the conversation? Email us at info@MainStreetFD.org. Phil Gunderson and Rob Gunderson, owners, Gunderson Funeral Home & Cremation Services of Fort Dodge and Larson-Weishaar Funeral Home of Manson Gunderson Funeral Home & Cremation Services along with Larson-Weishaar Funeral Home is resolved to serve our communities and the families who call upon us at the time of loss. Adapting to changes in technology, services requested and the ways families wish to memorialize is very important to us. We are resolved to helping reduce the stress and simplify the ease in the funeral pre-planning experience. Our staff will continue to provide post-service follow-up and care in support of those who grieve, as well as our community services of remembrance. Gunderson’s and Wieshaar’s will continue to be involved in the success, growth and improvements in our communities and region. Luke Hugghins, business partner, McClure For many years, McClure has been a proud partner in developing infrastructure and assisting in economic development planning throughout Fort Dodge and the surrounding region. In 2025, McClure will continue to seek opportunities to grow both locally and nationally. The local communities we serve are the core of our business, and we are excited to welcome back Fort Dodge native, Nick Bennett, who has accepted a full-time position as a Staff Engineer. Matt and Abigail Johnson, owners, Fort Dodge Ford Lincoln Toyota Happy New Year to all the readers of The Messenger! As always, we feel incredibly blessed and grateful to be a part of the community of Fort Dodge. We thank you all for your continued support over the years. Looking forward to 2025, our resolution is to be a helpful and positive influence in this community that we value so deeply. We believe having a team mindset with other businesses and the community as a whole will continue to strengthen the path forward. We want to continue to be a part of the positive momentum that is elevating Fort Dodge and making it an even better place to live, work and play. Mike Johnson, Calvert & Johnson Insurance Services As far as a resolution for our business, I would say that we are going to try and continue our giving/donating in 2025 as a corporation to making an impact with the youth in our community. A long time ago, our agency decided that the best way to invest in the Fort Dodge area was to concentrate on our youth and support Fort Dodge Community School District, St. Edmond Catholic School and Iowa Central Community College. Our belief is that by investing in our youth, we are committing to the future of Fort Dodge for not only the coming year but hopefully many years to follow. Thank you for your continued support of the Messenger and the Fort Dodge area. Randy Kuhlman, CEO, Fort Dodge Community Foundation and United Way Our resolution is to continue to invest in community projects and programs that will improve the quality of life for all citizens and continue or work to make Fort Dodge a safer community and a place where people will want to live, work, and raise their families. Kerrie Kuiper, executive director, Visit Fort Dodge Visit Fort Dodge has the same basic resolution each year: bring visitors to our community! In 2025, our resolution is focused on encouraging and recruiting residents to talk about the good things happening in the community. We want residents to know they are an important part of bringing visitors to town, especially as they talk about entertainment, recreation, dining, and shopping opportunities. By inviting others and talking about the positives of the community, residents make a huge impact on how successful we are. Mike Larson, market president, First Interstate Bank The mission in 2025 for First Interstate Bank to continue to be a resource and partner for individuals, businesses, government and non-profit organizations to be able to rely on. Regardless, if it is partnering with time, talents, collaboration or capital. We are committed to the community and its mission of quality growth while making it a phenomenal place to live, grow a business and raise a family. My resolution is to make First Interstate Bank the employer of choice and the bank of choice, by making it an easy place to bank and work. We truly believe in giving back to the community we serve. Chad Lennon, West Region president, Woodruff Construction Woodruff Construction will continue to support our community through our philanthropy on projects that serve the needs of various organizations in the community. The past year alone we finished the press box for the Iowa Central Rugby Team field, contributed to the design and construction of the gateway monuments on the Albert Habhab Veterans Memorial Bridge, donated needed concrete repairs at the Fort Dodge Public Library, raised funds for Community and Family Resources, and made significant cash donations to many local public and private organizations. Our employee owners will continue to build the future of our community and families with purpose, this year and forward. Monsignor Kevin McCoy, Holy Trinity Catholic parish / St. Edmond Catholic School — Fort Dodge, and St. Mary Catholic parish / St. Mary Catholic School — Humboldt Our Catholic community of Webster County is filled with much hope and optimism for 2025. As a community of faith, we will continue to invite folks to know the saving power of God in Christ Jesus; welcoming all to join us in prayer and worship as well as in our efforts to help provide for the food insecure through our food pantry and partnership with Upper Des Moines Opportunity. St. Edmond Catholic continues to offer educational formation rooted in Christian principles, and is welcoming new students, thus expanding the community we serve. The Marian Home and Village provides for the needs of those aging in our community with not only independent living opportunities and skilled care, but also looking forward to the opening of the newly rebuilt assisted living facility along MLK Drive adjacent to the campus on Sixth Avenue North. Dennis Quinn, chief of police, Fort Dodge The new year’s resolution for the Fort Dodge Police Department is first and foremost to continue to be committed to the safety, security, and well-being of our community. We hope to accomplish this through building trust and strong partnerships with our community members. As strong community partners, we will work to make Fort Dodge a place where people want to live and work. Fort Dodge is a wonderful city with a great many exciting things on the horizon. The Fort Dodge Police Department looks forward to being a part of this. Rebecca Reitmeier, owner, Bloomers on Central Coffee Shoppe After being flooded out of the Trolley Center a year ago, we are excited to announce 2025 as the “Year of the Bloom” for Bloomers on Central Coffee Shoppe. Despite the challenges, we made the decision to keep our business downtown, staying true to the vision established by the original owner over 30 years ago. We resolve to reopen Bloomers in 2025 to continue supporting the growth and vibrancy of the downtown community. Our mission remains the same: to be a central hub for local gatherings, fostering connections and creating a welcoming space where everyone feels at home. Maury Ruble, 6-12 principal, St. Edmond Catholic School St. Edmond Catholic’s New Year’s resolution focuses on fostering a vibrant educational experience that unites students and adults in a shared mission to strengthen the Fort Dodge community. By emphasizing academic excellence, respect, and service, the school aims to create a nurturing environment where learning transcends the classroom. This commitment not only enhances academic growth but also builds lasting relationships among families and local organizations, promoting a stronger, more connected Fort Dodge. Through various programs and initiatives, St. Edmond strives to inspire active participation and a sense of belonging for all, paving the way for a brighter future together. Dan Scott, CEO, Citizens Community Credit Union Credit unions are built on a “people helping people” philosophy and our commitment to that at Citizens Community Credit Union only continues to grow. Community is one of our core values and volunteerism is a corporate goal, which eclipsed 1,400 hours in 2024. So I look for us to continue being a leader in donating our time and resources in 2025. Not just to make a positive impact in Fort Dodge, but all seven of the communities we operate in throughout NW Iowa. We firmly believe that when the community succeeds, everyone succeeds. Bill Shimkat and Ed Shimkat Jr., co-owners, Shimkat Motor Co. As a proud family-owned business rooted in Fort Dodge, Iowa, Shimkat Motor Company resolves to inspire growth and togetherness in 2025. We will continue supporting initiatives like Coats for Kids, ensuring no child faces winter unprepared, and seek new ways to uplift our community. By supporting community initiatives and promoting shopping local, we aim to keep our small business community strong. We challenge fellow businesses and residents to get involved, give back, and help make Fort Dodge stronger. Together, we can achieve more — because we’re proud to call Fort Dodge home. Let’s make it a remarkable year! Ryan Smith, president, Kingsgate Insurance At Kingsgate, our New Year’s resolution is to continue to find ways to be a resource, beyond insurance, for our clients. The world continues to become a more complicated place; we resolve to bring solutions that can help simplify it. Clients are faced with a myriad of issues that involve risk, whether it’s the loss of tangible assets or navigating the complexities of compliance related risk. We resolve to scour the marketplace to find solutions that can help them focus on doing what they are best at, running and growing their businesses in 2025. Julie Thorson, president and CEO, Friendship Haven My hope for Friendship Haven that will also help the Fort Dodge community grow in 2025 is to continue to welcome new residents to our campus so many already call home. Whether that is people moving to Friendship Haven from outside our area or people who are moving in from their long-time Fort Dodge homes movement is growth and growth is good for everyone! We have openings available in River Ridge our Catered Living neighborhood. We would encourage people to consider 2025 the perfect time to move to Friendship Haven! In 2025 Friendship Haven will celebrate our 75th year! Tracy Trotter, executive director, Marian Home As we look ahead to 2025, Marian Home is excited to announce the opening of our Assisted Living in the first part of the year, at 925 Martin Luther King Drive. Marian Home will continue to enhance the quality of life for seniors, expanding services, and fostering a vibrant, supportive community. Our goals for the upcoming year reflect our ongoing commitment to providing a safe, fulfilling, and inclusive environment for all residents and we remain committed to making retirement living affordable for all. Collaboration with local organizations, healthcare providers, and businesses will continue to be a cornerstone of our operations. By expanding our network of partnerships, we can offer residents a wider variety of services and ensure they have access to the support they need both within and outside of our community. Our goals for 2025 reflect our unwavering commitment to creating a place where seniors can enjoy a fulfilling, faith-filled and rewarding lifestyle that is supported by a compassionate team. We believe that a successful retirement community should not just meet the basic needs of its residents but enrich their lives with opportunities for growth, connection, and peace of mind. Dr. Jesse D. Ulrich, president, Iowa Central Community College Our resolution is to continue our efforts for students to come to Iowa Central and finish their degree and/or certifications in the shortest amount of time possible with the least amount of student loan debt so they can have a better life.

By PAUL STEVENS

For well over a century, the Ingleside Study Club has connected women of Fort Dodge through their love of one of the world's oldest forms of communication – reading a book.

The book club – the name Ingleside means fireside, around which books were often read – was formed in October 1901 by 11 women and has operated continuously to this day – when, today, 27 women meet twice a month to share a book and enjoy long friendships.

Ingleside’s founding came at a time when women were not allowed to vote – that would come two decades later with passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It was a club for women only, women who saw it as a means of self-education and self-improvement.

“The original founders of Ingleside Club were women who invested themselves and their families in constructing the foundations on which Fort Dodge is built—physically, culturally, spiritually,” said Joyce Garton-Natte, current president and a retired dentist and Presbyterian lay minister. “Members today are, likewise, invested in this city and influential in keeping that foundation firm.

“Women like Sarah Kelly, our longest-term member with 67 years of membership, personify the commitment and enthusiasm, supportiveness and gentility on which Ingleside was and is formed.

“I believe it is the weight of our foundational heritage - AND the everlasting love of books and friendship - which inspire current members to keep Ingleside going into a, hopefully, unending future.”

Since being invited to join the club three years ago, Jeanine Nemitz, retired director of the city’s Foster Grandparent Program, has dug deep into Ingleside’s history.

“I myself am happy to note that the club has not avoided topics that might have been controversial,” she said, “including in the 1920s when a club member brought a ballot to the meeting to instruct fellow members in how to use their right to vote. Minutes noted that some members had been told by their husbands that their vote was unnecessary, as he would vote for the family. Advocacy for a community nurse in the early 1900s also highlighted the members who were not afraid to take on ‘City Hall’ in advocating for this important service for the less fortunate of the community.”

Current active members are Adrienne Adams, Pat Bennett, Rosalia Buda Claussen, Judy Delucca, RaeAnne Frey Marner, Joyce Garton-Natte, Jane Gibb, Sondra Holmstrom, Delpha Holtzman, Deb Johnson, Roma Johnson, Betsy Kentfield, Jill Lohff, Kathy Moe, Peggy Murphy, Jeanine Nemitz, Ann Powers, Sherri Schill, Judy Shimkat, Linda Ulstad, Kim Vosberg and Deb Zemke. Associate members are Patricia Crumley, Marilyn Graham, Karen Jackson, Sarah Kelly and Beverly Walker.

The club meets on the first and third Mondays of each month (once a month in January and February), most often in one another’s homes, from 1 to 3 pm, September through April. Membership is through invitation of members of the group and includes women who worked in a variety of professions, including teaching and health care.

The meeting format has remained the same over the years. Each meeting begins with dessert, a brief business session and then a presentation by a member who summarizes the book she chooses to read. A discussion of the book follows, punctuated by conversation among the friends. Sometimes there are props. At her first meeting, Nemitz said, the late Barbara O’Connor reviewed a book on international legend Coco Chanel “and brought hats, to talk about the fashion side of it.”

Once a year, in April, all members of Ingleside read the All Iowa Reads selection and discuss it as a group. Established by the State Library of Iowa in 2003, the goal of the All Iowa Reads program is to foster a sense of community through reading, with Iowans encouraged to come together in their communities to read and talk about a single book title in the same calendar year.

Annual dues are used for minimal club expenditures, and any remaining money is donated to the Fort Dodge Friends of the Library and to the Public Library itself in memory of members who have passed that year. When a member dies, Ingleside also donates a book in her memory to the library.

Sarah Kelly, 89 years young, is Ingleside’s longest-tenured member with 67 years. From her residence at Friendship Haven, she said of her first days with the club:

“I was 22 years old, the youngest one, and every minute with them made my life more beautiful. They were all so kind to me and to each other. I brought my 5-year-old son John to many meetings. My daughter Clare also came to some of the meetings. The women were happy to have them there and they gave me advice about things. I never wanted to miss a meeting.

“Ingleside is just so important! Eventually we enlarged with new members. Young or old, we just blended in, and I feel so fortunate to have had them in my life."

Roma Johnson, its newest member, joining in 2024, offered: "I was honored to be asked to join Ingleside and have enjoyed getting to know the ladies. I have always enjoyed book clubs because I love to read and discuss books. I am looking forward to many more lively meetings."

The year 1901, when Ingleside was formed, was a memorable year in history. It included the assassination of U.S. President William McKinley on Sept. 14 and the succession of Theodore Roosevelt, the death of Queen Victoria and the end of the Victorian era in Britain, the first awarding of the Nobel Prizes, and the unification of Australia into a Commonwealth.

The names of initial members came from prominent families, familiar to those with a knowledge of Fort Dodge history – Coleman, Gustafson, Bennett, Loomis, Schaupp, Evans, Butler, Stowe, Deveraux, Craig, and Mitchell. Many lived in the area between 4th Avenue South and 5th Avenue North, between 9th Street and 12th Street and came from prominent families, with help at home to give them freedom to join clubs like Ingleside, Nemitz said.

“They were women who wanted to not only better themselves but have a voice in the community,” she said. “Once the club lobbied the city council to establish a visiting nurse, to take care of less fortunate families. It’s always had a goal of self improvement as well as community awareness. The minutes show that Mary Stella Kelleher, the first woman from Fort Dodge to run for Iowa Secretary of State, once brought a ballot to a meeting to show members how to vote, even if some husbands thought that was their job for the family. Our late member Norma Schmoker was the first woman elected to the Fort Dodge School Board.”

Over the years, according to minutes of club meetings shared by Nemitz, members enjoyed books by authors such as Upton Sinclair, W.E.B. Dubois, W. Somerset Maugham, Eugene O’Neill, Agatha Christie, James Joyce, Sinclair Lewis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pearl S. Buck, Thomas Wolfe, Thornton Wilder and John Steinbeck.

At one meeting in 1936, the minutes show, a “Mrs. Kurtz” brought a new talking book machine to the meeting. This machine played records with 8,000 words per side. It allowed the blind to listen to books. Webster County possessed one of the machines and was able to request new records, which were delivered by mail free of charge.

In the turmoil of the 1960s, Ingleside members discussed books such as “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe” and “The Unsinkable Molly Brown.” The top-selling book in 1966 was “Valley of The Dolls.” In 1969, Kurt Vonnegut wrote “Slaughterhouse Five,” an anti-war novel that would become the topic of more than one Ingleside program over the years.

Constantine’s restaurant’s pecan pie was a popular dessert at meetings. Demitra Constantine was a member of Ingleside for many years.

With the 125th anniversary of Ingleside’s founding to be celebrated in October 2026, club members have chosen books from each of the decades of its existence to be read through the 2025-2026 club year.

It started two months ago, in September, when to mark the first decade of the 1900s, member Ann Powers reviewed a book on Peter Pan, “Peter and Wendy,” by James Matthew Barrie. In October, to mark the second decade, member Betsy Kentfield reviewed Agatha Christi’s “The Mysterious Affair at Styles.” In November, member Deb Zemke will review Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451.

Jane Gibb, a member for 45 years, said “there is great mutual respect and open-mindedness as far as books chosen for review. In January I will be selecting a book from the 1960s, an era when I was in high school and college. My challenge will be to decide which memorable book to review.”

She’s considering a brief survey of five works by female authors of the 1960s including Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” , Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar,” Betty Freidan’s “The Feminine Mystique” and Madeleine l’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time.”

“Ingleside is special,” Gibb said, “it has a rich history and some remarkable women. Dedicated, bright, caring women - who READ!”

What are the odds that a couple celebrates 60 years of marriage in the same year they both reached 80 years of age?

Infinitesimally slim, to be sure.

Joan and Tom Tibbitts celebrated both milestones earlier this year, but a third milestone number they achieved turns out to be the most important of all for the community of Fort Dodge. That number - 51.

That’s how many years they’ve been residents of the city, raising three daughters and touching hundreds of lives along the way, in particular through their work in health care and in education - and in much volunteering.

Fate may have taken them elsewhere when Tom Tibbitts was working in administrative positions at the University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics in Iowa City, after earning a master’s degree in hospital administration. That’s when a friend in his graduate school program, Gary Edwards, mentioned there was an opening at Trinity Regional Hospital – newly formed with the 1974 merger of Fort Dodge Mercy Hospital and Bethesda General Hospital (formerly Lutheran Hospital).

“I interviewed with Duncan Moore, the CEO of the combined hospitals, and was hired as associate director, with my office at Mercy Hospital,” Tibbitts said.

So in the fall of 1974 Joan and Tom and their three young daughters – Tracy, Jennifer and Jill – moved to Fort Dodge. Their intent was to stay for five years.

“The hospitals had just completed the merger,” he said. “It was a great opportunity. Key to the merger was Maurie Stark, who had the ability to coalesce opposing views. He was constantly helping me make sure the Catholic contingent was respected. The end result was a strong hospital that became a regional medical center.”

Tibbitts’ six-year path to becoming the hospital’s president and CEO, succeeding Moore, started as Trinity’s associate director and then executive vice president. But he left the hospital in 1978, hired by Richard Lindeberg to be executive vice president of First Federal Savings & Loan in Fort Dodge.

“Dick Lindeberg founded First Federal and was a member of the Trinity Hospital board,” Tibbitts said. “He came to me with a great offer, and I was there a little over a year. One thing the experience gave me that ended up giving me a leg up when I came back – I traveled to the smaller communities around Fort Dodge to promote the savings and loan, meeting people in the area, asking what can we do to support you. That carried over to selling Trinity and helping make it a regional presence. And right after I took the job, the CFO was injured in an automobile accident and Dick came to me and said that one of my new responsibilities was interim CFO and that the budget preparation for the next year was mine. I learned a lot about finances in a very short time which helped when I returned to Trinity as the CEO.”

Tibbitts served as president and CEO of Trinity Regional Medical Center from 1980 to 2008 and was president and CEO of Trinity Health Systems, Inc. – which encompassed the medical center, Trimark Physicians Group, Northwoods Living, Trinity Health Foundation and the Berryhill Center for Mental Health - from 1985 to 2010.

In the years before he retired in 2013, Tibbitts served as vice president for systems development for the statewide lowa Health System and held interim president/CEO positions for Trinity Regional Health System, Quad Cities, lowa & Illinois, and for Allen Health System of Waterloo.

Tibbitts said the proudest accomplishments of his career are twofold: “First, working WITH employees, board and physicians to build Trinity Medical Center into a statewide recognized ‘regional’ health care center providing quality patient care. And second, working with community leaders to build Fort Dodge into a vibrant community providing regional leadership in economic development, health care and education for northwest, central Iowa.”

Two of today’s leaders of Trinity believe Tibbitts’ service was instrumental in its growth and success.

“Tom served Trinity Regional Medical Center with dedication for 30 years, from 1980 – 2010,” said Leah Glasgo, Market President, UnityPoint Health – Fort Dodge. “As the President and CEO, he transformed our organization into a multispecialty, regional referral center. His innovation and hard work established the foundation for the strong healthcare system Trinity is today. Tom’s contributions continue to shape Trinity and will be felt for generations to come.”

Added Shannon McQuillen, Vice President, Operations, “I was honored to begin my career at UnityPoint Health 20 years ago under Tom’s exceptional leadership. He was a visionary leader, a strategic thinker, and a mentor. I am grateful to him for recruiting me to the Fort Dodge community and for the invaluable opportunity to learn from his example. Tom’s lasting influence on Trinity Regional Medical Center and the Fort Dodge community continues to be deeply felt.”

Tibbitts said one of his best hires was appointing Randy Kuhlman in 1988 as Trinity's director of Marketing, Communications and Business Development, the Community Action Network, Community Health Outreach and the Trinity Health Foundation. “He did an outstanding job of developing a solid donor base for the hospital,” said Tibbitts, who later recommended Kuhlman to be director of what is now the Fort Dodge Community Foundation. The two remain close friends to this day.

Kuhlman said it was a privilege to work with Tibbitts for 21 years: “During his tenure, Tom led the effort to transition and grow the hospital system into a strong and successful regional healthcare organization serving Fort Dodge and a six-county region in North Central Iowa. His leadership was defined by six characteristics: visionary, innovative, professional, trustworthiness, service and compassion.

“Tom was also an influential community leader who was often the first person to be called to help lead an important community initiative. Tom’s love for the Fort Dodge community was reflected in his willingness and ability to address important community issues and lead community betterment projects that were focused on making Fort Dodge an even better place to live. His love of his community is also demonstrated by his ongoing commitment to giving back through his caring and generous philanthropic support for numerous organizations and projects to help make Fort Dodge a special place that we all call home.”

Tibbitts was born March 24, 1945, in New Hampton, and graduated from Lake City High School in 1963. His father Thomas Tibbitts was a grade school principal and his mother Rita Mary was a grade school teacher. Joan Boes was born June 12, 1945, in Carroll to Clarence and Florence Boes and graduated from Glidden High School. Her father was a farmer in the Coon Rapids area and her mother was a seamstress in Carroll.

He was attending Cornell College in Mount Vernon when he met Joan, who was attending Iowa State Teachers College (now the University of Northern Iowa) in Cedar Falls. How they met? “Joan was dating a friend of mine and I dated the friend’s sister,” he replied. They were married July 3, 1965, at Holy Family Catholic Church in Lidderdale, in Carroll County, after their sophomore year and were newlyweds when he began classes at Iowa in the fall. Tibbitts earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration in 1968 and a master’s in hospital administration in 1970. Joan graduated from Buena Vista College in Storm Lake in 1984.

Education and medicine have been the predominant career themes of their three daughters and their families. All three were born in Iowa City and are graduates of Fort Dodge Senior High and the University of Iowa.

Tracy Hartley, married to Bruce Hartley, graduated from Iowa in 1989 and has taught at Fort Dodge Senior High for 30 years. Bruce taught in the Fort Dodge public school system for 32 years and is currently principal at St. Paul Lutheran School in Fort Dodge. They have three children: Thomas, Taylor and Grace. Thomas graduated from Iowa and is teaching in Riverside, Iowa. Taylor will graduate from Iowa in physical therapy in 2025 and Grace will graduate from Iowa in marketing in 2025.

Jennifer Berst Filloon, married to Jon Filloon, graduated from the University of Iowa College of Dentistry; she practices in Cedar Rapids and lives in Iowa City. They have three children: Megan, Matthew and Madeline. Megan graduated from Iowa with a master’s in Health Care Administration and is working at the University of Kansas Hospitals in Kansas City. Matthew graduated from Iowa and works for Farm Bureau in Cedar Rapids. Madeline is currently enrolled in Iowa’s College of Dentistry.

Jill Goodman lives in Iowa City and completed her OB/GYN residency from the Iowa College of Medicine; she practices in Iowa City. She has three children: Joey, Ryan and Eric. Joey graduated from the University of Missouri and works for Hershey in Boston. Ryan is a sophomore at Iowa State University. Eric is a freshman at West High School in Iowa City.

Two of the Tibbitts’ grandchildren are married: Thomas Hartley to Lauren, and Matthew Berst to Isabel, who are expecting the Tibbitts’ first great-grandchild in January 2026.

The Tibbitts have been heavily involved in the community and various service organizations over their 51 years in Fort Dodge. Joan was an elementary school teacher for 20 years, mostly at Butler, and served 15 years as a volunteer for an agency that assists domestic sexual assault victims. They have been members of First Presbyterian Church in Fort Dodge for 50 years.

What kept the Tibbitts’ in Fort Dodge and led Tom to turn down offers to work elsewhere?

“This is a great question that really made me think,” he said. “When we moved to Fort Dodge in 1974, we planned to stay for approximately five years. Joan and I came from small towns in Iowa and thought Fort Dodge would be a nice size community to make friends and become involved in community activities. During this five-year period, I worked with and learned from leaders who had accomplished a major event for Fort Dodge, merging two hospitals, Catholic and Lutheran, to form a new, stronger institution, Trinity Medical Center. Leaders like O.M. and Julie Olson, Maurice Stark, Art Johnson, John Murray, D.A. Peterson, Dick Lindeberg, Tom and Norma Schmoker, and Walt Stevens were just a few names who built the foundation for a strong future.

“Joan and I agreed that we were in a neat community where we could raise our three girls and be involved in the community, so we decided to stay.

“Fort Dodge to me is kind of a crown jewel of this size community in the state of Iowa. In my work over the years with community leaders, we kind of adopted the Nike slogan - ‘Just Do It!’.”

Among their goals for the rest of their years are to enjoy family and friends, travel (revisiting Italy and visits to England and the northeast United States on their bucket list) and continue to financially give back to Fort Dodge.

Working with the Fort Dodge Community Foundation, the Tibbitts’ goal, Tom said, “is giving back. Our goal is that by the time we die, we will have given a million dollars back. We’re just about halfway there.”

And the secret to reaching 60 years of marriage and 80 years of life?

Tibbitts said: “Joan and I both agree on this: Focusing on Faith, Family and Friends while staying active, both mentally and physically.”

By PAUL STEVENS

For nearly four decades, Randy Kuhlman has been known and admired by many for his tireless and passionate work on behalf of the Fort Dodge community. But there are some things even his closest friends may not know about Kuhlman, CEO of the Fort Dodge Community Foundation and the United Way of Greater Fort Dodge and before that, head of development for Trinity Regional Medical Center.

To wit, he… …is a Humboldt native and was a star athlete at Humboldt High School whose father, A.F. “Whitey” Kuhlman, is a member of the Iowa Football Coaches Hall of Fame; …met his wife of 47 years, Roxanne, while both were “shagging the drag” on Central Avenue, she the daughter of Mickey Castagnoli who owned a popular southeast Fort Dodge restaurant called Taco Towne and the niece of Abe Castagnoli, who ran the Chesterfield Bar right next door; …was a Midwest All-Conference basketball player at Cornell College in Mount Vernon and conference champion in the pole vault, and was named an NCAA Academic All-American;

…coached men’s basketball at Coe College part-time while working on his master’s at the University of Iowa and then served as full-time assistant men’s basketball coach at Western Illinois University in McComb for six years.

…with Roxanne coached their son Joe and daughter Kristin in youth basketball in their pre-high school years. The boys team Randy coached from fifth through eighth grades was the nucleus of the St. Edmond High School team that won the school’s first and only state basketball championship in 2000. His involvement in sports from an early age had a big impact on his career, Kuhlman said.

“Being significantly engaged in sports for a big part of my life helped me develop important characteristics that are applied to my work and my personal life such as leadership skills, work ethic, pursuing your goals and your work with a 100 percent effort, and realizing that there will be ups and downs and how you bounce back from the downs will determine your long-term success,” he said.

“Also, many sports are team sports, and it requires being able to be a good and strong teammate and appreciate the others on your team. This is also true in my work life. Success is often dependent on how well you work with others that are on your team, i.e. board members, partners and employees.

“I feel very fortunate to be able to work with so many people who truly care about their community of Fort Dodge and want to help it prosper and thrive. These people truly care about helping the less fortunate and also helping advance projects and programs that improve the quality of life and make Fort Dodge and Webster County a special place.”

The Fort Dodge Community Foundation is an independent 501(c) (3) public charity that enables those with philanthropic interests to develop lasting legacies through funds that support causes, projects, programs and organizations in their community.

When Kuhlman took over as CEO in 2009, it had assets of $700,000 with a dozen funds that included the United Way. It was located in an office in the Snell Building and had old computers that were not networked together. It later moved into quarters at 24 N. Ninth St. where it shares space with the Greater Fort Dodge Growth Alliance, Visit Fort Dodge and Main Street Fort Dodge.

Today, the foundation has assets of $23.5 million and manages about 150 funds. It is operated by a board of directors of 16 community leaders that meets monthly and is chaired by Kraig Barber, market president of First State Bank.

In 2024, Fort Dodge Community Foundation and United Way grants were made to more than 70 projects, programs and organizations totaling more than $1.9 million.

United Way of Greater Fort Dodge promotes charitable donations to help support underprivileged youth, families and senior citizens who struggle to meet their basic living needs for housing, food, clothing, personal hygiene needs, transportation and medical care. It merged with the Community Foundation in 2007 in a model that was the first of its kind in the nation, offering the community and region a “one-stop-shop,” for community based charitable giving. Its focus is on helping those in desperate situations such as homelessness or unstable housing or lacking other basic living needs. And its top priority is helping youth, many of whom are living in poverty-stricken households.

“United Way believes that the best measurement of a successful community is how it invests in the well-being of its youth,” Kuhlman said. “Our youth are 20 percent of our population and 100percent of our future.”

Debra Johnson, a co-owner of Fort Dodge Dodge Ford Lincoln Toyota, was on the foundation board when Kuhlman was hired and continues to serve on the board.

“When the United Way and Community Foundation were struggling,” she said, “he came aboard as our executive director, got the financials in shape, and has grown it into the respected organization it is today.

“Randy served on the international United Way task force and constantly advocates for small-community United Ways. He has also been tapped to help other communities merge their United Way with their Community Foundation; Fort Dodge was the first in the nation.

“Through many personal struggles, Randy continues to serve the organization and his community, never taking time off or even mentioning his own concerns.

Randy has the most compassionate heart, always working to help the most vulnerable. It was Randy who set up meetings in other communities so we could model a Meals on Wheels program that works for Fort Dodge.

“He is a man who wears many hats, all of them geared toward his fellow man. Now you know why I admire him so much.”

Kuhlman was born in Des Moines to Betty and Whitey Kuhlman. His dad was football coach and a high school teacher in Osceola until the family – which included Randy and his brothers Rick and Kevin - moved to Humboldt in 1957. Whitey was head football and track coach at Humboldt High School and later – when his sons competed in sports – was athletic director and assistant principal. He died in 2014 at 92.

Rick Kuhlman, of Fort Dodge, was a longtime teacher, coach and administrator in the Fort Dodge Community School District; he retired in 2008 as principal of Fort Dodge Senior High. Kevin Kuhlman, of West Des Moines, is a retired business development manager.

The three Kuhlman brothers were active in sports at Humboldt High School.

Randy’s forte was the pole vault - he won the North Central Conference competition with a 13 feet, 3 inch vault and finished second in the state tournament. Kuhlman played basketball and was a pole vaulter at Cornell.

The summer of 1972 was a landmark in Kuhlman’s life. That summer after his freshman year at Cornell, Kuhlman and a Humboldt friend drove to Fort Dodge one Saturday night to “shag the drag,” a popular pastime back in the day when teens cruised Central Avenue to see and be seen. Roxanne Castagnoli, who was to be a senior at FDSH that fall, also was cruising Central with a friend.

“We saw these two cute girls and they pulled over near the City Square. I walked over to the passenger’s side and met Roxanne,” Kuhlman said. “We dated from then on after that summer.”

Roxanne graduated from FDSH in 1973 and attended the University of Iowa where she earned a degree in education.

Her dad taught her to golf at the age of 10. She was on the high school golf team and today is one of the top golfers in the city, winner of 10 city tournaments.

When Kuhlman graduated from Cornell in 1974 with a bachelor’s degree in political science, he moved to Iowa City to earn a master’s in Administration of Higher Education at the University of

Iowa, which he attained in 1976. While there, he worked part-time as assistant basketball coach at nearby Coe College.

His first job out of Iowa was as assistant men’s basketball coach at Western Illinois University, a smaller Division I school; he held that position for six years. Roxanne and Randy, who were married in 1978, were living in McComb with their newborn son when they decided that a job that took him away from home recruiting and scouting for more than half the year was not conducive to family life.

The Kuhlman’s returned to Iowa City when he joined Hansen Lind Meyer, an engineering and architectural firm, as corporate director of human resources and were there for several years before they moved to Fort Dodge in 1985 when Joe Peed, president of Heartland Communications, offered him a job as vice president for human resources.

In 1988 Kuhlman was hired by Tom Tibbitts, CEO of Trinity Regional Medical Center, whom he first met playing pickup basketball at the YMCA (“He was much better than I was,” Tibbitts said.)

“I hired Randy as a member of our senior administrative staff and foundation director after I became CEO in 1980 and he did an outstanding job of developing a solid donor base for the hospital,” Tibbitts said. “In addition, he led our Community Action Network effort, a program our Trinity Health System board engaged in to better develop relationships with the Fort Dodge community. It was during this effort that Randy’s leadership really shined. He had an incredible grasp of what our community needed to improve our overall health and lifestyle, beyond just physical health.”

Tibbitts said that when he learned the United Way and Community Foundation were looking for new leadership, he and the Health Systems board recommended Kuhlman as “the perfect candidate for their organization…He was selected as the new director and the rest is history as he has created an organization that is recognized statewide and has brought enormous benefit to our community.”

Among Kuhlman’s proudest accomplishments were serving as chairperson of the 2004 City Charter Review Commission that led the effort to change the local form of city government from a strong mayor structure to a city manager structure; chaired the planning that landed a large federal grant to develop a new Community Health Center in Fort Dodge, and chaired a community coalition that coordinated the All-America City Award application and process. Fort Dodge was selected as an All-America City Award winner in 2001 by the National Civic League.

Fort Dodge Mayor Matt Bemrich lauds Kuhlman’s contributions: “Working with Randy over the years, I would say his passion for the community is something not matched and is truly the driving force of his organization. His compassion for others and efforts to find help when others have not been able to is amazing. I recall one of his many times at the podium speaking about a project to help a young woman and his emotions caught him and you could see how much he cares about others.”

Amy Kersten Bruno, who worked as program director for the Community Foundation from 2013 to 2021 after serving as Fort Dodge Chamber of Commerce director for four years, said that “when I think of Randy, first and foremost I think of his integrity and his love for his family. He is such a loyal friend, always willing to step in when help is needed - for his friends and for the disadvantaged in the community. Randy has been involved in just about every single project in Fort Dodge for many decades, always helping to guide the progress, be ‘at the table’ and put in the time, effort and follow through to see things to completion.”

The recipients of that “love of family” by Roxanne and Randy were their son Joe and daughter Kristin.

Joe Kuhlman, a graduate of Buena Vista University, is operations manager for the Community Foundation and United Way which he joined after working at Iowa Central in student services. In his St. Edmond days, he started his junior and senior years as a small forward for the Gaels, who won the Class 2A state championship and recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of their title.

An angel floated into the lives of the Kuhlmans in March 1993 when a baby girl they named Kristin Leon joined their family, adopted from South Korea through Holt International Children’s Services at six months of age. She was united with them in a joyous celebration at Des Moines International Airport. In her 24 years on earth, cut short by a rare illness, she touched many lives.

She played basketball and tennis at FDSH and graduated with honors, earned a nursing degree at Iowa Central Community College and had started work as a registered nurse at Mercy Hospital in Cedar Rapids when her condition worsened. In her courageous battle to live, her brother donated half of his liver. But she died June 1, 2017.

“She was a true blessing in our lives,” Kuhlman said. “She hardly ever complained, in spite of everything she had to go through and put up with. She was a real trooper. Joe was a great older brother to her.”

Tibbitts – who Kuhlman considers his “mentor” - has a favorite story involving Roxanne and her golfing abilities:

“Randy loved golf and I went to him during his first year as a member of our senior staff and foundation director and asked if he would serve as captain of Trinity’s team in the annual Chamber of Commerce golf outing, with one caveat: that he convince his wife, Roxanne (one of Fort Dodge best-ever female golfers), to be a member of Trinity’s team. He achieved that caveat and Trinity’s team won the outing. We all kidded that it was a “Kuhlman” victory!”

It has been 35 years since you could say, “There’s a Dr. Kersten in the house.”

Back in 1990, Dr. Herb Kersten retired from Fort Dodge’s Kersten Clinic, which was formed by him and his two brothers, Paul and John, and their father, E.M. Kersten. His retirement ended 74 years of medical care from the Kersten doctors to the people of Fort Dodge.

But while those four founders of the multi-practice clinic are now deceased, the Kersten name is very much alive in the form of 18 members of the third Kersten generation – four of whom live in Fort Dodge and the others scattered through the United States and even in Hong Kong. Not to mention 54 of their grandchildren and 69 of their great grandchildren.

There is among them one “doctor in the house” – Dr. Bob Kersten, an opthamologist who practices in Salt Lake City. And there are five attorneys among them, following in the footsteps of Paul and John’s brother Don.

Through thick and thin, theirs has been and is a closeknit family, as illustrated by how its members reacted when three of the cousins encountered tragedies.

Amy Kersten Bruno, daughter of Dr. Paul Kersten and his wife Nick, explains:

“I think what strikes me the most is how every single cousin is available for any of the other cousins in need. I remember when my husband, Mike, was injured in tornado in South Bend, Indiana, and ultimately, died (in 2001) from his injuries. Every single cousin asked how they could help – my brothers and sister came to be with my kids and me, Bob Kersten and his family came to be with us and help navigate the new course we were finding ourselves in, other cousins visited us in the hospital – Kathleen Kersten Roethler sent me cards almost every single week for a number of years, just so i knew she was thinking of us and was ‘in our corner’. i still had five children to raise – It was such a source of strength for all of us to keep moving forward. I knew, without a doubt, that if we needed anything, that they would all help us. It was such a safe and comforting feeling.

“This was also apparent when our cousin Margo (daughter of Frances Anne Kersten and her husband Bill Wolf) suffered the horrendous 4th of July Parade mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, in 2022. She lost her son Kevin and his wife (who left a 2-year-old son whose life was saved by his father covering him). Margo was also shot. Our cousins rallied from the minute we heard the news. The difficult new world she and her grandson are now navigating was foreign and almost impossible. The cousins came to Margo’s side, talked with her, are helping her as she figures out her new reality, and basically, just being kind constants in her life. And Margo is quite amazing – so strong and steadfast – what a thing to have to even happen to you. Just awful beyond words.

“The bottom line is that I think we all believe that at any time, in any situation, we could call each other for advice, for support, as sounding boards – and each cousin would do their absolute best to help. It’s pretty special.”

These thoughts are echoed by Kathy Kersten Roethler of Emmetsburg, recalling when her husband Bob Roethler suffered a brain aneurysm followed by a stroke. His long career as a wrestling coach included coaching at St. Edmond High School from 1967 to 1972; he is a member of the Iowa Wrestling Hall of Fame and the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.

“The Kersten family has always been a very tight knit group,” she said. “And when there is a tragedy we all come together. In 1978, my husband, Bob Roethler, suffered a brain aneurysm followed by a stroke. He was in Rochester for 3 1/2 months. Since my parents were overseas in the Holy Land, the aunts and uncles rallied. My Aunt Jeanne went to Rochester with me. My sister, Marylee, and my aunt and uncle, Cece and Herb, took care of my son, Robert, who was 2 1/2 at the time. Robert also spent time with my Aunt Merope and Uncle Don. While in Rochester, Bob had many family members visit. When Bob went to rehab, I stayed in Fort Dodge with my parents. During Bob’s stay in Rochester, and after, it was like circling the wagons around Bob. He was never a victim and the family supported his ‘never give up’ attitude until the day he died (in 2015). Family is everything!”

The Kersten name has been a prominent part of Fort Dodge history since Dr. E.M. Kersten, son of an immigrant pioneer doctor from Wisconsin, moved to the city in 1916 to join Dr. F.E. Seymour in a medical practice.

E.M. and his wife Anne gave birth to five children, born at Lutheran Hospital which he helped form in 1932 and is now known as UnityPoint Health – Trinity Regional Medical Center.

The five – Paul, Herb, John, Don and Frances Anne – brought 19 children into the world, and today they range in age from 75 years old (Kathleen Kersten Roethler) to 59 (Margie Kersten): Children of Dr. Paul and Nick Kersten, Paul Kersten, deceased, an Army veteran who served in the Vietnam War and later was a professional pilot and outdoorsman who loved to fish and hunt. The oldest of the 19, he died of stroke in 2013.

Kathleen Kersten Roethler, Emmetsburg: Office manager for Smarts Broadcast Systems of Emmetsburg for 40 years.

Tom Kersten, Hong Kong: Businessman and real estate investor.

Marylee Kersten, Omaha: youth services support coordinator, Boys Town.

Children of Dr. Herb and Cece Kersten

Amy Kersten Bruno, Highland Park, Ill.: Small Business Owner/Entrepreneur. Has served as director of community development for Fort Dodge Community Foundation and United Way and as executive director of Fort Dodge Area Chamber of Commerce.

Ernie Kersten, Fort Dodge: attorney.

Joanne Kersten Hudson, Winnetka, Ill.: Residential Real Estate. Former co-owner of The Hudson Company which she and her husband sold to COMPASS in 2018. Twin to Jim Kersten.

Jim Kersten, Fort Dodge: Vice President, External Relations and Government Affairs, Iowa Central Community College. President, Golden Dome Strategies, LLC, a consulting company. Former state senator. Twin to Joanne Kersten.

Children of Dr. John and Jeanne Kersten Dr. Bob Kersten, Salt Lake City: MD Ophthalmologist. Practiced in Saudi Arabia, Cincinnati, San Francisco and now Salt Lake City. Oculoplastic surgeon and professor at the University of Utah Medical School.

Kathy Kersten, Minneapolis: Attorney. Senior Policy Fellow at Center of the American Experiment, a state-based public policy institution, Former columnist for the Star Tribune newspaper.

Monty Kersten, Los Gatos, Calif.: Attorney and high-tech entrepreneur.

Terry Kersten, Los Altos, Calif.: Consumer marketing at tech companies including Apple, Intuit, Adobe, and, most recently, LinkedIn. Now teaches courses on leadership and serves as a leadership coach in her company “Lead By Values.”

Carol Kersten, Palo Alto, Calif.: Attorney. Does planned-giving fundraising for medical research at Stanford University, working with donors who want to include medical research in their estate plans and assisting with outright gifts as well.

Laurie Kersten, Nanaimo, British Columbia: Worked as a qualitative marketing researcher and ideation (brainstorming) facilitator, first at advertising agencies, then at a company called “Ideas To Go”, and then as a freelance moderator.

Children of Don and Merope Kersten

Anne Kersten, Fort Dodge: Editor of Fort Dodge Today magazine. Founded Twist and Shout magazine and online site (with Dave Haldin) and served as editor for 20 years.

Mary Kersten Crandall, Cedar Rapids: Taught high school students in Cedar Rapids with behavior disabilities for eight years and then students with learning disabilities, and finished her career as a Special Ed Consultant.

Steve Kersten, Fort Dodge: Attorney who practiced law for 41 years until retiring. Serves as Magistrate Judge for Webster County.

Margie Kersten, Woodstock, Ill.: Associate Director/Learning Consultant at Ernst & Young. Has been working in Learning & Development (corporate training) for her entire career and has been at Ernst & Young for the past 21 years. Also teaches part-time at the local community college.

Daughter of Bill and Frances Anne Kersten Wolf

Margo (Wolf) McCarthy, Vernon Hills, Ill.: Retired from many years as a commercial insurance broker. Only one of the “original 19” first cousins not to live or grow up in Fort Dodge.

Most of the Kersten cousins attended Fort Dodge Senior High. Three of Don Kersten’s older children – Anne, Mary and Steve – went to St. Edmond High School and his youngest, Margie, started there but later transferred to FDSH.

“Back in those days” Joanne Kersten Hudson recalled, “the students who were in your home room in junior high and high school were determined by alphabetical order of last name, so I was in the same home room with my twin brother Jim and cousin Laurie for 6 years. It was a nice way to start each day.”

Kathy Kersten said it was only after leaving Fort Dodge that “I came to realize what a fine education I had received in the Fort Dodge public schools. I owe my writing career–as a columnist at the Minneapolis Star Tribune and a policy analyst at Center of the American Experiment–to outstanding English teachers like Esther Jones at North Junior High and Judy Duncan at Fort Dodge High.”

What was it like to grow up a Kersten in Fort Dodge?

Terry Kersten responded, “Whether you were walking through downtown or out at the shopping center, you’d often meet someone who’d ask, ‘Are you a Kersten?’ given the similarity in family looks. People would then ask which family you belonged to: Was it Dr John or Dr Paul? While I was working at K-Mart in high school, someone recognized me as a Kersten and said how much he appreciated Grandfather Ernie making house calls when babies were due and remembered paying for medical services with a chicken pot pie during the Depression. It was wonderful to feel part of such a close and connected family and I am grateful that we cousins continue getting together regularly.”

Laurie Kersten: “For me, being a Kersten in Fort Dodge meant that I had so many siblings and cousins to connect with throughout my childhood and beyond. It has been such a feeling of support!”

And favorite memories of those growing-up years?

Mary Kersten Crandall: “Dancing at the Playmor every weekend, going into the record shop on Central and getting into those little booths to listen to 45s, sliding in Crawford Park, riding my bike all over town, to name just a few.”

Margie Kersten: “Spending time playing outside with neighborhood kids. We spent a lot of time in Crawford Park. It was the era of ‘come home when the street lights turn on.’

Amy Kersten Bruno: “I think the best part was that it was such a true Americana. It had a Norman Rockwell and an ‘Our Town’ feeling. That everything mattered but that we just didn’t make a big deal about things. One of my favorite memories of living in Fort Dodge was how we could walk all over town, ride our bikes anywhere and everywhere, and we were safe. And – that we had the freedom to do so.”

Joanne Kersten Hudson: “Some of my earliest and favorite childhood memories were at my family home. My dad built a backstop and a baseball diamond with bases in our yard and would pitch to us after dinner at dinner. When we were very little there was a fair amount of ‘Strike two and one half’ then ‘Strike two and two thirds’ until we were able to make contact. The first time our neighbor, Richard Loomis, made contact with the ball he dropped the bat, ran to first and then continued straight ahead to his home yelling, ‘Mom! I hit it! I hit it!’. My dad loved telling that story.”

Jim Kersten: “Having a safe community, great education, very good friends, and family. Favorite family memories include celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas together, playing fun games with the uncles and being able to help our dad at his farm during the weekends and summers. And, of course, watching U of Iowa and Notre Dame football games! It has also been rewarding to help Fort Dodge, Iowa Central and Iowa grow and create good-paying skilled jobs.”

Carol Kersten: “At the annual Thanksgiving gathering (that we John Kerstens hosted most years) my dad would offer words of thanks for all of us before the meal. Key in his remarks was to remember that our great good fortune to be born in the US instead of, e.g., a developing country, was not because of our merit, but because of chance and luck. In essence, although I don’t think he used these words: there but for the grace of God go I. This has helped shape my view of refugees and immigration.”

Margo (Wolf) McCarthy: “I was the only one of the ‘Original 19’ first cousins not to live or grow up in Fort Dodge. But we did visit often, and as an only child, it was always so amazing to have cousin/playmates across the street and down the block, as well as within walking and biking distance. Looking back, now as a grandmother living in the suburban Chicago area, I’m struck by the simplicity, ease and freedom of growing up in that small town in the 50s and 60s, where we walked, ran and biked everywhere.”

It was like doing nine RAGBRAIs back-to-back.

That’s how Alan Hutchison described his just-competed 59-day, 3,100-mile bicycle adventure across eight states that began March 6 in San Diego, Calif., when he dipped the rear tire of his bike in the Pacific Ocean and ended May 2 in St. Augustine, Fla., when he dipped the front tire in the Atlantic.

“I honestly didn’t know what I was getting into,” said Hutchison, a Fort Dodge native. “I had done day rides, weekend rides, riding across the state in RAGBRAI (Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa). This was like doing nine RAGBRAIs back-to-back.”

Hutchison, at 70 the third oldest of a group of 15 who made the journey, is a 1970 graduate of Fort Dodge Senior High and a 1972 graduate of Iowa Central Community College whose father, Jim Hutchison, once served as president of First Federal Savings and Loan of Fort Dodge.

He is retiring at the end of May as a professor of English at Des Moines Area Community College after a 35-year career in education – teaching in the classroom as well as online and virtual classes. He and his wife Denise Mernka, a FDSH classmate, live in Des Moines. They celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary in August.

Hutchison has religiously logged each day of the journey with text and photos in a blog titled “A Journey Both Ways” – which can be found at: https://www.ajhutchison.com/blog. In the opening of his blog, Hutchison quotes these lines from a Navajo wind chant taken from “Blue Highways” by William Least Heat-Moon: “"Remember what you have seen, because everything forgotten returns to the circling winds."

“I call it the tyranny of miles,” he said in describing the unique qualities of a cross-country ride. “You’ve got to hit your miles – 50 to 80 in a day. You get kind of tunnel vision, because that’s your goal, what you do. It’s when you stop – in the hole in the wall cafes, people you meet, we met a lot of bikers solo or in groups – the places and people are what made it interesting.

“There’s the weather, wind, rain. It’s one of those things you say is fun, not like a roller coaster kind of fun, but having done it. When you’re on your bike, you spend much time thinking, finding out about yourself. It is a mental thing as well as physical thing. It would be easy to give up but you don’t. You’ve got to dig deep and sometimes tell yourself, you’ve got to go on.”

Hutchison was the only Iowan in the group, comprised of men and women who hailed from all over the country – New York State, Indiana, Washington, Georgia, Florida, California and Massachusetts. A nonprofit, Adventure Cycling, organized and operated the trip.

“A friend of mine I cycle with a lot, we kicked around the idea of maybe taking time off for several months for a self-contained trip where we would work our way back to Iowa,” he said. “I took a professional leave from DMACC.”

Hours upon hours of preparation preceded the trip. Up until then, his longest rides were on RAGBRAI – his first cross-Iowa trip in 1976. Hutchison bought a smart trainer equipped with a computer program, put his bike up on the trainer and programmed it to simulate the various conditions he would face. He trained through the summer of 2022, up to four hours a day, and took progressively longer and longer rides.

“Since I was a kid growing up in Fort Dodge and Spirit Lake, I was always on a bicycle,” Hutchison said. “Denise and I really learned how to ride bicycles on our first RAGBRAI.”

Hutchison was a year old when his family moved from Kansas to Fort Dodge, then moved to Spirit Lake when he was in sixth grade and returned to Fort Dodge when he was in 10th grade.

Denise and Alan began dating in their sophomore year at Iowa Central and continued at the University of Northern Iowa. Denise is the daughter of James and Beverly Mernka of Otho and Alan’s parents were Jim and Jean Hutchison. All are deceased. He has two sisters, Diane Bock of The Villages, Fla., and Julee Bernard of Cedar Falls, and a brother, Gregg of Lawrence, Kan. Alan and Denise have two daughters – Adrienne Hutchison (and her husband Michael Gugliotti) of Baltimore and Natalie (and her husband Ryan Duff and their son Bruce, 2) of Vancouver, Wash.

His first paying job after graduation was with a savings and loan in Rock Rapids, Iowa. He and Denise would ride their bikes to George, Iowa, 15 miles away, but said he “didn’t have a clear idea that biking would become such a passion” until their first RAGBRAI. He was transferred to Des Moines in 1976. The family moved to the Beaverdale area and in 1988 he was hired at DMACC. A few years later, Hutchison began commuting by bike 25 miles round trip from home to the community college main campus in Ankeny. Hutchison earned his master’s and doctorate degrees at Drake University.

Hutchison’s cross-country ride was on a southern tier route that took him through eight states – California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. The group mostly skirted major cities, although they rode through metropolitan Phoenix on a bike trail, spent a night in Austin and on a rest day got into New Orleans. They rode alongside interstates in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas but mostly stayed on secondary highways, beginning each day by sunrise and ending the day by midafternoon.

The group was treated to a delightful glimpse of America.

“The high point for me was a little side trip we took to Mamu, Louisiana,” he said. “It’s the home of Cajun music. We went to a little place called Fred’s Lounge on a Saturday morning. Dancing, live Cajun music, great food. It was absolutely the funnest thing we did on the trip. Louisiana was my favorite state, I loved the food.”

Along the journey, he got three flat tires on his Surly LHT touring bike which he had purchased for the trip.

Hutchison said he thought they would never get out of Texas – which was about 900 miles and two weeks of the total trip to bike through.

His worst day – fighting 30 mph headwinds in a 6,000-foot climb at Tonto Basin in Arizona. That, he said, “was the day that told me I could actually be a rider and complete this trip.”

His retirement plans include more biking, including the 50th annual RAGBRAI July 23-29. Several friends from his cross-country trip plan to join him.

“I made some new friends, probably for a lifetime,” he said.

By PAUL STEVENS

For years the home of Zakeer’s Family Restaurant, the one-story building at 425 Second Avenue South has now fallen silent and soon will be gone.

No more will the laughter and conversations of its loyal Fort Dodge customers fill the restaurant as they gathered for breakfast, lunch – or maybe just stopping in for a cinnamon roll or a piece of homemade pie or a cup of coffee.

“We were the last family-owned diner left in Fort Dodge,” said owner Tommy Zakeer, “a place where you could get a homecooked meal, breakfast served all day, waitresses who came to your table to take your order, homemade pies and pastries.”

Zakeer, 55, whose parents Marie and Bob Zakeer started the restaurant in 1961, closed it last Sunday and has sold the property to a bank next door that plans to turn it into a parking lot. But not before a strong turnout of loyal customers showed up one more time to say farewell.

“We were packed, we had to stop a little early when we ran short of eggs,” Zakeer said. “We were completely full where people had to wait for a table – lots of family groups and of course, the regulars. For me, it was a little bittersweet and a little relief – we’re just been super busy for the past few weeks and there were just three of us left. There were many well-wishers, telling us ‘We’re going to miss you.’”

Normally, his wife Tara said, Tommy would have liked to be out in the restaurant more that day to greet and interact with customers. But with it being a cook short, he had to be on the preparation line.

The decision to close the restaurant - open for business six days a week – 6:30 am to 2 pm Tuesdays through Saturdays and 8 am to 1 pm Sundays - was not easy, but in a way inevitable, Zakeer said.

“I just got tired of looking for help,” he said. “It has been that way since covid. When you’re doing everything yourself, bookwork, shopping, orders for your trucks, everything, it gets overwhelming sometimes. I still plan to find a job, but I don’t want to be the boss. Just get a paycheck and go home.”

Zakeer and Tara plan to move to Hampton, which is her hometown. She now works for Head Start in Fort Dodge. Tommy plans to work in the cafeteria at Hampton-Dumont High School starting this fall. “I thought I would give it a try,” he said.

Back in the early days of the restaurant, “mom and dad had a huge crew when they had their business,” Zakeer said. “When I posted my last payroll, we were down to three employees – Shelly Young, our waitress, and Dave McVicker, our cook, and me.”

When Marie and Bob Zakeer purchased the restaurant from Bob’s aunt Thelma Saigh, it was first called the Country Kitchen. Bob had been an employee of his uncle’s Zakeer’s Appliance and Furniture and Marie was an employee of Iowa Electric. Then Marie helped Elaine and Denny Huss open a restaurant by that name in the Crossroads Mall. When the Country Kitchen chain came to Fort Dodge in early 1976, Tommy Zakeer said, both had to change their names: “We became Zakeers and they became D’Laneys.”

Zakeer’s Kitchen at First Avenue South and South Eighth Street became known for Lebanese dinners and was a popular lunch spot for people who worked downtown. Bob Zakeer managed the dining room, while Marie presided over the kitchen. The two were members of Corpus Christi Catholic Church and for years, Marie hosted a Sunday dinner in the Parish Hall featuring her Swiss steak recipe.

The Zakeers sold the business in 1992 and retired. But they returned to the restaurant seven years later after the new owners unsuccessfully tried to sell it. It was renamed Zakeer’s and Tommy returned from Texas to join them and operate the family business. The restaurant moved to its current location in 2003 after the city government bought the building and demolished it to make room for future development.

Bob Zakeer died in 2015 and Marie died three years later. Both were 91 at the time of their deaths and lived at home until entering hospice shortly before they died. Bob and Marie once served as Grand Marshals of Fort Dodge’s Frontier Days

John Daniel, the owner of Daniel Pharmacy, said he has known the Zakeer family his entire life.

“Marie and Bob worked hard and worked together well,” he said. “Bobby was the goodwill ambassador at their restaurant and he always had a few upbeat, friendly words for everyone. Marie seemed to be the visionary and was a very successful businessperson.

“Marie had unconditional love for her family, friends, and faith. She always gave much more than she received. That was just the way she was. There are many warm memories in the hearts of all the people she touched.

“Tommy became very good at the trade. He was well known for his baked goods, especially his pies!”

Roger Natte, Fort Dodge’s premier historian and retired Iowa Central Community College instructor, dropped by Zakeer’s before it closed to obtain one of the restaurant’s menus to preserve for posterity at the Webster County Historical Society.

“When I came to Fort Dodge, I lived at the Warden Hotel and had my breakfast there a lot,” he recalled. “It was a pretty busy place. Zakeer’s was known for their pies. Their cinnamon rolls were also a hit. The Zakeers did right by me. When my first wife became ill, Marie would always make sure she had soup for me to take home. Who does that? No one does that! It really meant a lot to me. I remember Bob always had a betting pool going when it was World Series time.”

The diner was a popular lunch stop for many Fort Dodge attorneys through the years, recalled Thomas Bice, senior district court judge and longtime Fort Dodge attorney.

“The diner was like a magnet at noontime!” Bice said. “A lot of legal business between lawyers quietly got done over a plate of the ‘daily special’. Marie’s pies were the BEST! And Bob always had a kind word for his guests! The ‘hometown’ atmosphere of this family restaurant will be sorely missed.”

Former Fort Dodge businessman and state senator Daryl Beall recalled that when he managed Furniture World, “some of us would walk a block to Zakeer’s on First Avenue South. They had delicious food, including Lebanese Night. When we were first married, I tried to steal something off Jo Ann’s plate and she poked with her fork. I didn’t do that again. The main thing I remember about Bob and Marie Zakeer is the delicious pies they made.”

Fort Dodge native Mark Mittelstadt called Zakeer’s “a gastronomic gem in Fort Dodge.

“Growing up we lived next to Bob and Marie for a number of years. They had an old white and black gas stove/oven, the kind that didn't have round knobs but the white tear-drop or lever type controls, as I recall. Every so often Marie and her sister would bake a Syrian flat bread. It was almost like a large tortilla and very delicious. You could rip off a piece and eat it wrapped around a piece of marinated lamb or simply eat it warm with butter and sugar or sugar/cinnamon on top. Delicious. Always a treat!”

Tommy Zakeer said he still has the oven “but I never mastered the bread.”

A number of church groups met regularly at Zakeers – the Gideons, St. Paul Lutheran and First Covenant among them. “Marie was active in the Catholic church and she would give pastors and priests free meals,” Tara said.

What will its customers miss the most? A sampling from Zakeers’ Facebook page about the restaurant closing:

Maggie Magennis: Only place with good liver and onions, pie, and hot meatloaf sandwiches. Melody Boitnott-Sorenson: I went this morning and had my last Monte Cristo for breakfast. Nancy Strait: BEST hot beef sandwich and apple pie. Maralyn Schulze: Always great, fresh homemade from scratch food! Kathy Lewis Streit: I love their sticky rolls. I have yet to find a recipe that comes close to theirs.

From John Hale, viewing a photo of Bob and Marie Zakeer on the menu: “Wonderful! They were so young then. A unique, lovely couple. I spent countless noon hours at the front room counter, along with (Messenger editor) Walt Stevens and so many other ‘regulars.’”

And from Christine Johnson Ahrens: “I had her bread but unfortunately, I didn’t get that recipe, have all her others, loved Bob and Marie best people! I’m gonna miss this restaurant, it’s part of me and history of this town!”

Tommy Zakeer said he has been asked often about sharing some of the restaurant’s prize recipes, many of which go back to his parents’ days, but for now is holding them close to the vest.

“Mom had her taco salad dressing, we named it Mama Sauce a long time ago. Her Lebanese salad dressing was unique. We made all our dressings, tartar sauce, shrimp sauce. We may market some of them later on.”

By PAUL STEVENS

To those who knew and worked with Bob Bargman, principal of Fort Dodge Senior High School for 15 years, he was first and foremost a people person.

He was the guy, they would say, who Barbra Streisand might have had in mind when she sang, “People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.”

In the wake of Bargman’s death May 19, two days before his 93rd birthday and nearly 40 years after he left the principal’s position, several of his former FDSH educators who were close to him had these thoughts to share:

Don Miller: “I can’t say loud enough about how much he cared about students and teachers. He was the kind of person to go above and beyond for the students and teachers. For kids who might not have a thing, he’d buy them shoes, coats, he would do anything necessary to get them focused on education. He was always reaching out to help someone.”

Rose Buda-Claussen: “He walked through his precious life with caring, generosity and kindness. His human flaws cannot hide the fact that he was a ‘beautifully interesting’ being.”

Roger Snell: “Bob was truly a unique individual whose basic kindness, decency and good intent carried throughout his whole life. That was who he was and how he lived. It was always a blessing to know and work with him.”

Debra and Don Carlson: From Debra, who Bargman hired as a special education teacher: “Bob had a heart of gold. He was a giving person, and he could always lift you up, even when you were having lousy days. He could light up a room. Everyone was drawn to him. He was a Dodger through and through.”

And from Don, who was assistant principal during Bargman’s tenure at FDSH: “He was an honest man, and fair, and he was always looking after the students. He was willing to do anything for education. I will greatly miss him as a man and as my friend.”

Sheryl Griffith: I remember that he always had his faculty, staff and students’ best interests at heart. A co-worker, Judy Payne, and I made him some very wide ties out of garishly patterned fabric. What a good sport he was to wear them to work. In our defense, that was the style!”

There are stories aplenty of Bargman during the years from 1970 to 1985 when he directed operations at the high school during some challenging years – soaring enrollment from the Baby Boom generation, protests over the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, inequality in women’s sports that Title IX had yet to remedy. Among those stories:

Imagine, your principal dressed as Baby Huey. Said Snell: “One year at homecoming, Bob got hustled into playing the role of the cartoon character Baby Huey in a skit put on by the FDSH administrators. Bob's ‘costume’ for the whole school assembly had him appearing in a huge white diaper (approximately the size of half of a U.S. Army pup tent) and sneakers. Yes, "That's ALL, Folks!!"

Imagine, showing up for a mandatory remedial driving school class on a Saturday morning and learning you were sitting next to your high school principal. Said his daughter Beth Bargman Schnurr: “Dad would always leave quickly after work to go to some school event. He’d drive fast, usually late getting somewhere. After getting too many speeding tickets, he got notice to go to Saturday driving school. And of course, when he showed up that morning, there were high school students there.”

Imagine, living out of your car because of unrest at home and being provided a bed and a meal by your high school principal. Said Beth: “He was very interactive with students. I know he would try to find a job or duty or errand that kids would have to do to keep them busy or occupied so they wouldn’t get in trouble. The basement of our home was set up with extra furniture for kids to come and live, kids in transition, who needed help. We’d share our dinner table with them at times.”

Keith Brown recalled entering his senior year at FDSH in 1970 as student body president. His parents were moving from Fort Dodge to Everly and said that in order to stay for his senior year, living with his older brother, he was required to pay tuition of $100 a month.

“When Mr. Bargman moved to Fort Dodge, he immediately asked me (as Student Body President) to a lunch to discuss student issues,” Brown said. “He was kind and listened honestly to my concerns. He would invite me to his house for dinner with his wife and children several times. He knew I was living in an apartment and understood that my nourishment schedule probably wasn’t the best. Boy, was he right.

“Each month on the first, I would write a check to FD Public Schools for $100. To cover the agreed-upon tuition. He would take me into his office and spend an hour asking how I was doing, how my band was doing and would give the most wonderful pep talks. I was so amazed at his kindness. But the best part was to come.

“Two days before graduation, he called me to his office (over the course of my sophomore and junior years I had been sent home 14 times.) I believe that is a record. So I thought ‘Here we go again!’ He sat me down in his office and pulled out an envelope with my name on it…inside were the (10) checks of $100…He had kept my tuition checks but never cashed them…Such a sweet gesture! The lesson I learned - There ARE good people in this world; if you’re decent and hardworking, one may come to your rescue.”

Faculty and staff were equally important to Bargman, said Buda-Claussen, who was hired by Bargman as guidance counselor at the high school and knew him for more than a half-century.

“Bob went above and beyond for his faculty like planning wonderful Christmas breakfasts executed with beautiful decorations, a sit-down meal, and a gift exchange,” she said. “There was great fun such as a basketball game between faculty and students with female teachers acting as cheerleaders with pom poms and the works. Years after Bob retired from Senior High School and had moved away from Fort Dodge, he returned and organized a Faculty Alumni Reunion. The response was magnetic, and alumni even traveled from out-of- state for the event. Lifetime faculty friendships were formed because of Bob’s influence.

“Bob had an enviable memory - of people, their names, their stories, places and events - that remained intact through his lifetime. He graced his wife and their children with immeasurable love and respect. He revered food and whenever he traveled, he would say, ‘We have to stop for pie.’ He loved to work and worked into his 80’s. He was smart, refined, played the piano, and admired the arts. He was a baseball guy.”

Ah yes, his love of pie. Don Miller recalled road trips with Bargman and “his unique way of ordering food – when we’d go to a restaurant, he’d order a hamburger and French fries and tell the server, ‘I’d like to have piece of apple pie with ice cream, and I would like to have it now.’ So while we were eating our burgers and fries, Bob was enjoying his pie and ice cream.”

Robert William Bargman’s story began with his birth May 21, 1931, in Rodman, Iowa, about an hour north of Fort Dodge. He was the oldest of three children of Vic and Viv Bargman who farmed near Rodman. His brother was Jim Bargman, who is deceased, and his sister is Karen Berkeland, of the Omaha area. All three graduated from Rodman High School. The Rodman/West Bend area was where he met Donna Balgeman, to whom he was married for nearly 73 years.

After graduation from Buena Vista University with a degree in education, Bargman joined the U.S. Army and he and Donna moved to Washington, D.C., where he worked in the Surgeon General’s Office. After completing his service, they moved to Akron, Iowa, where he began his teaching career.

Bargman taught in the English department, coached debate and produced school plays. He earned his master’s degree from the University of South Dakota and later served as principal in Akron. Their next move was to West Des Moines where he was hired as a drama teacher at Valley High School, where he produced the first musical at that school. The Bargmans left Iowa for Northern California in 1961 with their two young children, Robb and Beth, and during their 10 years there, he transitioned from teacher to administrator, taking doctorate work at Stanford University.

He learned of the principal’s opening at FDSH, applied and was hired by Dr. Earl Berge, then superintendent of Fort Dodge Community Schools.

Bargman wasted little time in bringing new ideas to the job, as noted in the 1971 Dodger yearbook. They included a “mini-course,” where experts were brought in on Saturdays to speak to any subject students were interested in; cross-age tutoring, involving both the high school and elementary school levels, and a roundtable, founded to give students a chance to talk about problems and get to know the administration better.

“He always liked change,” Beth Schnurr said, “and he liked change in education too. He had some innovative thoughts even in California. Dad liked change in his life. He liked hanging out in the cafeteria with lunch ladies, getting to know kids, not staying in his office.”

Beth and her brother Robb were both students at FDSH while their dad was principal but said they never felt awkward about it. Both were involved in student government. Robb was involved in the drama department and Beth took part in orchestra and choir.

“It felt very natural to be there and knowing he was there,” Beth said. “We had good high school years, were not embarrassed at any time. He would always go to activities we were in, always had teachers at our house eating supper. It was common. I felt people liked him, he was pretty fair to the kids.”

Robb, 67, lives in Des Moines and was involved in retail management, working for Younkers and JCPenney. When he retired five years ago, he joined Nordstrom Rack in a part-time capacity.

Beth, 63, followed her father into the teaching profession. She taught kindergarten and held various positions in the Fort Dodge school district before retiring as a special education teacher for grades K-4 five years ago. She and her husband Jerry Schnurr, a Fort Dodge attorney, have three children: Will, who with his wife Erin Leigh live in Brooklyn, N.Y.; Ellen, who with her husband Tyler Wallingford live in Fort Dodge and have two children, Elsie and Theo; and Ben, who with his wife Lauren live in Fort Dodge and have two children, Kennedy and Wesley.

Ben Schnurr is the third generation of the Bargman family in teaching; he is a health teacher at the Fort Dodge Middle School.

After leaving FDSH after the 1984-85 school year, Bargman worked for A.G. Edwards, the furniture store Interior Expressions in the Trolley Center and at Friendship Haven. He and Donna eventually moved to Phoenix, Arizona, where they established their permanent home for 20 years. There, Bargman took a job as head of concierge with the San Francisco Giants spring training camp as well as working at the ceramics department at Arizona State University. Debra Carlson recalled that when the Dodger marching band took part in the Fiesta Bowl parade in the late 1990s, she spotted Bargman along the parade route: “There was Bob, with tears pouring down his eyes, smiling at the band, and shouting, ‘There’s my school!’”

The Bargmans moved back to Iowa, first living in Des Moines, and then returning to Fort Dodge.

Living at Friendship Haven with his wife Donna for the past three years, Bargman remained engaged in life until its very end.

“On the Friday two days before he passed,” his son Robb said, “he was reading The Messenger when I came into the dining area and he asked, ‘What’s new?’”

By PAUL STEVENS

Matt Bemrich was 3 years old when he met Albert Habhab in the Webster County Courthouse and that encounter left a first impression with the judge and former Fort Dodge mayor that lasted a lifetime.

Back then, the youngster and his mother were visiting his grandmother Evelyn Hood, the county recorder, when Habhab strode into her office on business. He said, “Evelyn, who is this young fella?” to which Matt sprung to his feet, stuck out his hand and said, “I’m Matt Bemrich, nice to meet you.”

His mother and grandmother were stunned by the greeting from a normally shy young man, but not Habhab, who replied, “Well, Evelyn, it seems to me you’re training this one to be governor one day.”

Habhab had an innate ability to look into the future and may have guessed wrong on Bemrich’s future as a governor, but even he could not have predicted that the youngster he met that day would grow up to be elected as mayor of Fort Dodge and would surpass his own record tenure of 14 consecutive years as mayor.

Bemrich, 50, is now serving in his 15th year as mayor — elected by Fort Dodge voters four times to the position (2009, 2013, 2017 and 2021), twice without opposition).

In early February, Bemrich told the story of that long-ago chance meeting during a celebration of life for Habhab at Friendship Haven. Habhab, a decorated World War II veteran, died Jan. 27 at the age of 98 and had served as mayor (1960-1974), district court judge (1975-1988) and Iowa Court of Appeals judge (1988-1997). Another who also spoke at the celebration of Habhab’s life was former Gov. Terry Branstad, who had appointed Habhab to the state appellate court.

“I take somber pride in this achievement,” Bemrich said of his mayoral longevity record. “I would have loved it if he could have been around a little longer. He’s well-recognized, even in my generation, for the impact he made to the city that even today affects my generation and probably the next one. To be in the same office he was, it is humbling, and it makes you feel a lot of pride.

“He was a good mentor. I called him often over the years. He had a way of getting you to the answer without telling you what to do. I at one time took a lot of grief on roundabouts. We talked about it a bit. He had a way of telling you, you know what to do, without really telling you.”

The name Bemrich is a familiar one in Fort Dodge business circles. Bemrich Electric and Telephone was founded 40 years ago this spring, on April 1, 1984, by Matt Bemrich’s grandparents, Jim and Patricia Bemrich, who started the business out of their home in the Savage Addition. It provides electrical construction work to industry, commercial and residential facilities and data communications to small businesses. A celebration of its 40 years in business will be held June 20.

They bought a building at 110 South 21st Street in 1986, after Bemrich’s father Greg had joined the business, followed by Greg’s brother, Jamie. Matt joined them in 1997 while taking classes at Iowa Central Community College and working on the night cleanup crew at Fort Dodge Laboratories and earlier part-time work as a bartender and a short-lived try at selling insurance — “It was not my calling,” he said. Bemrich then completed training at the Iowa Electrical Apprenticeship Training Center in Des Moines, becoming a master electrician.

A fire caused by arson destroyed the building in 2013, but it was rebuilt in the same location. Today, Bemrich Electric has 32 full-time employees. Greg Bemrich retired as president two years ago and was succeeded by son Matt. Matt and Greg’s younger brother Jamie are co-owners; Matt is president and Jamie vice president.

Matt Bemrich is a lifelong resident of Fort Dodge. Born Sept. 8, 1973, he was told by his mother that he was the last baby born at Mercy Hospital before it merged with Lutheran Hospital. Bemrich is the oldest of the four children of Sue (Hood) and Greg Bemrich, who were St, Edmond High School Class of 1973 classmates and have been married 50 years. Matt’s brother Mitchell is national account manager for Implus in Chicago and is married to Rebecca, director of integrated marketing for Coca Cola; sister Jennifer Dutcher is an assistant professor and coordinator of visual arts at Iowa Central and is married to Matt Dutcher, president of Northwest Bank in Fort Dodge, and sister Jessica Smith is married to Ryan Smith, president of Kingsgate Insurance Co. in Fort Dodge; she likes to be known as the COO of their home.

Bemrich and his wife Michelle are St. Edmond graduates, she in 1991 and he a year later. They met in kindergarten at Holy Rosary School. She is industrial pretreatment coordinator for U.S. Water Services. They have three sons: Carter, 25, who works for Vanguard Utility Partners; Jackson, 22, a front-office assistant at Bemrich Electric, and Grant, 21, who operates his own music business. Bemrich got his start in local government by serving on a panel that recommended switching from a strong mayor form of government to the current city manager form. That change was approved by the voters in a 2005 referendum.

David Fierke was appointed the first city manager of Fort Dodge and continues in that position today — his tenure coinciding with that of Bemrich who in November 2005 was elected to a four-year term as an at-large member of the council.

As mayor, Bemrich is the face of the city and reports to its citizens. As city manager, Fierke reports to the City Council.

Bemrich presides over City Council meetings (the council meets on the second and fourth Monday of the month), and he and Fierke and most department heads also attend. “I have a voice, but not a vote,” Bemrich said, although he does have veto power, one he exercised most recently when the council proposed increasing his salary from $15,000 to $17,000.

As city manager, Fierke manages the day-to-day operations of the city and works to facilitate the vision of the council and the mayor. He and Bemrich consult frequently, and Bemrich also is in frequent touch with the police chief since he has emergency powers in such events as tornadoes or flooding.

“I have a lot of fond memories of being mayor,” Bemrich said. “There were many fun events. Multiple Groundhog Days at the zoo, I always liked going to schools to read to the kids. But I don’t want my legacy to be having garbage pickup changed from Tuesdays to Thursdays.

“I am proud of progress made in redeveloping the Crossroads Mall area, of our work out west with the ag park. I’m proud of jobs created, a significantly increased average wage in Webster County. Of helping local industry grow, of being a good advocate of helping businesses grow. Of the expansion of the water plant and creating the stormwater utility. Maybe my biggest legacy — helping change the form of city government.”

The mayor bristles when the image of the city is sometimes portrayed poorly, especially on social media.

“I think it’s an unfair representation of our community,” he said. “Fort Dodge has certainly evolved and changed, but I don’t think all the changes are bad. I think most residents are proud to be living in Fort Dodge, or to be from Fort Dodge. You see it in our change in government, you see it in our sports, in our volunteerism. PICA (Pride in Community Appearance) just broke 50,000 hours in volunteer hours. If we were such a bad place, would people be willing to give 50,000 hours to community service? No. The Dirty Dodge tagline? We’re definitely tough because we can take it. Do we deserve to be known as tough? Yes. But do we deserve the stigma of being dirty? No.”

Bemrich’s mayoral term will continue through the end of 2025. “I pretty much have made it clear that I will retire after 20 years of service to the city — four on the council and 16 as mayor. In our political climate, there are not enough people who are willing to step to the side and let others get involved in serving. This brings a change in ideas and passions.”

Bemrich recently was named to the Friendship Haven board, an addition welcomed by president and CEO Julie Thorson, who said, “I have a great deal of respect for Mayor Matt Bemrich. The word that comes to mind immediately is courage. For years he has put himself out there and made a stand because he believes in Fort Dodge. I admire his tenacity and work ethic. I’m proud to have him serve on the Friendship Haven board. Our residents and leadership team will absolutely benefit from his experience and leadership expertise.”

Bemrich plans to continue on several other boards — among them, Joy of Reading, Iowa National Electrical Contractors Association and Iowa Associated Business and Industry, along with passions of golfing, hunting and fishing. He and his father traveled in their van to South Dakota for a number of years to pheasant hunt.

He will always look back with pride at one accomplishment that involved honoring and preserving the name of his friend and mentor Al Habhab.

Bemrich played a key role in the City Council’s decision to rename the busy bridge on First Avenue South, known for 55 years as Veterans Bridge and built when Habhab was the city’s mayor, in honor of Habhab.

Just months before his death, Habhab was on hand at St. Edmond High School on Nov. 10 when it was announced that the bridge would be renamed to the Albert Habhab Veterans Memorial Bridge. At his side was Mayor Bemrich, that youngster who impressed Habhab when he was 3, as the audience rose to give Habhab a standing ovation. On the following Monday, the City Council unanimously approved the name change.

That event was the last time Bemrich saw Habhab, whose health began to deteriorate in the weeks leading to his death.

“I had planned to go see him with some samples of the bridge design showing the enhancements,” Bemrich said, “but he passed away before we could do that. When I received the call that he passed, I felt like a lot of knowledge had left us and I started to think of the questions I might have asked him if I had a chance to sit with him again. The one certainty I had was that Fort Dodge would forever be better because he gave us his time and talents.”

May 4, 2024 By Paul Stevens

Back in the late 1970s, when 27-year-old Sam Moser and his young family arrived in Fort Dodge after he was hired as an assistant football coach at Fort Dodge Senior High, no one could have guessed the dividends that hire would make for the school and the city — dividends that continue to this day.

Not only did Moser perform to a level that he was inducted into the Iowa High School Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame, but also the members of his family — his wife Sharon, daughters Julie and Jill, son Nik and their spouses — have imparted their own mark in making the city a better place to live.

Ever hear of the parlor game, the Six Degrees of Separation of Kevin Bacon? Well, try this — the Six Degrees of Separation of the Sam Moser Family. While the family doesn’t have the fame of the actor, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in the city whose lives they’ve not touched — from its youngest residents to its oldest.

Sam Moser, now 72, impacted thousands of young people and many coaches in his 33 years of coaching, from his first assistant’s position in Aurelia to the conclusion of his head coaching career at Fort Dodge Senior High in 2003.

His wife, Sharon Moser, works part-time at Iowa Central Community College in the student resource center. She earlier served as a para-educator in the Fort Dodge Community School District for 35 years, working in school libraries and with students with behavior disorders. In 2017, she received the Innovative Creator Award by Iowa’s Area Education Agencies, cited for “the creative ways you offered students to stretch their minds in school and engage them in thoughtful, meaningful activities.” She was instrumental in creating an elementary maker space at Feelhaver Elementary School.

Julie Moser Thorson has served for 12 years as president and CEO of Friendship Haven, a nonprofit retirement community with 370 residents and 380 full-time and part-time employees. Her father is most proud of how she guided it through the difficult COVID era. She started out as a part-time social worker after she found that her first career — as a television journalist — was not for her. After working in Topeka, Kan., and Mason City, she returned to Fort Dodge and married Tjeran Thorson, a former Dodger all-state football player and the son of the late Sherwyn Thorson, a star lineman and NCAA heavyweight wrestling champion at the University of Iowa. Tjeran works for Fort Dodge Distributing.

Jill Moser Smith earned a nursing degree and was working at Trinity Regional Hospital as a dialysis nurse when in 2001, she met Ryan Smith, a wrestler at the University of Iowa under Dan Gable from 1990-95, who was in his fourth year of teaching at Fort Madison High School. They met when he was in Fort Dodge for a wrestling camp at Iowa Central Community College.

They married in Fort Dodge and live four hours away, in Fort Madison, where Ryan is a Spanish teacher and just retired after 25 years as head wrestling coach. Jill is a health science teacher at the high school.

Nik Moser and his wife, Katie, lived for a year in the Twin Cities after they were married, he in finance and she in marketing, before returning to Fort Dodge when Nik took a position at Northwest Bank and she joined Trinity Regional Medical Center. Nik had played for his father at FDSH as an all-state defensive back and was a starting safety at Iowa State under Dan McCarney. He started volunteer coaching in 2008 and that eventually led to becoming head football coach at FDSH, where he has completed four seasons.

Nik serves as executive director of the Fort Dodge Community Schools Foundation. Its mission is to help educators and students go above and beyond what district funding allows with grants for professional development, technology and other educational items and looks for perpetual giving funds through estate planning and legacy gifts.

Katie teaches biology at FDSH, and earlier worked with the Fort Dodge Middle School.

Sam and Sharon still live in the home on 9th Avenue North in the Round Prairie neighborhood that they purchased when they came to Fort Dodge with two young girls, Julie, born in Sioux Falls, and Jill, born in Cherokee. Nik was born in Fort Dodge in 1982.

Julie and Nik obviously liked the neighborhood, as they and their families live in homes within a block of their parents.

“They both had opportunities to go other places and do other things,” Moser said, “but I think they’re very happy they live in Fort Dodge.”

Life took Jill away from the city where she grew up, but she talks to her mother daily. “My mom is my best friend,” she said, “an overall amazing woman…I’m a Fort Madison Bloodhound, but there’s still a piece of me with Dodger identity, Dodger Pride.”

“I always liked Fort Dodge,” Sam Moser said. “It’s blue collar, we had tough kids, we played in a good league. Over the years, I looked at a job once in the Quad Cities area but it was the best fit for my family to stay. Fort Dodge just seemed a natural fit for us. Far enough away from home, but close to home, just three hours. It had a lot of things going for it.”

Home to Sam and Sharon Moser had been in far northwest Iowa, where they began dating in their sophomore year at West Lyon High School in Inwood. He grew up on a livestock/crop farm close to the South Dakota border with three brothers and a sister and starred on the football team as a 250-pound defensive lineman. She lived in Larchwood and competed in cheerleading, track and softball.

“He was the football star, I was a cheerleader,” Sharon said. “That’s kind of how I perceive myself now, with my kids and my grandkids. I’m the one on the sidelines cheering them on.”

They were married in 1971, a year after high school graduation, Moser played football at Worthington (Minn.) Junior College and Sioux Falls College (now the University of Sioux Falls), earning All-America honors at both schools. His high school coach, Gary Hoffman, ended up being his college coach his senior year at the Division II school.

“I had a lot of respect for him, and he influenced me in becoming a coach,” Moser said.

Moser’s entry into coaching was at Aurelia High School, where he spent three years as an assistant under Myron Radke, who remains one of his closest friends. His first head coaching position was at Clarion High School, where he coached two years before getting the call from Athletics Director Dutch Huseman to join the Dodger staff in 1979.

The Dodger head coach at the time was Doug Black, who Moser knew at Hampton High School when Moser was at Clarion. Moser was the Dodgers assistant under Black for four years and under Mike Woodley, Black’s successor, for six years before he succeeded Woodley as head coach in 1989. Moser coached track throughout his FDSH tenure.

Moser retired after the 2003 season — his 15th as the Dodger head coach. The team won 57 games during his tenure, ranking third in school history behind Matt Miller (75, from 2004-19) and Forrest Marquis (74 from 1942-54). Fort Dodge qualified for the playoffs four times during Moser’s tenure, and reached the state quarterfinals in 1994. He led the Dodgers to conference championships in 1989 (Big Eight) and ’94 (CIML National).

Moser was 55 years old when he retired from teaching in 2007. He worked in sales for Mid Country Machinery in Fort Dodge for seven years before fully retiring.

When nominated for the 2013 State Coaching Hall of Fame class, Moser gave credit to his former players and assistants, saying, “This certainly isn’t about me. It never has been. I’ve always said through the years that I coached and taught for as long as I did to build relationships and try my best to have a lasting impact on the lives of my (players and students). I hope I can say I did that. I hope the kids and my staff would agree. That’s all I could ask for, looking back now.”

Julie Thorson said that in addition to her father’s influence over kids, “I’m pretty sure there are many coaches out there who would mention dad as a mentor. Including my brother and (former head coach) Matt Miller. But even other coaches from the state over the years I believe they have looked up to dad.

“One thing my dad will often comment on is questioning whether he had a significant impact on his players. I think this ‘questioning’ is what makes him so special. He’s never claimed to have all the answers but always worked hard to bring the best out in everyone he was around including the three of us. He also was a silent champion for so many kids…buying them shoes, gear whatever they may have needed for football. He found great joy in teaching…especially teaching mentally challenged students…he just always had a way with kids.

“Mom is equally humble but also has a tremendous impact on kids…Her love for reading also inspired many kids over the years. She was at both Cooper and Feelhaver and absolutely loved finding the right book for each child. She took great pride in her work and going above and beyond for kids to inspire a love of reading.”

Moser said that what he loved most about coaching was the “day-to-day contact with the kids. Games were fun and important, but I had a lot more fun with actually practicing and being around the kids, without the pressure that comes in a game.”

So it’s no surprise that he still shows up for Dodger practices under Nik, who said, “Dad is at the majority of our practices. He’s around, a coach but not on the staff, he still talks to kids, watching what we do, giving me advice, but from a distance. I don’t think you ever take the coaching out of him. A lot of things I do that my dad did, and a lot of things I do that he didn’t do.

“One of the things that stood out to me is how many relationships he had with people for years and years after playing with him and coaching with him. After learning and being in the family for a while, that’s just what we do, part of being a coach and teacher, do whatever you can for the kids. Do it without anyone knowing. Sometimes that’s kind of the best gratitude you can get.”

In a bit of deja vu, Nik will be coaching his oldest son Sam III when he is a sophomore this coming season at FDSH. He was on the freshman team as a safety last fall.

When Nik was playing at Iowa State, his parents purchased a conversion van so they could more comfortably travel to Cyclone games in Ames and on the road. They have continued that same passion by being there for the activities of their grandchildren. Sam and Sharon also enjoy golf and an annual trip to Arizona for a couple weeks each winter.

It comes as no surprise that sports are a big part of the lives of the eight Moser grandchildren.

Julie and Tjeran’s daughter, Lehr, was an outstanding swimmer at FDSH and Iowa State, and now, at 25, works for a company in Grimes, TAAG Companies, as its director of impact reporting. Their son, Asle, 22, will be starting his fifth year at Iowa State this fall playing football for the Cyclones and earning two degrees.

Jill and Ryan have three children: Teague, a senior who plans to attend Wisconsin-Oshkosh to play football and earn a teaching and coaching degree; Mara, a sophomore who is on the girls’ wrestling team as well as volleyball and track, and Lyla, an eighth grader, who plays volleyball, runs track and is involved in show choir.

Nik and Katie have three boys — Sam III, a freshman at FDSH; Lou, a sixth grader, and Mack, a fifth grader. All three are involved in football, wrestling and track.

Perhaps no one outside the Moser family has a longer history with them than Matt Miller, who was an assistant in football and track during Moser’s entire tenure before succeeding him as head football coach, a position he held for the next 16 years. When Nik and Katie moved to Fort Dodge in 2008, he immediately hired Nik as an assistant — and when Miller retired in 2019, Nik succeeded him as head coach.

“First thing that comes to mind about Sam is a caring leader,” he said. “Sam and Sharon have touched the lives of thousands of kids, caring about what happens in their lives.

“I have known Sam since the early ’70s when he got his first job at Aurelia. He taught seventh grade English and coached high school football and middle school basketball. I was fortunate enough to be on his seventh-grade basketball team. I looked at him as the John Wooden of basketball. Sam and Sharon were good friends with my parents and our relationship grew from there. I know there are so many student-athletes who are now adults who are better people because of the values and compassion they learned from both Sam and Sharon.

“I was lucky enough to get a job with the Fort Dodge school system later in the summer about two weeks before school started. Sam was a big reason I landed in Fort Dodge. Over the next 30-plus years, I was fortunate enough to learn more than X&Os from Sam — a lot of it was how to handle student-athletes with the kind of caring that made everyone who was around him feel good about themselves.”

Outside of sports, Sam and Sharon served as reception hosts when Miller and his wife, Staci, were married. Staci and Matt were hosts when Nik and Katie were married. And this summer, Nik and Katie will serve as hosts when the Millers’ daughter, Tehya, is married to former Dodger wrestler Cayd Lara.

“The families have been close for a long time,” Miller said.

APR 6, 2024

PAUL STEVENS

stevens.spotlight@gmail.com

By PAUL STEVENS

The seeds of Eddie Micus’ love of poetry were sown in a small green house on Second Avenue South in Fort Dodge where he grew up with his four siblings whose mother memorized poems from her own childhood.

But it was two decades into his life and 8,000 miles away, in a jungle in Vietnam, when his poetry developed a soul – but at no small cost to the 23-year-old Army infantryman. He was severely wounded in the abdomen by an enemy’s rounds while saving two fellow soldiers, an act of heroism that earned him the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.

It was a soul that produced poetry like this, which he titled “M-16 Round”:

Little gymnast, how you spin,

how the flesh applauds

when you tumble in,

ricochet off bone,

you’re a perfect ten.

One blink in an ambushed eye

and you’re already there.

You’re the quiet

in the dead boy’s ear.

Micus’ war poetry was an important part of a legacy remembered by his family, friends and his former colleagues at Minnesota State University, Mankato, who mourn his death Feb. 10 at the age of 80. His former wife, Fort Dodge native Jean Laufersweiler Fortune, said he died of cardiomyopathy. Like most veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, she said, “the hypervigilance, over-activity of the mind and nervous system, and sleep disorder are so hard on the heart.”

Fortune said he battled PTSD throughout his life but that “his writing kept him alive and his children kept him alive. He learned to cope with depression. When you know you have to take care of your children, you don’t take your life, you continue on. Eddie was writing poetry as long as I knew him. He had a way of looking at everything through different lenses. He would see as I would never see.”

“He did not speak of the war a lot, never bragged about it,” said Holly Dodge, a poet and an adjunct professor in Minnesota State’s English Department and someone Micus mentored early in her career. “I feel it defined his writing. It was a way of unpacking and unraveling things he saw and dealt with. I know the war haunted him. That’s why his poetry is so dynamic. He had a fragile sensibility for the way he wrote about things. He never played a victim of those things, he never wore his tragedies like a badge. When I asked him once where he kept his Purple Heart, he said, ‘I don’t know.'”

His first book, “The Infirmary,” based on his experiences growing up in Fort Dodge and his service in Vietnam, which included the poem “M-16 Round,” was awarded the 2008 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize from Kent State University in Ohio. In the foreword by Stephen Dunn, acclaimed American poet and winner of a Pulitzer Prize, Dunn called it “a rarity, a mature debut, a first book of poems with time-tested virtues” and said Micus’ Vietnam poems “will take their places among the very best war poems.” Micus also wrote a book, “Landing Zones,” a collection of short stories.

Edward Kelly Micus was born Jan. 23, 1944, 20 minutes before his twin brother, Bill. Their sister Maureen Micus Crisick recalled that “when kids teased him about being so much smaller than Bill, Eddie would say, ‘Yes, but I’m older.'”

As a single mother in their home, across from Sacred Heart Catholic Church and since demolished, Ruth Flattery Micus raised five children – Annamarie, twin brothers Ed and Bill, Maureen, and Mary Beth. Four were born in Chicago and Mary Beth was born in Fort Dodge. As a single mother, Ruth supported the family working as a secretary at Fort Dodge Laboratories. Her brother was District Court Judge Edward J. Flattery, who died in 1999.

The parents and grandparents of Ruth Flattery were pioneer farmers in the Fort Dodge area. She attended a two-room country school and was exposed to poetry when her mother Anna (who married Michael Flattery at Sacred Heart Church in 1905) would clip poems published in the Fort Dodge Messenger and put them into a booklet. Ruth was married to Edward Vincent Micus.

Crisick said their mother “was from the old school, the days of recitation. She had memorized those poems — Tennyson, Edgar Allen Poe and others — while on the farm. When she had her own family, she was always reciting those poems from memory. Eddie said we grew up in iambic pentameter. That was my mother’s style. ‘Oh mom,’ we’d say, ‘stop that, we’re on the 40th verse’.”

In a 2014 interview with the Mankato Free Press, Micus said he began writing poetry while a teenager and that his mother would recite poetry as she rolled out pie dough, which helped instill a love of language in her son.

“I can still hear her voice in my head,” he said.

All five Micus children graduated from St. Edmond High School and three of them — Eddie, Bill and Maureen — were graduates of Minnesota State University, Mankato, then called Mankato State University.

Annamarie Duncan lives in Denver, Maureen Micus Crisick and her husband William live in Walnut Creek, California, and Mary Beth Hollenbeck Kelly and her husband Robert live in Ridgway, Colorado. Like her brother, Maureen is a published poet and is also founder of the Moroccan Angels Project that helps further the education of girls in need in that north Africa country.

Eddie’s twin brother Bill died in 2020; he attended Minnesota State on a football scholarship, and it was a football injury that made him ineligible for the military draft.

“When Eddie was in Vietnam,” Maureen said, “Bill would have nightmares of fighting in the trench, being next to his twin brother.”

Recalled Dennis Lawler, who graduated from St. Edmond a year after Bill and Eddie and played football with Bill: “Bill was an excellent football player and, in today’s vernacular, he was ‘cut,’ although I don’t think he ever lifted weights. Eddie was significantly smaller than his twin brother, and he wasn’t a jock. He always had a smirky smile, as though he knew something you didn’t know. Everyone liked Eddie. His eyes twinkled.”

After graduating from St. Edmond in 1962, Micus held a series of jobs before his draft notice arrived and he was inducted into the Army in 1966. He told his sister Maureen at the time, “I’m just as deserving to go as the next guy.”

He got orders for Vietnam and arrived there on Valentine’s Day 1967 as an infantryman in the 12th Cavalry Division. On Nov. 7, 1967, he was point man in a rifle platoon that was dropped by helicopter to help another platoon under fire. He moved through heavy enemy fire to reach and carry to safety two of his wounded comrades. Micus took rifle wounds to his abdomen and suffered numerous shrapnel wounds. He was medevaced to a field hospital and then flown to Japan and later to Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Denver for surgeries. He was awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart for his actions.

Micus married Jean Laufersweiler in 1969 in Maryville, Missouri., where they attended Northwest Missouri State University. Their first date was in 1966 in Chicago, where Jean was attending Mundelein College, a double-date arranged by Jean’s sister Ann and Jim Tornabane (who later married). Micus was drafted a short time later and the two corresponded by letter during his Army service. Jean got word of his injury through his mother.

When his treatment at Fitzsimons Hospital was completed, Micus enrolled at Northwest Missouri State and he and Jean were married there.. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English and she completed her teaching degree. They moved to Minnesota where they both taught classes – Eddie teaching English, Jean teaching art – in the small towns of Storden-Jeffers and New Ulm.

They had three sons: Edward Nathan, who died in a car accident when he was 19, on the day of his father’s and uncle’s birthday; Mark Micus and his wife Judy of Oak Grove, Minnesota., and William F. Micus of Mankato. Ed and Jean divorced in 1980 but, Jean said, “continued to share our children…we still had to co-parent.” They were divorced while teaching in New Ulm and both moved to Mankato to attend Mankato State.

Micus loved to fish, Fortune recalled: “He and I used to fish small farm ponds when we were at Northwest Missouri State. He taught his three sons how to fish. He and his brother Bill fished together. Mostly, people talk about his writing, but he also loved the outdoors.”

His earliest poems were “terrible,” he told the Mankato Free Press. But when he returned from Vietnam, he turned to poetry to help process his feelings. “I felt almost an obligation to write about it,” he said. “I felt that I was luckier than many veterans in terms of dealing with post-war trauma, and I felt obliged to write about it. For me, poetry was the best genre to do that.

“The Vietnam stuff is narrative. I like to think it’s objective. Much of it deals with unpleasant circumstances and unpleasant emotions. It deals with the realities of war. Many people don’t want to re-experience that war. A lot of people don’t care to hear about Vietnam anymore. I can understand their feelings…It’s the damnedest thing. Sometimes I feel I have to write about the war. But on the other hand, there’s a part of me that wants to leave it alone for a while…I try not to write these war poems…I sit down to write a love poem or something lyrical and if the damn thing doesn’t turn into a war poem.”

In 1988 Micus was appointed assistant director for the Center for Academic Success at Minnesota State and worked there about 20 years. He also taught classes for the English department, including composition, creative writing and fiction writing. He earned a master of arts degree in creative writing in 1992.

Richard Robbins, who retired in 2021 after 37 years as a professor of English and creative writing at Minnesota State, first met Micus when Micus took his creative writing class.

“Vietnam was an experience that never left him, an experience that informed much of his writing, Robbins said. “But also poems about Iowa and Minnesota, living in the middle of America and the value of small towns and what he saw in the war.



“His legacy is certainly in the literary world, but on a more personal level he worked at the Center for Academic Success, helping students who needed help in their studies. He was just able to reach some people to get them over hump. He had a great sense of humor. He never forgot the people he left behind in the war, or the people he knew in Iowa and Minnesota.”

Richard Meyer, who was a friend of Micus for 50 years, from the time when both taught in New Ulm, shared these thoughts:

“Eddie faced difficult and hard times in his life, but through it all he maintained his resilience, humor and creative talent. He was a friend to many and a mentor to aspiring writers. He had an engaging sense of humor. His conversation was filled with wit and clever wordplay.

“He wrote powerfully about the human condition — about its sorrows and tragedies, but also about the mystery, love and hope we find in life. He was adept at putting the best words in the best order for artistic and emotional effect. He understood that language is a magical gift. That through the careful and effective use of words we can better understand ourselves, others and the world. His poetry opens us to empathy.”

Fortune said a celebration of Micus’ life will be held at a date and place to be determined.

The photo shows, from left: Veronica and Arthur Christensen, owners of House of Hits, and sister-in-law Kate Christensen in early 1970s.

By PAUL STEVENS

House of Hits. Musicland. Co-Op Tapes and Records. Brownies. Next Door.

If the Baby Boomers among us, or our children or grandchildren, have any vinyl 45s or albums in their possession, it’s likely some of those records may have been purchased at one of those Fort Dodge record stores.

“Record stores in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s were the Starbucks of their time,” recalled Keith Brown, long a part of the city’s music scene. “It was the gathering place for finding and purchasing new music. It’s where everyone hung out.

“Places like House of Hits allowed you to bring the 45 or album into a tiny booth with a small record player and listen to a bit of the song before purchasing. The smell of vinyl was strong when you entered the store. I still recall that smell to this day.”

Music long has been part of the city’s DNA – the home of the Karl King Municipal Band, garage bands, the Laramar and nationally known artists it attracted, numerous Iowa Rock and Roll Music Association Hall of Famers including Brown and the most recent inductee – Melanie Rosales, studios like West Minst’r Sound that recorded top artists, vibrant high school musicals, musical director Larry Mitchell…and more.

None of the record stores that once attracted generations of Fort Dodgers has survived, but their memories shine brightly.

Six decades removed, vinyl is fresh in the mind of Fort Dodge native Steve Dapper, who recalls the House of Hits listening booths as if only yesterday:

“I was mainly into 45s and could remember the color of the labels,” he said. “A green one was ‘La Bamba,’ flip side ‘Oh Donna’ by Ritchie Valens. Also, had a Ricky Nelson album with him in a yellow sweater. Tragically they both died on plane crashes.”

After the first record players were introduced, recorded music was sold primarily through department stores, electronics stores and mail-order catalogs, but as its popularity grew, dedicated record stores began to emerge. Music came primarily in two formats: one was the 12-inch, 33-rpm record, while the other was the 45-rpm, 7-inch single.

Art and Veronica Christensen opened House of Hits at 1108 Central Ave. and had ready-made help in the form of their 14 children, who all worked there during their high school years, said one of their sons, Terry Christensen of Hinton, near Sioux City.

“In the 1940s and early ’50s, my dad’s business was in jukeboxes, pinball machines, pool tables and other entertainment machines,” he said. “People started buying record players, but no one sold records and so people came to my dad for records. He started with just one counter containing records. He hired my older sister Teresa to sell records and before long she couldn’t keep up with the number of customers and supply of new records. From there the record business grew until he was making more money selling records than his jukebox and entertainment machines were making. He added record players, stereos, TV and radios. At one time there was an article written that he had the largest record store in the state of Iowa.

“He let people listen to the record before they bought it,” he added. “The House of Hits became a high school hangout. He should have started selling hamburgers and milkshakes with the kids listening to records. He had my mom come into the business as a secretary and sales clerk. My dad always said she was the best free help he ever had.”

During the 1960s, Kirk Van Gundy was one of the record store’s best customers.

“When I was 8, I bought my first record from House of Hits,” he said. “It was a 45, ‘Stood Up’ by Ricky Nelson. On the flip side, ‘Waiting in School.'”

He was such a regular customer that he could make special record orders without the normally required deposit. He also bought records at Luke’s variety store and S.S. Kresges.

Today, Van Gundy’s home in Adel is a repository for thousands of records, CDs and cassette tapes, with most of his collection in 45s. Kirk Van Gundy and his brother, Scott, owned Martin’s Flag Co. in Fort Dodge, succeeding their father in 1975 and operating it until they sold the business in 2013. The new owner moved it to Valley Junction. Scott Van Gundy still lives in Fort Dodge.

Speaking of collectors, Fort Dodge native Mark Mittelstadt, now of Tucson, owns an instrument that was the predecessor to vinyl records.

“We inherited an antique Edison Home Phonograph that apparently my grandfather received as payment for repairing someone’s TV or radio in the Fort Dodge area,” he said. “It came with approximately 30 cylinders (most of which by the time we got them had deteriorated, broken, disintegrated) but I’m guessing someone back then could buy them in the Fort Dodge area. Apparently, you can still order cylinders online.”

House of Hits went out of business in the early 1970s and today, the location at 1108 Central Ave. is home to Mary Kay’s Gifts & Home Décor-Merle Norman Cosmetics, operated by Mary Kay Daniel whose father, John, operates Daniel Pharmacy two doors away.

Back in the day, you could buy a 45-rpm record for less than a dollar and an album for $4 to $6, said Paul Dreasler, who worked at Musicland at the Mall and Sound World. Brown said record stores blossomed with many more types of releases and playback formats (cassettes, 8-track tapes, reel to reel tapes) and used records could be a more affordable option to the price of a new release.

“In Fort Dodge by the early ’70s there were several places to buy records,” Dreasler said. “Mall stores like Penneys, Younkers, Sears, Woolworth all sold some 45s and albums. By the mid-70’s we also had Co-Op Tapes and Records. Musicland had the better selection, but we got beat sometimes on price. We had most genres, a good rock section, country, religious, orchestra/vocal groups, classical and jazz. We sold mostly rock. Jazz and classical got a bit dusty.”

Katherine Etzel was an employee of Co-Op Tapes and Records, working for owner Mike Cotant, now deceased. Today she is an artist herself, living in New York City where she is a recording engineer, producer and songwriter who in 2008 launched a band called Bobtown – named after the Fort Dodge neighborhood by that name.

“It was the early ’80s,” she recalled, “and at 18 years old, with my polite manners and Top 40 pedigree, I was seemingly not a good fit for our edgy music hub and head shop, located on First Avenue North near Eighth Street.

“I was a fish out of water when it came to the bongs, one-hits, and feather-adorned roach clips in the display cases, but I was a natural when it came to the records and tapes,” she said. “Customers wandering into the store would find me singing along unabashedly to whatever I was spinning on the turntable at the moment. Little did I know at the time that later music would become my life.

“These were the days before the digital era, and, at least while I worked there, before the trend of featuring every release at listening stations. Instead, Mike would sift through new content on ‘Release Day’–a big day for both staff and customers when new music would arrive–curating albums for us to play in-store. We received a few promotional copies, but Mike would also open artists that he was simply curious about, and he’d graciously accommodate most anyone who asked to hear a record that had not been opened for in-store play, even though the practice likely ate into his profits. Like me, Mike was all about the music.”

Brown said the record stores were a special place for him and fellow musicians.

“There was a huge feeling of satisfaction when you could walk into a record store and either hear your record being played or see it displayed on the wall with maybe a poster of your band,” he said. “It was an achievement that had been realized after long hours of practice, performance and travel.

“If you were lucky enough to have your record played on the radio, your engagements became more financially successful,” he added. “Your crowds would be bigger, and your image promoted as ‘having made it.'”

In the summer of 1970, Dave Hearn was co-manager with Dave Cottrell of Next Door, a music store that was a branch of the head shop Purple Peddler located on Central Avenue. Both were owned by Steve Farr.

“We got to pick the albums we sold,” Hearn said. “We were both song writers and had a rather developed taste in rock music. We didn’t have huge stock but enough to be open. Albums like The James Gang Rides Again (led by Joe Walsh before he joined the Eagles); the Beach Boys’ Surf’s Up. The Pretty Things’ Parachute. These would be called alternative rock today.”

Hearn played keyboard in a band called the Hawks, which signed with Columbia Records, and was inducted into the Iowa Rock and Roll Music Association Hall of Fame. He kept his music passion alive while working as an optician for 32 years for Dr. Jeff Foreman. Retired for five years, the Fort Dodge resident still plays the keyboard and records music – with nine solo albums released.

The ending was cast for record stores with the Internet bringing forth Amazon and iTunes – with their two-day delivery and usually cheaper prices. Many independent record stores went out of business. Large chains like Musicland, Record Town and Camelot closed stores or simply did not renew leases.

Today, Fort Dodge has a Central Avenue music store – Rieman Music, one of six Iowa stores owned by the Des Moines-based company. It is located on a site previously occupied by Mid-Bell Music Co. Its education consultant, Jon Merritt, said the store sells musical instruments – anything band- or orchestra-related to about 30 school districts in northwest Iowa but does not sell records or consumer electronics.

“We sell guitars, sound systems, amplifiers, keyboards, pianos – 95 percent of the pianos we sell are digital, not acoustic,” he said.

Vinyl has made a comeback with vintage record stores popping up in larger cities and some new artists once again releasing their product on a vinyl format. Many of these vintage stores sell both new releases and used records as well.

Zzz Records on Ingersoll Avenue in Des Moines was opened in 2000 by Nate Niceswanger, who has two local ties: he is a native of Somers who graduated from Prairie Valley High School in Gowrie and he is a cousin to the late Gail Niceswanger, longtime speech and drama teacher at Fort Dodge Senior High School for whom its theater is named.

“Ours is an old-fashioned record store, vinyl records – new, used and collectibles – account for 80 percent of our sales,” he said. “Vinyl albumsare very popular. What’s collectible now has changed. When I started out, people were going crazy for Elvis and Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis but as that crowd got older, it changed – an Elvis album I once sold for $15 now goes for $4. A lot of artists from the ’50s and ’60s used to be very collectible, but have fallen out of favor and now those from the ’70s and ’80s are very big. The biggest surprise to me – I never thought the younger crowd – those in their 30s and 20s and even junior high – would be interested in records. But they’re buying record players and vinyl.”

Record stores in cities the size of Des Moines have a much greater chance of survival, he said. “I’m in an area of a half million people. But I get people coming here from all over the area. Record buyers are a very dedicated group. They’re not afraid to travel.”

Keith Brown believes there’s room for both vinyl and digital.

“I love the smell of vinyl,” he said. “I love the size of album jackets and their wonderful art. I like to listen to vinyl. But the convenience of digital formats makes it so easy to play, send, copy, share, maintain and archive. I’ll continue to embrace both formats – analog (for the past) and digital (for the future.)

By PAUL STEVENS

The Civil War veteran who is considered founder of the Fort Dodge Public Library could be forgiven for not envisioning that 150 years later, it would feature far more than hard-cover books, to wit: eBooks, eAudiobooks, magazines, comics and graphic novels, movies and TV shows, and music.

Or that Capt. W.H. Johnston’s creation — first housed in the office of his Fort Dodge law practice – would one day evolve into a gathering place for all the community — a focal point unlike any other public or private institution in the city.

Rita Schmidt, director of the Fort Dodge Public Library, believes he would be gobsmacked by the technological and educational offerings provided to residents today, but also would be pleased that the focal point centers on good old-fashioned books.

“I personally don’t think the desire to crack open a book and flip through its pages will ever go away,” Schmidt said. “For many people there is something comforting, reassuring and exciting about opening a book and then getting lost in its pages. And honestly, there is nothing better than sharing a children’s picture book in all of its full-color glory. Whether it’s your child, grandchild, niece, nephew or someone else important in your life, it’s a great way to spend time relaxing, bonding and experiencing the joys of reading.

“For many in our community, our library is a place they can come to for their recreational reading needs, to check out DVDs because they don’t have cable or the Internet and they want something to watch, to find answers to questions they have, to learn something new, to participate in one of our many programs for people of all ages and abilities, to use a computer or WIFI, to scan, copy and/or fax documents, to find a quiet place to hang out, to get warm or stay cool, or to just feel less alone. These are the things that make us an essential part of Fort Dodge and why we do what we do.

“Movements, ideas, programs, technology, and a million other things will continue to change over time, but our library will remain a valued and important part of our community because we provide a welcoming space where our citizens can get connected, satisfy their curiosity and learn more about their place within the global community. Simple as that.”

In total agreement is a man heavily invested in Fort Dodge history, Roger Natte, who grew up in Sibley, where “the library was books, that was it, period,”:

“You go to the (Fort Dodge) library today, you find diversity – Black people, those with Hispanic or Asian background, people with special needs – every day they are there,” he said. “The population mixture is very interesting. There’s not a place in town with that much of a mix of people.”

In 1865, Capt. Johnston lost a leg fighting in the Civil War. He studied law at Wabash College in Indiana where he met two men with Fort Dodge ties who encouraged him to come to the city of about 3,400 to practice law. He later was appointed to the deputy clerkship of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa, central division, at Fort Dodge, an office he held for many years.

At the time of the Civil War, Fort Dodge had what was called the Athenaeum, a private group of educated local leaders who got together to share their books and discuss ideas. In 1870 they offered to support a library and transfer their collection of books and journals. Johnston joined the group – and what he founded in 1874 was far different than today’s public library. His was a private library association that was housed in a small library and reading room in his office – which likely was just blocks from the library’s present-day location on the City Square.

“It was typical of those days in New England, when libraries were subscription libraries, with paid membership dues,” Natte said. “Such libraries got their start in Britain; public libraries as we know them today were non-existent.

“The library was an early fit in what the leaders of the community were interested in. We don’t think of Fort Dodge as being a place of other than pioneer farmers, but the first library was aimed at people educated in the East, who were used to reading Shakespeare and attending concerts.”

Johnston’s influence was statewide. He was one of the founders of the Iowa State Library Association and served as its president. He was honorary president at the time of his death in 1911.

The appetite for a public library, open to all, grew to the point that in 1890, the first free public library was opened in Fort Dodge. Nine years later, a group of citizens began planning for a much larger building to house the growing collection of books, among them Martha Haskell, Webb Vincent, O.M. Oleson and George Ringland.

Shortly after its fundraising campaign, the group learned that a larger sum of money might be available from Andrew Carnegie and his Carnegie Foundation. Carnegie, who made his fortune in the steel industry in Pittsburgh, was a nationally known philanthropist who made grants to help communities across the nation construct public libraries.

Two prominent Fort Dodgers who lived in Washington D.C., George Roberts, director of the U. S. Mint, and M. D. O’Connell, U.S. solicitor general, were asked to personally contact Carnegie with the city’s request. On Christmas Day 1900, Roberts and O’Connell telegraphed the mayor of Fort Dodge announcing that Carnegie had approved $30,000 for the construction of a new public library building.

The architect for the new building at 605 First Ave. N. was Henry Koch of Minneapolis, and construction was done by Northern Building Co. of Davenport – the same architect and construction company hired for the new Webster County Courthouse being constructed at the same time. The stone for the new building came in rough from the Black Hills Stone Co., then was smoothed and fashioned on the construction grounds by cutters. The total cost: $47,293.

The Carnegie Library was formally dedicated on Oct. 12, 1903. But from the beginning, the building had one major flaw — a roof that leaked, causing interior damage and staining. Eventually, the best cure was determined to be the addition of a second story, a change allowed for in the original plans in the event more space might be needed. The second-story addition was opened to the public on Oct. 6, 1930.

The addition afforded the library with more space than needed and in November 1930, it was decided that the west room in the basement could be used as a museum to collect and preserve data and relics pertaining to Fort Dodge and Webster County history. As the collection expanded, so did the need for more space. In 1934, the adjoining hall was used for the museum and later in 1937, with $1,000 donated by Alice Granger, another room was renovated for additional historical relic exhibit space. The museum remained in those quarters until 1964 when the Fort Museum was established.

The library remained in the Carnegie building until 2001, when it moved into its present-day building at 424 Central Ave., on the City Square. Accessibility, structural and wiring issues in the proud old building necessitated the change. The construction cost of the new library was $5.2 million. The Carnegie building later was purchased privately, and the interior was renovated for use as apartments.

“We have a fabulous location, the square is pretty much our front yard,” said Schmidt, a Sioux City native who joined the library staff in 1992 and became director in 2016. “Soon to be close by us is the Webster County Conservation River’s Edge Discovery Center, right along the river.”

That project, a joint venture of the county and city, includes a 13,000-square-foot Nature Center building that will focus on Iowa’s water resources; its exhibits will cover the water cycle, wetlands, glaciers, rivers and streams. The project is expected to be completed by July 2024.

Today, the Fort Dodge Public Library houses 86,000 physical items – the majority of them (74,000) books, Schmidt said.

“The secret of a good collection is making sure you keep it fresh, keep it current, “ she said. “We order books every month.”

It has 11,000 audio and visual items.

In the 2023 calendar year, about 63,000 people used the library and about 12,000 visited its web site — https://www.fortdodgelibrary.org/ – which was renovated in December. More than 80,000 physical items – books, audiobooks, DVDs — were checked out.

Young people are targeted through a variety of reading programs. Schmidt said, “This last summer, we had a cooperative Lego building table. When kids check out a book, they get a couple Legos to add to build a city. The kids added 20,400 Legos to the table.”

Other successful programs involved the use of dinosaur puppets and blowing giant bubbles on the square. More than 1,200 children took part in last summer’s reading programs.

There are two touch tables in the Children’s Department that allow kids to play educational games by themselves, with family members or with other kids who happen to wander by and ask if they can join in.

“Our touch tables are very popular and a great way for parents and grandparents to bond with their kids or grandkids in new and fun ways,” Schmidt said.

After Fort Dodge schools began providing students with computers, she said, “we saw fewer kids using us for their homework needs. To help encourage them to use us for their recreational needs, we added new formats like manga and graphic novels and services and tech that encourage learning.”

The library building is the office home to the Karl King Municipal Band, the Webster County Historical Society, the Webster County Genealogical Society and the Friends of the Fort Dodge Public Library – which operates a bookstore that sells used books and other items, with profits going to the library. The library has two meeting rooms – one with a capacity of 95 that is used by groups including Girl Scout troops, a local quilters group and a number of nonprofit agencies, as well as a room with capacity of 16.

“We do serve as cooling and warming spot for people who are unhoused,” Schmidt said. “We have patrons we see on a regular basis who come down and chat for five or 10 minutes, may be living alone and like that contact.”

The library has 16 computers with Internet access and productivity software for anyone to use and six workstations with educational games for kids. WiFi is available within the building and outside around the City Square. There is no fee to get a library card initially, Schmidt said, “but if you lose it and need to get it replaced, we do charge $1. If it’s just so beat up from use that it needs to be replaced, we don’t charge for a new one.”

The library’s total operating income for the past fiscal year was $1.14 million, with government funding $900,000 of that amount, Schmidt said. It has a staff of eight full-time employees and four part-time staff and is open six days a week. Other funding comes from the library’s own foundation, the Catherine Vincent Deardorf Foundation, the Friends of the Library Foundation and the Hillesland Trust. The library operations are overseen by a five-person board of trustees who are appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the City Council.

Like most libraries, the library has added downloadable content including eBooks, eAudiobooks, magazines, comics and graphic novels, movies and TV shows, and music.

“While we continue to see use of our downloadable content increase,” Schmidt said, “this past fiscal year patrons checked out 51,000-plus more physical items (books, magazines, audio CDs, DVDs – a healthy number of DVDs, over 10,000 checkouts of DVD movies, TV shows, documentaries) than they downloaded. There are a number of reasons for this, including people not having access to inexpensive, reliable Internet, but another, more simple answer is that many of our patrons enjoy the experience of visiting the library, browsing the shelves for a good book, checking it out, and then actually holding it while reading.



“It’s amazing, even though we have all these electronic possibilities, books are still an important part of a community. I don’t think it’s ever going to change. During the pandemic, more people were reading books for pleasure and leisure than they had in the past. They are continuing that trend, wanting escapism and taking in different worlds, different ideas, through books."

EDITOR’S NOTE: 10 years have passed since the originator of this Messenger Spotlight column, Editor Walter B. Stevens, passed away. His Spotlight legacy has been continued by his son, who salutes the legacy of his dad.)

By PAUL STEVENS

When I told my Dad that I was taking a buyout from The Associated Press at the age of 62, he paused and said, “You’re a slacker.”

It mattered not that I had logged 36 years with the news agency. I should have known. This was a guy who worked at The Messenger into his 80s and wrote more than 1,000 Spotlight columns that no doubt impacted many who are reading this column. Heck, he was just getting into fourth gear at age 62 – my age when I retired in 2009.

If I were to get a phone call today from Walter B. Stevens, editor of The Heavenly Messenger since leaving our world 10 years ago, I would tell him, “Dad, I’m not really slacking off. Really!”

I’ve been publishing a daily newsletter for some 1,800 AP retirees and news industry friends for the past 10 years. I started it not long after you died in your room at Friendship Haven at the age of 96, just after your best buddy and fellow World War II veteran Al Habhab had visited you, and two years after Mom (Ruth Stevens) passed away.

And eight years ago, I was invited by Larry Bushman, your friend and former Messenger publisher (yep, The Messenger here on Earth), to resurrect the Spotlight column you wrote for 27 years. I know, I know, you wrote your Spotlight on a weekly basis and penned more than 1,000 columns. Mine appears monthly – and to date, I’ve done almost 100. Did I hear you whisper “slacker”???

And Dad, I’m also getting my exercise by playing tennis several times a week, continuing with a sport that you played Saturday mornings at the Dodger Courts and wowed your opponents with your wicked slice serve. All three of your kids took up the sport – Jan (retired second-grade teacher of 45 years in Cherokee and a longtime girls high school tennis coach) and Dave (retired senior associate dean at the University of North Carolina business school) and me.

You know, tennis, the sport that helped get you your first newspaper job in Hartington, Nebraska, when you hit around with the editor of the Cedar County News in the middle of the Great Depression. I never did ask you if you let him win in order to get a reporter’s job. Dad, you still there?

Me, you’ll recall that I got into the newspaper business at the ripe old age of 10, delivering the afternoon Messenger door to door on my bike and on foot. (And perhaps unbeknownst to you and Mom, spending my earnings Saturday mornings at the Hobby Shop, at the top of Central Avenue.) I passed on Route 46 to brother Dave and then at age 15 started working in the sports department for Bob Brown, coming in to the second-floor newsroom at 713 Central Ave. on Friday nights to take football and basketball scores from the Messengerland area and write brief stories – on a typewriter! – for Saturday’s edition. Dave did the same thing – as did many other graduates of the Bob Brown School of Sports Writing, including Julie Moser Thorson, CEO of your home for your last 10 years of life, Friendship Haven.

Oh yeah, I worked three summers as the replacement for vacationing news staff. So did Jan, a proofreader one summer. From that era of the ’60s, two survive today: Fred Larson, staff photographer who’s one of the most popular people at Friendship Haven (and subject of a past Spotlight), and Marty McCarty, a reporter and editor then, from Emmetsburg, who’s a friend here in Kansas City and coaches aspiring book authors. My first Messenger byline was at age 16 – and I still get the same high 60 years later when I see my byline in print (and online). Slacker? Really?

Newspapering coursed through my veins, thanks to you, Dad, and I worked for the Tri-Crown at St. Edmond High School (with the O’Leary twins Bill and Jim, Bill Hood, Maureen Micus, Michaeleen Deaner, Larry Underburg) and the Panther Prowl at Fort Dodge Community College (with editors and twins Sally and Sheri Jackowell). It was at community college where I had the good fortune to meet a nursing student named Linda Saul. Our first date was Homecoming 1965 and she was elected homecoming queen. I wish you and Mom had been around this past June 15 when we celebrated the 55th anniversary of our wedding at Corpus Christi Church (where you were a member and usher for 60 years).

Those news genes I inherited from you continued strong when I left Fort Dodge for the University of Iowa, where my schedule adviser, Professor John Bremner, told me he knew and respected longtime Messenger City Editor Karl Haugen. I wrote sports stories on the Hawkeyes (including Ed Podolak in football, Fort Dodge’s own Tom Chapman in basketball) for Bob Brown, the Daily Iowan and the AP, and covered Regina High School for the Press-Citizen. When I joined the Air Force after graduation. I was editor of newspapers at bases in Little Rock, Arkansas., and Langley, Virginia,, during four years of service. You have me there, Dad, with your 33 months of combat in World War II.

Post-USAF, you’ll recall my Fort Dodge ties continued at the University of Kansas, where my master’s thesis was a history of The Messenger. I did much of my research at the old Public Library on First Avenue North. Years later, in 2006, when the newspaper celebrated its 150th anniversary, you and I collaborated to publish a book on its history that included some of that research. And Bob Brown wrote a chapter on sports – including what he called his favorite luncheon-speech story, on how I pitched for the FDCC baseball team and also covered its games for The Messenger and in one road game threw a no-hitter. He recalled that I called him to ask how I should handle it and he told me, “Write it like you’d write about me throwing a no-hitter.” And he added, “I have often considered Bob Feller or Sandy Koufax were never afforded that honor of throwing a no-hitter and savored having their byline over the story the next morning.”

I still remember when I was first named an Associated Press chief of bureau, in Albuquerque, Dad, and how you wrote me a letter with thoughts from an editor’s perspective on how a bureau chief should conduct himself. It was more a lesson of life. Your Number One Rule: be a good listener. It has served me well in writing my own Spotlights. And I still have that letter.

You recall the story behind why I began calling you a Grumpy Old Editor? Let me refresh you. I was AP’s Kansas City bureau chief when I interviewed for a reporter’s opening someone who had worked for AP’s competition, UPI, when it served The Messenger. To break the ice, I asked him about his job in Iowa and whether he knew anyone at The Messenger. “Oh yes,” he replied, “they had a grumpy old editor there who never liked anything we did.” Call me too nice, but I never told the applicant he’d just insulted my father. He didn’t get the job.

You know how I enjoyed my Associated Press journey that took Linda and me – and our children Jenny, Molly and Jon – to assignments and new adventures in Albany, St. Louis, Wichita, Albuquerque, Indianapolis and, in 1984, Kansas City. Maybe that’s why I’m still doing a newsletter that reaches those AP friends all over the globe.

And I am proud to say I came from Fort Dodge, the city where I grew up, got my start in journalism and met the woman who’s my life partner. My hope is to continue to tell the story of the people and places of Fort Dodge and Webster County, past and present, through the Spotlight column for years to come. As I learned from you, everyone has a story.

I’ve felt privileged to look into the lives of my Spotlight subjects and tell their stories. Lots of unforgettable people in those interviews. Jane Burleson, the first Black to serve on the Fort Dodge City Council. Tom Goodman, a friend growing up, so bravely telling about the life of his son Tommy John weeks after his sudden death. Judge Al Habhab, Mr. Fort Dodge. Doug Slotten, a blind amputee injured in the Vietnam War who became a successful attorney. Members of the Maggio family telling about their remarkable late sister Rosalie. And even some subjects that couldn’t talk – Dodger Stadium and its storied history (my favorite lead, if these bricks could talk). The Blanden Memorial Art Museum. The High Bridge. Tom Thumb Drive-In.

One other Spotlight I did besides this one that was very personal: This past fall was the 24th anniversary of my annual pilgrimage to Iowa City to watch the Hawkeyes – one started with Iowa roommates Greg Sells and Paul Wright but which has grown to encompass others from St. Edmond – John Anderson, Steve Dapper, Mick Flaherty, Doug Goodrich, Jim Konvalinka, Frank Kopish, Denny Lawler, Mark McCarville, Pat O’Brien and Mike Tracy. Yes, I did a Spotlight on that tradition, too.

When I finish each Spotlight and hit the Send computer key to dispatch it to Messenger Editor Bill Shea, I raise a hand of thanks to the heavens with hope I told the story fairly and accurately and that it would have passed your muster.

Will I write this Spotlight column as long as you, Dad? I’ve got a lot of years to go. Slacking off, though? I think not. Hope you agree.

Was the remarkable life of Doug Slotten a matter of destiny or the random nature of life – like the feather that floats on a breeze in the movie Forrest Gump, prompting Forrest to observe, "I don't know if we each have a destiny, or if we are all just floating around accidental like on a breeze, but I, I think maybe it's both.”

Doug Slotten’s “feather” lifted him from his parents’ farm home in Barnum to the University of Iowa to the financial district of Chicago to the battlefields of Vietnam (where he lost his eyesight and half of his right leg) to law school at Arizona State University to a job with the federal government in Washington, D.C., and, one day in the near future, to his burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

Slotten died Sept. 29 of prostate cancer under hospice care at his home in Chevy Chase, Md., surrounded by family - his wife Elin, twin daughters Chelsi and Kirsten, sisters Deanna and Nancy, and brother Lyle. He was 76.

Less than a month after his death, the circle of life – and Doug’s first name - continued with the birth of the first grandchild for Elin and Doug - Maxwell Douglas Pavlovic, born Oct. 24 in San Francisco to daughter Kirsten and her husband Alex. “I think my dad would be super happy and proud,” Kirsten said. “Max has his chin (and mine!) and also his furrowed brow when he’s thinking really hard or displeased by something.”

It was a December day in 1970 when Army Sgt. Douglas Slotten stepped on a land mine while on a reconnaissance patrol in Vietnam, attached to the 101st Airborne. He was quickly evacuated to a hospital ship but doctors were unable to save his sight and were forced to amputate the lower half of his right leg.

Call it his destiny or the random nature of life, this much is true: the injuries changed the course of Slotten’s life and all the lives he touched for the next 53 years.

Slotten, a recipient of the Purple Heart, set out with resolve and courage on a future far removed from the farm where he grew up – a future that took him as a blind amputee to law school in Arizona, an impactful 45-year career with the Federal Communications Commission in the nation’s capital, and a marriage that in its 37 years produced twin daughters and the grandson who bears his name.

Slotten will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery, with a memorial stone in Iowa. Because of a backlog of burials at Arlington, his family expects it could take at least a year but plans to hold two memorial services, one in early 2024 at Christ Episcopal Church in Kensington, Md., and the other at the church of his childhood, Fulton Lutheran Church of Roelyn.

Heroes are buried at Arlington – and Slotten was a hero. But in a larger way than what happened to him in Vietnam.

“While many may see Douglas as a war hero, I see him as a life hero,” said his sister Deanna. “What makes him so special is not what happened to him in war, but rather what he did after that and how he did it. He was not bitter, didn't feel sorry for himself. Instead, he set about figuring out how to continue with the dreams he had and then pursued them with tenacity and great success. He truly overcame so many obstacles that would give most people pause, but remained ever humble and grateful for the life he had.”

The arrival of Veterans Day 2023 sparked a memory from daughter Chelsi:

“He used to come in our school classrooms to talk on Veterans Day on what he did in the Vietnam War,” she said. “One of the stories he would tell was being on a hospital ship after he was injured and an Army chaplain coming in to talk to him. The chaplain had a bit of a prepared speech on the meaning of life and such and started in on the speech. My dad interrupted and said, ‘You’re wasting your time. A lot of people say that. You don’t understand. I was lucky enough to be born in a free country. This was my price that I’m willing to pay so that my family can live in a free country.’ I don’t know if it ever occurred to him to feel bad or resentful. He didn’t let it define his life or purpose.”

Douglas Lee Slotten’s roots trace to a farm in Roelyn. He was born in Fort Dodge on Dec. 22, 1946, to Leo Russell Slotten and Evelyn Woods Slotten. He was the oldest of four children – including sisters Deanna Reifsteck of Elysian, Minn., and Nancy Randolph of Garden City, Kan., and brother Lyle Slotten of San Bernardino, Calif. Their maternal grandparents Nellie and Lewis Woods lived in Fort Dodge until their deaths. Their aunt Betty Slotten is a Fort Dodge resident.

When the family moved to another farm near Barnum, Doug commuted to Cedar Valley High School in Somers for his senior year and graduated in 1965. His siblings graduated from Northwest Webster High School. A classmate of Doug’s at Cedar Valley, Daryl Beall of Fort Dodge, said, “His classmates respected and admired him, but he made us feel a bit inadequate. He accomplished so much blind and with an artificial leg. Doug’s life and death and legacy are reminders that our days are numbered. We must celebrate every day we have on this earth.”

Slotten attended the University of Iowa and received a bachelor’s degree in accounting in 1969. Friends say his propensity at poker and ironing shirts for fellow students helped finance his education. He remained a dedicated Hawkeye sports fan, especially basketball, for the rest of his life.

His first job out of Iowa City was in Chicago with a major accounting firm, Ernst & Ernst (now known as Ernst & Young) but his employment was brief when he was drafted in August 1969. It was at Fort Des Moines where he met Paul Onerheim of Ottumwa, who would become a lifelong friend. Together, they attended Army basic training at Fort Polk, La., and then advanced infantry training. Slotten was promoted to sergeant (E-5) and after assignments in Georgia and Kansas got his orders for Vietnam. He shipped out Nov. 7, 1970.

Five weeks into Vietnam, he was with a reconnaissance platoon on Dec. 14, 1970, assigned to the 101st Airborne Division, that was landed by helicopter on a hilltop in hazardous territory north of Hue. “We were checking the area,” he recalled in a 1971 interview with the Des Moines Tribune. “I went off to one side, looking for signs of the enemy. Our group had found one mine. I found the second. I stepped on it.” Within an hour he was flown in a military helicopter to the USS Sanctuary, a Navy hospital ship, where he stayed 17 days. After spending New Years Eve at the Da Nang airport, he was flown to Walter Reed Hospital in Washington.

He was given home leave and returned to Iowa with crutches and a wheelchair. “It was a happy time and it was a hard time,” Slotten told Lois Johnson of The Messenger in a Nov. 5, 1971, interview. “It was harder for the folks than for me. I’d had a month to adjust. They hadn’t. I had ideas about how to function. They had to learn.”

He came to Fort Dodge during the week and stayed with his grandparents and walked daily from their home at 4 Johnson Place to downtown. “In this way,” he told the Messenger, “I can find out how people react to me. I get out and visit, mingle with people, go into stores and buy things and order meals in restaurants by myself. My success in these experiences will help decide my future.”

Slotten returned to Walter Reed – where he learned to read Braille - and then entered Hines Veterans Hospital in Chicago for intensive training in how to live as a blind person and how to walk with an artificial leg. He returned to the University of Iowa as a special student and took three courses, and remarkably, as a blind student, completed the fourth and final section of the Certified Public Accountant test – one he had failed earlier when sighted.

Slotten decided to pursue an earlier ambition of entering law school. He applied and was admitted to Arizona State University School of Law, becoming the first totally blind person to enter the law school. With a Braille typewriter and several tape recorders and living alone in a student-filled apartment complex in Tempe, he graduated cum laude and in August 1975 joined the Federal Communications Commission as an attorney and made the move to Washington – where he would live the rest of his life. Three years later, he was named Outstanding Handicapped Federal Employee of the Year. He commuted to work by bus and train for most of his career, before taking cabs and Ubers in his later years. He retired in 2021.

“In his years with the FCC, Doug became in essence a historian for the commission,” said his longtime friend Jim Kracht, a tax and finance attorney for Miami-Dade County for 37 years, and who is blind. “He’d been there so long, he knew the history, and he had an incredibly retentive mind. Doug’s great strength was being a good listener. Doug was not outgoing. He was very quiet but deliberate. And when he talked, you listened to him. He wouldn’t give you 200 words when 20 would do.”

Weeks after his death, at the FCC’s October Open Meeting, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel delivered a touching tribute to Slotten and his legacy in his more than four decades of service. “Doug’s contributions helped shape the telecommunications marketplace and set the stage for the broadband revolution,” she said, adding that he was “a kind, patient and selfless teacher - he was always generous with his knowledge and his friendship. Doug also reminded all of us that life can hold great things, even in the face of challenges. He will continue to inspire us, as long as we hold his memory close.”

Slotten’s family was hugely important to him, said his wife Elin Wackernagel-Slotten, and he doted on their twin daughters, Kirsten and Chelsi, born July 8, 1988. It was only after her last ultrasound examination that they knew she was delivering twins. Elin recalled, “The nurse turned to Doug and said, what do you think of that, Mr. Slotten? There was no answer, so she asked again. He replied, ‘That’s two college tuitions.’”

How did they meet? Elin responded, “Doug loved it when people asked us how we met. Doug being Norwegian and a Slotten, he was not one to show emotion, but he would get this little wicked grin and say, ‘a blind date.’” She was a schoolteacher (with a master’s in special education) in Chevy Chase and the next morning, he sent a dozen red roses to her classroom. Their first date was in February 1986 and they were married eight months later.

“From the very beginning, what Doug said attracted him to me, I never cut him any quarters. I treated him like any other human being. The first time we went out to meet his parents and got off the plane, his father tried to take Doug’s suitcase. I turned to Russell and said, ‘No, Doug can do it.’ He was a loyal friend and one of the best fathers I’ve ever known. If you put a baby in his arms, he would go all goo-goo face.”

Kirsten Slotten is a senior vice president with Weber Shandwick, a public relations and marketing firm, in San Francisco. Her husband Alex covers the Giants for NBC Sports Bay Area (with Alex’s baseball background, he bonded immediately with Doug, a lifelong Cardinals fan). She wrote her college admissions essay for entry to New York University on what it was like growing up with a dad who is blind.

“He wasn’t defined by what happened to him,” she said, “he never let that impact how he approached life. He gave his best at everything he did, whether with the FCC or raising us. He was very committed to people. Growing up, his blindness was just a part of our lives. We just had to do things different – like reading signs for him at a museum or reading a menu at a restaurant.”

Dr. Chelsi Slotten is employed by Sage Publications, an academic publisher of books, journals and digital library resources, out of its London office but working remotely from Edinburgh, Scotland, where she lives with husband Guy Taylor, a software engineer and native Scot. She has a PhD in anthropology with a specialization in archaeology from American University in Washington.

“He was the absolute best dad,” she said. “He was there for every ballet recital, riding competition, graduation, help with homework, answering tax questions as we got older, there to bounce ideas off of for potential PhD work (he even read along some of my course books with me so we could discuss), etc. If we needed something he was there for it. He was also just great to hang out with. Every year for his birthday (a delayed present because of the season), we would go to a Nats game, although he was a lifelong Cardinals fan. For his 70th birthday my sister and I took him to Busch Stadium in St. Louis for a couple games because he'd never been to the park. We did two games and a trip to the Cardinals museum. Walking through the museum we would describe to him what the objects were and read signs and 95% of the time he had a story to go with the object we were talking about.”

One of his best friends, Paul Onerheim, of Lake Stevens, Wash., believes Slotten’s name should be included on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington. He believes the prostate cancer that took Slotten’s life “was likely caused by exposure to the defoliant Agent Orange while serving in Vietnam. The risk of prostate cancer is almost doubled for those who served in Vietnam, including a 75% increase in high-risk, aggressive forms of the disease.”

“Doug lived a positive, productive life under circumstances others would say were difficult,” Onerheim added. “Others in Doug’s situation would have given up 50 years ago. Not Doug. Doug was blessed to be a blessing. Rest in peace, my dear friend. Your work is done.”

One of Fort Dodge's most popular family-owned restaurants is up for sale, but it comes with a price beyond dollars.

At the Tom Thumb Drive In, Kirk Cairney vows to make sure the high standards for food and customer-friendly service set by his father are maintained by whomever might purchase the 52-year-old restaurant.

“It’s been up for sale for almost three years. We’ve had a lot of people come and look,” he said. “I would want them to continue to go with our traditions. It would be foolish to come in and change the menu. Or to change our commitment to customer service. I believe we’re successful because of what we do and how we do it.”

Meanwhile, Cairney, 57, has no intention of letting up on the gas – despite the long hours (4 a.m. to 1-2 p.m., six days a week) and staffing challenges that come with the territory in the only job he’s ever had since joining the family business right out of high school.

“When my father died,” he said, “people asked what was going to happen to Tom Thumb. Nothing is going to change. We were here yesterday, we are here today, we’ll be here tomorrow. I have every intention of doing what my father had done, find someone to run the business.”

The restaurant, located on the city’s west side, across US Highway 169 from Iowa Central Community College, is open from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week, serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. It has a loyal customer following. And a huge “alumni association” of hundreds who worked there as part-timers over the years, learning the value of customer service and hard work.

In a review of Tom Thumb a year ago, Raymond Goldfield, a travel writer for the web site, “Only in Your State,” wrote:

“The old-school drive-in is far from dead in Iowa, and heading to Fort Dodge will uncover one of the best out there. The Tom Thumb Drive-In has been operating since the 1950s, with some regulars proudly announcing they’ve been going there for half a century or more. But unlike so many similar places, this drive-in restaurant in Iowa doesn’t limit itself to car traffic. It actually doubles as a small diner, allowing people to enjoy their meals in a charming old-school setting. The surprisingly extensive menu dishes out retro comfort food that sometimes feels like it hasn’t changed since the 1950s – but that’s part of the charm! So hop in the car, order up, and take a drip back in time at this one-of-a-kind Iowa eatery.”

Helping bring more customer traffic to the restaurant is a Dairy Queen franchise it owns and is housed in the same building, with its own in-store counter and a separate drive-thru window. “Dairy Queen is a national name,” Cairney said. “It’s a big draw.”

Tom Thumb’s “retro comfort food” mentioned by the writer includes the restaurant’s most popular menu item – chicken and noodles over mashed potatoes and gravy. “My father started that,” Cairney said, “I had never heard of it. But we sell a lot of everything – hamburgers and tenderloin sandwiches.

“We have a smoker, and we smoke all our own products. My father started doing the smoking years ago, and I took it over 15 years ago. I’m in at 4 in the morning to get it started. So many people tell us our ribs are the best they’ve ever had. We also smoke ribs, brisket, pork loin, pulled pork, brats. We used to use apple wood, but now we use cherry and hickory to smoke everything. The seasoning we use was made by Jim Ertl, who worked with my father.”

Ertl created his “Ertl Famous Seasoning” in 1959 and it remains in use today (minus the paprika) for all of Tom Thumb’s meat menu items – as well as his recipe for beef gravy. Ertl – who Kirk Cairney said was a “great chef” - now lives in Webster City.

Tom Thumb’s roots trace to Kirk’s father Tom Kearney – a pioneer in the phenomenon of drive-through restaurants that began popping up in Fort Dodge in the 1950s and ‘60s.

In 1959, he left his job in sales with Farner-Bocken Wholesale Tobacco Co. to purchase Bohan Drug at First Avenue North and Eighth Street and create Tom’s Lunch, which he owned and operated for six years. (“You could buy 13 or 15 burgers for a dollar, legend has it,” Kirk said.) In 1965 Tom purchased Henry’s Hamburgers on Second Avenue South and built a second Henry’s Hamburgers at the Crossroads Mall (in a building where Ja-Mar Drive In restaurant is now located).

He built Tom Thumb Drive In in 1971 and owned and operated it until his death in 2018 at the age of 89. He owned or had partial ownership in numerous other businesses including Henry’s Hamburgers in Des Moines and in Emporia, Kansas, Tom Thumb Deli, Tom Thumb catering, three Dairy Queen’s and two P & P Convenience Stores. He purchased the Villager – which was the original Colonial Inn - with Jim Ertl in 1978. Two years later, Ertl and Cairney built the Colonial Inn/Bank Shot and operated it until 1998 when it was destroyed by a fire. They also managed the food service cafeteria at Iowa Central Community College for eight years.

Tom Cairney and his wife of 65 years, Phyllis, donated to Iowa Central Community College in 2011 the land on which the Colonial Inn once stood. The college is now building a 9,200-square-foot fuel testing laboratory on the site that includes land also donated by Caseys General Stores. Groundbreaking took place July 17.

Phyllis Cairney, who is 90, continues to live in the family home just north of Fort Dodge.

Perhaps the most important legacy of Tom Cairney, one that his son works to keep alive, was his impact on people. From Tom’s obituary: “Tom influenced countless people through his Tom Thumb Family. He was a role model, father figure and mentor. He taught customer service and hard work, while helping young people to become responsible adults.”

There’s a tie between Tom Thumb and Ja-Mar Drive In, another popular Fort Dodge family-owned restaurant. Tom Cairney and Jim Jordison were partners in opening the Henry’s restaurant at 2nd Avenue South and 3rd Street, Kirk said. Jim opened Ja-Mar in 1971 at the same time Tom opened Tom Thumb, and today Ja-Mar is operated by Jim’s son, Jerry.

“We’ve always been friends,” Kirk said. “Our businesses still work together from time to time. We’ve always been that way. We’re very similar restaurants. Our fathers worked together, now their sons run their businesses.”

Kirk Cairney started working for his father when he was 12, washing dishes at the Colonial Inn – which once stood in what is now a parking lot of Tom Thumb on its north side.

The day after he graduated on a Sunday in 1984 from St. Edmond High School, Kirk was at work at Tom Thumb the next day and has been in the business since. His brother Kevin and sister Kris also worked for their father. Kevin was night manager at Tom Thumb and then ran the Tom Thumb Deli on Fifteenth Street until 1989. Kris now lives with her family in Urbandale and Kevin lives with his family in Altoona.

Kirk worked at Tom Thumb for two years, joined the food service enterprise across the highway at Iowa Central for three years, then returned to Tom Thumb in 1989.

“Restaurant work is hard work,” he said. “Someone once mentioned to me, it must be so hard to work for your father since his standards are so high. My standards are through the ceiling. But those standards are hard to maintain anymore.”

Like most restaurant owners, Cairney is challenged by a shortage of staff – Tom Thumb employs 45-55 people in full-time and part-time roles. The shortage was most acute during the covid outbreak three years ago.

“About 20 percent of our employees are 14 or 15 years old,” he said. “It’s a challenge to work with them. It’s fun to work with them when they really want to work. I’ve learned to be a lot more patient with them than I had been, and I think that comes from having grandchildren.”

Cairney has a daughter, Amanda, a school teacher who lives in Greenwood, Ind., and three stepsons from an earlier marriage – Austen, Zach and Tyler – and grandchildren Hayden, Ava and Orth.

Two of an original group of four from Tom Cairney’s management days are still at the restaurant. Kirk Moore is day manager of Tom Thumb’s and has been with the company 38 years.

Mike Chardoulias was night manager for 39 years until his death a year ago. He had worked in his family’s business, the Melody Grill, from the age of 9 until it closed in 1982 when he joined Tom Thumb. Kevin Parks was Tom Thumb’s bakery manager, making all of its breads and buns which were once sold to a dozen other businesses. He died Aug. 19.

“All of us, we had an extremely high work ethic,” Cairney said. “All became successful through the restaurant. Kirk Moore and I survive, two old dogs in the building. When we were hired, we didn’t ask what we were going to do, what our pay would be. You just showed up, never questioned it, you just did it.”

Cairney said he is still looking for a baker and an assistant manager. The restaurant sports a large menu – with about 30 meat dishes alone – and still makes and sells pies and rolls.

Most restaurants in Fort Dodge these days belong to chains, Cairney said, adding, “It’s hard to be a little guy in a big guy’s world.

“But we’ve survived. It’s kind of like the old television show ‘Cheers’ where everyone knows your name. I think of Tom Thumb in that way. It’s kind of like a small community…we know so many of the families. It’s amazing how many families keep coming in. It’s the Tom Thumb Family. The seasoning we still use was made by Jim Ertl from my father’s days. There is a little more personality and person-to-person touch than in a corporate setting.

“I’d like Tom Thumb to never go away. It’s a unique business.”

By PAUL STEVENS

Daryl Beall has been a teacher, a businessman, a newspaperman, a state senator, a political activist and a community volunteer – and a world traveler who has visited all 50 states and more than 50 countries in all seven continents.

But he stays close to home now, working to get his life back.

That life was changed dramatically on a cold day last January when he unexplainably collapsed and fell flat on his face outside Trinity Regional Medical Center in Fort Dodge on his way to a doctor’s appointment. He was taken by ambulance to Iowa Methodist Medical Center in Des Moines. “The first day, we didn’t know if he would make it, he was so far gone,” said his wife, Jo Ann.

“After my initial fall I didn’t know people, even my family, for a few days,” said Beall, whose face was heavily bruised and lacerated. “I gradually regained my memory. I participated in speech therapy, physical therapy and occupational therapy first in Des Moines and then at Trinity in Fort Dodge.”

In April, he experienced another fall in the home of one of the Bealls’ children in San Antonio, Texas, and landed on the back of his head. About 30 hours later, “I suddenly did not know people and was very confused,” he said. He was taken by ambulance to Methodist Hospital where he spent four weeks as doctors administered tests that ruled out a stroke, brain bleeding, heart issues – “basically what they could test for,” Jo Ann said. Beall regained his senses and renewed his therapy there for about three weeks.

Hours upon hours of speech, physical and occupational therapies and numerous doctors’ appointments later, and with the loss of 35 pounds, he is back home with Jo Ann working with weights and exercise equipment and trying to get his life back. Jo Ann helps him keep up with medications. He is steadied by a cane and walker and is not able to drive a car or ride a bike, one of his passions. “He cannot fall again,” she said. “A lot of damage could be done with another fall.”

He works to keep positive through the health setbacks and uncertainty facing him, characteristic of the optimism for life that the 76-year-old Beall has possessed since his early years growing up in the small community of Somers in Calhoun County.

“My family and friends have been very, very, very supportive,” Beall said. “I have no memory of anything that happened to me in Fort Dodge, before they took me by ambulance to Des Moines. My doctors are dumbfounded, they couldn’t trace it to anything. When it happened again in San Antonio, they couldn’t discover anything either.

“I hope it is something I can put in the past. At first, I was demoralized, and I still am a bit. But I feel fine, I’m OK with it. I still want to travel. I’ve enjoyed so much of life. I’ve accomplished so much but I still want to do more.

“I want to meet more people who look different than my own reflection in the mirror.”

Jo Ann added: “Family and friends have been great. They’ll call me and offer to sit with him if I need to get away. With our friends, I say thank you, but you have enough on your own plate at home. Now people will call taking him out to eat.”

Jo Ann Hasty Beall has been his rock since they met at Iowa Central Community College in 1965 – she a graduate of Fort Dodge Senior High and he a graduate of Cedar Valley High School in Somers. They were married at the Little Brown Church near Nashua, Iowa, on March 24, 1968.

Beall is the last survivor of the four sons born to Marjorie and Wayne Beall. His father was a rural mail carrier in the Somers area, then worked for Iowa-Illinois Gas and Electric before returning to the Postal Service in Washington, D.C., in 1968. His mother worked in the Somers school system and while in Washington, at Marine Corps headquarters. They returned to Fort Dodge in 1980. Their oldest son Jerry was born in 1933 and died six months later of spinal bifida. Michael was a pilot who died in 1963 in a plane crash in Fort Dodge. Stanley was born in Washington and worked as a teacher, school safety officer and correctional officer; he died in November 2022.

Losing his brother Michael was one of the most difficult moments of his life, Beall said.

“Michael was teaching me to fly, and we flew around Central Iowa and that night he was the pilot of a Piper Tri-Pacer and he and three other young people crashed and were killed near the Fort Dodge airport because fog closed in. The plane crashed in the woods where the Gunderson Funeral Homes is now located,” Beall said. “I lost my brother, buddy, flight instructor and friend. I was 16 and he was 21. I identified his body by what he was wearing. My parents had four sons and buried two of them. Mom always said it is natural and normal to bury your parents but not your children.”

Jo Ann suffered a similar family tragedy when in February 1968, her sister Susie died in an auto crash in northeast Missouri that also took the life of longtime Fort Dodge Community College social studies instructor Ralph Gosmire. Several other students were injured as Gosmire was driving them to a Model United Nations function in St. Louis.

After graduating from Iowa Central, then called Fort Dodge Community College, Beall joined the Peace Corps and was destined for assignment to Ecuador but left it when he failed Spanish language requirements. He attended the University of Northern Iowa for a year, then transferred to Buena Vista University where he received a bachelor’s degree in 1969. He taught political science courses at Urbandale High School where he earned the Freedom Foundation Teacher’s Medal. Beall was a Taft Fellow at Macalester College in Saint Paul and earned a Master of Public Administration degree from Drake University.

The Bealls returned to Fort Dodge where he managed Furniture World, owned by Jo Ann’s father, Dale Hasty, who had opened Carpet World and Furniture World, and then Drapery World and Paint World, all at the corner of Sixth Street and First Avenue South. Beall managed Furniture World from 1974 until 1984 and was twice elected to the Fort Dodge school board.

It closed when Beall was named general manager of The Hometown Register in Fort Dodge, a publication of The Des Moines Register. He was with the Register when he was named the first grants manager of the Gannett Foundation and was on the board of Downtown Des Moines, Inc. He was then named editor and publisher of the Register’s weekly newspaper, The Record-Herald and Indianola Tribune where he stayed for five years.

Jo Ann worked at Furniture World for her father, managing properties. She earned a BA and teaching certificate from Simpson College when they lived in Indianola. She worked in human services in Canon City, Colo., and Huron, S.D., where Daryl was engaged in newspaper work. Upon returning to Fort Dodge, she was the case management supervisor for Webster County.

“I have never ever regretted returning — coming home — to Fort Dodge,” Beall said. “The support I’ve received since my falls has been very affirming.”

In 2002, Beall, a Democrat, was elected to the first of three four-year terms as an Iowa State Senator in Senate District 5, which now serves Calhoun, Humboldt, Pocahantas and Webster counties.

During his years in the Senate, Beall chaired the Veterans Affairs Committee and International Relations Committee and was vice chair of the Transportation (policy) Committee and the Transportation (appropriations) Committee. He was an active member of the Education Committee and served as a member of the Education Commission of the States, an interstate compact. He was also finance chair of the Midwest Passenger Rail Commission, also an interstate compact.

Beall said that among his proudest moments in the Senate were working to pass autism legislation, getting a veterans bill passed as a freshman senator in the minority and successfully working in a bipartisan manner to pass legislation to create a four-lane Highway 20.

He ran for a fourth term in the 2014 general election but lost to Tim Kraayenbrink, a Republican, who continues in the office and is seeking another term in the 2024 elections.

Beall’s proudest moment?

“Family. Being married to Jo Ann for 55 years and producing three successful children, 11 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.”

Their children are: Lora Sue Beall and her husband Steve Sink, of Cedar Falls, and their children Lydia, Christopher, Paul, Theo and Joe; Scott Beall and his wife Kim, of Huxley, and their children Jace, Drew and Lily, and Christen Beall and her husband Col. Paul Fredin, of Lackland AFB, San Antonio, and their children Katen, William and Luke. They have two great-grandchildren, Everett Alexander Gowey and Graham Christopher Sink.

He currently serves on the boards of Fort Dodge Sister Cities (Kosovo) and Iowa Sister States. He also serves on the Webster County ISU Extension Council and is a longtime member of the Fort Dodge Kiwanis Club.

He returned to Kiwanis earlier this week to the applause of its members and mention in the invocation by its president, Rev. Scott Meier, pastor at Badger Lutheran Church. He got a standing ovation days earlier when he returned to his first Democratic Central Committee meeting since the falls.

Beall is also a longtime member of an informal group calling itself the Urban Tribe. The group of 12-15 friends, formed in 1998, meets every Tuesday night for dinner at various restaurants. One of the group’s members, Nedra Conrad, said she has known Beall for at least 20 years.

“He has the knack for meeting people and staying friends with people, communicating well,” Conrad said. “I have a grandson who was deep into politics in high school. Daryl encouraged him, believing it’s good to encourage kids to get into politics. Now, that grandson is in his third year of law school at Iowa, very interested in politics, and I think Daryl had a role in this.”

In November, Beall will return to Methodist in Des Moines to see a neurologist and rehabilitation physician, with plans to undergo a neuropsychological testing that is an in-depth assessment of skills and abilities linked to brain function.

As to the future and travel, “I accept who and what I am and am very happy with what I accomplished. I think it’s not likely, but I want to go to the -Stans (in Central Asia) and Southeast Asia. But I realize where I am and who I am and I’m OK…but there are still places I would like to go see. I want to do more, but I know I won’t live forever.”

By PAUL STEVENS

Back in the day, there were three family-owned jewelry businesses on Central Avenue – Wicker, Kirkberg and Olson – all

mainstays of a then-vital downtown Fort Dodge retail scene that even included stores open for Monday night shopping.

Any day now, the last of the three to survive – Wicker Jewelry – will take down its signage at the northeast corner of Seventh and Central – across the street from the Webster County Courthouse – and close its doors for good when a sale of its inventory is completed. With it comes the end of an era.

“We decided it was time – we’re in the process of going out of business,” said Marilyn Simonson, who with her husband, Gary, operated the full-service store they purchased in 1984 from Lew and Lorene Wicker. “We will miss a lot of the friendships we made with people who were our customers. We met so many kind people along the way.

“We thought about selling the store to new owners, but wanted to leave the store in good standing with all of our loyal customers so ultimately decided closing the store was the best way to go.”

Just days after the Wickers announcement was made, Kirkberg Connections – operated by Cary Kirkberg Estlund and her husband Steve – ended its business operations that began after the Kirkberg Jewelers retail store at Sixth and Central closed its doors in 2000.

They placed an ad in The Messenger that read: “Thank you! On behalf of Steve and myself and the whole Kirkberg family – all three generations. We have enjoyed working and being part of this community. We will be moving soon to enjoy the next chapter in our lives and will be closer to our daughters and their families. Cary & Steve.”

Olson Jewelry closed operations in December 2005. It was founded in 1922 and in business for 83 years.

Rare is the Fort Dodge shopper who has lived in the city for the past 50 years who doesn’t have a jewelry keepsake box in her or his possession emblazoned with the name of one of the three stores. Or a clock or watch or ring or piece of jewelry purchased – or repaired – at one of the three stores.

The Kirkberg name appeared on the Fort Dodge shopping scene when H.C. Kirkberg purchased in 1927 a well-established store at 812 Central from Mack Hurlbut that had opened its doors in 1888. H.C. came to Fort Dodge to work for Hurlburt. It was renamed Kirkberg Jewelers and was a downtown institution until it closed on June 1, 2000. (In 1968, it moved next door to 814 Central and in 1984, the store moved to 615 Central, where it remained for its final 16 years.)

H.C.’s son Bob succeeded his father as owner in 1969. Bob’s daughter Cary and her husband Steve Estlund took ownership in 2000 and founded Kirkberg Connections which took on a format significantly different from a standard walk-in jewelry store. Its focus, Cary said, was to work with customers to find the jewelry solution for their situation. It specialized in diamond and gemstone purchases, custom design and redesign of jewelry, jewelry repairs and restorations and appraisals.

Cary Estlund called the experience of closing Connections – and ending the Kirkberg’s long history in the city – “very bittersweet. But what lies ahead, I’m just so excited for it, I can hardly stand it.” She and Steve have sold their home at Twin Lakes and move this fall to Lee’s Summit, Missouri, a Kansas City suburb, to be closer to their daughter Carly, her husband Tommy Gavin and their children. The Estlunds’ daughter Lauren, married to Chris Coleman, lives in Springfield, Illinois, and daughter Maria, married to Austin Bockwinkel, lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

What will she miss most?

“Making people happy,” she replied. “There’s nothing better… bring out a diamond ring, it could be anything. They smile, they cry, they laugh, I will miss that a lot. I literally had people coming in all day long, at the store and with Connections. People would come in, maybe wearing grandma’s wedding ring, and tell you they bought it from your grandpa or from your dad.

“My siblings and I grew up working in the store, when we were 8, 9, 10 – making bows going on packages, wrapping presents so it was always part of our life. Then when we got to high school we did Christmas seasons, some summers. Whenever they needed someone on a Saturday, one of us would be there to work.”

Her older brother Bruce Kirkberg and his wife, Gay, live in Davenport and her older sister Lynne (Stellmach) and her husband, Dean, live in Tempe, Arizona.

Olson Jewelry was founded in 1922 by Oscar Olson, a watchmaker, and was located at 903 Central. It was rebuilt next door in 1982 after two fires in an adjoining building. Future owners Lloyd Hambleton and Karl Johnson began working there part-time in the early 1940s while still in high school. Their wages were $5 a week.

During the 1960s, Hambleton and Johnson went through old newspapers deciding to offer customers a diamond ring off the same ad Oscar Olson had used in the 1920s. Strangely enough, the offer received little attention. Karl owned the store at the time it closed.

Paulette Heddinger of Fort Dodge was a longtime (20 years) employee of Olson Jewelers. Her duties included sales, ordering merchandise, engraving, window dressings – “Everybody worked well together. I got the pleasure of working with Fran Byrne and Rose Lunn. Beth Quinn was a longterm employee. We were a family, a big old happy family. Most have passed on. Others I remember are Yvonne Pullen, Jan Haugen, Darlene Nielsen, Lois Stratmoen. Drexel Peterson, who worked at KVFD radio, did clock repair. When the store closed, Jean Hutchinson and Nancy Axness were working there.”

Another with Olson Jewelers roots is Marty Pickett, who worked there several years until it closed in December 2005 and then came to work at Wickers. She said she was saddened that Wickers will soon close its doors.

“I will miss the customers. It will be really sad that last day, when we open the doors for the last time,” she said.

Marilyn Simonson had worked for Wicker Jewelry for more than 10 years prior to purchasing the store from Lew and Lorene Wicker in 1984. She had been an assistant manager until their retirement.

Lew Wicker, a World War II infantryman, became involved in watchmaking after being influenced by his cousin, Ralph Wicker, who had owned the store since 1932. Lew bought the store in 1960 from Ralph and renamed it Wicker Jewelry.

The Gamble Store fire in June 1960 wiped out the jewelry store and forced it to move. It was located elsewhere on Central Avenue for about six years before settling into its current location at 700 Central Ave. The building Wicker occupies was built in 1882 and was once a Commercial National Bank.

Marilyn Simonson started working at Wicker in 1962 for a few years and then left to become a stay-at-home mother before returning to work in 1977.

Once the Simonsons bought Wicker Jewelry, they decided to keep the name the same as they already had loyal customers and didn’t want people to think it was a different store.

“We thought it was best to keep everything the same,” Marilyn Simonson said.

“I learned from Mr. Wicker that we treat people as we would want to be treated if we came into the store and that’s true with any business,” she said. “if they make an attempt to walk in your door, that’s what counts.”Wicker Jewelry was a family affair for the Simonsons. Gary was involved with bookkeeping and engraving. Their son, Brant, did repair work and their daughter Lynn (Zeka), a veterinarian, worked summers while attending high school and college. Their oldest son Eric is county attorney for Wright County and lives in Belmond. Gary and Marilyn have seven grandchildren.

A member of the Wicker family is still involved in the jewelry business, but not in Fort Dodge. Sherri Schwaller and her husband Steve operate Royal Jewelers in Jefferson. She is the daughter of Dwaine Wicker, Lew’s brother, and worked summers at Wicker Jewelry in Fort Dodge while in high school and college.

On July 24, Wicker Jewelry was honored at a meeting of the Fort Dodge city council, which proclaimed the day “Wicker Jewelry Recognition Day.” Mayor Matt Bemrich presented a mayoral proclamation to Marilyn and Gary Simonson and their daughter and her family.

“Whereas,” the proclamation concluded, “after years of dedicated service, Marilyn Simonson has decided to enjoy the fruits of her hard work, and close her store so she can start enjoying retirement this summer.”

By Paul Stevens

As long as sunsets and sunrises are part of our world, memories of Tom Tierney and how he captured them so spectacularly with his cameras will remain with his family and friends and the thousands who found pleasure in his work.

Tierney was many things in his 71 years, 3 months and 28 days on earth – a son, a husband, a father of three, an environmentalist, a technology specialist – before an apparent heart attack took his life May 15 at his home in rural Rutland, seven miles northwest of Humboldt.

But his passion was photography – and while the sunrises and sunsets he captured with his 35mm digital cameras were spectacular, he also took photos of silos and barns, old buildings, dams, often silhouetted by the sun.

“He was into photography before I knew him,” said Jackie Tierney, his wife of 32 years, who often accompanied him on photo expeditions around Humboldt County and adjacent areas in their maroon Volvo S60 sedan. When Tom made solo trips, it was in his Volvo V70 station wagon named Clifford (which at the time of his death was in the shop, getting repaired for his next journey).

“He once had a darkroom and everything for film cameras,” she said. “Photography was always his huge passion, kind of a security blanket. Both of us were a bit socially awkward – at our wedding rehearsal, he had big camera around his neck to calm his nerves.”

His horizons expanded thanks to a barn cat named Annie.

“For a few years, we lived near New Virginia, Iowa,” Jackie said. “There was this barn cat he really liked, and he started posting on Facebook cute pictures of Annie, who we still have. She lives in our garage and is 9 or 10 years old. Annie followed him around outside. He got a lot of comments – people would ask for new photos of Annie. So Tom randomly started posting pictures, and pretty soon it became a daily event. It kind of became an obsession in the last few years. Anywhere we went always had his camera in his pocket.

“He didn’t do photography to make a profit, he did it for his love of people, preserving history, the need to care for people. He used to say to me all the time, always let the other guy be the jerk. There were many, many sides to him. He was always happy that he will be known forever as a photographer.”

Tierney was born in Fort Dodge, the only child of Iva (Fisher) and Francis Tierney. His mother worked as a court reporter and his father was an attorney who served as a state representative from 1951 to 1953 and as a magistrate and juvenile judge.

Tierney graduated from Fort Dodge Senior High School in 1970, earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Iowa State University in Ames and joined Fort Dodge Laboratories as an IT specialist. When attending an environmental meeting, he met Jacqueline Piersel. He asked her out for dinner while they were on a Sierra Club hike.

“Neither of us had dated anyone else before we met,” Jackie said. “I guess it was meant to be. He was in data processing at Fort Dodge Labs and I was in vaccine research. Both of us were total nerds.”

They married on Sept. 22, 1990, and started a family – two girls and a boy. Katherine Tierney lives in Humboldt and works at Trinity Regional Medical Center in Fort Dodge as a pharmacist. Allen Tierney and his wife, Erin, live in Ames where Allen works in IT for Iowa State University. Mary Tierney lives in Rutland and works for Signet Jewelers in application development.

The family moved from Fort Dodge to an acreage near Rutland in 2002. After about 30 years with Fort Dodge Labs, Tierney joined Wells Fargo Bank in 2013 and was a project manager, working from home, and employed by Wells Fargo at the time of his death.

When he was growing up in his parents’ home, Tierney had a darkroom in the basement – digital photography was still years away and the darkroom was where he processed his film and made prints from the images. He also had a darkroom after getting married, and son Allen remembers that it was the one room in the basement that the kids were ordered to stay out of.

“My dad was a kind, soft-spoken guy and I think people will remember that, too,” Allen said. “I think he would like to be remembered for all the things he did in the community and all he did to help. He would use photography as a tool to help people as well.”

Among the many recipients of Tierney’s photographic talents were the Humboldt County Memorial Hospital (where his photos grace its hallways), St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Humboldt (where he was a member of the choir) and the Humboldt County Historical Society where he would work to restore old negatives and photos. The Humboldt Library has a wall dedicated to displaying Tierney’s work.

Rarely a day would go by when Tierney didn’t take at least one photo, especially at the beginning and the end of a day. Photographers call the hour before sunset and the hour after sunrise as Golden Hours, when the natural light emitted by the sun is more directional and softer. Jackie recalled: “Sometimes he would awaken early and I’d find a note by the coffee pot, ‘Chasing a sunrise, Love, Tom.'”

Not many structures escaped his lens, she said – silos, old barns, country churches and more.

“The Rutland dam was absolutely his favorite thing to photograph,” she said. “It’s in Rose Mill Park in the city of Rutland, right along the Des Moines River.”

A selection of his best photos from Humboldt County was included in a calendar Tierney produced at cost, beginning for the year 2019 through the year 2023, and was sold at V&S Variety Store in Humboldt. Allen Tierney said there are plans afoot to produce a calendar with his dad’s photos for the year 2024.

Tierney’s photo work spanned far more than Facebook, although the social media site provided him a worldwide audience.

He posted his last Facebook photo two days before his death – it showed wind turbines in stormy weather south of Pocahontas. That day, Jackie said, “We decided to go over and do some storm spotting as weather was another interest. Since these storms were slow-moving, we decided it would be fairly safe and easy to stay clear of any dangerous weather and we were hoping to spot (and of course, he photograph) a funnel or tornado on the ground. He did take several photos while we were over there including the one he posted.”

When the sad news of his death became known, the Humota Theater in Humboldt posted on its marquee: “Tom. ThankU 4 beautiful memories.” Tierney had served on the board of the historic, nonprofit movie house.

News of his death was posted quickly on Facebook and Amanda Friedl, of Humboldt County, shared: “So many beautiful photos and memories of Tom Tierney in this thread, I encourage you all to scroll through and be uplifted at the beauty of our world. Tom was a man who could see beauty in the normal and share it in a way that made everyone pause and notice it more. What a gift to a busy world. He will be missed.”

Longtime friend Bill Witt, of Cedar Falls, wrote: “Thank you, Old Friend, for sharing with us your relationship to what is beautiful. It carried you to the end. We walked with you in beauty.'”

He added: “Tom and I became friends over 40 years ago, and I think fondly of the times we crawled through prairies and clambered up wooded ravines together. He was an unassuming person, of deep humanity, but with a delightful, gently droll sense of humor. And he grew into a masterful photographer. The north central Iowa landscape is the most overlooked region of our state, but Tom shows us its great and subtle beauty in images that are quietly and spiritually revelatory.”

Tierney’s family is planning to sponsor an exhibition of his photos at the Historical Society sometime in the fall.

Tom Tierney, photographer, is how he will be remembered, Jackie Tierney said, and that suits her just fine, adding with a smile:

“When I’d be in Humboldt, quite often people I didn’t know would come up to me and ask me if I was ‘the photographer’s wife’ and tell me how much they loved his photos. I was always proud of that and always told him when I had that happen and of course he was always very flattered to hear they liked his photos.”

His daughter, Mary, hopes the legacy of the gentle soul that was her father will continue.

“I know what we are all thinking,” she said. “The world is going to be a colder place without him. Except it doesn’t have to be. Just think, if one person could have this big of an impact on so many people by simply doing the right thing, what could happen if thousands of people did? If we all take some time to try to be more like him, the world could be a much warmer place. Make sure your neighbors are OK. Check on your friends. Smile. Don’t think twice about helping someone who needs food. Go out and take pictures at parades, school activities, the sunset or sunrise, a fun tree you see, birds, flowers, an old building, etc.. There are pictures everywhere if you just look for them.

“Get involved in nature conservation. Fight for the land to be protected and fight for the bees. Get involved in local activities. Support the community and the history around it.

“Why? Because that is what he did and it is the right thing to do. This is the way to let his memory truly live on forever. We can carry his kindness on through each other. We can help him change the world.”

By Paul Stevens

The High Bridge — it’s a Fort Dodge landmark that has never missed a day of work in 120 years. And it shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

At least two to three times a day, a freight train travels at 10 mph across the single-track railroad bridge that spans the Des Moines River and a neighborhood 182 feet below. The bridge has carried hundreds of thousands of trains since it was constructed in 1902-03 at a cost of $450,000 — equivalent to $11.4 million in today’s dollars.

Built by the Mason City & Fort Dodge Railway (which was then operated by the Chicago Great Western Railway) and now owned by the Union Pacific Railroad, the bridge is one of the highest and longest in the country. In Iowa, it is second only in height to the Kate Shelley High Bridge three miles west of Boone — which is a year older, 3 feet higher, but now retired when it was replaced in 2009 by a concrete bridge right next to it.

No retirement is in sight for this bridge.

“In fact, we replaced all the ties on it in 2020. Yes, that’s correct. We replaced all the ties on it in 2020,” said Robynn Tysver, a spokesperson for Union Pacific at its Omaha headquarters.

She said the High Bridge and all Union Pacific bridges are inspected twice a year.

Don Heddinger, a Fort Dodge railroad man for 44 years until his retirement from Union Pacific in 2014, said he traversed the Fort Dodge High Bridge thousands of times during his career.

“What has always impressed me about the High Bridge is that the one-half-mile of steel that’s still standing across that river valley today was forged in factories that were built in the late 1800s,” he said. “They made things to last and it was made in the good ol’ U S of A.

“Think of all the violent storms that thing has withstood and the thousands of trains and the millions of tons of cargo that has crossed it, and she’s still standing just as strong as it was 120 years ago. I bet most people never give that bridge a second glance, if they even look at it once, as they drive across the hospital bridge, but I do.”

The bridge’s beginnings trace to 1886 when the Mason City and Fort Dodge Railway began construction on a 72-mile line between the two cities. The route served as a diagonal railroad in an area otherwise dominated by a gridline rail network. It was expanded in 1903 when another 133 miles was built towards Council Bluffs. The line served as the quickest way between Mason City and Council Bluffs.

The Mason City & Fort Dodge Line was merged into the Chicago Great Western Railway in 1941. The rail line’s last passenger train ran from Omaha, through Fort Dodge, to St. Paul, Minnesota., on Sept. 29, 1965. Three years later, the Chicago Great Western Railway merged into the Chicago & North Western Railway on July 1, 1968. The Chicago and North Western Railway was acquired by the Union Pacific Railroad on June 23, 1995.

The rationale for construction of the High Bridge was to avoid the large grades that would otherwise be required in Fort Dodge.

Construction began in 1902 with the American Bridge Co. of New York in charge of building the superstructure, Bates and Rogers Construction Co. of Chicago the substructure, Kelly-Atkinson Construction Co of Chicago with its erection, and H.C. Keith serving as chief engineer.

“Not a single life lost” in the construction process, according to a railroad historical brochure distributed to the public. “Most serious accident was a smashed finger.”

The bridge was considered a significant engineering achievement. The west approach consists of 11 spans, resting on large steel towers, and is an uphill climb. The east approach consists of 19 spans of the same design.

The four main spans of the bridge are massive Baltimore Deck Trusses, significant as a relatively uncommon truss design and aesthetically pleasing due to the complex geometry. These trusses consist of seven panels each, with pinned connections. The system of main spans is flanked on each end by an extremely long series of deck plate girder spans supported by steel bents of a design that are sometimes called “towers” on similar large high-level railroad bridges.

Another unique piece of the bridge is the towers on which the trusses sit. These towers rest on large stone piers below. The approach towers rest on simple stone bases.

Heddinger said that during World War II, Great Western ran passenger trains across the bridge on a daily basis between Chicago and Omaha, and also ran military troop trains as needed.

Only freight trains cross the bridge now — carrying corn, soybeans, ethanol and dried distiller grains — but Heddinger recalls the Union Pacific program called Operation Life Saver, begun in the early 1970s to promote rail safety, especially at rail crossings, that included passenger cars.

“There were fancy passenger cars and we would give free rides to the public to promote how important it is to be alert at crossings,” he said. “We would stop in the middle of the bridge to give passengers a view from both sides of the train.”

That view if you look downward is not recommended for those with a fear of heights. While Heddinger never knew of any engineers who refused to take a train over the High Bridge, he said “I knew one, back in the early ’70s, who was genuinely scared of it and never looked out the windows of the locomotive.”

Any portfolio of photos of Fort Dodge is sure to include the High Bridge. Mention it to most anyone who has lived in the city and they are likely to have a story to tell. Recalled Fort Dodge native Dennis Spurlin, who now lives in Madison, Wisconsin:

“My dad (Ed Spurlin) was supervisor of the Fort Dodge Sanitation Department for many years in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s,” Spurlin said. “He would go under the bridge frequently when he went to the landfill, which was out in Coleman District. One morning he was really shaken when he looked up and a body was hanging about 25 feet below the bridge in the middle of 11th Avenue Southwest. He came home and called the police (no cell phones in those days). The police raced to the bridge to retrieve the body and investigate the crime. They found that someone had ‘hung’ a life-sized dummy off the bridge. In this case, the dummy won!”

Bob Lentsch recalled that “when we were kids, we used to walk across it to get to Oleson Park from the Westside. If a train was coming, you had to make it to one of the step offs or beat the train to the other side. Pretty hard to do.”

Dale Hearn, who has photographed the bridge dozens of times, including the photo used with this article, said his grandmother, Sigrid Hearn, instilled a love of railroads in her kids and grandkids. Hearn worked as a lineman for Iowa Illinois Gas & Electric (later, MidAmerican Energy) for 35 years before retiring in 2009.

“Grandmother lived in the Flats below the Karl King Bridge, down the street about 10 blocks from the High Bridge,” he said. “I watched trains go over that bridge from the time I was in kindergarten. We kids would sit in her yard among the plum trees and look down the street and see part of the bridge. When I was a teenager, I got a chance to ride with the switch crews dozens of times.”

It is illegal to go walk onto the bridge and there are signs posted by Union Pacific on both ends of the bridge that say: “Private Property — No Trespassing.”

“My favorite memory is always getting to the other end,” Heddinger said with a laugh, adding, “but I was never scared to go over it. When you’re in a train up on the middle of the bridge, it’s a beautiful view looking over horizons, at the city of Fort Dodge and looking down river.

“It’s impressive, so many things about it, when they built it, the equipment they had back then, the craftsmanship and design that went into it, the fact it is still in operation today after all those years.”

by Paul Stevens April 1, 2023

Late in the 19th Century, 18-year-old Thorvald Eastvedt boarded a ship in his native Norway and crossed the Atlantic Ocean to immigrate to the United States, where he took a train from New York to Minneapolis and made his way to Fort Dodge to begin a new life.

Well over a century later, as part of a sailing excursion around the globe, his grandson Frank Larsen landed his 53-foot sailboat Sweet Dream in Brevik, Norway, to meet family members and tour the farm where his grandfather once lived.

“When we went in and anchored where granddad was born, it was so neat,” said Larsen, a third-generation Fort Dodge native who was accompanied on the 2016 journey by his now-wife Laura Larsen. “We were embraced by our relatives. They were so amazed that we had sailed from America. No USA-flagged sailing boat had ever visited there before.”

Added Laura: “Frank’s brother David Larsen flew in and joined us for the discovery of the ancestral farm, and the wonderful local folks connected us with a third cousin of Frank and Dave’s who chauffeured us all over the countryside showing us the farm Thorvald had grown up on, the bay where he had swum as a boy, and the church and graveyard in Eidanger where many relatives were resting.”

The Larsen family had come full circle – thanks to the adventurous spirit of Frank “Lars” Larsen, who emerged from the sadness of the death of his first wife Cathy to sell his businesses in Utah and begin a quest to sail around the world. Together, Frank and Laura have sailed 84,000 miles, the equivalent of circling the globe almost four times.

The story of how the family settled in Fort Dodge began back on a farm where his grandfather grew up near Kien, Norway, on a hill on the east side of the Oslo Fjord – a location assigned the family by the King.

His grandfather’s family was poor, and he was the second son, and the farm could not support him, so he left home at 14 to attend pharmacy school at Moss, Norway. He immigrated to the United States in 1891. His name in Norway was Thorvald Eastvedt but upon arriving in New York, his name was changed to Thorvald Larsen. (His father’s first name was Lars, hence Larsen.) Arriving before Ellis Island was the clearinghouse for immigrants, he traveled to Minneapolis where at a job fair for immigrants, he held up a sign saying he wanted to be a pharmacist. The owner of Oleson Drug Co. of Fort Dodge, Olaf Oleson, also a native of Norway, spotted the sign, offered him a job and Larsen moved to Fort Dodge. After a couple years, Thorvald sent for his wife in Norway, named May. They had six children, five boys – Carl, Rolf, Bob, Harold and Frank - and a girl, Helen, who died of pneumonia at the age of 6.

Four of the five boys (with the exception of Carl) settled in Fort Dodge. Bob owned a lumberyard, Rolf worked as a pharmacist and became owner of Oleson Drug Co. (at Central and Eighth Street), and Harold and Frank became physicians – both Iowa medical school graduates who started a family practice after Navy service in World War II in the South Pacific.

When the war ended, Larsen’s father disembarked in Long Beach, Calif., in 1945 and met Dorothy Spencer, a California native, at an officers’ club dance. Two weeks later, they were married – and drove to Fort Dodge to begin a new life.

The Larsens had five children – Joyce, Frank, Dave, Nancy and Laura. Joyce Foss lives in Ripon, Wis.; Dave in Nevis, Minn.; Nancy Kainz in Austin, Texas, and Laura Eimers in Spring Branch, Texas. Laura lived in Fort Dodge until three years ago.

Frank Larsen graduated from Fort Dodge Senior High in 1969. He took part in wrestling, track and football and is lifelong friends with two from his class, Bruce Edmondson and Terry Goodman, and with Bruce Jochims, who was a year older.

After two years at Cornell College, he transferred to Iowa and in 1973 earned a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering. Before his senior year, he married Cathy Kinney of Hinsdale, Ill., whom he met at Cornell. He later earned a master’s at Iowa State University.

Frank and Cathy moved to Cedar Rapids when he was hired in early 1974 by Collins Radio (which soon became Rockwell Collins). A highlight of his early career was a one-year assignment to Yugoslavia to help develop the ARC 159 airborne transceiver that years later was used in the original Top Gun movie starring Tom Cruise.

There were five with the first name of Frank in his and Cathy’s families, and as a result, to keep them straight, he became “Lars” – a nickname he is known by to this day.

Frank and Cathy had two children – Mike and Katie. Mike lives in Houston with wife Jennifer and daughter Emily and works in real estate development. Katie lives in Evanston, Wyo., with husband Jerod Dent and they have four children: Damien, Kiersten, Tristen and Collin. Katie works in food service for the school system.

Larsen was transferred to Salt Lake City to become manager of the engineering department. The facility closed and he was offered a position in Atlanta, but Cathy was undergoing a kidney transplant at the time – she had had infant diabetes since childhood – and they didn’t want to leave Salt Lake City. He resigned and started a business, Tunex – an auto repair company that soon grew to five locations.

“I sold it when she died of kidney disease in 2012,” he said. “When Cathy passed away, after 39 years of marriage, I was lost. I just had to do something different that was all-encompassing After I went to work, I was consumed by my job, raising family. They were my life. For me, that dream was buying a boat. I went on the internet and shopped around and found a boat I liked in Seattle.”

Larsen’s first experience with sailing had been on a boat owned by Bob Merryman on Lake Okoboji; Merryman was the general manager of The Messenger. “He had a 35-foot day sailer that could really move. I was hooked,” said Larsen, who also in his youth had a hobby of building and sailing model sailboats.

Larsen moved to Washington State, bought the boat, a 45-foot Morgan which he named Sail La Vie – a play on the French term c’est la vie, or “that’s life” - and that became his home at a marina in Bremerton, Wash. When he met Laura Crowell, she was living on her own boat in the same marina and working at a local hospital as an X-Ray technician. They were introduced by a mutual friend and nine months later, in 2013, he made Laura an offer he hoped she could not refuse.

“Lars told me he had bought this boat to go sailing around the world,” Laura said, “and that he thought I’d be a very good crew and asked, would you come with me? My answer to that, I have a job, a boat, and my friends and family are here. His answer to that – A, quit your job; B, sell your boat; C, your friends and family can come visit us in exotic places. It took two months for me to consider this incredible offer before I said yes.”

Laura has three children: Rachel Crowell lives in Seattle with boyfriend Brad Nissen; Nathan Crowell lives in Waxhaw, N.C., with wife Anna Crowell and their daughter Ivy, 4 weeks old; and Paul Crowell lives in Troutman, N.C.

Before embarking on their journey around the world, Frank and Laura got a first taste of ocean sailing in June 2014 with a trip to Canada, circumventing Vancouver, Wash., and sailing the north Pacific Ocean.

“We decided once we survived that, hey, OK, let’s go around the world,” Laura said.

After installing water makers and solar panels on their boat, they took off in the fall of 2014 down the western U.S. coast, to Mexico, Costa Rica, then to the west side of Panama – embarking from Panama City on a 4,200-mile sail across the South Pacific to the Marquesas Islands, a group of volcanic islands in French Polynesia. The trip took 37 days.

“We sailed the boat 24 hours a day, we never stopped,” Larsen said. “Three hours on, three hours off – we took turns doing that, 24 hours a day. It takes about 56 hours to get in the rhythm.”

Then they were off again and when they reached the Fiji Islands, they had a Larsen family reunion “in a very primitive part of the world,” Larsen said. They sailed on to New Zealand and when they hit a bad storm, they decided that a 45-foot sailboat was too small for the task. They spent six months in New Zealand.

He sold Sail La Vie and flew to Spain where he bought a 53-foot sailboat named Sweet Dream in Denia, Spain, and then sailed the Mediterranean, the Baltic and landed in Brevik, Norway, where Larsen’s brother Dave flew to join them at their grandfather’s birthplace.

In all, Frank and Laura have sailed to 115 different Islands in 45 separate countries and 9 U.S. states. Their Top 12 favorites: the Galápagos Islands; Tangier, Morocco; Moorea, French Polynesia; Musket Cove, Fiji; Magnetic Island, Australia; Whangarie, New Zealand; Cocos Keeling (island in Indian Ocean); Capetown, South Africa; Oslo, Norway; Saint Barthes (in the Caribbean); Calle Volpe, Sardinia, and Ibizia, Spain.

“The perils of life on a boat are not like it seems,” Larsen said. “We had a SAT system so mid-day I’d download weather files, making course corrections as needed. Remember, we’re sailing, so wind is a good thing. We did run into some nasty situations, but the key was reducing sail in response to conditions.

“The technical nature of sailing I find quite stimulating. With trimming sails, navigation, weather, making water and keeping the boat ship shape, life is never boring. An added benefit is the beautiful places we were able to visit.

“Water is critical, your most important commodity. We ran the water maker every other day for two hours. We ate fish at least four days a week. Catching fish in the open ocean isn’t a problem, the issue is size. We used a smaller cedar plug that yielded about the right size fish.”

The Larsens have since sailed the Atlantic Ocean three times and lived on a boat from 2014 until 2020, when they left Seattle to buy a home in Punta Gorda, Fla. They sailed 65,000 miles on Sweet Dream before selling the boat in January 2022.

After Larsen had a stroke a year ago, they came up with a new plan and last December he bought a 50-foot trawler, the Freyja, a Norseman 480 semi-displacement boat which has a 10-foot sailing dinghy, named Laura, tied to her back. Their plan is to one day purchase a 30-foot day sailing boat.

“Sailors’ plans are written in sand at low tide.” Larsen said. “Up to 10 months ago, I’d have said something different than I would today. The stroke didn’t affect my motor skills. It was a very small one and I’m still in the recovery stage. I plan on boating, but I also need to see how I recover.”

“This March, we start the Great American Loop,” Larsen said, “up the east coast, through the lock system to the Great Lakes, cruise the Great Lakes in the summer, then on the Illinois River in the fall, head into the Mississippi River into Tennessee, cut over across Tennessee and Alabama, and then down the west coast of Florida. Home by Thanksgiving. In all, 5,500 miles.”

Said Laura, who married Larsen in March 2021 on the dinner cruise boat Marco Island Princess: “I used to tell my patients – Lars got a second chance, and I am very blessed that he asked me to crew for him.”

Larsen’s lifelong friend and classmate Terry Goodman, a stage and screen actor who lives in Utah, believes his friend’s story could make a movie script: “I think this is a story of dealing with grief that so many people experience and finding love again … that it’s out there and that if you want it, it’s possible. Theirs is a lovely story.”

The Kiki Dee Band may not have known of Melanie Rosales when it sang “I’ve Got the Music in Me,” but its 1974 hit song could have well been written just for her.

When she was growing up in Kalo, a small town between Otho and Coalville, “My parents always had music going in the house – all kinds,” recalled Rosales. “Dad had Mexican stuff going, mom was into country, rock, Broadway. I knew I was obsessed by the age of 4 or 5.

“I was born with a good ear, an open musical mind, and God-given pitch. Pitch is the gift. The rest can be learned and practiced. Never ever wanted to do anything else! It never occurred to me. Whether a blessing or a curse, when I graduated from high school, I just knew I was going to be singing. It was not even an issue.”

Like a verse from the song says:

Some say that life is a circle But that ain't the way that I found it Gonna move in a straight line Keeping my feet firmly on the ground

Rosales’ “straight line” took her from Fort Dodge to Minneapolis, where during the 1980s and 1990s she sang with many of the bands that did the real 'hard gig" work of the Minneapolis rock and blues scene, including the Doug Maynard Band, T C Jammers, Lamont Cranston and Lipps Inc. of "Funkytown" fame. Rosales said she and her close group of friends - writers, players and singers - formed the core of each of these bands.

In the process she earned four Minnesota Music Awards for Best Female Vocalist. In 1984 she had a Billboard Dance Chart leading single "Addicted to the Night", with Lipps Inc. which then crossed over to the R & B charts. In 1985, her single "What You Really Want" written by Jerry Williams, was one of the Billboard top picks.

Singing with the T C Jammers, she took part in a Department of Defense tour for servicemen and servicewomen in Europe and the Azores. Rosales sang many musical jingles for companies that included Dillards, Great Clips, Hormel, Taco Bell, Land O’ Lakes, Phillips 66, McDonalds, SuperAmerica and Arby’s.

Today, she and her husband Charles “Charlie” Underbrink – a fellow member of the Fort Dodge Senior High Class of 1973 (“he was the basketball star, I was the band geek”) – split their time between homes in Park City, Utah, and Crosslake, Minn. Their daughter Piper Underbrink, 30, is a winemaker and viticulturist who owns Prive Vineyard and Winery in Newberg, Ore. She is engaged to be married next August.

And the music - well it’s still in her.

“I sing in the summer, I do at least a couple jobs every summer,” Rosales said. “There’s a really nice show venue called Crooners in Minneapolis, it’s like the old supper clubs. I did one country show with Men of Country, doing some of Loretta Lynn’s stuff, for a couple nights last summer in Minneapolis. They’re just enough to see my old friends, rehearse, laugh, carry on, and pretend like I’m 20 again.”

Keith Brown, who said Rosales has been nominated to the Iowa Rock ‘N Roll Music Association Hall of Fame where, if elected, she would join him and others from Fort Dodge, is a longtime friend who was two years ahead of her at FDSH.

“Fort Dodge has produced many great singers, songwriters and musicians but at the very top, in rarified air is where you’ll find Melanie. She’s the ‘Jewel of Fort Dodge’,” he said. “Melanie has forged her path with determination, hard work and massive talent.

“When Bonnie Raitt performed in Minneapolis last year to a sold-out crowd, she stopped 4 times to tell the crowd how lucky they were to have Melanie in their city. Pretty good recommendation, I’d say.”

In the liner notes for Rosales’ first record, Raitt wrote: "I've loved Mel's sexy, soulful voice for years and the range she's shown on her new record of terrific songs just proves her depth. Her production chops just keep getting better."

Rosales is the youngest daughter of Dolly and Ralph Rosales. Her dad, known as Rosy, operated Rosy’s Tire Service in the Crossroads Mall area. Her parents met after he returned from World War II. “My dad was born in Coffeyville, Kan., and came to Iowa because his dad, my grandfather, got a job working on the railway system in Fort Dodge,” Rosales said. Her grandfather, Lorenzo Morales, immigrated to the United States from Mexico.

Her mother and father each came from families of seven. Three of her father’s sisters survive - Shirley Nelson and Fran Rosales of Fort Dodge and Angie Fair in California. The surviving member of her mother’s family is Dr. Larry Dunscombe of Humboldt.

Rosales and her two sisters, Vicki and Kristi, were born in Fort Dodge and grew up in Kalo. Her mother worked as a beautician and today, at 92, lives in Cocoa Beach, Fla. “She’s into social media – Facebook, TikTok, Instagram - and is still driving.” Rosales’ father died about 8 years ago. Both of her sisters also live in Florida. Vicki is married to Larry Chase, who is from Otho, and they live in Rockledge with their sons Brett and Nathan. Kristi is married to Tim Abbott, who is also from Fort Dodge, and they live in Cocoa Beach with their son Ian. “Both of my sisters used to sing all the time, never professionally, but we always sang together and had fun! They both have great voices.”

“My parents were the most influential people in my career and musical path,” Rosales said. “They both equally fed my love of all types of music and never once uttered the dreaded ... When will get a real job? I had started begging them for a piano around third grade and took lessons every week until I finished my senior year.”

Rosales began singing rock, country and blues when she was 8 years old and has been perfecting her own brand of hard-driving, soulful, contemporary R & B and country sound ever since. She was given a baritone ukulele when she was 10 and played it solo for weddings, funerals and other functions.

She started getting paid for performances when she joined the Fort Dodge band Dale and The DevonAires. “Dad knew Dale Black and told him, my daughter sings, and lo and behold, I signed with them when I was 12. I would join them at a venue to sing a set of songs – one of them, ‘Stand by Your Man’. Lots of country. My dad would take me and stay there while I sang.”

One of her most memorable gigs came when she was asked to sing at a wedding near Gilmore City. “I was 16, had a car, and got caught in a freakish Iowa snowstorm. I got as far as my aunt and uncle’s farm in Gilmore City. I got in the house and called to say I was stranded. ‘Stay right there, we know where the Niemeyer farm is,’ they told me. Soon a sheriff arrived in a snowmobile and took me and my guitar to the wedding.”

The family moved into Fort Dodge, to a home on South 15th Street, when Rosales was in the seventh grade. In high school, she sang in a jazz band, The Fort Dodge Big Band, with John Groethe and Ralph Drollinger. (Groethe taught instrumental music at FDSH and Drollinger taught music at Manson High School.) She took part in high school choruses, “but not a lot of theater stuff because I was always working on weekends. It was fun – with Dale, we’d sing all country, and with the jazz group, all jazz standards. I loved it all. I got to perform for Gail Niceswanger – I loved him as a director. Fort Dodge is not a huge town, it’s a working town, but it always had exceptional art and music instructors.”

Rosales attended Iowa Central Community College from 1973-75. She sang alto as one of the 20 members of the Iowa Central Singers under J. Eugene McKinley and upon graduation, she was the soloist with the Easy Street band – composed of Neil Isaacson of Webster City, Rusty Larson of Eagle Grove and Kim Laird of Moline, Ill.

“We did the Holiday Inn and Ramada Inn circuits, including Florida and up the coast, for the next two years,” she said. “I met Olivia Newton John’s bass player at a Holiday Inn in suburban Minneapolis and he told me, ‘You’re a good singer and you should think of moving to Minneapolis.’ So, I went up and auditioned - and immediately became a waitress. I worked at O’Connell’s Pub in St. Paul, owned by two brothers, and told them, ‘I’m really a singer.’ Finally, I joined a band and got some jobs. Then everything just started happening.

“Total steady work forever…bar work and bands, six nights a week, sometimes seven. I could not do it now. I started getting jingle work – I would sing jingles during the day, then sing with bands at night. I opened for Bonnie Raitt, B.B. King, Taj Mahal many times, and I’ll never forget opening for Muddy Waters at the Union Bar in Minneapolis. It was just mind blowing.”

Although she has performed before audiences since she was 8 years old, Rosales said she still gets stage fright: “Always have, probably always will. My best friend, (Twin Cities performer) Bobby Vandell, once told me to get comfortable with your surroundings and stage for the night, look around, and BREATH! Breathing really really really works. It can calm your pounding heart. Can’t really sing with a pounding heart!”

She was performing at a Minneapolis bar when she “re-met” Charlie Underbrink, whom she had not seen since high school. The son of Earl Underbrink, once president of the First National Bank of Fort Dodge, he worked as an attorney at the time, later got into the investment business and is now a private investor.

“He came to see one of my shows and afterward, he said, ‘You remember me?’ and we started visiting,” she said. “We had both married at about the same time; his marriage went awry; my marriage went awry. We were just friends for another year before we started dating, when we were in our upper 30s.”

They were married Feb. 24, 1987, on a cruise ship, The Big Red Boat – “Married at sea while heading to the Bahamas surrounded by close family on both sides. It was a gas!”

Brown said he and his wife visited Melanie and Charlie at their Crosslake home last summer.

“We engaged in laughter, song and a taste of Charlie’s amazing bourbon catch,” he said. “Melanie engages in all musical styles, R&B, Rock, Country, Jazz with the same desire…to be the best and she always is. As Julie and I were preparing to leave, Stevie Nicks’ keyboardist Ricky Peterson was pulling in for the weekend…yep!…and he’s Melanie’s longtime friend.

“Minnesota loves to claim Melanie as their own, but Charlie and Melanie are truly ‘Iowa Nice’ and ‘Dodger Proud’!”

Asked what music means to her, Rosales replied: “EVERYTHING! Simply everything. It directed my life from the beginning. It can soothe a crying baby, silence a howling wolf, make people get up and move, provide comfort during deep sorrow, change attitudes, open minds, make you laugh! It’s very trite I know ... but music truly is the universal language.it is the great UNITER!

“I hope I have been able to touch people throughout the years to bring moments of happiness to them with my music. I could never ever give back everything that music has given to me in my lifetime.”

From the time she was afflicted with polio at the age of 4, Alyce Moss Flaherty needed crutches and a leg brace to go about what would become her life’s mission – bringing light and love to all she met.

She was armed with an indefatigable spirit and a beautiful smile that lit up any room she entered – and her’s well could have been the smile that Tony Bennett sang of in his hit song of the ’60s that began:

The shadow of your smile When you are gone Will color all my dreams And light the dawn.

“What will she be most remembered for? I think it would be her smile,” said her husband, Mick Flaherty. “She always had a beautiful smile on her face. She was the kindest person. She’d want to get to know you. She was interested in people. When the time came for her to be cared for by hospice, she had the nicest smile on her face for all the hospice people who cared for her. They prayed for her, but she was also praying for them.”

When Alyce died Jan. 31 at the age of 75, it was not polio that took her. It was breast cancer diagnosed in March 2022 that aggressively spread throughout her body. She passed away at Friendship Haven’s Simpson Health Center and hadn’t been able to walk since entering there in December.

Her daughter, Lisa Reisner, was with her on that Tuesday night when she took her last breath. Just days earlier, doctors gave Alyce and Mick and their family the news that she had only a matter of days. That night, many of the family were attending a St. Edmond Middle School basketball game in which Alyce’s grandson, Griffin Laufersweiler, was participating.

“Doctors told us Saturday night she was transitioning,” said daughter Susan Laufersweiler. “I think she didn’t want to do it (die) in front of all of us. Sure enough, Lisa was with her and we got a phone call from her right after the game ended. We got there minutes later, but she was gone. I know mom waited, she didn’t want any of us to miss the game.”

Lisa said she kept reminding her mother “how important she was” and believes she is reunited in heaven with Alyce and Mick’s son, Tim, who died suddenly in September 2021 at the age of 50. “Fly high mom, run and dance with God, Tim, your parents, in-laws and friends.

“My beautiful mother taught us so much and always instilled in us humility, not thinking less of yourself but yourself less. She lived a life of strength, perseverance and faith. She lived her life for others as a wife, mother, grandmother and friend. She was everyone’s biggest champion. If you had the pleasure to know her, she rooted for you.”

In his homily at Alyce’s funeral service at Holy Trinity Catholic Church, Msgr. Kevin McCoy couldn’t have picked a better Scripture verse to begin with than that from II Timothy 4: 6-8 16-18:

“St. Paul says, ‘The time of my dissolution is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.’ No truer words could be said of your wife, mother, grandmother, a sister and our friend, Alyce Angeline Flaherty.”

The race and the good fight for Alyce Angeline Moss Flaherty began in Inglewood, California, when she was born April 22, 1947, to Kay and Chester Moss. She had an older brother, Dick, and a younger sister, Linda. Their grandfather, Tom Moss, who owned a farm in southwest Missouri, lived with them in the Los Angeles suburb.

Dick Moss, who lives in Joplin, Missouri, said he still remembers the day in 1951 that changed the family’s lives.

“Mom and dad and Alyce, Linda and I had gone to visit a nephew of dad’s in Tolleson, Arizona (a suburb of Phoenix),” he said. “We traveled from there to Mexico to a place called Rocky Point, played on the beach for a few days, and returned to Tolleson. Alyce was sitting on the couch one night with her right leg underneath her and when it was time to go, she tried to get up and walk but she just couldn’t. That night, the pain got so bad that we took her to a hospital in Phoenix. She was immediately placed into an iron lung; she was paralyzed from the neck down.”

The polio that struck her so suddenly is a highly infectious disease, mostly affecting young children, that attacks the nervous system and can lead to spinal and respiratory paralysis, and in some cases death. It would be several years before Dr. Jonas Salk developed a vaccine that would help lead to near eradication of the disease today.

Alyce stayed in the hospital until she was strong enough that she did not need the iron lung, an artificial respirator invented for treatment of polio patients. She eventually returned to her family in California, undergoing many operations on her legs.

Recalled her sister Linda Moss, who lives in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico: “She was in a hospital, and Dick and I were not allowed to visit Alyce in the polio ward. At some point Alyce had recovered enough that she could come home wearing braces on both legs and on crutches. I am sure this situation was traumatic for our parents and changed their lives in many ways.

“My dad would get up before going to work and do physical therapy with Alyce every morning. They always told her that she could do anything, and their love and commitment certainly helped her achieve a beautiful life. I also think her positive attitude was something she was born with; it was in her being and who she always was. I know that Dick and I always tried to create games that she could participate in whether she was in a wagon being pulled outdoors, etc. Dick being the oldest was the one that was creative in the games we played. Even as a young child she was always determined and had a smile on her face.

“Our mother loved her and never gave up on her and was the one who taught her to sew, cook, take her to piano lessons. It was a team effort with different roles for each of them, but they always supported her efforts to do what she wanted and to never give up.”

In 1954, Alyce’s grandfather prevailed on her father to sell his tire, battery and accessory business and move to Missouri where her grandfather owned a farm 15 miles east of Joplin. Their dad farmed the land and their mom taught at a rural school. The children first attended a rural one-room school, 32 students in six grades.

“Alyce participated in all the sports including baseball,” Linda said. “One of the best batters would hit for her and she would run the bases on her crutches. I used to get jealous that she would get picked before me to be on a team and I did mention this to her when I visited her for the last time.”

Linda recalled that when the family was in Los Angeles, Easterseals asked her parents if Alyce could be the face on its brochures, “but they said no, they did not want Alyce to have that type of publicity. Again, the polio was not a handicap but just a physical limitation that she would need to deal with and that’s how they wanted her to think of herself.”

The three Moss children attended McAuley Catholic High School in Joplin. Alyce learned to drive – using her left foot for the brake and accelerator pedals – and drove with her sister to school each day from their home near Carthage. In her senior year, Alyce was voted Miss Merry Christmas to represent McAuley in the Joplin Christmas parade.

“She was the perfect person for that honor with her beautiful smile and kindness,” Linda said.

Alyce learned to sew when she was seven and was told she would never be able to operate an electric sewing machine. She proved them wrong and made all of her clothes through high school. She was active in 4-H and was elected one summer with two other girls to attend the 4-H citizenship course in Washington, D.C.

Alyce decided she wanted to be a nurse and in an interview with The Joplin Globe when she was in high school, she told why: “I guess it is because I have spent so much of my life in hospitals.” The reporter asked, wouldn’t hospitals be the last place she would want to be? She replied, “It just doesn’t seem to work that way with me. It kept making me realize how much I could help others if I were only a nurse.”

After graduating from McAuley in 1965, she was accepted at St. Catherine’s School of Nursing in Omaha and was valedictorian of her class and student nurse of the year. Alyce was working at Bergan Mercy Hospital in Omaha as a pediatric nurse when she met Mick Flaherty, a St. Edmond graduate, at a party.

“We hit it off,” Flaherty said.

They were married April 4, 1970. After graduating from Creighton, Flaherty began work at Central Life Services in Omaha before they decided to move to Fort Dodge when their firstborn Tim was on the way. He went to work with his father, John Flaherty, at the Flaherty Insurance Agency under the Central Life umbrella. Alyce later became office administrator for the agency, serving in that role for 21 years.

They settled into Fort Dodge and had five children: Tim, who was the HyVee director in Fort Dodge when he died, married to Jodi with children Shannon, Sean, Katie and Maggie; Krysi, a massage therapist in Eugene, Oregeon.; Lisa Reisner, a reading instructor at Duncombe Elementary in Fort Dodge, married to Ryan with their children McKenzie and Calahan; Susan Laufersweiler, development director at St. Edmond and Holy Trinity Parish, married to Mark with children JT, Griffin and Josie; and Amy White, a second-grade teacher in Altoona, married to Adam with children Kaleb, Kennedy and Caroline.

One of Alyce’s best friends was Mary Larson, who was volunteer coordinator for UnityPoint Hospice from 2003-2022. Alyce was honored as Hospice Volunteer of the Year in 2014.

“It was a gift that I was given to meet people like Alyce,” Larson said. “She was a beautiful person, inside and out. She is the person I admired most in my life. She was just a wonderful, kind person, wonderful with patients and other volunteers and staff, treating everybody with respect. I just learned a lot from her about life.”

Beyond her hospice work, Alyce was active with her church. She and Mick received the Spirit of St. Edmond Family Award in 2012. She was part of Monican Mothers, served on the library board, was a bookstore volunteer, a Girl Scout Leader, a church greeter, a Sunday School leader and a member of 100 Women Who Care.

She was a huge fan of her grandchildren and was there to support them for every game, musical, concert or meet; she loved to play cards and games, work on puzzles, bake, and she enjoyed traveling, family vacations and summer times with her family at Twin Lakes.

“She made us all clothes,” Susan Laufersweiler said, “and every year she made pajamas for each grandkid for Christmas. She also cross stitched. She helped make curtains for our houses and mended everyone’s clothes. Msgr. McCoy said she was probably up there mending the angels’ wings, as she often helped mend clothes for him and the other priests.

“She was strong, she never let her it (her disability) get her down. When she played Duck Duck Goose with her grandkids, she’d tap them on the head with her crutch. She didn’t view herself as handicapped at all. She persevered through everything, and she taught us to persevere. You tell me I can’t do that, I’ll show you I can. We all have that strength.

“Mom was tough as nails and didn’t let anything stop her from doing the important things like going to the kids’ activities. Something that got her upset was when we tried to help out and do something for her. She was very independent and knew how she could achieve her mission. When we tried to help her, we usually got in the way.”

As her time on earth neared, Alyce continued to pray for others – including Father Lynn Bruch, a former priest in Fort Dodge, who is battling Parkinson’s disease. He came to Fort Dodge from his home in Manson to be concelebrant at her funeral.

Her brother and sister came to visit her from Joplin and Mexico as her life neared its end.

“It was a beautiful experience to be with her family,” Linda Moss said. “She always had family around 24/7 and was surrounded by love. The family would say prayers, sing or play her favorite songs and talk to her about her grandchildren and what they were doing that day or week.”

Alyce told her brother Dick before he left, “I just want you to know I’m fine, I’m at peace with this, don’t worry about me…”

Paul Stevens

If Trivial Pursuit ever invented a game involving facts about St. Edmond High School, you’d want your partner to be Pat Hassett. You couldn’t lose.

Hassett, a member of the Class of 1960, has been chronicling the history of the Catholic high school for 45 years, operating from a first-floor office off the school library called the Alumni Room – stuffed full of all kinds of items relating to the school.

If there was such a Trivial Pursuit game, here are some questions that might be posed. Go to the bottom of this article for the answers. No peeking!

Who is St. Edmond named for?

What is the origin of the school’s mascot and nickname, Gaels?

Who was the school’s first homecoming queen and what year?

What was the first St. Edmond school play?

When did girls begin wearing uniforms – gray wool blazer and skirt?

When did a St. Edmond athletic team win the school’s first state championship? In what sport, and as a bonus, who was the all-state player that led the Gaels?

Who holds the boys’ basketball school record for most points in one game, and what year?

What year did sanctioned girls’ sports begin? In what sport?

What year did St. Edmond and Fort Dodge Senior High hold their homecoming parade together?

And then here is a question this member of the Class of 1964 posted to Pat: Why does she volunteer and what does she get from it all?

“St. Edmond is my family. And they’ve always been good to my own family. I’ve always liked sports and liked kids and love to be close to the kids” said Hassett, who has been a second-grade helper for the past 17 years, currently working with Ann Knobbe’s class.

“I have no children, so my St. Edmond children are my children. I always say that I now have 385 grandchildren – the number of children in the second-grade classes I’ve helped with since the 2005-06 school year. Almost all the kids call me Grandma Pat.”

“Grandma Pat” is part of the fabric of the high school that has graduated 5,856 students over its history. Today, the original building has been expanded to accommodate all grades – from preschool through senior high school. And it’s right next door to Holy Trinity Catholic Church.

“I personally would say Pat bleeds green,” said Susan Laufersweiler, director of development for St. Edmond Catholic Schools. “She is a true historian of our school. We are so fortunate that she dedicates so much of her time to documenting and keeping up with the history of this school.

“She is the biggest Gael fan as she attends almost every game our students play to cheer them on to victory. She loves to volunteer in the second-grade room and even had a shirt made that says ‘Name, Number, Date’ to help kids remember to put their headings on their papers.”

Hassett was a Valentine’s Day baby, born Feb. 14, 1942, at a hospital in Detroit to Robert and Anna Marie Hassett. Her father was an agent for New York Life Insurance. The family moved to Sloan, Iowa, when she was in kindergarten and then to Fort Dodge in 1955 when her dad joined Lee Oester in a New York Life Insurance agency. The Hassetts had six children at the time – Micki, Pat, Bob, Rusty, Jim and Dick. A seventh, Joe, joined them in late 1955 when he was born at Fort Dodge’s Mercy Hospital.

The family’s move to Fort Dodge came in the same year that St. Edmond High School opened, when long-standing high schools at Corpus Christi and Sacred Heart merged to offer classes in a newly constructed building at 501 N. 22nd St.

All seven Hassett children graduated from St. Edmond – Micki in 1958, Pat in 1960, Bob in 1961, Rusty in 1963, Jim in 1966, Dick in 1970 and Joe in 1974. (Today, three are deceased – Micki, Jim and Joe.)

Pat Hassett worked at Fantles department store while attending high school. After graduation, she joined a friend in attending classes at AIB College of Business in Des Moines. She took business courses and graduated in nine months, then returned to Fort Dodge where she was hired by Fort Dodge Labs, working there from 1962 to 1966.

She moved to Minneapolis and was with First National Bank when she got a call from Don Perry, manager of Fantles, asking if she would return to Fort Dodge to help start up a Fantles store in the new Crossroads Mall. She worked there part-time for two years before joining Iowa-Illinois Gas and Electric as a bookkeeper, then a teller, from 1968 to 1992. Hassett joined the City of Fort Dodge Water Department in 1993 as a billing clerk and worked there until retiring in 2004.

Hassett started as a second-grade helper in 2005, but she had long been active with Catholic schools from the time she started as an eighth grader at Corpus Christi when her family moved to Fort Dodge. Her efforts earned her the distinction of being the first recipient of the Spirit of St. Edmond Alumni Award in 1994.

“Everyone loves Grandma Pat,” said Tabitha Acree, principal for pre-kindergarten through grade 8. “She supports ALL students, but particularly our second-grade students who are getting ready for their sacraments. Grandma Pat is known for giving a $2 bill to students. Both my boys still have theirs and they are in their 20s.

“Grandma Pat is known for school spirit and attends assemblies, sporting events, school masses, etc. She encourages everyone to stand during our school song and is one of the biggest fans for our students. Grandma Pat spends countless hours documenting our school events (which helps staff and coaches). She keeps our alumni room updated. You can always go there to learn about the history of our school.”

The genesis for Hassett’s historical work came in 1977 when a friend asked her if a list existed of all the graduates of St. Edmond. She typed in names from yearbooks and then found their addresses at the time they were attending school. Sister Dominic Church worked with her on the project.

Hassett had always been saving clippings involving St. Edmond students, but it was when custodian Skip Ostrander rescued boxes of clippings that were about to be thrown out that her work as school historian intensified.

“We are so lucky he saved them for us,” she said.

She started organizing the clippings in binders by years and activities. She has a filing system that she uses to keep track of the current year at the same time as organizing materials from past years. One of her binders contains all the historical firsts for the school.

She estimates that she has 5,000 newspaper clippings, placed in folders for each of the 67 years of the high school’s existence. In the Alumni Room, you can find photos, every high school yearbook, many middle school yearbooks, sports books, VHS tapes of musicals, Tri Crown newspapers, Sharing the Spirit magazines, trophies, letter jackets, and much, much more.

“All the time, people ask me a question,” she said. “I’ll write it down and tell them I’ll get back to them. Once in a while, people will email me. I get back to them as quickly as I can.”

She welcomes donations of any materials relating to the school. They can be dropped off at the Development Office. Her phone is 515-570-7373 and her email – hamp@frontiernet.net.

“I like finding answers for sports or St. Edmond questions,” Hassett said. “I get to know the kids and parents that way. Most of the time when someone asks me something, I will ask the teachers or coaches and most of the time I get some kind of answer. Sometimes they will show me how to get the answers on Google.

“I hope when I’m gone someone will keep it going. I have been at St. Edmond since the school opened and hope to be with them for many more years.”

Who is St. Edmond named for?

Answer: Bishop Edmond Heelan, once bishop of the Sioux City Diocese, and St. Edmond of England, an Anglo king of the 4th Century.

What is the origin of the school’s mascot and nickname, Gael?

Answer: Gael was an Irish warrior. When the high school opened, it held a contest for a school nickname; from a list of 100 entries, senior Karen Coleman was the winner and received a $25 savings bond.

Who was the school’s first homecoming queen and what year?

Answer: Angie Tornabane, 1955.

What was the peak enrollment year for a St. Edmond senior class?

Answer: Senior class of 1968-69, 166 members. (Note: the first senior class of 1955-56 had 69 members and the most recent graduating senior class of 2021-22 had 45 members.)

What was the first St. Edmond school play?

Answer: “Special Delivery.”

When did girls begin wearing uniforms – gray wool blazer and skirt?

Answer: 1961-62.

When did a St. Edmond athletic team win the school’s first state championship? In what sport, and as a bonus, who was the all-state player that led the Gaels?

Answer: The 1999-2000 Gaels boys basketball team won the Iowa Class 2A title, led by guard Jack Brownlee who was Class 2A Player of the Year. The coach then was Adolph Kochendorfer.

Who holds the boys’ basketball school record for most points in one game, and what year?

Answer: John Anderson, Class of 1964, 50 points, against South Hamilton on Jan. 18, 1964. (NOTE: Anderson went on to star at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., where he rejoined St. Edmond teammate Dan Hansard, Class of 1963, who at 6-foot-10 is believed to be the tallest player ever to play at St. Edmond.)

What year did sanctioned girls’ sports begin at St. Edmond? In what sport?

Answer: Girls volleyball started in 1971, coached by Sue Koenitz. Two years later, girls’ 6-on-6 basketball began, coached by Keith Goedken.

What year did St. Edmond and Fort Dodge Senior High hold their homecoming parade together?

Answer: 2007.

-PAUL STEVENS

Life’s lessons learned on the baseball field at Dodger Stadium under the tutelage of iconic coach Ed McNeil have served Del Blankenhagen well in a career of education and military service.

Blankenhagen taught in the Fort Dodge Community School District for five years (where he was an assistant coach several years under McNeil), then worked as a principal and teacher in Wyoming for 11 years. He served in the U.S. Army for 35 years – 17 on active duty and 18 in the reserve – before retiring as a colonel.

Today, from his home in Newnan, Georgia, in suburban Atlanta, he reflects on how his twin careers and his life were impacted by McNeil, who coached at FDSH from the mid-1960s until 1990. McNeil died in 1991 after suffering a heart attack at the age of 61. One season later, the baseball field at Dodger Stadium was dedicated and formally named in his honor: Ed McNeil Field.

“Ed instilled a sense of teamwork in his ballplayers,” said Blankenhagen, an All-State second baseman for the Dodgers in 1968, his senior year. “That is an extremely beneficial life skill. Teamwork is present in any successful business and organization. Obviously when a sports team performs as a team as opposed to individuals, success usually follows. It’s no different in military operations. The more a squad, companies, battalions, etc. perform as a team, the more successful is the mission. Successful missions save lives and property.

“Ed was extremely organized. As a player, I liked that we were continually occupied with baseball skills and fundamentals in practice. We had hitting stations, pepper drills, infield grounder practice, and did situations. We were always occupied. This prepared us to be as successful as possible at game time. I used this type of format for my classroom as a teacher. I tried to keep my students creatively occupied with the time I had them. I put them in different learning stations: silent reading tables, diary writing station, math problem solving and puzzles. Being fully occupied created a good learning environment and consequently fewer discipline problems.

“Ed was always in charge. He created an environment with discipline that was fair and practical. You either abided by the rules or you didn’t play. As players, we had to look and act like athletes because we represented our family, school and city, made us want to play and win for the team. All off this helped shape us and prepared us for success in our future endeavors.”

When Blankenhagen coached under McNeil for several seasons, as head coach for junior varsity and third-base coach for the varsity, he saw a different side of McNeil “that he didn’t let us see as players.

“During that time, he allowed me to be my own coach, make mistakes and learn from them. As a principal and an officer in the military, I used those principles of teamwork, organization and discipline as the bedrock for supporting and improving my students, teachers, and soldiers.

”Blankenhagen recalled his last year as McNeil’s assistant when the Dodgers made the finals of the state tournament. As third-base coach, he waved a Dodger runner home from second after the batter hit a single. The runner was thrown out and the Dodgers eventually lost the game.

“In retrospect I should not have sent the runner,” he said. “Ball was hit hard and the outfielder had a good arm. I should have realized that but in my judgement, I felt he could make it. Ed took me aside and sternly asked why I sent him. I told him in my judgement I felt he could make it. Instead of chewing me out, he said “OK“. I think he wanted to know that I made a decision based on what I thought was right.”

None of this surprises Sharon McNeil, who was married to Ed for almost 35 years and lives in Fort Dodge. Her husband tried to teach far more than baseball skills, she said: He worked to impart life’s lessons, with one of the most fundamental ones: respect for others.

“He was very strict in what he believed in, and the kids respected him for that,” she said. “That’s what he believed in – to respect people, always listen with respect. He wanted his kids to live their life the right way, to respect life and respect people and to go out there and do the best you can.”

Said Blankenhagen: “I loved and respected the man a great deal. I think he had a lot of respect for me as well. It hurt when I heard that he died. I was supposed to be one of the pall bearers at his funeral, but I could not make it due to military obligations.”

Blankenhagen is the son of Erna and Delmar Blankenhagen, who met in Livermore when his dad was working a soda pop route and delivered to a gas station where his mother worked while helping her father. They had five children. Chuck Blankenhagen, the oldest, died in 2006 of a stroke at the age of 57; he pitched for McNeil while attending FDSH. Del was next-born, followed by sisters Debbie Johnson of Hudson; Cindie Archer of Smith Center, Kansas. and Cara Burke of Cedar Falls.

Baseball was part of Blankenhagen’s life from the age of 4 or 5. He was 13 when he joined the Fort Dodge Demons, coached by another Fort Dodge baseball legend, Jerry Patterson.

At FDSH, he played baseball, wrestled and ran track “but I was only proficient in baseball,” he said. He was voted to the first-team All-State Iowa baseball team in 1968 as a second baseman.

Blankenhagen attended Iowa Central Community College in 1968-1969, and played baseball. He moved to Buena Vista College (now University) from 1969-1972, majoring in education with a teacher’s certificate and playing baseball all three years. He was all-conference in 1971 and 1972 and was named an NAIA Little All American for his team’s region.

In 1970, he married Jerrilyn Maurer, who graduated from FDSH the previous year. They have three daughters – Kristy, Keri and Kelly. Kristy Hughett of Fort Dodge is married to Bill Hughett, with children Landon and Leah; Keri Finkenbinder of Lithia, Florida., is married to Brooke Finkenbinder, with children Haley and Hannah, and Kelly Blankenhagen Lopez of Gilbert, is married to Eric Lopez, with children Quinn and Caroline. Del and Jeri had two sons who are deceased – Delmer James (DJ) Blankenhagen and Kyle Allen Blankenhagen.

The military ties continue with two of his sons-in-law. Eric Lopez is an ROTC instructor and commander of the Air Force ROTC at Iowa State University in Ames. Brooke works as a contractor and is a Warrant Officer 4 in the Army Reserve specializing in information technology.

After graduation from Buena Vista, the Blankenhagens moved to West Des Moines where Del worked at the Woolco department store. They returned to Fort Dodge in 1974 when he was hired as a physical education teacher for K-6. He taught physical education, coached baseball under McNeil and coached junior high wrestling.

With a friend Steve Harbaugh, then an elementary school teacher, Blankenhagen began work on a master’s degree at Iowa State University in educational administration and the two of them car-pooled to Ames three days a week, for four years, to obtain their degrees in 1978. Harbaugh is now retired from teaching and work as an elementary school principal.

The Blankenhagen family moved to Wright, Wyoming., in 1979 when he was appointed a principal there for a new K-8 school. He then moved to Gillette, Wyoming., to become an elementary school teacher and principal. His wife Jeri taught junior high science in Gillette.

Blankenhagen’s military career began in 1971 when he was a junior at Buena Vista and joined the National Guard in Storm Lake. He served in the Iowa and Wyoming National Guard at the same time he was working in education, from 1970 to1985, and then transferred to the Army Reserve for the next five years.

In 1990, he entered the Army full time during Operation Desert Storm and was assigned to the 76th Training Division out of Hartford, Conneciticut., as a force development officer. He transferred to Colorado State University in 1994 as an ROTC instructor there and commander of the ROTC program at the University of Northern Colorado. He was assigned to Washington, DC in 1996, serving in resource management and force development at the Pentagon. Then it was off to an assignment with the U.S. Forces Command in Atlanta in 2000, where he served as the Army Reserve Liaison from 2000 to 2004. His final tour was in Birmingham as the deputy division commander specializing in readiness.

Blankenhagen retired from the Army in 2006 and worked from 2006 to 2012 in the Washington area as a government contractor for the CALIBRE (a contract company). He worked on contracts with the U.S. Army Reserve Command in East Point, Georgia, and the Office of the Chief Army Reserve (OCAR) in the Washington area.

“I liked the military because it was a structured organization – you do well, they promote you; you don’t do well, they don’t,” he said. “I got into a field I found interesting. In the military, knowledge of force management is very important.

“My most challenging assignment was in the DC area, as force management officer. It is important, you at the pinnacle of your military career. The decisions you make are decisions that you pretty much stick and you live with them. It was an exciting time, a challenging time.”

Today, in retirement, Blankenhagen enjoys golf and traveling.

“I do volunteer with church projects and assist fellow Army officers with home projects, etc.,” he said. “I assist a fellow retired Army colonel with his Parkinson’s disease. We meet weekly for lunch, and I assist him in his woodworking projects.

August 6, 2022

Paul Stevens

If indeed someone could be personified by these words from Bette Midler’s classic song “Wind Beneath My Wings,” it would be Janet Habhab:

“Did you ever know that you’re my hero

And everything I would like to be?

I can fly higher than an eagle

For you are the wind beneath my wings.”

For nearly 70 years, she was a hero to Al Habhab, the wind beneath his wings — the wife of one of Fort Dodge’s most well-known figures who was a decorated World War II veteran, an attorney, mayor of the city for 14 years, a district court judge and a state appellate court justice.

But that hero had teeth. If someone was critical of her husband, watch out.

“She was always supportive,” Habhab recalled. “She would take personal offense if something was said about me that was unkind. She would never do it publicly, but she’d tell me, ‘Where’d they get their information on that, they don’t even know you.'”

She helped him soar in his profession while raising their two children, Bob and Mary Beth; managing the family’s rental properties; forging many friendships; being active in the Republican Party; volunteering for Meals on Wheels and working to keep her husband grounded outside of work. There was so much more to her than met the eye – as many who knew her well recall in the wake of her death this past Tuesday at the age of 92.

“We have had the pleasure of being neighbors with Janet and Albert for 25 years,” said Dee and Bruce Murman. “We discovered early on that Janet was in charge of her household. She possessed a strong, authoritative persona with a no-nonsense approach to most everything. She was assertive and independent taking care of business — the business of her family. Albert may be the judge, but Janet was in command!”

More such memories will be shared by family and friends who gather for a visitation from 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday at Gunderson Funeral Home and Cremation Services and for her funeral services at 10:30 a.m, Monday at First Congregational United Church of Christ, followed by interment in North Lawn Cemetery.

Her husband and her son were at her side — as well as emergency Fire Department officers — when she took her last breath in the living room of the home where they’ve lived since 1963.

“She said she knew she was going to die,” Al Habhab said. “I told her, ‘Get well, don’t be worried about dying.’ It was quick, she didn’t answer.”

In an interview with the son of his best friend, the late Messenger editor emeritus Walter Stevens, Habhab recalled one of the things he most remembered and admired about his wife of 59 years.

“Whenever there was something that needed to be done, she was more inclined to correct it than to complain about it,” Habhab said. “A lot of people complain and complain and do nothing about it. With Janet, she’d do something about it. We had no regrets. I enjoyed every minute of our life together.”

The two met on a blind date in 1950 when students at the University of Iowa. Janet was born June 10, 1930, at an orphanage in Kansas City, Missouri., and was adopted by a dentist and his wife, Robert and Grace Morse of Elkader. Al was a World War II veteran from Fort Dodge — later awarded the Bronze Star for heroism at the Battle of the Bulge.

“I was in law school and the only time we dated was on weekends and so it had to be the following Friday or Saturday,” Habhab recalled. “We only dated once a week. We did not have a lot of money. I was on the GI Bill at that time. We would date Friday or Saturday. Most of the time, we would attend a movie. We just considered that we were going together. I did not see anyone else and she didn’t, as I recall.”

Janet quickly added: “He remembers it differently than I do, because if I could not go, if I was unable to go, he went with someone else.”

Al responded: “I guess that is true.”

They were married three years later, on July 26, 1953, and made their home in Fort Dodge where Habhab opened his own law office.

The happiest moment of her life was when they welcomed children into their home, Habhab recalled. Robert was born in 1959 and Mary Beth in 1962, both adopted as infants from an agency in Dubuque.

“The adoption agency called and said, ‘we have a child for you, if you want him,'” he said. “Bob was 4 to 5 months old. She took one look at Bob and wouldn’t let him go. ‘No, we’ll take him now,’ she said, and literally grabbed him right out of the nurse’s arms. Those 10-15 minutes are permanently embedded in my mind and heart.

“I was in the hospital for some reason when we got the call on Mary Beth. Janet went with a friend. She came into my room the next day and said, ‘You’re a dad again.’ She wasn’t going to take any chances of anyone changing their mind.”

Bob lives in Fort Dodge and Mary Beth in Cottage Grove, Minnesota, where she’s married to Troy Burger and have two children and four grandchildren.

“I think Janet was real patient with me. Going to the Court of Appeals was a deciding moment on whether we wanted to remain in Fort Dodge or move to Des Moines,” Habhab said. “The kids were pretty well grown by then, but as you know, you’re better off moving with 3- or 4-year-old children than you are with 15- or 16-year-old kids. They need more attention and Janet was there for the kids, always. They never came home from school when she was not there for them. She took care of the home and did everything, particularly when I was in Des Moines so much. Even when I went on the bench, she was there.

“In the mayor’s office, which was a demanding job, there were endless meetings and occasions that you had to attend. She was there. She carried the burden there. I think one thing about it, she was always there for the kids. Whatever they needed, wherever they had to be, she would dress them for the occasions. Our son was a model for children’s clothing, Janet would dress him so well. Mary Beth was interested in synchronized swimming and was good at that. Bob was exceptionally good in athletics.”

The Habhabs ate out a lot in their later years. One of their favorite meals was the fried chicken at Ja-Mar. For years, they met for breakfast Sunday mornings at Village Inn with Ruth and Walt Stevens, two of their best friends.

Janet loved to play bridge and did so several times a week. She was active in PEO and with Meals on Wheels – and was a huge fan of the Iowa Hawkeyes.

“She was an avid Iowa Hawkeye football fan — we had season tickets for years — and we went down to Iowa City in snow and sleet and rain,” Habhab said. “She’d get mad at some of the calls that were made, which was completely out of character. You didn’t say anything bad about her Hawkeyes.”

The Habhabs loved to travel as a family.