“It’ll be hard to say goodbye,” says Tom, who turned 53 last Saturday. “But life is about transformation and change.”

Yes, as he has married couples, baptized their children, confirmed them and spoken eulogies for longtime members of the Shueyville United Methodist Church, Tom knew this day would come.

In the Methodist tradition, pastors typically serve a church for seven years and move on.

“In the early development of the country, that’s how the Methodist denomination was able to spread out,” Tom says.

Even 10 years in one place, Tom says, would be a long time.

“Twenty-two years is a great run,” he says. “It’s more than we expected.”

He and his wife, Linda, raised five children — Dan, Jessi, Laura, Beth and Katelyn — in the parsonage overlooking the church. He knows that church officials were generous, allowing them to stay as the children finished high school.

Tom’s last Sunday is June 17, but the church is hosting a reception for him and his family on June 10. He and Linda will live in a church-owned house in Storm Lake.

As a young man, Tom had no inclination to take the pulpit. He graduated from high school in Urbandale where he regularly attended and participated in youth activities at Aldersgate United Methodist Church.

“An old retired pastor told me, ‘We’re always looking for a few good men.’ I said, (to himself), ‘No way, old man.’”

But, at the University of Northern Iowa, where he earned a business degree, Tom and Linda, his girlfriend at the time, became regulars at a Lutheran church in Cedar Falls. One Sunday the sermon seemed particularly inspiring.

“Wouldn’t that be neat,” Tom thought, “to inspire people like I was inspired that morning.”

Then, a voice in his head said, “Tom, if that’s what you want to do, that’s what you should do.”

He told his girlfriend that they needed to talk; that he’d made a decision that would change their lives. Of course, she thought he was about to propose. Instead, Tom said, “I’m ready to become a pastor.”

Since they’d never talked about that, she didn’t know what it meant. Tom wasn’t sure, either.

But he proposed a year later, they married in 1981, and after seminary and internships, he served the Otterbein United Methodist Church in rural Toledo for five years. He came to Shueyville in 1990.

“I never really thought about the ministry before that,” Tom recalls about his own transformation, “but I’ve never doubted it since.”

He has seen plenty of change at the Shueyville church, too, where community growth has translated into a swelling congregation, from 250 members to more than 750, putting this rural church in the top ten percent of Iowa’s Methodist churches, he says.

“There is such great potential for this church to keep growing,” Tom says. He doesn’t doubt that, either.

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

CEDAR RAPIDS — For nearly 70 years, Al Meier has loved boxing, from donning gloves as a teen to being a national boxing official. He’s sat ringside with some of the greats, from George Foreman and Evander Holyfield to Sugar Ray Leonard and James “Buster” Douglas (with Al, at left). But, unlike the bravado often shown by pros — he describes a young Muhammad Ali as “loud” — Al prefers to work behind the scenes.

“I’ve ducked publicity all my life,” Al says, “and I still get more than I wanted.”

He wasn’t too eager to flip through scrapbooks, either, but his son, Rod, convinced him otherwise.

“I never remember dad boxing,” says Rod, 62. “He started at Collins (Radio) when I was born. But he had cartons of gloves out in the garage. We’d pick them up, three kids, and box.”

Al would join his older sons on occasion.

“Before you knew it,” Rod laughs, “there were three kids laying on the ground.”

Al laughs, too. He had fun with his sons Rod, Bob, Ron and John. But he never really worked with them to box.

“I could see how easy it would be to get in trouble if you thought you was tough,” Al says. He pauses. “I always thought I could whip anyone.

Al, 82, was born in North Dakota but moved to Keswick, Iowa, as a youngster and later to Cedar Rapids. His father was a Methodist minister.

At 14 he began boxing in Golden Gloves, in the days when The Gazette was a sponsor. In AAU competition he became Iowa champion in 1946 and then turned pro for a short career — a couple of 1947 contracts show he was paid $125 to fight in El Paso, Texas.

“I could hit awful hard,” he says, “I knocked out people.”

A Chicago newspaper clipping tells the story of a knockout at bantam weight in Golden Gloves.

But Al retired from the ring, married his wife, Dolores, and had children. As a kid he’d worked on the railroad and drove trucks. In 1949 he began at Collins and in 1959 became business manager for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. He later lobbied for the Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, and was Iowa’s labor commissioner from 1977 until retiring in 1995.

Al continued his boxing interest as state athletics commissioner to oversee professional boxing and wrestling. In 1977, he joined other state commissioners to form the United States Boxing Association which, in 1984, became the International Boxing Federation. A former vice president, he’s now on the board.

“We felt American boxers weren’t getting a fair shake,” Al says. “I supervise fights for the IBF now.”

That means he attends rules meetings, makes sure fighters weigh in correctly, keeps the master score card for bouts and presents award belts.

Al doesn’t travel as much as he used to, although he was recently in Chicago for a fight and, later this month, flies with his son to Hawaii for the national convention.

Rod, who fought with the Cedar Rapids Boxing Club in 1967-68, graduated from Kennedy High School and once owned ten carwashes. He now concentrates on the Edgewood 5 Seasons Car Wash on Edgewood Road NW near Johnson Avenue where he also owns a laundromat and other buildings he leases.

“Dad will call me up for a fight,” Rod says. “I’ll go sit ringside with him.”

“Blood splatters on you,” Al says. “You get cleaning bills. Spit, Sweat. Blood. It gets juicy up there.”

But, for a father and son who love boxing, there’s no better seat.

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

Some are silly, some dry tears, some can fold or hold back fears.

One by one, Naomi Yates, shows her aprons and knows the dates.

With 80 examples, each unique, she talks about each ones mystique.

“I had a little apron,” says Naomi, 88, recalling her time on the farm before she was three. “It was red. And it had little marks that were red that looked like peppermint candy. I loved that apron.”

But, one day, Naomi couldn’t find it. As she looked around, she discovered that her grandfather had cut two eye holes in the apron and had fashioned it like a bandanna around a horse’s head to keep it cool.

“Needless to say I cried,” Naomi says. “I cried a lot of tears over that apron.”

But, she learned something else that day that has stayed with her for 85 years. Aprons often have more than one use.

As Naomi talks about her aprons, her daughter, Ruth Kibbie, takes them from one of two old suitcases, then folds them up again for safe keeping.

When they reach the bonnet apron, one with snap closures to be folded up into a garden hat, Ruth, 64, graciously models it.

“Some of these,” Ruth laughs, “you can tell had to belong to small women like mother. They wouldn’t fit me.”

Most of Naomi’s aprons come from the family. The one Ruth wore earlier in the day was made by the mother of Howard Yates, her father who married Naomi in 1942. Another was made from grocery string saved from packages of meat and peanut butter. Still another was worn by Howard during World War II when he was a cook in the Navy.

“He never cooked before or after,” Ruth chuckles.

“He couldn’t even fry an egg,” Ruth smiles.

But Howard became the love of Naomi’s eye. The first house they rented in Palo cost $6 a month plus $1 for the garage. They eventually farmed in the Palo area and he didn’t retired until he was 75. Naomi continued to collect her aprons.

She wears one of her favorites, a black border print apron that had been her grandmother Maude Little’s apron. She shows one made from a bleached flour sack made by her other grandmother, Elizabeth “Mate” Moubry.

“Her husband called her Mate instead of wife,” Naomi says. “Everybody called her Mate.”

In those days, particularly on the farm, aprons were a necessity. They kept a limited wardrobe clean, could be pulled up to carry corncobs for the heating stove or to gather eggs from the chicken house. They could be as plain as a burlap sack or fancy cross-stitch works of art. Some had pockets for kitchen utensils or stashing the nails, marbles and precious rocks removed from pants pockets before doing the wash.

When Naomi would talk about her aprons to kids at Seminole Valley Farm west of Cedar Rapids, she’d ask if their mothers wore aprons.

“Not many raised their hands,” she says. “But their fathers wore aprons. Probably to barbecue.”

Times have certainly changed. But, in the good old days, nothing comforted a child more than grandma and her apron.

“I’d sit on grandma’s lap and she’d cover me up with her apron,” Naomi recalls with a gleam in her eye. “I got a fascination with aprons.”

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

CEDAR RAPIDS — With such an early spring this year, the cars have long come out of mothballs, are spit polished and running great, and are ready for cruisin’. So, with the 25th anniversary of Cruisin’ for Camp Courageous this Sunday at the camp off Highway 38 southeast of Monticello, expect to see the street rods and hot rods, the muscle cars and antiques, the Corvettes and the VW Beetles out in full force.

If the sponsoring Cedar Valley Street Rods have their wish, this will be another record-setting year. More than 300 cars showed up last year to raise $35,000 for the camp that provides year-round recreation for adults and children with special needs. That was a cruisin’ record — but it can be broken.

“It started as a wet day, but the people came out and it was a great day,” recalls street rods member Mary Johnson, 58, who along with her husband, Brad, 59, (right) have organized the cruise the last 13 years.

I caught up with the street rodders in Cedar Rapids for a recent pre-cruise celebration. Members were all hyped up for another successful year.

“We couldn’t do it without everybody’s help,” says Mary (left). “The club and all the people. It’s a show for everyone.”

“If it wasn’t for them,” adds Charlie Becker, executive director of Camp Courageous, “this thing could have died.”

In a quarter of a century, the cruise has raised more than $200,000 for the camp. Club members have even spent time constructing buildings at the camp that caters to people of all ages with mental and physical disabilities, brain injures and autism, hearing and visual impairment.

“I think it’s a great organization,” Mary says. “I have family members that have gone there for trips.”

The cruise began in Cedar Rapids, was held in the Amana Colonies and Great Jones County Fair fairgrounds for a time, then moved permanently to the camp. That allows visitors to not only see the cars but also the facilities. Camp Courageous, founded 40 years ago, has gone from 211 campers in 1974 when it opened to 6,144 campers last summer.

“This is a fundraiser,” Charlie (right) says, “but it also helps get the word out.”

Butch Slocum, 68, (left) of Marion, remembers taking his purple 1923 Bucket-T up the first few years and will have his blue and silver ‘37 Ford coupe on display this year.

“I like the camp,” Butch says. “It does great things for great people.”

Dave Wheatley, his longtime friend who joined the street rodders the same year (1977), will take his third ‘32 Ford sedan this year. That first year he took his ‘40 Ford.

“We were looking for a charity,” says Dave, 65, of Cedar Rapids. “We always did the Jerry Lewis Telethon and gave kids rides for a buck. It evolved into doing things for the camp.”

Dave fondly remembers working on the pony barn, especially on a ramp so young campers could climb aboard “Tony the Pony” for a ride.

“I miss Tony the Pony,” laughs Charlie. “Those were the good old days at camp.”

And that’s what cruisin’ is all about — reliving the good old days with cars for the camp’s brighter future.

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

Where: Camp Courageous of Iowa, 12007 190th Street, which is southeast of Monticello two miles east of Highway 38.

When: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday.

Admission: A $5 donation is requested.

Activities: In addition to the cars and a car-part art contest, the festivities include live music, kids games, live and silent auctions and crafts and antiques show.

Car entries: Anyone can enter a vehicle for $15. Trophies will be awarded in 33 classes.

For more information: www.campcourageous.org/?page_id=759 or www.cedarvalleystreetrods.org

CEDAR RAPIDS — Rather than art being in the eye of the beholder, it has been put into the hands of the artists in a unique exhibit to be unveiled to the public Thursday night at Prairiewoods in Hiawatha.

In an exercise reminiscent of a classroom assignment, artists in the local group, Creative Artists, received a black and white copy of a color landscape photograph taken by club member Noma Lucas with the purpose of giving it a new look. Twenty-eight artists took up the challenge to use watercolor or pastel, oil or acrylic, calligraphy or pencil, to recreate all or part of the rustic barn farm scene as they see it.

“I think this will be one of the most fun things we’ve ever done,” says Helen Hunter, president of Creative Artists. “I’m really excited to see what people will bring.”

While Helen displayed her own interpretation and three others at her home, recently, she has yet to see what other artists have submitted for the exhibit, “Repeat, Repeat & Repeat Again” that runs from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. with a wine and cheese reception. Open free to the public, the reception will feature some paintings for sale.

“We’ve got a great group of people, a creative group,” she says.

Founded in 1970 by a group of YMCA art students under the leadership of Edwin J. Bruns, Creative Artists has numbered between 40 and 60 two-dimensional artists as members. With the purpose of fostering public interest in art through programs, workshops and exhibits. Its big show of the year, The Great Autumn Art Show and Sale, is Sept. 15-16 at the Kirkwood Community College building on Armar Drive in Marion.

The organization meets on the second Monday of each month. Tonight’s meeting, at 6:30 p.m. at Mr. Beans in Marion, features guest artist Lizzie Dvorsky, 17, of Cedar Rapids, an artistic face painter. (For more information see creativeartistsiowa.org)

Helen’s own story is a prime example of the artists the organization wants to attract.

“I always wanted to paint,” says Helen, 72, of Cedar Rapids. “I never thought I could. I wasn’t a gifted artist.”

She grew up in Shellsburg, took an art appreciation class at Kirkwood Community College, worked at the now defunct Killians Department Store in Cedar Rapids before going to Minneapolis where she became a marketing vice president at Powers Department Stores.

In 2004 she read a book that said anyone could paint, so she signed up for a class and began painting still lifes. She would take her watercolors home to her husband, Bud, who died in March, and he would say, “That’s really great.”

Helen knew he was being kind. So, she persevered. And since then painting has become a fun adventure.

“I got started,” she says. “That’s the key. I’ve been painting ever since and now I’m winning ribbons.”

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

MARION — Church bells ring in the distance as the sun shines brightly overhead and a breeze ripples through the grass landing strip at McBride Airport. It would be a great day to fly.

But, gaze through a window of the metal-sided hangar and the only airplane inside is a skinless fuselage. No windsock flits above the nearby administration building to indicate the wind direction. Once the bells stop, the silence seems as if it will last forever.

“Shutting it down is not easy for me,” says Ivan McBride, whose late father, Melvin, founded the airport half a century ago. But, with increasingly expensive liability insurance, it was time.

As Ivan plops a box full of scrapbooks onto a picnic table, he grins.

“This should only take six hours,” he says, opening a scrapbook. “I have to admit it’s been fun looking at the photo albums to find some old pictures and just to reflect on these memories.”

There’s a photo of his father propping up a sign to McBride Field. That’s what it was called in 1961 when Melvin began leveling the farm field in the family since the 1920s. He would shape a 2,400-foot, 150-foot wide east-west grass runway, have the hangar built and relocate an old service station/cafe from near Marion’s Highway 13 to serve as the office. Although planes would test the field the following summer, the airport didn’t officially open until Oct. 14, 1962.

“I’m not going to plow up the rest of the runway until we hit Oct. 14,” says Ivan, symbolically hitting the 50-year mark even though the last plane left a couple of weeks earlier and the airstrip would officially close May 10.

With churches popping up around the airport along the C Avenue Extension north of Cedar Rapids, some people speculated the 80 acres would be sold for another church or development. But no — it will be farmed by Ivan’s son, Calvin, 19, (an agriculture student at Iowa State University) just as his grandfather had once farmed it.

About 1940, Ted Saxon had relocated his airport from land where Rockwell Collins headquarters now sit south of Blairs Ferry Road NE to a farm across C Avenue Extension from here. Even though his wife ran it for a few years after Ted died, that airport closed. Folks thought the area could still use an airport.

Melvin McBride didn’t know how to fly but he liked the idea. Ivan, 57, was just old enough to be impressed.

“As a kid, I remember 30-some planes based here,” Ivan says. “It was an active little strip back then.”

Melvin died in 1972, but Ivan would solo on this field at age 19 (in the family’s 1952 Piper Tri-pacer), study aircraft mechanics and become a corporate pilot who has been with Rockwell-Collins for 26 years.

For a time Ivan and his family — wife, Lyn, and their children, Leanna, now 25, Sarah, 22, and Calvin — operated the airport. Other managers included John Tibben, who would found Tibben Flight Lines in Cedar Rapids, and Perry Walton, who owns the Marion airport.

Through the years, McBride Airport has been home base to flying clubs like Cloud 9 and Mercury. Regular nightly flights used to leave here for Chicago for Bank of Iowa Computer Service. During a three-day period in 1983, more than 700 planes landed here as it was designated the official airport for the nearby Farm Progress Show.

“There’s no question this airport defined my career and my life,” Ivan says. “I met a lot of people, made a lot of friends, as a result of this little airport.”

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

And so, 30 years ago this week, I was off and Ramblin’ in Paris.

Such a place may seem far-fetched for the debut of an Eastern Iowa columnist until you realize this Paris IS in Iowa, northern Linn County, to be exact.

On that spring day in 1982, far from the glitz and glamour of France, I found exactly what I was searching for — a wide spot along a gravel road with an iron truss bridge nearby and the tallest Eiffel Tower-like structure a distant windmill. I talked to genuine good-hearted, Iowans, including Esther Bremer, 77 at the time and the last lifetime resident still in Paris. (She died in 1999.) And I discovered, if I can quote an Allman Brothers Band song title, that I was born a “Ramblin’ Man.”

Since that day I’ve had something like 3,500 Ramblin’ columns published in The Gazette. My Ramblin’ ways have taken me to nearly every community in Eastern Iowa from the Minnesota border to the Missouri state line and then some. I’ve soared more than a mile high in a hot-air balloon, spent a week riding with a truck driver to California and visited Iowa snowbirds in Texas. Mostly, though, I’ve been behind the wheel of my car driving no more than three hours from my home in Cedar Rapids.

I’ve convinced my bosses through the years that this is all work. But you and I know better. I mean, I go where I want to go, visit with people I want to meet, marvel at how everyone has a story.

“Ramblin’ ” was born one afternoon in early 1982. I’d joined The Gazette three years earlier as a general assignment reporter. In the fall of 1981, when I became Eastern Iowa Reporter. my job included writing feature stories. After a few months, Mark Bowden, state editor, and I discussed giving these stories a feature column heading. When I couldn’t come up with a title, Mark slapped the “Ramblin’ with Rasdal” tag on my “Springtime in Paris (Iowa)” column.

Who knew that three decades later I’d still be Ramblin’? But that nearly didn’t happen. I left The Gazette in 1986 on a personal adventure that took me to San Jose, Calif., a year later. By 1990 I was ready to come “home” and Mark’s acceptance of my desire to become a full-time columnist sealed the deal. Whereas I’d only been writing one column a week in the ‘80s, I worked up to three per week after my return.

To commemorate the 30th anniversary, The Gazette issued “Ramblin’: Reflections of Hidden Iowa,” last fall. The hardcover coffee-table-style book features 103 columns and accompanying photographs. With a list price of $34.95, it’s on sale this month at The Gazette for $30 plus tax to coincide with 30 years. You can pick one up any time during regular business hours, although I’ll be signing copies in The Gazette lobby from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Friday. (I’ll also be at Barnes & Noble in Cedar Rapids from noon to 2 p.m. on Sunday, May 20.)

Some readers wondered if the book signifies my retirement, but that’s not so. As we move past this milestone into summer, I’ll announce from time to time here and on my blog (http://thegazette.com/ramblin) that I’ll set up “shop” for a few hours somewhere in Eastern Iowa so you can stop to visit, buy a book if you’d like and give me a story idea or two.

It began with springtime in Paris. I have no idea where it’ll end.

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

LISBON — When Elaine West joined the Friendship Club, a group of Mount Vernon and Lisbon area farm wives, the United States had yet to enter World War II.

Donna Jordan became a member when The Beatles still topped record charts in the 1960s.

Mollie Marti signed on eight years ago and, at 46, is the youngest as well as newest member.

These women joined four other members to celebrate the club’s centennial birthday — it was founded May 29, 1912. Unfortunately the eighth member, Mary Wolrab, who joined in 1933 and recently turned 96 years old, was under the weather and couldn’t make it to the meeting that was, appropriately, held at the Lisbon History Center rather than the usual member’s home.

After opening with the long-standing tradition of reciting The Lord’s Prayer, the women heard Sandra Wolrab, 68, club president, read a passage about the influence of political parties during the Civil War and answered roll call by explaining what their own political agenda would be today. For instance, Marion Lehman, 87, a member since 1970, would advocate better checks and balances for government spending while Sharon Peters, 76, who joined in 1999, would endorse improvements to educational programs that help solve other problems.

Then Donna, 64, the treasurer, reported a balance of $41 in the club’s account, members paid their $5 annual dues and the meeting adjourned to talk about club history.

The Friendship Club formed to bring farm wives together in an era before long telephone conversations, paved roads and easy transportation. Beyond the social aspects, the women helped others, whether that was neighbors in need after a fire or orphans who lived at the Home for the Friendless in Cedar Rapids.

“I remember when we had a second meeting of the month,” says Elaine, 101 years old. “It was a work meeting.”

Just four meetings after that first one in 1912, the women gathered to finish quilt blocks. In 1919, after World War I, the club adopted a French orphan. One year in the 1950s it made six dozen neckties for the county home, as well as sofa and chair cushions. Despite the dwindling numbers — the club once had more than 30 members — it still practices philanthropy, such as making fleece blankets for child protective services.

A little play, of course, was necessary. The club has a song and a cheer. In 1927, with families present, 72 ten-cent Christmas gifts were exchanged. In 1917 the club adopted the motto: “A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.”

Men? Has a man ever belonged to the Friendship Club?

“No, and we aren’t looking for one, either,” laughs Kathryn Henik, who joined the club in 1957 at age 19. “It would just spoil the ambience if you’d get men in here.”

But, to be honest, the women do wonder about the future of the club.

“Some of us think we should let it die with dignity rather than change too much,” says Kathryn.

“To me,” adds Elaine, “a club like this is necessary. It’s surprising to me how many people live in neighborhoods and don’t know their neighbors.”

If recruiting new members (members used to invite daughters and daughters-in law) falls to anyone, that would most likely be Mollie, the youngest by 18 years, If younger women felt as she does, there’d be no doubt about continuity.

“The club fills me up,” Mollie says. “I get out in my community and talk it up.”

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

Elaine West (center), who at 101 is the oldest member of the Mount Vernon-Lisbon Friendship Club is surrounded by other members (left to right) Sandra Wolrab, Donna Jordan, Sharon Peters, Kathryn Henik, Marion Lehman and Mollie Marti after the 100th anniversary meeting at the Lisbon History Center in Lisbon. (Dave Rasdal/The Gazette)

MARION — They danced the twist, wore colored socks and carried large purses.

Their town had three gas stations, two movie theaters and a new Chevrolet dealership.

A night watchman kept on eye on them if their parents didn’t, whether they were stopping at the local drive-in restaurant or heading out of town for a dance.

They were the class of ‘62 at Olin High School, a class that has remained tight through the years with annual summer and Christmas gatherings. They are the Olin Lions who will celebrate the 50th anniversary of their graduation over the entire Memorial Day weekend around the annual alumni banquet that Saturday night at Olin High School.

“This year we get to eat for free,” laughs Jana Henderson, 68, who worked with the United States Department of Education in Washington D.C. for more than 30 years before retiring in 2004.

“When we looked up at the old people at the banquet, we thought that’s not us,” adds Sheryl Knodle, 68, of Marion. “Now we’re them.”

In a prelude to the reunion, Sheryl (second from right) hosted Jana (right) and three other classmates — Linda Rogers (left), 67, of Cedar Rapids, Sandra Stephen (second from left), 67, of Monticello and Paul Thomsen, 67, of Anamosa — for a recent informal planning session. The longtime classmates — the girls attended Olin school from kindergarten through graduation while Paul joined them in the second grade — reminisced and reflected, lamented and laughed, gave a couple of cheers and shed a tear,

“We were the first kindergarten class,” Sheryl says, “and this year will be the last graduating class.”

Yes, this summer Olin’s high school and junior high will close, the future graduates going to nearby Anamosa in a whole-grade sharing agreement. And Olin’s business district is a shell of its former self.

“It was good in its day,” Sheryl (left) says, to which Jana (right) replies, “We had a good time.”

School lunch was a quarter, but with an open lunch period you could go to the Triangle Cafe instead.

As a senior, Paul drove a school bus. “I could drive kids around,” he says, “but I couldn’t haul my dad’s hogs.”

The movie was a dime, food was purchased at one of two grocery stores, you could buy all of the repair items you needed at the hardware store.

The small town with plenty to do kept the kids close. Of the 31 graduates in 1962, 15 of them went all the way from kindergarten to graduation. All four of these women’s fathers graduated from Olin. Sandra, who left town only six years ago when she remarried, watched children Patricia (‘85), Eric (‘87) and Tara (‘88) graduate.

A few of the ‘62 classmates live far away, from Florida and Nevada to Oklahoma and Virginia. But many didn’t go far.

Paul (at left) left in 1965 for school in Davenport, but become an assessor in Cedar County and Dubuque before returning to nearby Anamosa. Linda (right) retired as an administrative assistant after 32 years with Iowa Realty in Cedar Rapids. Sheryl was a nurse in Anamosa and Marion, where she’s now retired.

“Every Christmas, anybody who came home would always get together somewhere,” Sandra (left) says.

They would recall the boys in suits and vests, the girls with bouffant hair styles, and the lifetime friendships. That will never change.

“It’ll be fun to see everybody again,” Sheryl says, “and talk over old times.”

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

ROBINS — In the cold, damp stillness of the early morning — the sky filled with stars and the sea dark as midnight — Barbara and Ron Ritchie of Robins felt a chill race up their spines. It wasn’t just the 41-degree air temperature hovering above the North Atlantic, but the fact that at that exact moment 100 years ago the HMS Titanic was about to become history.

“Silence prevails, interrupted only by the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer,” wrote Ron in his own 2012 log. “Wreaths are dropped into the water and small bouquets of flowers are set adrift. As with the Titanic, at 2:17 a.m. our ship’s lights go out. Titanic is breaking apart, her stern rising. She is poised for her final plunge. An eight-piece orchestra, comprised of young German music students carrying instruments duplicating Titanic’s orchestra, comes forward and plays ‘Nearer My God to Thee.’ Silence. It is now 2:20. Titanic has slipped away.”

At that moment Barbara, 65, and Ron, 66, felt eerily like ghosts at sea. They had visited the graves of Titanic victims in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and sailed on the Azamara Journey to the exact longitude and latitude of the Titanic’s demise. They had studied the ship’s history before leaving from New York City; listened to lectures and watched videos on the cruise. Her in a dark blue floor-length dress, he in black tails and bow tie, they had never felt more a part of history.

The sea waves calmed to a gentle swell. The waning quarter moon rose just after 3 a.m. The couple was drawn to the story of the Cedar Rapids couple on the Titanic — Walter Douglas who died on the ship and his wife, Mahala, who survived in one of the lifeboats.

“We didn’t even think about going to bed until 4 a.m.,” Barbara says.

Veterans of 15 cruises including one that took them from Canada to China, the retired Linn-Mar teachers (he in high school social studies; she in the talented and gifted program at Wilkins Elementary) happened upon this one by accident three weeks before it set sail.

“I remembered that this was happening, so on the off chance there might be something available I went on the Internet, “he says. “There it was.”

The original $5,000 per person cruise had been discounted to less than $1,000. They couldn’t resist, especially Ron whose teaching specialty was European History leading up to World War I.

In preparation, the couple visited the Brucemore mansion’s Titanic exhibit, researched copies of The Gazette online and read up on the Titanic. Ron had read Walter Lord’s “A Night to Remember” in the 1950s.

“There are so many stories still being told about the people on the ship,” Ron says.

In Halifax, the Ritchies relived the scene of a century ago when the bodies were brought ashore for burial, turning public buildings into temporary morgues. They were fascinated by the gravesite and story of the unknown child which was identified last year through DNA testing as 19-month-old Sidney Leslie Goodwin who died with his English family. They learned that Walter Douglas’ body had been tagged No. 62 before he was identified and entombed at Oak Hill Cemetery in Cedar Rapids.

Aboard ship, they made friends among the 400 passengers, ate a similar eight-course meal as served on the Titanic, enjoyed harp music.

“As the evening progresses,” Ron wrote, “all on board sense a narrowing of the distance between April 14, 2012, and April 14, 1912.

At 11:40 that night, the ship’s whistle sounded to signify the Titanic hitting the iceberg. For 90 minutes, into the wee hours of April 15, the names were read of the 1,503 people who died. In the chill of the darkness it seemed so real.

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

MARION — More than 65 years after he wrote letters home while serving with the Army in Korea, LaVerne Crowley is reading them. In fact, now that LaVerne is 84 and comfortably retired in a Marion condo, he’s also taking the time to read his old diaries which hearken back to 1941.

“I think I probably got one for my birthday,” LaVerne says about the diaries. “I just kept on going.”

On Jan. 3, 1941, he comments that he lost his watch. A couple of weeks later he writes that he found it.

“I read that the other day,” says LaVerne, 14 when he started and still keeping daily records. “They sure bring back a lot of memories.”

That’s the purpose of keeping a diary in the first place — a great chance to look back on your life and reminisce.

“They do solve a lot of arguments,” LaVerne adds with a laugh. “We just go to the diary and check it out.”

Yep, when was so-and-so born? When did she die? What year did we have the big snowstorm?”

“It was unbelievable the blizzards we had back then,” he says. “The snow and high winds. I don’t think people could live through it today.”

His wife, Mary Jane (they celebrate 60 years Sept. 24), also enjoys deciphering the faded pencil scratches.

“Once-in-a-while she’ll be reading and say, ‘Oh, do you remember this?’ I don’t remember,” he laughs.

LaVerne was born May 28, 1927, in a rural Coggon farmhouse at the far northeast corner of Linn County, adjacent roads dividing it from Jones County to the east and Delaware County to the north. It was home for more than 80 years until last spring.

The Crowley farm was settled in 1865, his father, John “Jack” Crowley, being born in the same house. LaVerne and Mary Jane moved in when they married, after his parents had retired, and he continued to farm with his brother, Harold, who now lives in Hopkinton. They had four children and their son, Bill, is now on the farm.

Peruse the diaries and you learn about new milking machines for the cows, gasoline at six gallons for a dollar and LaVerne’s first car, a 1942 Chevrolet bought after his return from Korea. Read the letters with 6-cent stamps, saved by his mother, Alice, and you learn about a young soldier’s concerns half a world away in 1946 and 1947.

Soon, thereafter, on his visits to the McDonough store (groceries, feed and farm supplies) in Castle Grove, LaVerne got sweet on the owners’ daughter, Mary Jane.

“She used to make me ice cream cones,” he laughs,

For nearly 60 years LaVerne told his wife he’d read his diaries after he retired. This winter, when he dug them out, the first one was locked.

“I had to cut it open,” he says. “I don’t know why I locked it. It didn’t have any secrets.”

But, like the letters, those diaries give a lifelong farmer a window into his own life.

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

IOWA CITY — While many women her age are giving up collections, Erda Jo Thomas, 78, continues to see blue, as in Smurf blue. For, in about 20 years, she’s amassed a collection of more than 2,000 figures and items of the worldwide popular cartoon figures. And Erda Jo’s not quitting now.

“The brand new ones are on order. Every year they make eight new figures as a set.”

A bedroom in her Iowa City home is the land of the Smurfs, with 2-inch figures lined up shoulder-to-shoulder in glass-enclosed bookcases surrounded by stuffed dolls, 1970s toys in boxes and a smattering of mushroom-shaped Smurf homes.

“I’m not a druggie,” Erda Jo jokes. “This is my drug of choice.”

She’s definitely a Smurf fanatic, belonging to both the United States and European collector clubs. She has given local talks about the small blue characters created by Belgian artist Peyo in 1958 and first produced a year later in French and Dutch speaking countries.

The mischievous beings who love having fun and speak a weird language, first appeared in short films in 1965 in Europe. A decade later Belgian TV produced a full-length feature based on “The Magic Flute.” And in 1981, Hanna-Barbera produced a Smurfs cartoon show for NBC that would grew to 256 episodes still seen on TV around the world.

Erda Jo, born Erma Joan Thomas in Iowa City where she graduated from City High in 1952, became a nurse at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics for 32 years. Before she retired, she collected Tarzan stuff, from books and movies to dolls. After she sold most of that collection for $1,000, she collected Disney items for a while.

“One day I discovered Smurfs in a consignment store here,” she says. “I could get ten for a dollar.”

Now they’re worth $15, $40, even $65 each.

By 1998 she had so many Smurfs all around her home that Jan Lindenberger of Colorado called to feature her collection in the book, “More Smurf Collectibles.”

Jan spent two days taking pictures. Erda Jo received six copies of the book and a connection to Smurfs collectors around the country.

Ask how many different Smurfs there are and she laughs. “Who knows.”

You’ve got Smurf and Smurfette. Papa Smurf, Mama Smurf, Baby Smurf. They ride scooters, eat ice cream, deliver pizza, race boats, play volleyball, wear Indian headdresses, jump rope …

They appear on drinking glasses, backpacks, T-shirts, underwear …

They seem to be everywhere. Last year’s “The Smurfs” movie was so popular another comes out in 2013. They front theme parks. Typing “Smurfs” on e-bay gets you more than 6,000 hits. They’ve become such big business, fakes (unauthorized versions) are made around the world that even a trained eye has trouble distinguishing from licensed ones.

“I’ve got fakes up the ying yang,” Erda Jo says, explaining that some of them are so good they can still be worth the same as a genuine one.

Joking that she has entered her second childhood (Erda Jo has never been married), she feels a special kinship to other collectors including a good friend whom she’s visited a half-dozen times in Ripon, Wisc.

“I have nothing compared to her,” Erda Jo says. “I told her when I die to come and get my collection.”

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

CEDAR RAPIDS — The St. Luke’s bill for surgery, including 16 days in the hospital, came to $56. But that was 1919, a year after the hospital had weathered the flu epidemic.

“We were surprised St. Luke’s survived,” says Dot Hinman of Cedar Rapids. “The flue epidemic, two world wars, the Great Depression. They had trouble finding people during World War II because everybody was drafted.”

“They also had closings and chronic debt,” adds her husband, Gene. “They once had egg festivals, to have people bring in eggs so they had something to eat.”

But, since 1884, St. Luke’s Methodist Hospital has been a presence in Cedar Rapids. And the Hinmans, longtime community volunteers, have spent the last two years sorting through two rooms of documents, photographs, equipment and memorabilia to uncover artifacts for the hospital’s history wall just off the A Avenue lobby entrance.

“It’s really neat to watch people stop and look at it,” says Dot. “They say, ‘I remember when they did that. I remember when they did this.’”

Of course the hospital bill, which was $2.50 per day, stops a lot of folks. So do the photographs of the original building, of surgical rooms with open windows, and of trash cans located next to the freight elevator that doubled as the public elevator.

Dot, 80, and Gene, 82, responded to an idea from hospital president Ted Townsend.

“He thought this was a project somebody should do,” Dot says with a laugh. “Apparently we looked like history types.”

Actually, the Hinmans are volunteer types who appreciate history. They were first hit with the idea in 1963 when a hurricane removed part of the roof from their Texas hotel while he finished graduate school. Gene retired in 1995 from Cornell College in Mount Vernon after more than 35 years as a geology professor. Dot had worked in admissions at both Cornell and Coe College. Divorced after a 30-year marriage, they remarried 15 years later on Jan. 7, 1997.

“It was a failure as a divorce,” Gene jokes.

Getting back together has not only been beneficial to them, but to hundreds of people around the country. For, from 1998 to 2008, the Hinmans helped at 31 disasters for the Red Cross including Hurricane Katrina, 9/11 in New York City and three hurricanes in Florida. They continue to volunteer at the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Iowa City on Mondays and at St. Luke’s on Wednesdays.

Their first St. Luke’s duty was to put together a hospital directory for other volunteers, followed by a dictionary of acronyms. Then it was on to organizing for the history wall, which continues.

In the beginning, the Hinmans divided items between the nursing school and the hospital, sorting them by decade They soon had 50 pages of lists for the scrapbooks, photographs, yearbooks, nurses caps, uniforms, equipment and a variety of bedpans including one that was galvanized.

“It must have been real cozy to sit on that,” Gene says.

As they scan documents to computer files, the Hinmans have learned not too many stories exist since the 1980s. “We hope people will come forward with their stories,” Dot says, “before they’re gone.”

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

VINTON — You can’t buy American cheese at the Cheesehead Cheese Haus.

Then again, why would you want to when you can choose from dozens upon dozens of such intriguing Wisconsin flavors as chocolate fudge cheese, Colby cranberry and hot Jack habanero cheese?

“I didn’t know if I’d like some of these cheeses,” admits Kris Shultis, who opened the business last November with her husband, Bob. “But I haven’t found a cheese I don’t like.”

The fudge cheese melts in your mouth. The habanero can burn your tonsils. And, if you’re looking for something a little weird, you can’t beat morel and leek Jack cheese.

“You might not think so,” Kris says, “but that’s one of our most popular.”

But, look through cooler No. 1, then No. 2 and No. 3, and Kris will say that about a lot of the 100 kinds/flavors.

“Cheese is really fun,” she says. “It makes you happy.”

It makes you smile — that’s why photographers have you say “Cheese.”

Such happiness is why Kris, 46, and Bob, 54, gave their business (www.thecheesehaus.com) the double cheese name. She was born in Wisconsin and he moved there from New Jersey to attend the University of Wisconsin in Madison where they met 20 years ago. Kris, a graduate of Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, had returned to Madison after a stint with the Ohio Ballet Chamber Orchestra in Akron.

The couple moved to Iowa City in 1993 when she taught oboe at the University of Iowa. But, after her endowment was cut three years later, she became a massage therapist. Meanwhile, Bob, who worked for Crescent Electric in Madison and Cedar Rapids (he’s now with R/B Sales of Marion) was between jobs. About five years ago they had moved with their children, Grace, now 13, and Julia, 9, to an acreage southeast of Vinton.

“We wanted to bring Wisconsin cheese to Iowa when we came here 18 years ago,” Kris says. “We wanted to have our own small business.”

The Cheesehead Cheese Haus seemed perfect since the only dedicated cheese outlet they knew about was the Kalona Cheese House.

“All of our cheese is from small, family owned dairies in Wisconsin,” Kris says. At first they worked with a dozen, but have cut that to six stops on their cheese runs every two or three weeks.

For the past year Kris has read a lot about cheese and hopes to attend a cheese school in San Francisco.

Competitively priced for the quality, cheese prices here range from $6 to $30 per pound. You’ll find everything from cheddar cheese (aged from one year to 12) to interesting flavors from bacon or blueberry to apple Jack or Limburger.

“We take requests,” Kris says. “When we first got here, we got a request for frying cheese. When you heat it, it doesn’t melt.”

Maybe your request could be a song, too, since, if you stop in the afternoon, Kris may be playing her oboe.

The Cheesehead Cheese Haus simply has that relaxed atmosphere, where you can sample some of the worldwide wines also available, consult charts to pair wines and cheeses, and shop for all sorts of related items from cheese-stuffed green olives to special storage containers, knives and cutting boards.

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

WEST BRANCH — Expect to see some highflying Saturday morning as the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum kicks off its 50th anniversary. That’s when folks are invited to bring their kites and launch them into the breeze over Hoover Park.

“We’re trying to recreate what Hoover saw as a child in West Branch with the kite flying,” says Tom Schwartz, director of the library since last July.

Obviously, kites invoke childhood nostalgia as well for Tom, who grew up in Downers Grove, Ill.

“There was this nice hill,” he says, a fifth-grade twinkle in his eye. “I could go up there and catch the wind.”

Hoover was born in West Branch on Aug. 10, 1874, and returned 88 years to the day to dedicate his library (above). Between times, of course, he left town, graduated from Stanford University, forged a magnificent career as a mining engineer and became President from 1929 to 1933.

“We’re taking the 50th year and trying to reconnect with all of the things Hoover valued — the community of West Branch, the carefree childhood, the importance of presidential service,” Tom says. “Not because of what it would say about his life, but about his presidency.”

Because The Great Depression began during his administration, Hoover has often been misaligned. But Tom, raised in a Republican family, grew up with a completely different attitude.

“Anytime they got together, they’d talk,” he says. “You always got these history lessons. You’d hear how things were so much better when Hoover was president than (Franklin Delano) Roosevelt.”

His grandmother, in fact, would not allow Roosevelt stamps in the house. Yet, as Illinois state historian and chief historian at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum in Springfield, Ill, Tom wondered if he should accept the appointment in West Branch.

“Do I really want to tell the Hoover story?” Tom says. “Then, I realized, ‘You don’t really know much.’ Then I started reading. My God, this guy was really something.”

The more he learns, the more he appreciates Hoover’s legacy and the similarities of our 16th and 31st presidents.

“They both held things close to the vest,” Tom says. “They were not emotive about what they were thinking unless it served a purpose.”

Obviously, Lincoln’s speeches are much better known, in part because he had the ability to talk in “sound bites” and served during the Civil War. Hoover was more low key, idolized Lincoln and felt doing the right thing was enough.

“This is a good opportunity for people to see Lincoln documents, but to also see that Hoover had many of the same traits,” Tom says.

The exhibit, which runs through Oct. 28, features three elements — “Ideas of Lincoln and Hoover,” “Creating the Legacy,” and “Dining with the President.”

As you walk around you can see Hoover’s portable leather-cased martini bar with bottles for gin and vermouth. Always one to like a couple of martinis a day, he came up with a perfect solution when his doctor told him to cut back to one.

“He told his staff to use a bigger glass,” Tom laughs. “He still got his two martinis a day.”

The exhibit — in fact, the entire library — are filled with great stories about Iowa’s only native-son President. One has to do with the dedication of this very library which Hoover did with President Harry S. Truman.

As Tom relates the story, the presidents spent the night before in Cedar Rapids — Hoover at Brucemore and Truman at the Roosevelt Hotel. They ate breakfast together and, as they traveled to West Branch, realized they should visit a bathroom before arriving for what would be a long day. In 1962, of course, “convenience stores” were a thing of the future, so they stopped at the groundskeeper’s house and, when nobody was home, had a State Trooper break a window so they could get in.

So, who paid to repair the window? Tom laughs. “That’s still one of those mysteries.”

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

FYI: Hoover Library Turns 50:

Celebrating 50 Years at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, West Branch

What: The new exhibit features three parts: “Creating the Legacy,” “Dining with the President” and “Ideas of Lincoln and Hoover.”

When: Saturday through Oct. 28. Regular Museum hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.

Kickoff: People are invited to bring their kites Saturday to fly them over Hoover Park west of the library from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. “Benjamin Franklin” will be present from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. and admission is free to the museum that day.

More information: www.hoover.archives.gov

HILLS — As an artist who lost his parents, Pat Muller, 50, wanted to tell his story in a unique way. He turned to dinner, a pleasant time, and the plates it is served on. And he reflected on life, doing it with symbols rather than a written language.

What you find, then, are ceramic plates — “Supper Time” — created to represent Iowa communities in a fresh way.

The Riverside plate (left), for instance, depicts a barbershop and pole along with the Star Trek emblem. For, not only were Pat’s ancestors barbers here, but his father, Kenneth, was born in Riverside and the fictional Star Trek’s Captain James T. Kirk is to be born here, behind the barbershop, on March 22 in either 2228 or 2233, depending on which source you believe.

The plate for Wheatland (right), where his mother, Hazel Fox was born, shows the Wapsipinicon River running through it, intersecting with an unnamed stream and a creek called Yankee Run, one of the settlement’s early names.

Hazel died in 2007; Kenneth in 2008. Their son always thought he’d have plenty of time to learn their history.

“You take it for granted,” Pat says, “because you can always ask questions tomorrow.”

He created the first plates in 2010 and has steadily added to them as he traveled to many surrounding communities, researching their histories and talking to residents. He’s approaching 50 plates now.

“They started with where my family came from, but then I added towns because I liked them,” he says. “It’s kind of a way to tell stories. For this project, it was a way to continue to tell family history in a unique way.”

Born in Washington, Iowa, Pat is a 1979 graduate of West High School in Iowa City and earned counseling and education degrees at the University of Iowa in 1983 and 1995. He now develops essay tests at ACT in Iowa City and lives in the home that was his parents’ in Hills.

“I like to do art that gives the viewer some kind of ownership and also that makes culture palpable,” Pat says. (He blogs on the Internet at http://prairieincubator.wordpress.com)

For instance, not only have his “Supper Time” plates been on display (at Plum Grove Historic House and Public Space One in Iowa City), they’ve served as eating utensils at an invitation-only dinner at historical Elmhurst (the Singmaster Mansion) in Keota.

“Eating on the plates makes it interactive,” Pat says. “They pick a plate and take it to their place.”

In conjunction with this project, Pat has created a subset of plates as a wedding gift for a couple and their two children in Prague, Czech Republic, which he’ll revisit late this month. He’ll also pick up companion pieces (a commemorative book and a doll) for a handmade ornamental sword he bought in the village of Strani, Moravia, in February. He hopes to have a ceremony in Cedar Rapids before donating the items to the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library.

“My Czech connection is my own connection,” Pat says. “But my family was in the Austrian-Hungary Empire at one time.”

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

IOWA CITY — “Many homes are filled with sorrow and with sadness.”

The shock was felt around the world after the April 15, 1912, sinking of the Titanic.

“Many hearts are filled with anguish and with pain.”

Everyone had heard it was indestructible.

“And our nation now is wrapped in deepest mourning.”

So many loved ones, 1,514 people, perished; yet 710 were saved.

“For the heroes of the Titanic.”

So begins “The Titanic Disaster,” a song written by sisters Gertrude and Agnes Hartman of Steamboat Rock, Iowa, that was copyrighted on May 13, 1912, just four weeks later. It was, indeed, a tragic time even in Iowa.

Gertrude, 19 at the time, wrote the lyrics. Agnes, 14, composed the music. And Agnes’ daughter, Bonnie Bleeker of Iowa City recalls her mother talking about the Titanic.

“She didn’t make it any more sad than I could handle,” says Bonnie, 78.

Yet, there was no denying that Bonnie understood the emotional impact of so many deaths.

Historical accounts show that it took two days before a partial list of survivors was released and another four days before the list became complete.

By then, newspapers carried widely varied accounts of the Titanic hitting an iceberg. And, in no time, people were writing and publishing poetry. Companies cashed in by issuing commemorative memorabilia from candy tins to a black mourning teddy bear. Soon, some survivors even published books.

Gertrude and Agnes had no intention of trying to cash in. Their father, Bill Hartman, a blacksmith, paid to have their song published. Only a few copies were printed for family and friends.

Bonnie has held on to several copies, many of them tattered, torn and taped together because the pages have been turned so many times.

“I’ve played it for friends at parties,” Bonnie says. “For people to sing. And for my own entertainment.”

Bonnie couldn’t play it for me on her piano because she broke her left wrist not long ago. But she did sing a couple verses of her mother’s song.

“She did her own music, then she incorporated “Nearer My God to Thee” in it because that’s what they played when they were leaving the ship, and then she went back to her own music,” Bonnie says.

Agnes loved music and it rubbed off on Bonnie who took piano lessons from her mother and has been a tap dancer all of her life. In fact, Agnes’ second husband, Roy Glaze, had an orchestra in which she sang and played the violin.

“They’d bring all of their music stands to our house and practice,” Bonnie says. “I just loved it.”

The music for “The Titanic Disaster” was a different story.

“Mom didn’t really show it off,” Bonnie recalls. “She just had it in the piano bench with all the other music.”

Agnes died in 1960 at age 62. Her sister had died six years earlier. Did they write anything more than “The Titanic Disaster?”

“No, not that I know of,” Bonnie says. “They were just so impressed with the Titanic.”

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

CEDAR RAPIDS — In the 1997 movie about the Titanic, rereleased last weekend in theaters, two men from the salvage crew doubt old Rose’s story. In fact, one of them checked her out, learned she was an actress and claims she’s a liar.

“Her name was Rose Dawson back then,” says Lewis Bodine. “Then she marries this guy named Calvert, they move to Cedar Rapids and she punches out a couple of kids. Now Calvert’s dead, and from what I hear Cedar Rapids is dead!”

“It certainly isn’t very flattering,” says Mark Stoffer Hunter, a Cedar Rapids historian.

“It is one of the enduring mysteries of the movie,” adds David Wendell of Marion, a Titanic aficionado.

The men, unpacking a Titanic model for a display at the Carl & Mary Koehler History Center, speculate that director James Cameron was simply looking for a nondescript Midwestern town for his film and came up with Cedar Rapids.

Of course, anyone who knows Cedar Rapids history from a century ago knows that Walter Douglas, a member of the family that founded Penick and Ford. died when the ship sank April 15, 1912, while his wife, Mahala, and their maid, Berthe Leroy, survived.

Mark and David were helping set up a new exhibit at the history center as a companion piece for “The Titanic’s Unsinkable Stories: 100 Years Later” which opened last month at Brucemore. This exhibit, “Cedar Rapids 1912: The Titanic Connection,” opens Saturday and runs through July 14.

Among period clothing and artifacts, you’ll see a piece of coal from the Titanic’s death bed, autographs of Titanic survivors and reproductions of dishes from the first-class dining room, photographs and paintings.

“It’s fun to be able to put these things out,” says Lisa McKirgan, communications director for the history center. “It was a fascinating time and these are fascinating clothes,” she adds about items that have been donated through the years.

David, who owns a half-dozen replicas of the Titanic including the detailed four-footer in the exhibit, paid about $100 for a piece of coal hauled up during salvage operations. Another piece of coal will be set up for visitors to touch.

“People will be able to leave this exhibit and say, ‘I touched a piece of Titanic history,’” he says.

Through the years, David’s interest helped him become friends with Titanic survivor Eleanor Johnson Schuman while he lived in Chicago. In fact, he introduced her to James Cameron as he helped with publicity for the film.

Eleanor, not quite 2 as a third-class passenger, was so cute her family was escorted up to the last collapsible lifeboat, David says. Her autograph is among those he collected that include Millvina Dean, the youngest survivor at 2 months old, Cameron and Celine Dion, who sang the movie’s theme song.

“The Titanic is not a ship to me,” David says. “It is 2,207 people, some of whom I had the privilege to get to know and considered to be close friends. Exhibiting these artifacts is my way of assuring that these men and women who mean so much to me are never forgotten.”

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

MOUNT VERNON — In the Ault family, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. But that had nothing to do with the laws of physics; rather it was the elder Ault’s love of teaching and the younger Ault’s penchant for solving puzzles.

Warren Ault, who became a history professor at Boston University in 1910, taught for 56 years.

Addison Ault, who began teaching chemistry at Cornell College here in 1962 will retire this spring after 50 years.

“When he started there,” laughs son, Addison, “he was the entire history department.

“He was a fine example. He was involved in a noble profession.”

So, Addison, born 78 years ago in Boston, graduated from high school in nearby Newton and went on to Amherst College about 90 miles further west. After completing his undergraduate work in 1955, he returned to the Boston area and Harvard University where he earned his doctorate in 1959, although it wasn’t conferred until 1960.

After writing 63 letters for a job, he spent two years at Grinnell College which, at the time, hired young teachers for two years and then replaced them. After a year with Grinnell’s participation in a project at the Argonne National Laboratory, associated with the University of Chicago, he was offered jobs at Monmouth College in Illinois and Cornell College.

Impressed with Bill Deskin, chairman of the chemistry department, Addison took the position at Cornell. He had no idea that he’d stay half a century, although the signs were there. For, when Deskin retired, his career was well over 40 years and his successor, Cindy Strong, is wrapping up her 23rd year. Truman Jordan has been with the department 36 years.

“Longevity is one of our strong points. We get along with each other extremely well,” he says.

In fact, even though Addison has been part-time the last 13 years and is “retiring” (he’s being honored Saturday at 2:30 p.m. in The Commons), he’ll continue to oversee a couple of labs. That means he’ll walk all of two blocks to work, as he’s done for 49 years from the home where he and his wife, Janet, raised five children.

Addison has stuck around so long because his true love, teaching, can take precedence over research.

“I’ve always thought I found it, my perfect job,” he says. “Here, research with students is another form of teaching, especially in the summer.”

While Addison taught summer chemistry labs early in his career, he stepped back when the budget grew tight. But, by connecting with a friend at Dartmouth College, he was able to teach summer labs elsewhere, including a 13-year stint at Harvard that ended in 1998.

“Students can have insights,” he says matter-of-factly, recalling how his own curiosity was exactly why he studied chemistry in college after skipping it in high school. The element that interested him?

“It seemed like a series of puzzles,” he says. “You could do things in the lab. You could experiment in a practical way.”

As far as science goes, it’s all an endless supply of puzzles, he says, although chemistry bridges the gap between physics and biology. His textbook, “Techniques and Experiments for Organic Chemistry,” copyrighted in 1988, still sells 2,000 to 3,000 copies a year.

“The challenge was to find out what was going on at the molecular level that you couldn’t see. That’s what kept me interested for 50 years.

“It’s just one level of puzzlement after another. The good thing is there is an answer that you can figure out.”

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

TOLEDO — The screen door stood open, the white board out front espoused a daily words-of-wisdom and a chocolate Coke was just a couple of spritzes away at the soda fountain.

On Toledo’s main street (High Street) the Trojan Inn cafe nears its 50th anniversary with signs that time has stood still.

For one, Mary Ann Gardner waited tables when her older sister, Marlene Rhoads, opened the place in 1962 and she’s still waiting tables. Only, now, Mary Ann is the owner.

For another, the Trojan Inn accepted only cash and checks until last November when it added a credit card machine.

And, third, the food is made from scratch.

“Ninety-nine percent of what I do is homemade,” Mary Ann laughs. “No wonder I’m tired.”

Yes, for 50 years the Trojan Inn has been Mary Ann’s second home, her favorite hang out, her life.

It began about May 12, 1962 (an open house will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on May 12), when Marlene and her husband, Dene, decided Toledo could use another cafe. They named it the Trojan Inn after the Trojan mascot of the newly formed South Tama Community School District. Mary Ann, an older sister, Ruth, and their mother, Carrie Becker, became early employees.

Four years later, Marlene and Dene left for Kansas so he could go to school and sold it to her mother. Carrie owned the cafe until she retired at the end of 1983, turning it over to Mary Ann.

“I figured, I’ll take it,” she says. “The business is there, I’ll get the kids through school, I can sell it in five years.”

Hah. That was 28 years ago as of Jan. 1. And two longtime employees — Tonda Swanson, 15 years, and Deb Tonche, on and off for 25 years — say it won’t be sold now.

“Tonda says I have to work here until I’m 80,” Mary Ann says. “That’s 13 years.” She laughs. “I don’t plan to retire as long as I stay healthy.”

Why would she? The cafe was a lifesaver, it holds so many memories and it’s still a popular gathering place.

Mary Ann married in 1965 and only worked here on occasion they moved to Colfax. But two years later, after her husband was killed in a car accident, she returned to Toledo with two children for the comfort of family. As her sons grew up she worked more and more.

In those early days the old-style coffee maker had to be watched so it didn’t boil over, ice was packed around the syrup for pop and, in fact, ice was purchased in 50-pound bags because the restaurant didn’t have an ice maker.

Mary Ann recalls starting at 50 cents an hour plus tips. “If you got a quarter, that was monumental,” she says.

The tradition of making food from scratch, the pie crusts and soups, cinnamon rolls and Thursday hot beef special and breaded pork tenderloins (some customers have taken them to Arizona and Colorado), all began on day one and continue, with Mary Ann arriving about 5 a.m. The Trojan Inn is open 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and closes the weeks of July 4 and Labor Day so she can have time off.

Only once did the Trojan Inn come close to closing for good — in 1994 when she was forced to leave the original place a half-block away. Fortunately her fiance, Larry Applegate (he died in 1998), had the present building available. And the Trojan Inn tradition continues.

“It’s always feast or famine around here,” Mary Ann says. “That’s the way it’s always been. But we have more good days than bad. That’s why we’re still here.”

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

I talked to Dennis about the early appearance this year of butterflies in Iowa. (See yesterday’s post and my Ramblin’ column in the April 6, 2012, issue of The Gazette.)

What an education about butterflies. Dennis co-authored the book, “Butterflies of Iowa,” published in 2007. It was a book nearly 40 years in the making, started by John Downey, a world-renowed butterfly expert and biology professor at the University of Northern Iowa when Dennis became a student.

Dennis’ personal collection of butterflies includes more than 6,000 specimens, many of them collected by others. And he’s not just interested in butterflies — he and his wife, Linda, raise 50 varieties of heirloom tomatoes and they’re accomplished woodworkers. Linda works at the Grant Wood AEA based in Cedar Rapids to assemble and delivere science kits to elementary schools in seven counties. One of those kits includes all of the basics about butterflies.

“You’ll find a lot of second graders who know a lot about raising butterflies,” Dennis says. “You better be good with your stuff or they’ll correct you.”

When it come to a state butterfly, a lot of folks in years past have suggested the Monarch. While it’s a beautiful butterfly, it pretty much just passes through Iowa during its spring and fall migrations. Besides, seven states (Alabama, Idaho, Illinios, Minnesota, Texas, Vermont and West Virginia) all have designated the Monarch as either their state butterfly or state insect.

The orange and black Regal Fritillary (right) is nearly as beautiful and could be mistaken as a Monarch by people who don’t know any better. But it stays in Iowa all year long. It lays eggs in the late summer and hatching caterpillar hibernate through the winter. In the spring, the short, black and yellow fuzzy caterpillars eat violets and soon turn into butterflies to start the annual cycle again.

Habitat loss, of course, as cut the numbers of Regal Fritillary as it has lots of other butterflies. But, of the 115 species in Iowa, it’s one of the best known and recognized. And, fortunately, it has been found in all 99 of Iowa’s counties. In fact, Dennis’ collection includes mounted Regal Fritillary from all over.

“You wonder why there are so many,” Dennis says. “I’ve got to prove I’ve got one from every county. That’s why it should be the state butterfly.”

CENTER POINT — A Red Admiral, a black butterfly with a red stripe on its wing, flits onto the white blossom of a pear tree in Dennis Schlicht’s front yard.

“That’s kind of like the earliest on record,” says Dennis, a student of butterflies for half a century. “It shouldn’t be here until the beginning of June.”

Then again, pear trees shouldn’t have blossoms, morel mushrooms shouldn’t be popping up and we shouldn’t be mowing our yards — again.

Mother Nature has certainly thrown nature lovers a curve this year with the warmest March on record. Already insects threaten to become early pests, from uninvited ants to your picnic to the bad guys who invade corn and soybean fields.

It also presents a conundrum for butterflies and their followers.

“In a year like this year, when should we go?” says Dennis. “The timing is important for them for the resources they need. And for us, we need to be out there at the right time.”

The early Red Admiral, up from the southern United States, is just one example. Expect the ever-popular Monarchs to arrive from Mexico late this month, some two to four weeks early.

“I’d think they’re up to southern Missouri with this wind (from the south),” Dennis says. “The trouble is, they could run into a frost.”

Of course, these aren’t the same Monarchs that flew south last fall. While the autumn butterflies have an innate ability to live up to 120 days to make the entire trip, those flying north the following spring are grandchildren who typically live 30 days.

Yep, when you talk to a butterfly expert, you learn some cool stuff.

Dennis, 63, a retired biology teacher from Washington High School in Cedar Rapids, co-authored the book, “Butterflies of Iowa,” published in 2007. It was 40 years in the making, started by John Downey who was in charge of the biology department at the University of Northern Iowa when Dennis enrolled. Before he knew it, Dennis, who paid minimal attention to butterflies as he grew up near Cedar Falls, was studying them with his nationally renowned teacher.

For the next four summers, his interest intensified as he watched butterflies as a forest fire lookout on Jelm Mountain near Laramie, Wyo.

“You’re up there and they’re flying all around,” Dennis says. “It was just a circus of butterflies.”

Some of his 1966 specimens are among more than 6,000 butterflies mounted in his collection, which includes butterflies gathered by others. He opens one drawer to reveal South American butterflies gathered in the 1920s by Bert Porter of Decorah and then removes the top from a box of Allamakee County butterflies (right) collected in the late 1980s by John Nehnevaj of New Albin.

Currently, Dennis says, Iowa has 115 species of butterflies which all depend on weather conditions for their life cycles. He points to the Ottoe skipper which relies on the opening of purple coneflowers about July 1.

“If it’s a wet year, the coneflowers will be late and they need to be late,” Dennis says. “If it’s a dry year they’re early and they need to be early.”

And, he laments the loss of the Dakota Skipper, last seen in Iowa in 1990, due to fire and a loss of habitat.

“A number of butterflies, I warned in the book, we’re going to lose,” he says. “And we are.”

In the meantime, enjoy the variety of butterflies while you can. And, like the Red Admiral in Dennis’ front yard, expect to see them early this year.

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

CEDAR RAPIDS — Bill Hood has had a fondness for Cedar Rapids since 1970, when he came to town to become director of the Jane Boyd Community House. So he wants to give back. Which is why he and his wife, Gwendolyn, have established three college scholarships for black students in Cedar Rapids. Each scholarship is for $1,000.

“It’s not for the A-plus student, but for the student who needs a bump up,” says Bill, 78, who grew up poor in Davenport and knows what it’s like to pull yourself up by the bootstraps.

The first scholarships are scheduled to be awarded April 28 at the annual African American Museum of Iowa banquet.

That means black students who graduate from the Cedar Rapids Community School District this spring need to submit their applications as soon as possible. They can contact Aaron Green, director of student equity at the school district by phone, (319) 558-2259, or email at agreen@cr.k12.ia.us

The scholarships are being issued in the name of Bill’s late sister, Willella Fluellin, of Davenport who died two years ago at age 86. She was very active in her Davenport church and had its outreach center named after her.

“I wanted to do something in my own way, in my sister’s name,” Bill says. “She was the most loving, kindest person I ever knew.”

For the first year, the scholarships will be funded out of Bill’s and Gwendolyn’s pocket. They hope to raise additional funds so the scholarships can be awarded in perpetuity.

The Hoods’ affection for Cedar Rapids is evident in the fact they left in 1972 but returned five years later. They both retired in 2004, Gwendolyn after 27 years as a secretary at Mercy Medical Center and Bill after a career that emphasized social work.

They love Cedar Rapids, they say, because it’s nice and quiet, yet has a solid community spirit. That’s what brought them back in 1977 after he had worked with mental health clinics in Wisconsin and Indiana. In 1960, as a student at Iowa State Teachers College in Cedar Falls, he began his social work at the Mental Health Institute in Independence where he worked for a decade.

The return to Cedar Rapids came when Bill was hired as the first black teacher at Mount Mercy College. In 15 years there he went from assistant professor of social work to vice president of student affairs. In 1992 he returned to the Jane Boyd Community House where he established Harambee House (Harambee is Swahili for “let’s work together.”) as an outreach of community services to the Wellington Heights area including programs for African-American middle school youth.

Growing up in Davenport, Bill knew exactly what it was like to have solid adult mentors. He was encouraged to play the drums, participate in athletics (football and a three-time state shot put champion), join the Marine Corps and go the college. In other words, to follow his passions and his dreams.

Still very active in the community, from being director of Christian education at Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church to serving on Linn County’s general assistance advisory committee, Bill hopes the scholarships can provide similar help to young people today.

“My thing,” he says, “is to give back the blessings that I have received.”

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

MOUNT AUBURN — For now they’re known as A, B, C, D, and E or 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, but if you’ve got a better idea, Brooke Gardner would entertain nominations to name her five kids.

Yep, five kids. As in goats. Because Brooke’s longtime female goat, Sweet Pea, recently gave birth to a litter of five. (Normal is one to three kids at a time.)

“It is so exciting,” says Brooke, as the kids jostle for position around a bottle of milk replacer. There’s no way mom could keep up.

Around noon on March 10, Brooke’s husband, Chris, called out to her as he went out on their acreage north of Mount Vernon to check his small heard of Dexter cattle. He heard bleating in the goat barn and shouted, “Booke, I think you’ve got babies.

So Brooke grabbed their 16-month-old son, Ethan, to investigate, knowing two of her goats were expecting. She found Sweet Pea cuddled up with a new litter.

“They were still wet,” Brooke says. “She was cleaning them off.

“I counted them and there were five. No way were there five, so I counted them again.”

Mmmm. Maybe it’s a result of this weird, unusual and early spring. Because, the same day, the other goat gave birth to two kids and the next day a cow had a calf. Or, maybe, it was just time for Sweet Pea to break her own record of four.

Sweet Pea was one of the first goats Brooke and Chris, both 29, got in 2004. The couple married earlier that year and moved to 9 1/2 acres because to be in the country. He’s plant manager at Farm Services in La Porte City and she’s a special education associate with the Center Point-Urbana schools.

“His first thing was, you can’t live in the country without having chickens,” Brooke says.

From baby chicks, they soon added a pair of pygmy goats, a couple of horses (now gone) and the cattle which, which Chris breeds and sells.

“We found out pygmies jump,” Brooke says. “We’d have friends over and they’d jumped on people’s cars. They weren’t too happy.”

Since everybody liked Sweet Pea, and she’d gained enough weight not to jump too high, she got a reprieve. Cinnamon was sold. Then Brooke discovered fainting goats.

“I like fainters a lot more,” she says. “You don’t have to worry about them.”

The neighbors also enjoyed the fainters, honking their car horns to watch the goats keel over from fright as their defense mechanism.

Soon, with a fainting Billy goat, Brooke was breeding and selling a dozen or so goats a year at $50 to $100 each. With five-month gestation periods, the females give birth twice a year.

“I usually don’t name the babies,” Brooke says. “People who buy them want to name them.

But, in this case, since there are five — two males and three females — Brooke agreed it would be fun to name them.

How about Billy Bob and Billy Joe; Betty Jo, Bobbie Jo and Billie Jo (from Petty Coat Junction fame.)

OK. If you’ve got a better idea — I’m sure you do — let me know.

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

CEDAR RAPIDS — The feel of rolling thunder on the rails, the smell of creosote from the ties, the wail of a fading whistle.

Darren Ferreter can close his eyes to relive the days his father hauled him off to experience the wonder of life-size trains.

Or, he can open his eyes to a model railroad he’s created since building them became his job nearly two years ago.

Yes, Darren, 43, has parlayed a childhood interest into a vocation many model railroad hobbyists would envy.

“It started when I was about four years old,” he says. “As I was growing up, we would do trips out to watch trains.”

At first, he watched his father’s Lionel train set. Then, Darrell Ferreter took his son to see the real things in Cheyenne, Wyo., North Platte, Neb., and Galesburg, Ill. where tracks run in seven directions.

“My father took a lot of photographs and still does,” Darren says. “It was the joy of the hunt. With cameras in those days you got one or two shots and it was gone.”

But, for Darren, life took over. That meant graduating from Washington High School in Cedar Rapids, a stint in the Air Force, marriage, three children, divorce, working long hours in food service management at Mercy Medical Center and Coe College.

He dabbled in the hobby while in the service in Omaha, home for the Union Pacific, by painting models for railroad enthusiasts. That fueled his impulse to try it full time.

“Even a 4-by-8-foot layout has to have a design,” he reasons with a laugh.

So, like the little engine that could, he kept going, bigger and better, until he has nearly a dozen regular clients and many one-time ones. It has been full steam ahead in HO scale, building a layout for the “All Aboard” exhibit at the Iowa Children’s Museum in Coralville and a replica of downtown Marion for the Marion Heritage Center. He’s also modeled private layouts after Fort Wayne, Ind., and north central Pennsylvania.

“People call me either because they don’t have the time or the talent or the know-how to build their dream,” Darren says. “They seek out my assistance to help with any part of that.”

One client, who wishes to remain anonymous, says, “I’m pretty mechanical, but the thought of doing this by myself was overwhelming.”

So Darren dug in to help build the table, lay the wooden rail beds so the curves are gentle enough to prevent derailments, make mountains on chicken wire, design street scenes from historic photographs. The Pennsylvania layout, which can be the 1930s or the 1950s, depending on which trains run, includes a working roundhouse, a hobo jungle and genuine, finely-crushed Pennsylvania coal.

“I’ll build anything people want,” Darren says, “but most of my clients have an idea of what they want and we’ll go from there.”

Costs generally range from $25 to $50 for a quick solution, he says, to thousands of dollars for an elaborate design and layout. (He received $3,500 to build the children’s museum layout.)

Sophistication and detail have always been the hallmark of HO gauge (1/87th size) model railroads, whether owners set a steady speed or operate their “railroads” on rigid schedules. But now days you’ve got specific Internet interest groups and digital electronics that can control several locomotives at one time.

One thing, however, will most likely never change and that’s the desire to always improve and add on to a layout.

“I don’t care if you have an entire gymnasium,” Darren laughs, “you’re always going to want another four feet.”

n Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

With the weather already playing warm temperature jokes on us, it might seem that April 1 has come and gone.

Not so. Check your calendar. April Fools’ Day is Sunday. So, be prepared.

Three years ago, Shirley Mills of Keota was not. Her son, Bob, who was always up for a good joke, was. And since he died of cancer late in 2009, at 54, Shirley always fondly remembers her son’s jokes this time of year.

As Shirley recalled in a story written by the Washington Evening Journal that she just forwarded to me, she awoke that morning to sunshine and a strange scene in her backyard. A raccoon stood on its hind legs washing its front paws in her birdbath. It was so cute she grabbed her camera and took a picture. Then, in the background, beyond a garden bench, she noticed a coyote stalking the raccoon.

Oh, no, Shirley thought. She called her husband, Tom, who grabbed a BB gun to scare off the coyote.

Then, Shirley looked again. So did Tom. Both the raccoon and coyote seemed frozen in time.

“I just couldn’t believe it,” Shirley says. “We laughed and laughed.”

It seems Bob, who had visited his parents the day before, set up his April Fools prank that night before leaving.

“I’m Irish and French,” says Shirley, 84, “so, yeah, it has been known for me to do something.”

She loves to write letters and include witty and funny sayings she’s collected. One method she uses is to write in circles on the envelop so anyone who sees her message will “have fun” reading it.

“I enjoy doing it because I enjoy giving people a laugh,” says Shirley, who will celebrate her 60th wedding anniversary on Aug. 24.

And that’s no joke.

Also no joke is the latest creation by Francis Lebeda — a ring gun.

As Francis puts this gun on his ring finger, it appears to be a relatively large flat-faced gold ring a man would wear.

But, when he turns his hand over, there’s a complete gun mechanism in the palm of his hand — a plunger, a 5-shot cylinder and a little trigger.

“There’s only a few of these and they’re in collector’s hands,” he says. “You won’t find one.”

Originals, a century or more old, can sell for up to $13,000.

Francis will sell his brass and steel replicas for $2,000 each, as soon as the idea clears the liability and ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) approval hurdles.

“It’s a very, very expensive cap gun,” Francis laughs.

Yep. While gamblers reportedly wore ring guns (the name George H. Duval, a famous riverboat gambler, is engraved on the face of his prototype) to shoot small lead balls if there was trouble at the card table, Francis’ gun fires only blanks. It uses those little red plastic caps for fancy cap guns.

Good thing. If his gun fired bullets, you could easily shoot off your little finger or hit something by accident since the accuracy is suspect.

But Francis, always fascinated with stuff his father, Paul A. Lebeda, built at Lebeda Engineering (85 years old this year), likes to play with ideas as well as fabricate custom machinery and parts. He made eight ring guns before he got one right.

“I almost gave up,” he says. “But, hey, this is fun.”

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

MOUNT VERNON — What do you do when you hold a winter-fest celebration and there’s no snow?

You laugh it off and hold a comedy fest the next year. You make sure everyone is red-faced, er, red-nosed about it.

The first Cabin Fever Comedy Festival in the Mount Vernon-Lison area begins Tuesday and runs through the weekend. It features plenty of laughs at two dozen events, not the least of which will be seeing the audience wear red foam-rubber clown noses. That’s because you buy a nose for three bucks and get free admission to all events.

Obviously, the festival’s name derives from the fact we’ve usually been cooped up all winter. But, with temperatures already in the 70s and very little snow, festival organizers are 0 for 2 as weather forecasters.

“You’ve been happy and content going out this winter because it’s been nice,” laughs Cabin Fever founder Miles Fuller. “And now we have this festival, It’s ironic.”

But “Cabin Fever” promises to cure spring fever with everything from seminars by Laughing Laura to the “Funniest Person in Mount Vernon and Lisbon” contest. (For events see visitmvl.com or keep your eye on The Gazette).

The comedy festival came about as Miles, a non-fiction creative writing instructor at the University of Iowa, talked about it among friends in Mount Vernon. He brought the idea to Joe Jennison, marketing director for the Mount Vernon and Lisbon Community Development Group. A committee was formed and the festival was born.

Originally, Miles, 25, a closet standup comedian, had considered holding the festival in Iowa City.

“I decided it wouldn’t work there,” he says. “We’re all serious as a heart attack.”

But Mount Vernon and Lisbon seemed ideal, just as the area had lured the Salt Lake City native to his place of residence.

“It’s beautiful. They have just the right amount of delicious food. And I’m really happy to be here because they said ‘yes’ to the festival.”

Ideas tossed around to promote the funny fest included T-shirts, maybe even trying to schlep the surplus from the previous year. But a new festival needed a new angle.

Rubber chickens? Whoopee cushions? Joy buzzers? Clown noses?

“When you said noses, it was such a great idea,” Miles says to Joe. “The noses work because the audience has to wear them to get into all of the events. Everyone has to participate.”

The communities have already embraced the idea like a clown takes to seltzer water, making a dent in the supply of 2,000 red noses and taking pictures of themselves in groups or individually wearing the noses for Facebook and website display.

“One of them is a dentist,” Miles says with a smile. “He got into the laughing gas.”

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

HIGHLIGHTS: CABIN FEVER COMEDY FESTIVAL

Admission to all events is a red clown nose that can be purchased for $3 at a variety of area locations or at the Mount Vernon Visitor’s Center, also headquarters for the Mount Vernon-Lisbon Community Development Group. (See its website at visitmvl.com)

Highlights include:

“Laughing Laura” workshop at 7 p.m. Friday, First Presbyterian Church, Mount Vernon. The Rev. Laura Gentry directs the Iowa School of Laughter Yoga in Lansing as a pioneer of the laughter movement. She has led classes on five continents and is the first woman in America to become a Master Trainer of Laughter.

“Funniest Person in Mount Vernon and Lisbon” contest, 4 p.m. Saturday, First Street Community Center, Mount Vernon. Amateur comedians of any age or experience level will give 2- to 5-minute family-friendly performances to try to win the title of “2012 Funniest Person in Mount Vernon and Lisbon” and $100. Applications are available at www.visitmvl.com

Late Night Stand-up, 9:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Professional comedians from around the state will perform at area clubs (C&D Lounge, Chameleon’s and Scorz in Mount Vernon) with Paperback Rhino Improv Group at 9:30 p.m. Saturday at 3 Finger Saloon in Lisbon.

VINTON — Record the memories before they’re gone. Historians have urged that for decades.

But, if you heeded that advice long ago, you may need to follow the lead of the Benton County Women’s History Committee and upgrade what you’ve got.

In the early 1980s, interviewers recorded 36 hours of audiotapes from ten Benton County women at least 80 years old. By 1986 the tapes were edited and combined with pictures into the slideshow, “Her Own Story: Oral Histories of Ten Benton County Women.” It traveled the state to stimulate similar projects.

My, how times have changed in a quarter of a century. And those ten subjects have all died.

“Last year I got to thinking,” says project director Julie Zimmer (left) of Vinton, “These things are about to be lost. Nobody has tape players. Nobody uses audiocassettes. Nobody uses slide projectors.”

Yes, the slides were turning yellow and brittle. The sound quality of tapes could deteriorate.

Using private funds, Mike Kelly, a Vinton videographer, transferred the 35-minute slide/tape show onto a DVD. That program was screened at Vinton’s Palace Theater last year by 100 viewers.

“We heard from a lot of people who wanted to see it but couldn’t,” says Jane LaGrange (right), an original interviewer for the project.

As a result, the show has made the rounds this month, Women’s History Month, at care centers and libraries. It will be shown free of charge at 2 p.m. March 25 at the Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School in Vinton. That program includes a discussion about the importance of recording first-person interviews.

But, the Benton County group also hopes to preserve the original 36 hours of tape and to digitize more than 2,000 typewritten pages of transcripts. A $550 Iowa Humanities mini-grant this year helps, as does a local contribution from the Gilchrist Trust. Still, additional funds are needed.

“We’ll have it put on the Internet,” says Julie. “That way any school kid can push some buttons and access this.”

“It’s amazing,” adds Jane. “Back when we were doing this, that was unheard of.”

“You look at it in your own lifetime,” Julie says. “What will be here for the people when I’m gone?”

That, of course, was the intent in the 1980s.

“I’m the same age these women were when we did this,” says Jane, 81. “It just blows my mind.”

From nominations, the ten selected were Jennie Koch Beck (left, at the time of the interview, and right, high school graduation in 1922) of Keystone and Belle Plaine, Bess Shurtliff Burrows of Belle Plaine, Nira Primmer Geiger of Vinton, Freida Brehm Geiken of Vinton, Ruth Congwar Mumford of Fremont Township, Dorothy Wiegand Salle of Mount Auburn, Alvena Selken Schroeder of rural Keystone, Allegra Grady Schueler of Van Horne, Gertrude Nellist Smith of rural Vinton and Esther Williams of Vinton.

“Most of them lived into their 90s and one lived to be 103,” Jane says.

“We tried to balance it with demographics,” Julie says. “Married and not married. With children and without children. Different walks of life. Different socio-economic backgrounds.”

“One had only an eighth-grade education,” Jane adds. “Others had college degrees.”

But all told wonderful stories, whether that was preaching in church, cutting corn in a cannery, weathering the Great Depression or working a lifetime at a daily newspaper.

It is priceless to preserve and listen to these voices, the voices of everyday women recalling life in the 20th Century.

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

It’s not a magic gun that can blow away cancer cells or eradicate a disease. But Harvey Halverson’s old Remington 721 rifle with scope is doing the next best thing.

In less than seven years this gun, worth maybe $400 today, has been sold 55 times at 12 benefits, raising $40,125 for people in need, thus earning the nickname, “The Benefit Gun.”

“It’s a cool story, how that gun has gone full circle,” says Harvey’s son, Dan of Lansing. “And now it’s coming back to us.”

Dan’s son, Zach, became the first beneficiary in May, 2005.

Two more people from Lansing — Rich Mckee, 36, who is battling colon cancer and Daryl Bolson, 63, who is fighting prostate cancer — will benefit from the gun’s sale these next two weekends.

“My dad only used that gun once and that was on an elk hunt in the 1970s,” Dan says.

Harvey, who died last March 17 at the age of 88, was a World War II Navy veteran, an owner of the Lansing Garage and a man who truly believed in “community.” He enjoyed surrounding himself with people, whether it was on the volunteer fire department, running into them at the Allamakee County Fair or working through the Immaculate Conception Church. He liked to hunt and came up with the idea to donate his gun after his grandson, Zach, had been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma that produced a softball-sized mass in his right lung.

Zach, now 27, lives in Bozeman, Mont. He’ll graduate in December from Montana State University with a degree in mechanical engineering, yet still battles cancer. Initial treatment shrunk the tumor, but he’s had countless chemotherapy and radiation sessions, two stem-cell transplants and is now on an experimental drug through the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. Knowing that folks cared from the start, especially his grandfather, provided a needed boost says his father.

The May, 2005, auction of donated items at the New Albin Community Center lasted well into the night. When friends heard the rifle had been donated by Harvey, bidding soared. Ray Whalen paid $700 for it, in the name of New Albin Savings Bank, and returned it to be auctioned again. Pat Birgy, Harvey’s son-in-law, bought it and took it back to Michigan.

Early in 2009 Pat donated the gun to a friend fighting cancer and it was auctioned twice again, for $1,100 and then $800. By Thanksgiving, 2010, the gun had become a regular on the Michigan circuit and was known as “The Benefit Gun.”

With Pat Birgy’s help, Dan tracked down the gun in Michigan and had it sent back for these two auctions, both at T.J. Hunter’s in Lansing:

The first begins at 3 p.m. Saturday for Rich Mckee with the live auction starting at 5 p.m. (For more information or to donate call Roy Mckee at (563) 538-4940.)

The second begins at 2 p.m. March 24 for Daryl Bolson with the live auction starting at 5 p.m. (For more information or to donate call Dan Halverson at (563) 419-5472.)

A plaque listing donors and a running total of the money raised will accompany “The Benefit Gun” back to Michigan.

“Our hope,” Dan says, “is that this ‘Benefit Gun’ will continue to touch the lives of many more families for years to come.”

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

NORTH LIBERTY — Rock hunting as exciting as the Fourth of July?

Yep says T.J. “Geode Guy” Ramsey who has three young children.

“When I’m out in the backyard cracking open geodes they’re right there,” he says. “It’s like watching fireworks. ‘Oooo, ahhh.’”

Red, white and blue. Orange, black and gold. Pink, brown and yellow.

Bursts of colorful crystals inside a freshly opened geode do seem to explode right before your eyes which is why T.J., 35, became a rock hound more than a decade ago.

“It’s the thrill of the hunt,” he says about that first adventure in 1999 to geode fields near Alexandria, Mo. “It’s not knowing what you’ll find.”

If you’ve got a similar interest, though, you’ll find Geode Guy at Hawkeye Downs in Cedar Rapids this weekend. That’s where the annual Gem, Mineral and Fossil Show is being sponsored by the Cedar Valley Rocks & Minerals Society; where T.J. will give presentations about geodes at 1 p.m. Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday. (See cedarvalleyrockclub.org)

T.J. also will be a vendor at the show, offering whole geodes in a variety of sizes — racket ball, $5; tennis ball, $10; softball, $15; grapefruit, $20 — where you could get lucky.

At one birthday party T.J. watched a boy crack open a $10 geode and did his own “Oooo, ahhh.”

“This is something special,” T.J. told the boy. “I’d like to buy it back.”

After thinking for a moment the boy accepted his offer — $100 and another geode to open.

“I was just stoked when I saw it,” recalls T.J. with the enthusiasm of a kid.

As a youngster T.J. enjoyed rock hunting but preferred to a different “rock,” a baseball. He played at Wilton (high school), UNI, the University of Iowa and, for five years, with the semipro Red Sox in Muscatine. And even though he’s a telecommunications contractor with Ramsey Communications, started by his father, he loves educating people about geodes.

Ask his wife, Kate, whom he met at UNI. Does she know anything about geodes? “I do now,” she smiles. Their children, twins Hannah and Luke, 7, and Natalie, 4, enjoyed their first hunt last year in Hamilton, Ill., where T.J. is an organizer of Geode Fest which attracts 700-some fanatics.

The geode, though, is Iowa’s state rock. Southeast Iowa provides the best hunting grounds but, like mushroom hunters, geode diggers are intentionally vague about exact locations.

Gathering geodes can be hard work, from swinging a 12-pound sledgehammer to free them from shale to lugging around 60- to 80-pound buckets of them. It’s even a workout for T.J., 6-foot-1 and 220 pounds. That’s why he prefers to hunt in cool spring weather.

T.J. uses “geode cutters,” also known as iron pipe cutters, once he’s home. He looks for the hollow ones, although solid geodes add a nice touch to rock gardens and yards. (He’s got a 208-pound one in front of his house.)

His best finds are displayed in glass-front cabinets or sold online at www.firstcrackgeodes.com. Opening a door, he pulls out both halves of a grapefruit-sized geode with black and white crystals worth about $800. They aren’t for sale.

“It’s just too pretty,” he laughs. “It’s hard to let some of them go.”

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

CEDAR RAPIDS — Pepsi has been good. So has McDonalds and Intel. TEVA, not so good.

Such are the ups and downs of investing in the stock market, especially when you’ve been doing it for three decades like Money Talks, a Cedar Rapids area women’s investment club that first met in February, 1982.

“We started out this whole thing to learn about investing,” says Mary Lou Selzer, 80, of Fairfax, “and we’re still here 30 years later.”

It celebrates the anniversary April 18 with the club picking up dinner at the Elks Lodge.

“You have to love it,” says longtime president Carole Swanson, 73, of Cedar Rapids. “I love investing. I do it for our family. It’s not so much work if you’d do this anyway.”

Money Talks emerged from the local chapter of the American Association of University Women after a stockbroker’s presentation.

“She did this investing,” Mary Lou says. “We said, ‘Why don’t we do this?’”

An initial group of 16 women formed Money Talks, incorporating under strict rules. Each member had to invest $20 per month, attend meetings regularly and actively participate in finding, researching and recommending stocks since every action requires a vote of members in attendance.

“We didn’t want anyone just sitting around,” Carole says. “Everybody is involved. I think that’s part of the reason for our success.”

After collecting $320 that first meeting, club members studied the stocks and made the first purchase — 30 shares of Public Service of Colorado utility at 14 1/8.

Eight years later the club’s portfolio hit $50,000 and by March of 1995 it topped $100,000.

In early 2000, as the Dow Jones Average rose above 11,000, the portfolio reached $385,000. Then the bottom fell out.

“In the ‘90s the market was wonderful,” Carole says. “It hasn’t been wonderful since 2000.”

Yet, in 30 years, the portfolio has returned an average annual return of 9.95 percent. It sits at $185,000 after payouts to 34 members who left the club, died or wanted their money for other uses such as taking a cruise.

The original bylaws didn’t allow withdrawals, but now members can take out money in $1,000 increments. That’s just one of many changes.

At first, missing three meetings a year (the club meets on the third Wednesday of each month in members’ homes) was grounds for expulsion. Now you must attend at least five a year.

In addition, maximum membership increased from 16 to 20, the monthly ante went to $25 and investing is done online rather than through a stockbroker.

Also, new members must pay a $100 entry fee but can invest as much as they want up to the amount held by a charter member.

“We don’t want a new member coming in and saying, ‘Ah, hah, I have more in the club than you do.’” Carole says.

A recent new member opted to put her money into the club rather than into a low-earning CD.

“She had great faith in us,” Carole says with a laugh. “The jury is still out to see if that’s a wise investment or not.”

Buying McLeod at $14 a share and unloading it at 36 cents was worse than TEVA, down $2,500 after two years on a $12,000 investment.

But, successes have been many, from buying McDonalds at $5.75 and selling at $31.30 or Intel (bought at $8.75, sold at $61) or GE ($8.75 and $54).

But Pepsi, bought in 1987, is up $11,000, a resounding success for this generation of investors.

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

MARION — Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Charles A. Clark became an attorney in Cedar Rapids after the Civil War and is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery.

Rebecca Otis (left) of Manchester was known as “Aunt Becky” for tending to thousands of sick and injured soldiers at Jefferson Barracks, a hospital in St. Louis.

Andrew Ford, of African-American descent, survived battles as a member of the United States Colored Troops to help found the Bethel AME Church in Cedar Rapids.

These are just three of more than 300 Iowans who served with distinction in the Civil War as noted in a new exhibit at the Marion Heritage Center titled “More than Any: Iowa in the Civil War.” Iowa produced 65 generals and at least 24 Medal of Honor winners in the war, says exhibit curator David Wendell of Marion.

The exhibit will be unveiled at 5 p.m. Thursday with Civil War re-enactors, members of the American Legion and Marion Mayor Allen “Snooks” Bouska. It is the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Pea Ridge, Ark., the first major engagement for Iowa troops.

“I can’t think of a moment in my history when I wasn’t interested in history,” says David, 43.

This goes back to the family farm in Nebraska where he’d hear stories from his ancestors.

A Linn-Mar High School graduate, David wound up in Chicago for a dozen years. He operated his own living history museum which concentrated on the Civil War and received national TV coverage when it re-enacted Abraham Lincoln’s funeral on the 130th anniversary in 1995.

After being a tour guide at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., David returned to Marion a year ago to care for his father, Kenneth, who died two months later. Deciding to remain in Marion, David toured the state to gather information about its Civil War connections.

He visited graveyards, often leaving flowers or flags. He located old houses where Civil War veterans had lived. He explored the dusty storage rooms of libraries and history centers to dig through old books.

“My original intent was to make sure these men and women were remembered,” David says. “I discovered, in 150 years, there’s never been a comprehensive guide to Iowa in the Civil War.”

David’s discoveries, which could become a book, led to his exhibit. He learned some fascinating tales about Iowa’s famous and not so famous Civil War veterans.

Clark, for instance, was from Maine. He took over when his commander was killed, leading the Union to victory at Brooks Ford, Va. David doesn’t know why he later came to Cedar Rapids.

Otis, the Manchester nurse, had gone to St. Louis with her husband, John. Deemed too old to join his three sons to enlist, he helped at the hospital. When he became ill, “Aunt Becky” stepped forward. She is buried in Manchester with a military headstone.

And Ford, who has a government marker at Oak Hill in Cedar Rapids, came from Mount Vernon, Va., where President George Washington reportedly fathered Weseley Ford with a slave. David speculates that Andrew Ford could be a descendant of Weseley who is buried in the Washington family crypt.

The bottom line is that Andrew Ford served with the United States Colored Troops who were put onto the front lines for, as David says, “cannon fodder.” But they were fighting for their rights, he says, and proud to show what they could do, as Andrew Ford continued to show after the war.

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

MARION — Marilyn Prouty, 84, lives just around the corner from where she grew up and can’t help but reminisce in her colorful way.

She’ll talk about walking the streets of Marion with her grandfather when she was a child and the stories he’d tell. She’ll laugh about working as a telephone operator after graduating from high school in 1945 and recall riding a trolley car, the Interurban, to Cedar Rapids. She’ll tell you about being the only child of a single mother and raising 11 children of her own.

“I write things down every once-in-a-while but then I can’t find the piece of paper,” Marilyn says. “What in hell fire good does that do?”

Born Nov. 19, 1927, at Mercy Hospital in Cedar Rapids, her parents had already split.

“My dad (with her in the photo) left three months before I was born,” she says. “I think he lived in Cedar Rapids for a while.”

Eventually, Carl, a mechanic, moved to Minneapolis and married another eight times.

She and her mother moved in with her father’s parents, Chris and Sopha (Sophie) Johnson, because they felt bad about their son leaving them. That was at 535 Eighth Ave., not far from 742 Seventh Street where she lives now.

The house had plumbing then, so her grandfather filled in the outhouse and turned it into a chicken coop. “It still looked like a crapper,” she says.

And she’d often help her grandmother make cookies. “I’m sure I was a big help. I’d stick my finger in the bowl and take a little taste.”

Her mother, Mary Estella, who went by Stella, became a clerk at Owens Drug Store, later Sorg’s Pharmacy, where she worked 40 years.

Her grandfather was born in Sweden as Christ Johnson, but dropped the “t” because he didn’t want to be called Christ. She says he became streets commissioner.

“My grandfather was always nosing around,” Marilyn says. “When I’d walk up town with him when I was little, he’d see people. Are you doing this? Are you doing that?”

The Hallwood Cafe (now Zoey’s Pizza) was a popular hangout but, even more than that, used to handle emergency calls for the police and fire departments. She was told, after a call came in, a red light would be turned on to signal them.

Later, Marilyn’s husband, Daniel, a longtime sheet metal worker at Ilten’s in Cedar Rapids, frequented the cafe. “They had a place where the men went to have beers,” she says. “The women and children couldn’t go.”

They married July 15, 1946 — “It was on his birthday,” she laughs. “He got a real package, didn’t he?” — and had 11 children. “One and one is supposed to make two, but in our case it works out to eleven,” she says. “The kids tell me that.”

With dozens of grandchildren and great grandchildren, they rent a hall to hold family reunions.

“At Christmas, I love it,” Marilyn says.

Of course, that’s an excellent time to reminisce, too.

Maybe she’ll talk about the telephone switchboard. “I was an evening chief operator which is supposed to be a feather in your cap. I was 18. I had to boss older ladies.”

Or maybe her rides on the trolley for a nickel and then a dime.

Or maybe about leaving Marion and her return because, sometimes, it’s just nice to hear those old stories before we can’t hear them any more.

n Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

CEDAR RAPIDS — Laptop? Check.

I-phone? Check

Tablet? Check.

Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Check.

As if former Green Beret Mike McElmeel isn’t busy enough — he’s full-time at PerMar Security, works part-time with the Delaware County Sheriff’s Office and two ambulance services and officiates three sports — he’s active with 16 social media Internet sites.

“I don’t really consider myself busy,” says Mike, 48, setting aside his electronic gizmos for a live chat. “I just do what I do.”

He goes to bed about midnight; rises at 5 a.m.

“I’m home a couple of nights a week,” he says. “That’s more than when I was in the military.”

His wife, Starr (they’ll celebrate their 25th anniversary this summer), and four adopted children, ages 17 to 28, don’t mind. Staying busy is his way of avoiding boredom.

A Manchester native who grew up in Cedar Rapids (Kennedy graduate, 1982), he made pizza at a Happy Joe’s on Council Street NE. He listened to an assistant manager, a Vietnam veteran, talk about the 82nd Airborne. His father had been an Air Force cartographer. He had a poster of John Wayne from the “Green Berets,” on his bedroom wall. He was hooked.

Enlisting in 1982, Mike worked his way up through special forces ranks to become a Green Beret by 1990. His assignments took him around the world, Sinai Peninsula, Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq. He retired in 2004, returned to Cedar Rapids.

Mike admits he still misses it. He hears about other special forces missions, namely those of the Navy Seals.

“We were quiet professionals,” he says. “You do your job, you do a good job and don’t brag about it and you move on.”

Check out one of the last 2011 posts on his Former Action Guy blog at http://mikemac356.blogspot.com and you’ll see that he misses special forces every day.

“It was the best job I ever had. You’re working with some of the most elite guys you’d meet anywhere. A huge amount of job satisfaction.”

So, what’s a guy who was trained in hand-to-hand combat, who fought the enemy and won, who completed 2,500 parachute jumps, to do?

For Mike, physical security operations manager at PerMar, it is now ensuring that customers and security offices are happy. It is writing occasional stories for RealCombatLife.com and his blog. And it is staying otherwise extremely busy.

A couple times a month he rides shotgun as a reserve deputy in Delaware County. He’s nearing the end of training and assists with traffic control for special events.

Six times a month he works a 12-hour shift as an EMT with the North Benton Ambulance Service out of Vinton; he volunteers another 60- to 100-hours a month with the Lisbon-Mount Vernon Ambulance Service. “I really enjoy emergency medicine,” he says. “I like helping these guys out.”

He officiated 50 football games, 75 baseball games and more than 100 wrestling matches.

He sent more than 10,000 tweets on Twitter (“I have no life,” he jokes) and wrote plenty of blog posts and posted videos on YouTube.

Oh yeah, and Mike runs. He’s approaching 350 miles so far this year as he trains for the Hawkeye 50K around Lake Macbride on March 17 and the Ice Age Trail 50-mile run in Wisconsin on May 12. He completed a 5K earlier this year after jogging five miles to warm up.

“I’ve got an addictive personality,” Mike laughs. “When I do something, I do it.”

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

HIAWATHA — The Civil War was supposed to be over a few months after it began. So, 150 years ago, when 760 soldiers in the 15th Iowa Infantry made their way to Shiloh, Tenn., they expected little resistance and a quick return home.

Instead, Confederate forces attacked General Ulysses S. Grant’s troops at Pittsburg Landing. And, when the smoke cleared on April 7 after a two-day battle, more than 3,400 men lay dead, 1,750 of them Union soldiers, 21 of them from Iowa.

The Battle of Shiloh instantly became America’s bloodiest battle, with another 16,400 soldiers wounded and 3,800 missing or captured. And, while the Union won this battle, it would take three more years and eight even bloodier battles to win the war.

“Iowa should be proud of what these guys did,” says Brandon Jolly, 30, as he opens the door to the Civil War room in the basement of his Hiawatha house. “They should be proud of these flags.”

Spread out on a large table are exact replicas of the 6-by-6 1/2-foot flags the Iowans carried into that battle — the 34-star American Flag and the eagle emblazoned state regimental flag. Using the original state flag and period American flags as models, Brandon has re-created the flags stitch-by-stitch for this year’s re-enactment of the Battle of Shiloh.

“All of the materials,” he says, “are as exact as you can get in the 21st Century.”

He fingers the gold fringe he and his adopted son, Steven, 15, tied and trimmed one tassel at a time.

“This means the world to me,” says Brandon, a Civil War re-enactor who also served in the Iraq War. “Not just the project, but everything we do. As a veteran, I can’t believe these guys could stand so close to each other and blast away.”

The original American Flag, most likely tattered and torn, was buried with its bearer in Mississippi after he died less than a month later at the Battle of Corinth.

The original Iowa Flag, tattered, torn and desecrated by souvenir takers, has taken a round-a-bout journey from private ownership to the Iowa Capitol Rotunda to the Iowa Historical Society where it is being restored through the Iowa Battle Flag Project (www.iowaflags.org).

Brandon, a Civil War fan since he became a re-enactor at age 9 with his father in Scott’s Tennessee Battery in Scott County, volunteered to make these replicas. He’s been sewing Civil War uniforms and accessories for more than a decade.

As his reward, Brandon, a manager at Ovation Networks in Cedar Rapids, will carry the Iowa flag when 500 historical interpreters from around the country gather at Savannah, Tenn., at the end of March. As the Civil War soldiers did, they will ride a paddle-wheeler on the Tennessee River to Pittsburg Landing where the Iowa regiment arrived as the Battle of Shiloh (April 6-7) commenced.

The re-enactors will then march five miles through the National Battlefield Park, commemorating the 150th anniversary of the 15th Iowa Infantry’s first battle.

“We’re very passionate about it,” Brandon says. “We’re very proud to carry these flags.”

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

CORALVILLE — If someone says International Harvester today, it usually reminds people of tractors from days gone by or diesel trucks on the road today.

But, with roots as far back as 1834 when Cyrus McCormick patented his horse-drawn reaper, International Harvester (formed in 1902 with the merging of the McCormick and Deering companies) has meant a lot of things to a lot of people.

IH was tractors and farm equipment, milk coolers and refrigerators, garden tractors, pickup trucks and early SUVs.

“They’re the best trucks and tractors ever built,” says Dean Haase, 45, of rural Anamosa. “When I was growing up I always had a preference for red tractors.”

As a kid raised near Oxford Junction, Dean’s eyes grew wide when a neighbor came home with a new 12-row planter to pull behind his Farmall tractor. Dean was already very familiar with the name since his father pulled a 26-foot Airstream travel trailer with a 1965 IH Travelall.

“I’d love to find it,” Dean says. “My eyes are always open.”

It’s that affection that hooked Dean, an operations supervisor at AEGON/Transamerica, into the International Harvester Collectors Club where for several years he’s been writing the newsletter for Iowa Chapter No. 5 (the fifth chapter formed) that has 540 members. And it’s why he’s excited for another national winter convention, this one Thursday through Saturday at the Marriott Hotel and Conference Center in Coralville.

Three years ago, when the national winter convention was held in Waterloo, more than 4,000 people attended, in part to see the main attraction, the 5 millionth International Harvester tractor produced (1974 at the Farmall plant in Rock Island, Ill.). That tractor is now in a Montana museum, but with 27 inside exhibits, some outside exhibits and vendors selling parts and memorabilia, this IH collectors convention promises nostalgic variety true to the IH tradition.

If you like old tractors, you can see eight very rare “IHC Regulars” from the years 1924 to 1932 owned by the Derwood Heine family of Waverly.

Garden tractors your thing? Check out the complete line of Cub Cadet tractors with Hydrostatic Drive transmission which were introduced 45 years ago. (Charlie Ricketts, the inventor of this continuously variable transmission, will talk at a seminar.)

IH trucks? Oh, yeah. From one built in 1915 owned by a family in Stanhope, Iowa, to models into the 1970s (IH quit making passenger vehicles in 1980), you’ll see them here.

Dean will bring his red 1967 half-ton, a truck he bought years ago but didn’t restore until 2009. He also owns a 1973 Travelette Crew Cab (four doors) truck that gets about 8.5 miles per gallon but holds 82 gallons of fuel and a 1974 Scout II that’s been painted Dodge Plum Crazy purple.

As far as that 1965 Travelall Dean’s father once owned? It was parked in the yard when a man came up and offered to buy it.

“He wasn’t using it at the time,” Dean says, shaking his head in dismay, “so he sold it.”

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

FYI; INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER COLLECTORS CONVENTION:

What: International Harvester Collectors winter convention

Where: Marriott Hotel and Conference Center, Coralville

When: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Admission: Free to general public which includes displays, seminars and an auction at 6 p.m. Friday. Club members pay $45 registration fee that includes the Saturday night banquet.

On the Web: See http://nationalihcollectors.com/for the national collectors site and http://www.ihccia.net/for the hosting Iowa chapter.

CEDAR RAPIDS — One minute you’d swear a giant bird was scratching around in the rafters of Theatre Cedar Rapids; the next that someone was running a power drill or had stepped on a cat. But then, with a faint whoosh of air and for the first time in more than three years, the pipes of the Rhinestone Barton organ make beautiful music.

This is the culmination of five days of intense work by the team of Ken Crome (left) and Lyn Larsen, theater organ experts from Reno, Nev., and San Diego, Calif. It is finally the reuniting of the replicated 14-rank organ console and the 1,100-pipes in the theater’s upper chambers that entertained audiences for 80 years. It is the first shakedown of a new computerized system that replaces flood-damaged mechanicals in this $240,000 project (funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency) that promises to produce bone-thrilling music for decades to come.

Ken, 65, and Lyn, 67, have worked together for 35 years to revive dozens of theater organs around the country.

Ken, through his Crome Organ Company in Reno, duplicated the console’s wooden case, keyboard, pedals and inner workings with poplar, yellow cedar, plastic and metal, using original parts when possible. It came to Cedar Rapids last spring for finishing touches and installation.

Lyn, a musician since the age of three who played on the Mighty Wurlitzer (also damaged in the flood) at the Paramount Theatre to a sold-out crowd in the early 1970s when he performed up to 40 concerts a year, lends his ear.

“We are here to get all the pipes to sound the same, to get the different pipes to blend with their partners,” says Ken.

So, up in the “rafters” Ken works, adjusting the pipes, traps, and wind regulators, while Lyn, at the console, pushes the right keys. They communicate by two-way radio, by signals Ken “taps out” on the keys and, rarely, by shouting across the theater.

“You’ve got to remember,” Ken says, “the organ has to sound good in the room.”

The tonal finishing, as it’s called, is completed one note at a time. Should it be louder or softer? Have more upper treble or less? How fast does it play the moment it starts to “speak”? Is it rock solid and stable? Does it blend well within its rank of pipes?

“Sometimes,” Lyn says, “you listen to it and it’s not correct so I give him some more taps and we do it again and again. We can do it ten times.”

No wonder it took them five long days to complete the task, with plenty of breaks thrown in to rejuvenate the senses.

Yes, like wine tasters cleansing their pallets, the tonal finishers must let their ears rest.

“Your ears,” Ken laughs, “get numb.”

So, have they had any problems?

“You always do,” Lyn says.

“Not something I’d want to put in the newspaper,” Ken laughs.

But, by Tuesday evening they’d completed their task. The pipe organ sounded great. And, says Darren Ferreter of the Cedar Rapids Area Theatre Organ Society, a few more finishing touches will have it ready for its public debut sometime this fall.

n Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

2800199 - WIR - DOLLAR DEBUT - 02_15_2007 - 06.58.32

“I do all of these projects and when I’m done, what do I do?” says Ed who with son Eddie Pettus Jr. has Eddie’s Rod & Custom in Cedar Rapids.

The Lakester, which I wrote about last July, is built around a wingtip gas tank of a 1950s Lockheed Super Constellation and has a steering yoke from a 1948 airplane. Parts came from 1930s Packards, a 1940 Ford tractor and a 1959 Chevy pickup. It has a turbocharged Toyota engine.

From shows in Cedar Rapids and the Quad Cities, it went to Chicago’s World of Wheels, a two-month stay at the Experimental Aircraft Association museum in Oshkosh, Wis., and on display at El Mirage near Long Beach, Calif., where dry lake bed speed runs originated.

“I thought, you know, after that I’m going to take it home and put it in the garage,” Ed says.

But, as a fan of the famous Barrett-Jackson vehicle auction in Arizona, Ed inquired about selling the Lakester. Told it was too late, he sent information anyway and was surprised to become a last-minute entry. It went on the block Jan. 21.

But, this auction doesn’t allow sellers to set a minimum price — if the high bid is $100, the car sells for $100.

Ed had insured the Lakester for $100,000. Bidding opened at $10,000.

“We were a nervous wreck,” he says, referring to his wife, Kathy, and friends in attendance.

Bidding quickly rose, though, to $100,000. Two bidders pushed it to $170,000, the winner from Georgia adding it to his collection.

“We feel so blessed with what we got,” Ed says. He’ll use the extra funds to retire the mortgage on Ellis Boulevard NW property (home and vacant lot) destroyed by the Floods of 2008.

Unsure about what they can do with the property, Ed, 60, isn’t waiting around for another hot rod project. All he says is that it’s a unique truck. “Let people wonder.”

*****************

Linda Betsinger McCann, a Shell Rock historian working on books about trolley cars sends her thanks. She’s received many great comments from Gazette readers after I wrote earlier this week about her particular interest in the Waterloo, Cedar Falls and Northern Railway that came to Cedar Rapids. (She can be reached by emailing linjenka@yahoo.com or by calling (319) 885-6687.

Beverly Schuman of Decorah wrote about catching the trolley at Buzzard’s Glory near her father’s farm between La Porte City and Brandon.

Larry McGrath of Cedar Rapids called to reminisce about catching a trolley near Coe College and putting pennies on the tracks to watch a trolley flatten them to the size of a quarter.

*****************

Five years after the gold-colored Presidential dollar coins were introduced (I wrote about them), a group of U.S. Senators including Iowa’s Tom Harkin are pushing legislation to eliminate paper dollar bills in favor of the coins.

A 2011 study indicated the move could save $5.5 billion over 30 years because paper money must be replaced more frequently. The problem is the American public hasn’t bought into the $1 coin idea.

I love ‘em, how they never get crinkled, jingle in my pocket and slide into vending machines. They’re so much cooler than paper or plastic.

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

7233665 - LAS - Ramble - 02_01_2012 - 12.03.12

6635428 - LAS - 07_20_2011 - 16.36.39

1367277 - LCL - Grant Wood Drum Corps - 12_22_2004 - 00.16.24

“Wherever you look there’s a Slayton Thompson footprint,” says Ruth White, founder and executive director of The Academy for Scholastic and Personal Success which is honoring Slayton on Thursday.

“The organization is about teaching African American students to take responsibility for their own education,” she adds. “At the fundraiser we try to find someone who has upheld that ideal for young people of color.”

Slayton, 64, (above, in 2008 after a trip to Africa) may be best known for founding the All-City Drum Corps along with his wife, Linda, in 1990. The drum corps offers children a free summer activity, teaching them responsibility and confidence. Its appearances include Presidential Inaugural Parades in 1997 and 2005.

The drum corps’ success not only reflects Slayton’s life, but epitomizes his desire to help others, especially youngsters who need it. He retired last year from the Cedar Rapids schools as a liaison for homeless students.

Born in Rockford, Ill., on Feb. 12 (Abraham Lincoln’s birthday) as a twin (brother, Stanley), Slayton’s family was financially poor but rich when it came to understanding concepts and using common sense. Still, he struggled in his youth.

“The drums were something I liked,” he says. “It was a way for me to overcome, uh, I was remedial. But, not really.”

In elementary school, Slayton says he attended class with a “Retarded” sign above the door.

“What they thought as hyper, my mom thought was talent.” He laughs. “You know, drumming all the time, humming, singing.”

In high school he played in Rockford’s all black Phantom Regiment Drum and Bugle Corps and won the Illinois State Championship Percussion Contest. He founded an intercity student council to foster cooperation among black and white students. And he worked the night shift at a Chrysler factory where he got fired (for his own protection) after proposing a system where one worker could replace five.

Slayton came to Cedar Rapids as drummer of a funk/jazz band in 1969 after a couple years in the Army (he was drafted). He worked at Quaker Oats before joining the Cedar Rapids schools as a custodian in 1973. After 20 years he’d became a community liaison. In all he worked at Fillmore, Taylor, Tyler, Johnson and Grant Wood elementary schools and Franklin Middle School. in 2008 he secured a $1 million federal grant for the homeless program.

With his early penchant for organization, Slayton became active in the union (state president of the Service Employees International Union in 1982) and Democratic politics (national delegate for Clinton in 1992 and Obama in 2008). He has received AFL-CIO and NAACP awards.

“When I’m confronted with something,” Slayton says, “I ask, what am I doing, what do you want me to do, what should I do?”

That’s his way of saying that success comes with listening to people, understanding them and not being afraid to take calculated risks.

“My whole life,” he says, “I haven’t always done the perfect thing, but when I’m conscious of what I’m doing, I do the right thing.”

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

4300058 - SAX - SLAYTON - 12_17_2008 - 03.07

7275552 - LAS - Ramble - 02_15_2012 - 15.25.12

No wonder guys like Jerry Hightshoe, 68, of rural Swisher have revived a hobby of their 1960s youth — slot car racing.

“I wanted this to be a true driver’s course,” says Jerry, retired administrator from the College Community school district, who started building his basement track in 2001. It was race-ready in a year but, as with model railroading, always seems to be a work in progress.

“We’re more into racing than the scenery,” says Bruce Gardner, 64, of Iowa City who joined fellow slot-car racers Art DeArmond, 63, of North Liberty and Craig Margulis, 57, of Iowa City, in a recent practice session.

That was just perfect for Jerry’s four-lane track, a standard for home-built layouts while many club tracks in public buildings have eight lanes.

Jerry, however, hosts racing one Sunday a month for two clubs that grew out of the original Iowa City slot car club formed in the mid-1960s. Jerry had joined in 1968 but lost interest, like most others, by the late 1970s. By 1990 or so the hobby experienced a resurgence and participation grew into ERASR (Ecurie Road America Scale Races) and IMAR (Iowa Model Area Racers). About 10 regulars in each club can be found hooking up pistol-grip controllers to a track to race in one of eight classes for ERASR and ten classes for IMAR.

You’ll see everything from stock cars and equally-prepared IROC Camaros to Porsche and Ferrari LeMans-style racers and open-wheel Formula One missiles. Cars “out of the box” these days cost $35 to $60 each while home-built cars, which tend to be lighter and faster, run $35 to $50. Since they’re electric, “gas” costs nothing, although parts like tires ($4.50 to $9 per pair) contribute to expenses.

“You don’t have to buy new,” Craig says. “When I started, I bought a lot of used cars from other members.”

Building, rebuilding and modifying slot cars can be just as addictive as working on real cars, although not on nearly the same scale, says Art, owner of Riverside Sports Cars in Swisher where he restores classic cars.

Jerry’s slot-car track sits on an 8-by-16-foot table, its 57-foot (about a third of a mile at scale) lanes within an inch of each other in length. That makes for very competitive racing, winners often determined by a few thousandths of a second on the computerized timer.

Each club keeps weekly stat sheets and determines season winners in each class — all for fun, not for money.

“We have a great time,” Jerry says. “Everyone gets along. No fighting. No money.”

If the 248 and growing spectators were real, they’d probably cheer. But, they’re actually model construction workers Jerry buys in bulk, modifies and paints while he’s watching television.

Yep, like real in life, even when Jerry’s not racing, it’s on his mind.

Comments: (319) 398-8323; dave.rasdal@sourcemedia.net

7275549 - LAS - Ramble - 02_15_2012 - 15.25.12

7275554 - LAS - Ramble - 02_15_2012 - 15.25.13

7275553 - LAS - Ramble - 02_15_2012 - 15.25.13

7275543 - LAS - Ramble - 02_15_2012 - 15.23.21