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

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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

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Thomas, William, George, John, Kendall and Noah all enlisted, all fought in bloody battles and all were buried (from 1862 to 1864) before they knew the war’s outcome.

“This is truly the most tragic and historic war story ever told,” write Tom Woodruff of Davenport and Ed Bayne of Wapello on the cover of their booklet, “Littleton: Brothers in War,” a project of the Louisa County Historical Society.

The brothers will be honored Memorial Day (May 28) with a program that begins at 8:30 a.m. on the Iowa River bridge on Highway 99 in Wapello.

“We’re gradually finding out more and more,” Tom says. “We have a lot more to learn.”

The story came to light as Tom perused a 56-page scrapbook of Louisa County newspaper clippings dated 1846 to 1906. It included short clippings about the “Lyttelton” family war casualties. Subsequent research — land records, at the Rock Island Arsenal and at cemeteries where the brothers are buried — revealed the correct spelling as Littleton and the fact all six died.

Unfortunately, Tom says, no photos of them have been found. But the story continues to fascinate, from its initial publication last July in “LOUISA’S hiSTORY” magazine to a follow-up article in October and additional materials.

“We really think this story needs to be told,” Tom says.

In 1840, James and Martha Littleton brought their growing family from Maryland and then Ohio to explore the opportunities of the Iowa Territory. They eventually bought farmland near Toolesboro. Their nine children (six boys and three girls) survived after the parents died, Martha in 1853 and James in 1860, and were buried in Potters Timber Cemetery. Records and research indicate Martha was white and that James, a mulatto, came from free slave roots.

Just months after the Civil War began in April, 1861, Thomas, 25, enlisted on July 16 into Company C of the 5th Iowa Infantry and William, 24, followed into Company K of the 8th Iowa Infantry on Sept. 21. George, the oldest at 33, enlisted from New Boston, Ill., where he lived on March 26, 1862. The other three, John, 31, Kendall, 19, and Noah, 16, enlisted together into Company F of the 19th Iowa Infantry on Aug. 21, 1862.

Why they enlisted isn’t clear, although records indicate Louisa County abolitionists and supporters of the Underground Railroad had helped the family get settled. An 1856 census shows the boys were white, yet the 1860 census had them as mulattos. They all joined white units.

“We actually believe there was a time in our country when people looked at you for who you were and what you contributed to the country,” Tom says.

Kendall was killed Dec. 7, 1862, less than four months after enlisting, at the Battle of Prairie Grove, Ark..

John died 11 days later, Dec. 18, of injuries from the same battle..

Noah survived that battle but drowned March 1, 1863, when a ferryboat sank crossing the White River at Forsyth. Mo.

George probably died in early 1863, having been discharged Oct. 31, 1862, because of disease. He’d been captured in the battle of Harpers Ferry Va.

William died Dec. 8, 1863, in a St. Louis hospital of chronic diarrhea. He’d fought at Shiloh, Jackson, Miss., and Vicksburg.

Thomas, the first to enlist, was the last to die on June 16, 1864, at the Confederate’s notoriously horrible Andersonville Prison in Georgia where he is buried (at left). He’d fought at Corinth and Champions Hill, Miss., and Vicksburg before his capture Nov. 25, 1863 during the battle of Missionary Ridge, Tenn,

“People would have known who these boys were,” Tom says. “And they gave their lives.”

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

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“What’s up?” Jed said, surprised that Kali Rose wasn’t ready to go.

“I don’t feel like going out,” she said.

“OK,” Jed said, But, thinking on his feet and since it was harvest season, he said he needed to pick up some combine parts at Dennis Hogan’s farm where he worked. “Why don’t you ride along?”

Kali agreed since the Hogans were her friends, too. But, as they approached the rural Coggon farm, every buildings was dark.

“That’s OK,” Jed said. “I think he’s at the north field.” Then Jed became excited. “Hey, I’ve got to show you what Dennis and I did.”

“OK,” Kali Rose said.

Jed guided the pickup off the main road into a cornfield and down a waterway. Some of the corn had been leveled.

“Isn’t this cool?” Jed said. “Dennis and I have been driving around making a corn maze.”

Kali looked around. It didn’t mean much to her.

Jed stopped the truck. He climbed out and urged her to follow. He dropped to one knee.

“You said you’d never marry me if it wasn’t in the middle of a cornfield,” he said.

“You’re frickin’ kiddin’ me,” Kali said.

Jed smiled. “Will you marry me?”

“Ha, ha, ha,” Kali Rose laughed. “You’re kiddin’”

Jed pulled out a diamond ring. “I’m serious,” he said. “Hurry up and put it on before I drop it.”

Kali did that day, Sept. 10, 2010. And this Sept. 1, in that same cornfield, she and Jed will marry.

“I always told him I’d never marry him unless it was in a cornfield,” laughs Kali Rose, 22, human resources director at the Good Neighbor Society home in Manchester. “I didn’t know he’d go through with it.”

But Jed, 25, an industrial maintenance mechanic at Red Star Yeast in Cedar Rapids, had asked her parents a week earlier if he could marry their daughter. He enlisted one of her best friends, Kelsey Heims of Cedar Rapids, to help pick out the ring. And since then, he’s worked with Dennis to sod and groom an area of the cornfield for a wedding with 200 guests.

“That’ll be the perfect time,” Kali Rose smiles, “when the corn is just starting to change color.”

Kali Rose has picked out her wedding dress, completed most of the arrangements and can’t wait for the day. It’s something she never imagined eight years ago when Jed, a good friend of her brother, Kyle, called out of the blue to ask if she wanted to hang out.

Again, at her mother’s urging, Kali Rose said OK. She and Jed drove to Cedar Rapids for a movie but, when the line was too long, they picked up a pizza and watched a movie at her parents house.

Their next date was July 4 to see the fireworks. They’ve been together since.

“I couldn’t get rid of him,” Kali Rose jokes today.

But, nothing could be further from the truth. This will be it, as the folks at the Good Neighbor home say, “The field of her dreams.”

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

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7240397 - LAS - Ramble - 02_03_2012 - 16.09.17

“In New Hebrides,” he says, “if you scraped the back of your hand, the flies there would keep it clean and infection free. But, it wouldn’t heal.”

So, Laird would grab a few band-aids and return to work.

But, after 26 months in the South Pacific, after 32 years teaching high school history, Laird never forgot those experiences. And what helps him remember, at 91 years of age, are the notebook diaries he’s compiled under the title, “A Knuckle-Buster Remembers Men and Planes from World War Two.”

There he is pictured with fellow mechanics in front of “Sea Bee III,” a B-26 he served on as assistant crew chief in 1942 at New Caledonia.

And there are pictures and diagrams of other bombers he worked on — B-18s, B-24s, B-17s.

And there are the words, thousands of them, as he served in the 69th bomb squadron of the 38th bomb group.

Laird began to write his stories in a notebook on June 14, 1945, and didn’t finish until after he’d retired in 1980 from teaching history at Jefferson High School in Cedar Rapids. What makes the journals complete are the notes he includes, identifying every location, landmark and person.

“I could name a lot of them,” Laird says, “but if I can’t, it’s right there.”

Born west of Springville, Laird lived with his grandparents after his parents divorced. He assumed he’d become a farmer until his grandfather died.

As a result, he joined his father, Wes, a teacher in Norway, Iowa, and graduated in 1937. As a hired hand, a farmer suggested Laird enlist before he was drafted. On March 1, 1941, he joined the Navy, only to switch to the Army Air Corps on his father’s advice.

Laird learned of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor as he and buddies came out of a movie in Jackson, Miss. Kids gave them a ride back to base in Vicksburg with the words, “Good luck.”

His South Pacific tour began by loading and unloading fuel drums and 500-pound bombs before he became a mechanic. As a serviceman behind the scenes, he subtitled his journals “Memories of War by a Non-Hero.”

“There are at least 20, 25 guys behind every guy up there shooting people down,” Laird says.

Laird spent 55 days (1,320 hours) on troop transports, 380 hours flying (often to troubleshoot planes) and more than 1,000 hours busting his knuckles as he became a B-25 crew chief.

“When I came back from the war,” he says, “I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life on my back under a car.”

He did, however, work for a Cedar Rapids service station until word came about the G.I. bill which allowed him to graduate from Coe College in 1948.

He taught in Wapello and Osage before coming to Cedar Rapids. After retirement, he and his second wife, Flo, spent 16 years living in the Missouri Ozarks until they moved to Palo and then to Springville in 2008.

Laird had kept his journals in their finished Palo basement until floodwaters approached. He moved them to the first floor and then, with Flo’s warning, to the second level where, luckily, this knuckle-buster’s memories survive.

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

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He holds a glass of light brown liquid (not always whiskey) in one hand.

He banters with the audience as if everyone is his best friend.

Who is this man in the tux behind the mic?

At this Sunday’s Melodies d’ Amore Sweetheart Ball at the Ponderosa Ballroom in Walford, he is Craig Boche of Marion. He’s fronting The Rod Pierson Big Band for KMRY radio’s annual February event. He’s tall, dark-haired and intentionally mysterious.

“I like to keep a line between my private life and my public life,” says Craig, 43. “I love the fact that people are curious and they don’t know.”

But, let’s say you see someone resembling Craig driving a silver Honda Civic. Or maybe at the mall with a wife and two children. Or working in human resources for a non-profit organization in Waterloo. Assume that’s Craig and you’re probably right.

And, as a classics crooner who’s crafted an image, Craig’s got a point.

“You can never be famous in your own hometown. They know you. ‘He’s just a regular Joe from around the corner.’”

Born in Muscatine, Craig grew up listening to his father, Kurt, yodel. Having been born in Bavaria, Germany, Kurt has become famous in Iowa for his talent.

“He is an amazing man, probably the best entertainer I’ve ever seen,” Craig says. “I’ve listened to music my whole life because of dad.”

Polkas and romantic ballads. Marty Robbins and Roger Whittaker. Bobby Darin and The Rat Pack.

“I had a plan,” Craig says. “My plan was, I want to sing for a living.”

After earning a business degree from the University of Iowa in 1990, he joined an accounting firm in Des Moines. One night at Billy Joe’s Pitcher Show he saw a newfangled music machine that let audience members sing to recorded music.

Craig was hooked. In 1991 he leased a machine to bring karaoke to Zazoos in Cedar Rapids.

“I did a four-hour show with only one other singer and they only sang one song,” he laughs.

Craig performed as Karaoke International for a while, quit, then restarted in 1999 after partnering with Quality Chef co-worker Chuck Cavanaugh. A year later Craig walked into the Red Lion Lounge.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” he says, having talked owner “Boston Bill” McLaughlin into letting him set up for a night. Craig belted out a Frank Sinatra tune and the rest is history — his Singin’ N Swingin’ Entertainment has been featured there Friday and Saturday nights since.

Soon, however, Craig took a hiatus for another Quality Chef friend, Shannon Ashby, who needed a liver transplant. That July 7 (Craig’s 32nd birthday), he gave Shannon 60 percent of his liver at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. (After Shannon bought into the Sip ‘N’ Stir a few years ago, Craig’s karaoke group became a mainstay Thursday and Friday nights.)

With help from mentors Codi Wilkinson and Jay Rasch, Craig fine-tuned his show and molded his persona. The emphasis was on a quality show that attracted talented karaoke singers.

After cutting a CD five years ago, Craig connected with KMRY radio and hooked up with Rod Pierson’s band. He’s since performed and recorded all around Eastern Iowa including the Iowa Band Association and his Copa Amana show in Amana.

This year, Craig moves the show to Theatre Cedar Rapids, renaming it “Craig Boche’s Flight to the Copa.” Scheduled for June 9, it’ll be a modern-day version of Dean Martin’s TV variety show featuring singers, dancers and the big band, all now Craig’s friends.

Even though singing isn’t his only job, it’s Craig’s dream fulfilled, combining the nuances of childhood idols into his own image.

“I want swagger, I want in your face, I want to sing like Craig Boche,” he says with a smile. “I want to be me.”

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

SWEETHEART BALL TICKETS:

Craig Boche will sing with The Rod Pierson Big Band from 6 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Sunday for KMRY radio’s Melodies d’ Amore Sweetheart Ball at the Ponderosa Ballroom in Walford. Admission is free but tickets must be picked up in advance at one of KMRY’s sponsors for the event.

. . . any station the trolley stopped.

Or, so hopes Linda Betsinger McCann, a historian/writer from Shell Rock who has put out a call for memories of electric trolley cars, particularly those that ran in the first half of the 1900s from Cedar Falls/Waterloo to Cedar Rapids via the Waterloo, Cedar Falls and Northern Railway.

“I’ve had some really great comments,” Linda says. “People really like talking about it.”

She became fascinated by the trolleys while researching several of the 14 books she’s written, particularly those titled “Lost: Black Hawk County Towns” and “Lost: Butler County Towns” about long-gone communities that were once nothing more than streetcar stops.

“There were some places,” Linda says, “where the railroad depot would be named one name, the post office would be named another name and, for some reason, a village had another name.”

Definitely confusing. Also intriguing.

“I said, somebody needs to write a book about it. I finally decided if i didn’t write it, nobody would. These memories would be gone.”

Trolleys quit running before Linda, 59, could hop aboard. But, she rode Amtrak to Virginia in 2008 (“I absolutely loved it.”) and is familiar with “The Trolley Song” made famous in the 1944 film “Meet Me in St. Louis.”

So, if you remember the clangs, the dings, the zings of a local trolley, Linda would love to hear from you. She can be reached by email linjenka@yahoo.com or by calling 319-885-6687.

Her emphasis now is on the W.C.F. and N. Railway which also had lines to Denver, Sumner, Hudson and La Porte City. She’s got a map but doesn’t feel it’s complete.

“A lot of the time,” Linda says, “it’s a phone call out of the blue. One guy called me from San Diego and talked for an hour.”

One story revolved around a man sick with the mumps who, due to loyalty to his employer, went off to work anyway. But, when he wasn’t at the trolley stop as usual, the conductor looked around and found him in the bushes. The conductor put him on the trolley and made sure he received medical attention.

To me,” she says. “this makes it real. The passengers and the conductors, they became like family.”

Then again, its curious that the railway stopped at the edge of Cedar Rapids, blocks from a CRANDIC station for destinations in town and to Iowa City. But why?

“It had to do with governments. I get a lot of my information from reading newspapers. It sounds like Cedar Rapids didn’t like these outsiders coming into town.”

She also wonders about a town named Mon Dieu, French for “My God,” about five miles northwest of Cedar Rapids. “What was the French Connection to Linn County?” she laughs.

For now, Linda plans to have this trolley book, tentatively titled “The Cedar Valley Road,” published this fall. She hopes to finish the Linn County book a year later.

“I write for my grandchildren and their children,” Linda says. “If I don’t, the stories will die.”

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

“We each grew up about ten miles from Hampton,” says Dale who now lives in Charles City. “I was north at Sheffield and he was east at Geneva. People would see me and they’d say, ‘Hi, Del.’ They’d see him and say, ‘Hi, Dale.’”

Only as they grew older did they learn the truth. Del and Dale were identical twins, separated at birth.

“We think we have a unique story,” laughs Del, 85, who has lived in Cedar Rapids since 1978. “There’s so much to talk about our past, you’re not going to be able to take it all in.”

The story begins Aug. 12, 1926, when the boys were born as the sixth (Dale) and seventh (Del) children of Ella and August Siems in Hansell, east of Hampton. As an itinerant mechanic and carpenter, August struggled to keep food on the table.

Ella’s brother, Conrad Block, however, was a prosperous farmer. He and his wife, Jennie, had hoped to raise a family. But, with no children at the time and to alleviate the pressure on August, they took one of the twins home. That just happened to be Del.

“They thought they were being good samaritans, but they never took me back,” Del says.

He pauses for a moment to consider the consequences.

“They could have taken Dale,” he says, “but they took me.”

And so, as the families grew and moved — the Siems family to Sheffield and the Blocks to a farm near Geneva — Del and Dale grew up as cousins.

“Everybody that knows me, my friends, go bananas when I tell them my parents were my aunt and uncle; my aunt and uncle were my parents,” Del says.

“Last time we were together, about a month ago, we talked about that,” says Dale by telephone from Charles City. “Wouldn’t that have been something if they had taken me?

“There’s no animosity,” Dale says. “Everybody was hurting. We were all in the same boat. Times were tough.”

But, would that have made a difference in their lives? At one time a University of Minnesota professor proposed doing a case study examining the genetics and environmental impact on these twins separated at birth. But, in this case, it might not have proved anything. Both Dale, who grew up sleeping on straw mattresses and eating “horseradish leaves and oatmeal,” and Del, who grew up wanting for little and eating “butter, eggs and real cream on his oatmeal,” became successful.

Dale wound up in Charles City in 1953 with $24 in his pocket and soon began a career that built Sherman Nursery into one of the Midwest’s largest suppliers of trees and plants for independently owned and operating gardening centers. And Del retired in 1987 as General Commercial Manager for Alliant Energy in Cedar Rapids after a 41-year career that included stints in Marshalltown, Sibley and Spirit Lake.

Del likes to tell the story about his own children — he and his wife, Dee, had three. “When they’d see Dale,” he laughs, “they’d go hide. They couldn’t believe there was another guy who looked just like their dad.”

In their youth, the brothers saw each other at family gatherings and even played against each other in school basketball games. The Blocks had five children to go along with Del. The Siems also had five more children, for a total of 12, even though doctors told Ella she shouldn’t have any more after the twins.

At one point, the brothers say, their mother seemed upset that her brother had taken Del.

“She had enough kids to worry about without worrying about one more,” Dale says.

As World War II arrived the brothers joined the service — Del the Navy and Dale the Army.

It wasn’t until 1948, two months before their 22nd birthdays, that Del realized his last name was Siems. He had proposed to his wife and retrieved his birth certificate. Not until then was his last name legally changed to Block, even though he and Dale Siems would forever be brothers — twins separated at birth.

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

In 2010, the new librarian was charged with taking most of the operating funds.

In 2011, a wind storm blew the roof off.

“Is our library worth it?” wondered board members, including 10-year member Christy Leckband.

“Yes,” she answers. “It’s my personal mission. Our kids need a library.”

The problem? A $100,000 insurance settlement for the old building won’t cover the cost of a new one. About $100,000 more is needed. And, in a town the size of Garrison, about 400 people, there’s not a lot of extra money floating around.

So, for the third time in three years, the library board has regrouped. And this time members hope an all-out effort of applying for grants, soliciting donations from former residents and holding fundraisers (soup suppers and flea markets) can help build a new library, one that would not only house the library, but also be a meeting place for the town council and a community building.

“We can see all of these uses for the building besides just a library,” says Betty Hendryx, a board member and librarian from 1992 to 2008.

From the beginning, the library has been well accepted, Betty says. It was started by the Garrison Study Club at Mercantile Exchange, the town’s general store, then moved to the elementary school in 1975. It moved again in 1981 to the old bank after the State Bank of Vinton opened a new branch office.

Upon Betty’s retirement (she joined the board,) Vicki Stone was hired. Everyone liked Vicki. But, on Nov. 15, 2009, on a shopping trip to Waterloo, she became ill. She died that day in the hospital.

After interviews, the board hired Mary Sheeley. Everyone liked Mary. But. on Dec. 13, 2010, she was arrested and accused of forging checks to withdraw more than $4,000 of the library’s funds, leaving only about $50 behind.

Board member Mary Kearns decided to take the job. Everybody likes Mary. But, on July 11, 2011, winds gusting more than 100 mph tore the second floor off the century-old building. Most of the contents were saved, but a new home was needed.

As you’d expect in a small town, people stepped forward to help, among them Christy’s husband, Mark, the pastor of St. Mark’s Lutheran Church. He offered a storage room in the church with an outside door.

So, for now, even though materials (including historical photos and cemetery records) are stored in a variety of places, the Garrison library is open from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, just as kids arrive home from school in Vinton and Shellsburg. It has a couple shelves of books, a couple shelves of movies, four computers and a governing board with dreams of a better future.

“We’d like to put it where the Old Creamery was,” Christy says. “We could have a walkout basement to the nature trail. It’s across from the Post Office. It would be the first thing you’d see when you came into town.”

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“My mom,” says Darlene Sprague Murphy, 61, fingering the dress’s gathered bodice, “said this was made out of dad’s parachutes.”

It is a beautiful dress — a tiny gathered waist, silk-covered oblong buttons at the back, a long flowing skirt — constructed from one parachute that has yellowed and another that has remained unbelievably white.

“My mother,” Darlene says, “was an amazing woman. She was very, very determined. I think that’s what got her through.”

Frances was born Nov. 24, 1922, in Riga, Latvia. Before her 13th birthday, Nazi soldiers knocked on her parents’ door, even though they were Christians, and took the youngest three of seven children — Peter, 15, Frances, and Freda, 12. Peter would never be seen again; Frances and Freda would spend nearly a dozen years in concentration camps.

“She talked to us kids when we were out in the garden,” Darlene says. “When she’d talk about it, she couldn’t sleep for days. She’d relive it.”

“One night,” adds Darlene’s husband of 42 years, Roy, “we’d known each other only a few years. I asked her about it. She talked all night, until the early morning.”

The Holocaust, the death of millions and the trauma to millions of survivors, had that effect.

“You wouldn’t believe how many people can’t believe that ever happened,” Darlene says.

Frances knew.

She sewed and mended soldiers’ uniforms.

She peeled potatoes, often rotten ones, and witnessed the shooting death of a man sitting next to her when he took a bite.

She used her drinking cup to clean out latrines.

In all, Frances was taken to three different camps, spending most of her time in Dachau.

“She said when they first got taken off the boxcars, there was a table and chair on top of it,” Darlene says. “They put everyone up there one at a time, striped them naked and shaved them.”

Frances collected human hair, knitting it into socks for soldiers.

She helped drag horses killed in battle that would be slaughtered for food.

She carried human bodies from the gas chamber to the crematorium.

“She never knew if she was going to be killed or not,” Darlene says.

Frances cleaned boxcars, removing bodies to be buried in trenches.

She ate nettles, a noxious weed, for nourishment.

She survived more than a decade, losing track of time but watching out for her sister.

Some time in 1945, the camp was liberated.

“When they opened up the gates and told everybody they were free, they were afraid to leave,” Darlene says.

Vicious dogs had guarded the gates. Soldiers would shoot anyone who tried to escape. Many of the prisoners, so malnourished, gorged themselves of food and died.

Frances stood 5-foot-7 and weighed 80 pounds. But she had kept her wits, learned to speak seven languages and worked at the American Hotel in Bad Tolz, Germany.

Gilbert “Buck” Sprague was born in Greeley, Iowa, on Oct. 31, 1923. He grew up around Colesburg, enlisted in the Army, become a paratrooper of the 82nd Airborne. One of his missions would be to land beyond the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944, and help move the Germans out of France.

At war’s end, Buck joined the Military Police to help with the recovery of Germany. He wound up in Bad Tolz where he fell in love with Frances.

On Jan. 1, 1946, with half-a-dozen other couples, Frances and Buck married. They would begin their family in Germany before moving near Colesburg in 1948. Buck started as a hired hand but used the GI bill to get a college education and was able to buy a farm in 1961. They would have ten children (one died in infancy), work hard to achieve success and Frances truly loved Iowa where she was free.

“No doubt about it,” Darlene says. “He was hard working. Mom was the brains and held everything together.”

Frances died Aug. 29, 1975. Buck died May 13, 2008. Her wedding dress made from his parachutes tells their story.

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But Ilene, 93, doesn’t like to be alone. Never has. So, when her husband, Leonard, died in 1978 she opened up her heart and her home.

In the nearly 34 years since, Ilene has never been lonely. She has rented rooms to teachers and future doctors, to children of friends and complete strangers, to girls who have stayed a few months to a man who stayed 17 years.

In all, Ilene has rented rooms to 72 people. And she remembers each and every one, as they remember her.

“Everybody that’s lived here comes back to their home,” Ilene says with a huge smile. (Above, she holds a picture of a former tenant.) ”Every summer I’m bombarded with my family.”

Today, an emergency room nurse and a health caregiver live in upstairs bedrooms, sharing the living area and bathroom with Ilene. In the remodeled basement, brothers Reggie and Sam Reicks live in the two-bedroom apartment.

“I get hugs,” Ilene says with that big smile. “I get a pile of hugs. That’s why I like men better than women, but I don’t want to marry them.”

Ilene and Leonard (right) married in 1934 when she was just 16. She was born the second of 10 children to Marie (Bruchbuhl) and Herman Enabnit.

“My parents both came from Switzerland. We couldn’t speak English until we went to school.”

Ilene tells of the Hardscrabble School teacher who slapped her wrist with a ruler so she’d understand. Of babies kept warm on the open door of the wood-burning oven. Of rolling up the linoleum and dancing all night until the cows had to be milked. Of being so poor her parents couldn’t put gas in the car so she could go to high school.

“I knew I’d be rich,” Ilene laughs, “when I could buy a head of lettuce in the winter.”

She and Leonard prospered through hard work, owned farms near Prairieburg, raised three children, retired to an acreage before moving to this house in 1968. One night a decade later, after playing cards, Leonard felt ill and died that morning of a heart attack.

Alone, Ilene recalled a childhood fear, that the boogeyman would get her as her father had teased.

Within two weeks a knock came at the door. Julie Koranda, who worked for a dentist, heard Ilene might have a room. Julie stayed seven years.

“That started it,” Ilene says. “I’ve never been alone since.”

A teacher came next. Then a school custodian, young farmers, a beauty operator, plumbers, music teachers …

“I’ve never had a Swiss,” Ilene says, referring to her heritage. “I’ve had Bohemies. I’ve had Catholics. I’ve had a priest and, not at the same time, a nun.”

Sometimes, when a tenant couldn’t pay the full rent, she’d have him do chores. One borrowed $500 and paid her back. Another who talked her into cosigning a $3,000 loan, skipped the state.

“I write him a ‘love’ letter (by email) every week,” Ilene smiles. “He knows I remember him.”

For 40 years, Ilene has sold advertising and written for the Linn County Newsletter. Health problems, including heart surgery, though, have limited her mobility. And she knows that, like her husband, she’s likely to die of a heart attack.

“Here today, gone tomorrow. Whatever,” Ilene says. “I enjoy life every day.”

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“I love it,” says Jean Marie Hall, 72, an Elkader resident since 1976. “It’s home. I love the water, the environment, the people. You can do things like this, starting from nothing.”

The flood wiped out Turkey River Athletic Club, the community’s private fitness center on south Main Street, leaving 50 members high and dry. The owner put the waterlogged equipment up for sale and left town.

In stepped Amy Holst who bought the equipment and stored it until she secured another location. It just happened to be in a cleaned up space next to the former center.

“We sat on the curb and washed weights,” recalls Carolin Phippen, 65, treasurer of the Elkader Fitness board. “We were close to the fire station so they used fire hoses to wash the equipment.”

Carolin also resumed her “Fit and Flex” classes at Bethany Lutheran Church.

By Nov. 1, a little more than four months after the flood, Elkader Fitness opened. But, being along that flooding Turkey River kept members on edge.

“The windows faced the river,” says Jean Marie, an early board member. “Every time it rained, we looked out. ‘Oh my, when is it going to flood again?’”

While board members appreciated all the help received, they hoped for more space and security.

Up stepped Bill and Diane Erickson who operate a small engine repair business on High Street, on the high side of the river. The Quonset hut building above them, past home to Sears, a welding shop, a video store, was available. Would Elkader Fitness like to move in?

Board members gave a resounding “Yes.” The Ericksons cleaned the space and moved some walls. Then club members and volunteers painted walls, installed new flooring including a hardwood exercise floor and moved the old equipment to the new place. Donations from all corners helped buy additional equipment. By the end of last summer, Elkader Fitness was home.

“It’s because of the whole community coming together, not just one or two people, that we’re here,” says Sandy Refle, 70, who belongs with her husband, Dean, 75.

“She said, ‘I’m paying for a double membership and you have to go and get our money’s worth,’ ” Dean laughs as he kicks off his shoes after sessions on an elliptical machine and treadmill.

The fitness center is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week thanks to a coded lock entry system. It features everything from a large free-weight area to more than a dozen machines to that gym-like floor where a new large-screen television/DVD player plays exercise programs. It also offers a variety of classes.

“If we had to pay anybody we wouldn’t make it,” says Carolin. “But the fact it’s volunteers, we can make it.”

With 80 members, the fitness center is bigger than ever. And the fitness of Elkader has an even brighter future.

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As they stand guard over a casket, they wear traditional white uniforms and shoes, the Navy blue and gold capes of old, and starched white caps that once identified nurses everywhere.

They sit together during the service — two, four, up to six in one pew.

They read “A Nurse’s Prayer” that begins “Give me strength and wisdom; when others need my touch …”

And, before they leave, they present a family member with a porcelain replica of a Florence Nightingale lamp, a symbol of the first nurse of modern times who lit the way for all who serve.

They are the Mercy Nursing Honor Guard. They are 11 retired or nearly retired nurses. They are women dedicated to their profession who appreciate the dedication shown by fellow nurses.

The idea hatched nearly two years ago after Mercy alum and retired nurse Judy Jaeger, 70, (right) heard about another community’s nursing honor guard.

“I just thought about it and thought about it,” she says. “We really needed to do that here.”

Administrators at Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids liked the idea so much they agreed to sponsor it. And Vicki Keegan, 64, (left) then director of patient relations, pitched in.

Before Judy and Vicki knew it, they were digging relics of old wool capes out of the closet and searching catalogs for old-style white uniforms. After all, nurses have been wearing scrubs for 20 years or more; the traditional uniforms relegated to the distant past.

“I don’t ever remember wearing the capes,” says Judy, a nurse for 43 years after graduating from Mercy’s nursing school in 1963.

But the capes looked so nice, so traditional. So, with the old capes as a pattern, Mercy had six polyester (wool would be too warm) capes made with “CR” and “MMM” embroidered on opposite collars and the Mercy Medical Center patch on the left shoulder. The women were able to find white uniforms, white hose and white shoes at different places. The caps, however, were a different matter.

To the rescue came Sister Lenore who sews half a day a week at the hospital. She made custom caps out of cotton. But then came the challenge of stiffening the cloth so it could be bent into the traditional half-moon shaped caps.

“We used to plaster them up against a mirror and starch them,” laughs Vicki, also a Mercy grad and nurse for 43 years. Then they’d be folded and buttoned into shape. Since the new caps have no button holes, they use plenty of bobby pins.

The honor guard became active last April. It has appeared at six funerals including four from mid-November to mid-December.

“I think people are appreciative we take the time to do this,” Judy says.

“It’s really an honor for us,” Vicki adds.

Of course, some people are surprised to see them, Judy says. “After we did a visitation in Mount Vernon, someone walked in and thought we were cardboard cutouts,” she laughs.

That’s because they remain off to the side, not the center of attention. After all, they are paying their respects to the nursing profession.

“It’s such a rewarding career,” says Vicki. “You can help in so many ways and see the result of what you’re doing.”

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You see, Emma, 16, knows what it’s like to be bullied. Which is why, last fall, as a student council member, she was thrilled to partake in a new student-led anti-bulling program called “The Voice.” She wasn’t alone.

Yes, anti-bullying programs have been sweeping the country in the last few years. Yet you still read and hear stories about why they’ve become necessary, from elementary kids shoving each other on the playground to Penn State University where a former football coach is accused of abusing preteen boys. Even this school in Lisbon, with 660 students, is sorting out accusations of bullying in the wrestling program brought to light last month.

Which is why I sat down with some representatives of “The Voice,” a program I heard about last October. It was born when Ali Givens, 16, (left) a junior, completed an English homework assignment about marginalized groups in society. She realized they needed a voice and emailed her answer to Terese Jurgensen, dean of students at the school.

“You could tell when she was writing about it, she was really thinking,” Terese says.

A gathering of a few student council representatives led to the initiative for “The Voice.”

“We had a 100 percent buy-in from the student council,” Terese (right) says.

But she and administrators made one thing perfectly clear to all 28 council members. (To be on the council, you simply volunteer.) “You have to really buy into it,” Terese reiterates. “You have to live it. You have to teach it.”

The plan was to begin in the elementary school. Two or three council members would be assigned to each classroom.

Student Council President Jordan Bahl, 18, (left) remembered being that young not so many years ago. He knew elementary kids can be cruel to each other, sly while doing it, and resistant to adult guidance.

“We thought they didn’t want to hear it from their boring teachers,” Jordan says with a laugh. “They wanted to hear from us. They look up to us.”

In the past there was peer counseling. Lisbon had Big Brothers/Big Sisters programs for some students, too. But this would be for everyone.

In an October retreat the council identified types of bullying — physical, verbal, cyber — as well as social alienation and intimidation. It came up with a three-point pledge: be strong, stand up, use your voice.

Lessons plans included fun physical activities, from loud cheering to a variation on “Twister” called “Human Knot,” where kids cross arms, hold hands and work together to free themselves.

“They like it a lot,” says Mitch McAndrew, 16, (right) a sophomore who mentors fifth-graders. “They’re pretty rowdy,” he laughs. “But the best thing for them is to see us there.”

Already, even though high school students meet with elementary grades only two or three times a month, success is evident. Elementary and high school students have become hallway friends.

“When you’re young,” Ali says, “is when you learn habits. Hopefully, when you’re older, that will carry over.”

“It holds us up to a higher standard,” Mitch says. “We’re their role models. It’s helps us be better people.”

“You know you can’t stop everything,” Jordan adds. “Our main goal is to reduce it.”

That’s all Emma (left) could have hoped for when she was young. “I cried a lot. I was bullied in elementary school, on the playground. I wasn’t the skinniest kid.”

When Emma told adults she was teased about her weight, nothing happened. But, maybe, if she’d had “The Voice,” if she had learned to stand up more for herself, it would have been different.

“I think we learn every time we go,” Emma says, “what gets through to the kids. What works.”

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She never let being a woman prevent her from joining the Iowa National Guard — she’s served tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And, if Tessa has her way, her gender won’t stop her from working counter terrorism with either the FBI or the military.

To see her on the University of Iowa campus, you’d be hard-pressed to pick out this sweat shirt and blue jean wearing student with shoulder-length light brown hair from any other co-ed. But, visit Tessa’s apartment in an old Iowa City house and the clues are there, from a world map on the wall to photographs of her in Army fatigues to a playful Central Asian Shepherd mix dog rescued from Afghanistan.

“To this day,” says Tessa, 24, “I’d rather go on a run than a walk.”

And Izzy, that rescued puppy who is approaching 60 pounds, would be right at her side, a symbol of the toughness, the trustworthiness and the compassion women like Tessa can bring to the armed forces.

“Women in the military have definitely come a long way,” she says. “I think ‘no women in the infantry’ will be overturned in the next few years.”

As a home-schooled student in Marion, Tessa not only played sports, she excelled at Tae Kwon Do and rose through the ranks in the Civil Air Patrol.

In 2005, before her senior year at Marion High School and Kirkwood Community College, she enlisted in the Iowa National Guard.

“Both my parents didn’t want me to go,” she says, “but they supported me.”

Since she couldn’t be in the infantry, Tessa chose the next best thing — Military Police. She would perform security for convoys, personnel, even prisoners of war.

“I wanted to get deployed,” she says. “That’s something I wanted to do right away. I wanted to be out in the field.”

In 2007 her wish came true. She carried “The Saw,” a 17-pound automatic machine gun during a 9-month “boots on the ground” tour in Iraq.

In 2010, Sgt. Poppe was in Afghanistan, hauling around 65 pounds of equipment including a grenade launcher and ammunition for an 11-month tour that ended last June.

After interrupting college twice, Tessa is now back in class studying Russian and international studies as a “super senior” — a student who takes more than four years to earn a degree. “I’ll graduate, cross my fingers, in May, 2013,” she laughs.

At 5-foot-5 and 165 pounds, Tessa stays in shape jogging three miles a day and lifting weights three times a week.

“If they asked me to go again, I would,” she says. “I’ll always want to go back to Afghanistan. I’d like to visit it as a peaceful country.”

As a photograph (left) of her that appeared in the online version of the New York Times shows, she did her part. Taken by Capt. Peter N. Shinn, the public affairs officer, it shows Tessa talking a little Afghan boy out of throwing a rock at a convoy.

“We’re driving ginormous vehicles through their villages,” she says. “What little kid isn’t going to pick up rocks and throw them at us?”

And she has Izzy, a once malnourished puppy that was the victim of young rock throwers before being rescued with beef jerky, loving companionship and a new home in Iowa.

Having re-enlisted for a year while in Afghanistan in order to remain “in country,” Tessa now faces a similar decision this August. Undecided at the moment, she’ll never forget how much military life has meant to her.

“The people, the friends you make in training and in deployments,” she says. “you can’t get those relationships anywhere else.”

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So this country boy at heart bought himself some karaoke equipment, recorded a 24-track album of old country songs (include two he wrote himself) and now tours taverns and care centers in northeast Iowa

“I wanted a guitar as a kid,” Denny says, sitting in his house high on a hill just west of tiny, yet picturesque, Eldorado. “But my dad said, ‘We got your brother one and he never learned to play it. You wouldn’t either.’”

So Denny went about life, walking to a one-room school, riding a bus to West Union to finish in 1964, marrying his sweetheart, Jean, in 1966.

He farmed with dad for a while then went to work at Edwin Mittelstadt’s repair shop in Eldorado, buying it a few years later. When the farm economy went south, he closed up shop in 1985. He worked at a couple West Union garages before joining the Fayette County roads department for a 21-year career.

Retirement in 2009, on his March 14 birthday, prompted Denny to re-evaluate his life and plan his future.

He’d had a heart attack at 47 and triple bypass surgery. During a stress test in 1993 he passed out. Diagnosed with ventricular fibrillation, he had a pacemaker/defibrillator implanted. He’s had it replaced three times.

In 2002 his first wife, Jean, died after she’d been diagnosed with lung cancer the year before.

Childless, he got an instant family in 2003 when he married Betty that’s now four children, 11 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Since Betty liked the way he sang — something he used to do only when nobody could hear — he hooked up a simple karaoke machine to the stereo.

“It didn’t sound too bad,” Denny admits, so he practiced with his favorites — Ray Price, Faron Young, George Jones, Charlie Pride — and hit the karaoke circuit.

“My God,” he laughs. “I almost wet my pants. I had stage fright like you wouldn’t believe.”

“He’s a country boy,” laughs Betty, “stuck out here in the country.”

Maybe it was the adrenaline, maybe it was the childhood dream to play guitar. Whatever, Denny was hooked. He bought dedicated karaoke equipment, a couple of guitars (he taught himself to play) and recorded a CR two years ago. He became a regular at care centers in Oelwein, Elkader, Fayette, Postville, Decorah, New Hampton and at Hooty’s tavern down the road in Auburn.

“He was very critical of himself,” Betty says. “But people say, the more they hear him sing, the smoother his voice is.”

People asked when he’d make another CD. So, last year, he went into the Bird-On Fire Recording Studio in West Branch and cut “Together Yours and Mine,” a 24-track CD that includes two songs he wrote, the haunting title track and the final cut, “Life Goes On.”

In that last song, Denny sings to Betty: “When I first met you, my heart was broken. My first love had left and gone to heaven. And you saved me from a life of pain and sorrow. And showed me that life goes on.”

For Denny Halverson, that’s a new life as a country singer.

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To order a copy of Denny’s CD go to http://www.memorybrothers.com/ and click on the “this week” section.

Laughing Laura Gentry greets everybody she meets in the same way.

“Hahaha” reads the license plate on her little blue Mini-Cooper S.

“Ha, ha, ha,” she begins every weekly session of the Lansing Laughter Club at Our Savior Lutheran Church where, at 41, she’s been pastor for ten years.

The laughter for Laura began in 2006. She has since spread it around the world, laughing on five continents with her laughter yoga program.

In fact, Laura was in Durbin, South Africa, last month for the COP17 convention where attendees wrung their hands over the potential disastrous fallout of global warming. They obviously needed a little laughter.

“By some estimates,” Laura says, “we should be laughing 20 minutes a day. Most people laugh 15 times a day but for only 1.2 seconds each time.”

Laura was one of those.

“I was feeling particularly stressed in my profession,” she says. “It has a high burnout rate.”

Caring for a congregation is 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from birth to death. You know the burdens other people carry and share in their concerns.

Laura’s husband, William Gentry II, also experienced the stress, although on another level. He’s a black man in a predominately white community as minister of the First Congregational Church in McGregor. (They live in that church’s parsonage.) She’s quick to say the communities readily accepted the mixed-race, mixed denominational couple.

Laura and William met at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, Calif., and married in 1996. He’s from Alaska. She was born in Cedar Rapids and grew up in Illinois, Wisconsin and Dubuque. After five years in Los Angeles, they came to Iowa. As she’s expanded her laughter program, he’s pursued professional photography.

“We love Iowa,” Laura says, laughing. “Some people don’t get us here, but they tolerate us.”

The laughter, she admits, has become an important aspect of the Gentrys taking care of themselves, too.

“It’s miraculous to me how a little laughter can do so much for people,” Laura says.

Following the principals of Dr. Madan Kataria who started laughter sessions in India and brought his teachings to California, Laura incorporated her experience in dance, the arts and public speaking into “The Iowa School of Laughter Yoga.” She and William have produced books, videos and a website, www.laughinglaura.com, extolling laughter’s benefits. Her audiences range from executives in suits at GE Healthcare in Wisconsin to students in Chili where she and William laughed their way across the country for three weeks.

“Laughter is this universal language,” Laura says, “and we learned how true that is.”

The yoga aspect of Laura’s sessions comes not in the exercise so much as the controlled breathing with the fits of laughter. Even if you force yourself to laugh, you get the benefits. Plus, it can become contagious and develop into genuine laughter.

In a recent session Laura had participants shake their hands, roll their shoulders, hop around, breathe deeply like weeds blowing in the wind, walk with an arm extended as if they were elephants. “I am happy,” they chanted. “I am relaxed. I am happy. I am relaxed.”

“Because we don’t tell jokes,” Laura says, “nobody is being laughed at. It’s just playful laughter.”

She had everyone hold a hand over theirs noses, pretending it was a mask for laughing gas. They panted like a dog and wagged their tails. They pretended to breathe through their right ears because, as Laura said, “You can’t do it and that’s what makes it funny.”

At one point, everyone sat in a circle and smiled at each other until it became a grin and then all out laughter. It put everyone in a positive mood which, with exercise, can become habitual.

“No sense of humor is required,” Laura says, “but humor leads to laughter and laughter leads to humor.”

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No longer do we have to pretend that we’re all meth addicts with rotten teeth cooking up the next batch in an abandoned farmhouse, that a Friday night date at a tractor pull was the highlight of our lives, that we’re just living in the country counting the days of boredom until we die.

Sure fooled him, didn’t we?

Now we can go about our lives without the media-induced microscopic stares. Or, can we?

As long as we’re in Iowa, the Heartland, people from outside our borders will have their opinions of us.

During my year-end desk cleaning, I ran across a news release with a West Palm Beach, Fla., dateline about a book written by retired newspaper columnist Ron Wiggins. He never lived in Iowa but got this notion from meeting Iowans and reading about us. He thinks we’re a good bunch, hence, his book, “Iowa Nice: Genial Jokes for a Gentle People.”

If you’ll pardon the pun, the book is full of “corny” jokes. In fact, the cover depicts a smile over an ear of corn so the kernels double as teeth.

To set the tone, Ron opens his book:

“To the people of Iowa, good sports all, and by good sports I mean folks who can lose at Monopoly to a gloater with hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place and not want to shove a tiny choo-choo up somebody’s nose.”

Ummmm.

On his website he explains that Iowans are nice, “but what else would you expect from Midwesterners who grew up minding their manners, moms, scoutmaster, 4-H leaders and earning perfect attendance Sunday school pins?”

OK, so he lays it on a little thick. Especially when he talks about community sings, ice cream socials and riding bunting-festooned bicycles in an Independence Day parade.

But, he also says, “Iowans represent our better selves, the big brothers and sisters we wanted to look up to.”

So, brace yourself for lines like this:

• All Iowa beauty pageants end the same: One winner and 19 Miss Congenialties.
• Iowa cats come when called; dogs remember to put the toilet seat down after drinking.
• As for straight-dealing — when an Iowan closes a savings account, the bank returns the money in the same knotted handkerchief.
• How does a diner know when he or she has overtipped an Iowa waitress? She chases him down the street waving money.
• What makes an Iowan happy? When it’s her turn to hold the puppy.
• Iowans slump in their seats at the picture show. Not because they have bad posture, but so the person in back of them can see.
• Iowans may wear out their invitations, but never their welcome.

If you’d like to order “Iowa Nice: Genial Jokes for a Gentle People,” ($10, 102 pages) go to www.iowanice.com or download the Kindle version ($3) at Amazon.com.

Just be prepared groan as you laugh.

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“You get people who pick them up,” Carl says, “and look at ‘em and look at ‘em and can’t tell what they’re made of.”

The roses are that intricate, that beautiful, that lifelike. And they’re easy to “grow.”

“He just does it when he watches TV,” says his wife, Barb, who had seen someone make plastic roses after melting spoons in the oven to make them pliable.

“I’m crafty anyway,” Carl says. “I sat down here over a winter with spoons and a candle and started playing with them.”

Yellow spoons or pink. Purple or red. Light blue or dark blue. In less than three hours they come alive.

“It takes 48 spoons to make a rose,” Carl says. “Then I take a handle and roll it up for the bud inside.”

He buys quality spoons in bags of 24 for $2, so he has $4 invested in each rose. The garland he buys for stems and leaves adds another $1 per rose.

He has sold them for as much as $25.

“When are you going to get me some of those so I can sell them?” more than one friend has asked, to which Carl replies, “I’m not going to get into it that much.”

At 69, Carl, a Mechanicsville native, has worked enough, from being an automobile mechanic to working bridge construction to trimming trees. He was with Rockwell-Collins for 30 years, first as a tree trimmer and then in maintenance. He retired a dozen years ago but has still spent the last 20 years performing maintenance on nights and weekends at Rockwell’s child care center.

“My dad bought a welder when I was about 14,” Carl recalls. “He said, ‘Use it.’ So we did.”

He builds useful items in his wood shop and owns a variety of old cars including the first and second ones he owned — a 1932 Chevy coupe when he was 14 and a 1954 Packard Clipper when he was 17.

So, melting one spoon at a time — too long and it’ll burn; not long enough and it’ll crack when he bends it — is pure relaxation. He heats each one just right to bend into a tight pattern or to stick to each other, the plastic being its own glue.

“You can’t really make a bad one,” he says, “because roses come in all different ways.”

When friends recently celebrated a 50th anniversary, he collected the plastic spoons, washed them and transformed them into anniversary roses for a special gift.

“They were shocked,” Carls says. Then, he adds with a laugh, “It’s not unusual for me to collect spoons at a lot of places.”

“I think they’re beautiful,” Barb says.

Carl smiles. “It’s just fun.”

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In the meantime, we kicked off the year with an inspiring story about Filipe Camarotti and his mother, Maria, who set an excellent example of achieving your goals after bringing her family from Brazil to Cedar Rapids. He earned a full-ride scholarship to Bowdoin College in Maine.

And we ended the year with Wednesday’s column about the Dingalings, a group of happy bell-playing retired residents from Garnett Place in Cedar Rapids who vow to keep ringing well into the new year.

In between, we held a conversation with Yokey Bear (left), that great stuffed animal that’s stood guard at the Ox Yoke Inn in Amana since 1955, and wandered around hosta gardens with Josh Spece (below) in his wheelchair that he wouldn’t let become an obstacle to realizing his dream at Independence.

We met Joe Scherbring of Manchester who, at 79, had driven semi-trailer trucks 4.6 million miles over a 40-year period, most recently with CRST Inc., in Cedar Rapids.

Since the Civil War started 150 years ago, I wrote about it several times including one where I spent the day as a Union soldier in a re-enactment at Ushers Ferry west of Cedar Rapids.

Wilfred "Zip" Zipperer, 86, who still wears a suit every day to go to work, jokingly gestures to his lifetime friend, George "Gus" Oujiri, 86, who has been retired since 1979. The Cedar Rapids men have been friends for 81 years since they met in Kindergarten. Photo was taken Wednesday, March 30, 2011. (Dave Rasdal/The Gazette)

We met George “Gus” Oujiri and Wilfred “Zip” Zipperer, both of Cedar Rapids, who had been friends for 81 years.

Yet, 75 seemed to be a magic number, from talking to Helen Kurth of Coggon who had played the organ for 75 years at United Parish church, formerly a Methodist church, to visiting Gene and Vern Ann Baxter of Cedar Rapids who celebrated their 75th anniversary in August.

Now to the books.

In the spring I wrote about Ray “Dutch” Coleman who died at 95 on Feb. 1 and his wife, Sadie, who died at 90 on Feb. 18 of a broken heart. They had been married 73 years and were each other’s lives even as both suffered from dementia in later years. Their daughter, Loretta Coleman-Prybil of Riverside, vowed to write a booklet about caring for one’s parents in later years.

Loretta has completed her 56-page book, “Tips and Suggestions in Caring for Dementia/Alzheimer Loved Ones.” If you’re interested, contact her at 1498 Underwood Ave., Riverside, Iowa 52327.

Later I wrote about Vinnie Ream, a nationally known sculptor who spent summers in Iowa City until her death in 1914. Paul Juhl, an Iowa City historian, filled me in since he was writing a book about her, in particular about her sculpture of Iowa’s Civil War governor Samuel Kirkwood for the U.S. Capitol.

Paul has finished his spiral-bound booklet about Vinnie. You can contact him at Lhujpc@aol.com or by mail at 832 West Side Drive, Iowa City, Iowa 52246.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that 2011 was a big year for my Ramblin’ column with the publication of “Ramblin’: Reflections of Hidden Iowa” by The Gazette. The coffee-table style book will be available through next year as I celebrate the 30th anniversary of my first Ramblin’ column in May. It includes 102 columns with photographs that represent the variety of stories I’ve penned through the years.

I’ll be talking about my book in Eastern Iowa appearances including Jan. 14 at 2 p.m. at the Marion Public Library. I’ll sign books if you’d like to purchase one. You also can stop at The Gazette offices in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City to pick up a copy for $34.95 or order one online at TheGazette.com or for an order form go directly to: http://alpha.gazlab.com/design-host/RamblinOrderForm.pdf

Hey, also stop by my blog at http://thegazette.com/ramblin or, while you’re at TheGazette.com, scroll down about a third of the page and find the icon for Ramblin’ Blog. I’ll be posting my columns as well as other information most days. That’s what I’d done on a couple of previous blogs. I’m glad to be back for 2012.

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Bessie Beauregard, 85, seated next to her watches for turquoise ovals while Bruce Mesplay, 54, rings his bell on blue.

They are among the 14 Dingalings of the Garnett Place Retirement Community who played a debut concert last week at Lindale Mall’s center court.

“I love it,” says Gerry with an enthusiasm echoed by the others.

“I like music, but I never played anything in my life,” adds Bessie.

Such are the opportunities for the Dingalings, a bell choir formed more than a year ago as a fun activity that now spreads senior citizen cheer.

Diane Fulknier, a volunteer with 50 years of music experience, much of it in churches, had used the flash card bell choir idea before. It’s perfect, she says, for people of all ages with limited musical experience.

“When they see the colors,” she says, “they ring their bells.”

Director Cathy Hulbert-Boyes, activities coordinator at Garnett Place, taps her feet for the rhythm as she opens the concert with “Oh, Holy Night.” One song after another swells the mall audience of all ages.

“We are the Dingalings,” Cathy says to proud smiles from her choir. “We are going to go on tour this year. This is our first appearance.”

Each member wears a bright red shirt so you can’t miss them.

“Let me introduce you to our oldest member,” Cathy says. “Gladys McShane (left)  is 99. She doesn’t use a walker, a cane or a hearing aid.”

Timidly, Gladys stands and waves.

“Look at her,” Cathy says. “She’s beautiful.”

Too poor to have instruments as she grew up on a farm west of Cedar Rapids, Gladys eagerly joined the Dingalings. When she recently celebrated her birthday she didn’t blow out all 99 candles on purpose. “I saved one for the 100th,” she smiles. And she wasn’t nervous at all about her first public appearance.

“I knew I had company,” she says, pointing to fellow second row Dingalings Wilma Larson and Thea Gorman.

In the back row, Ruby Klein, 71, didn’t let a slow healing broken left femur stop her. She sits in a wheelchair ringing her bell, recalling how she played the saxophone in high school band at Waukon.

“I’ve always wanted to play the bells,” Ruby says. “When the opportunity came, I jumped on it quick.”

Ruby also suggested adding men to the bell choir. “I told them,” she laughs, “we needed some power.”

If the group was going to tour, it also needed a bus. Garnett Place acquired one in June.

“Now that they have a bus,” Diane says, “the sky’s the limit. Look out Broadway.”

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“No way would I hire you,” I say, glancing up from her application.

“I was a job hopper,” Karen admits with a laugh. “I didn’t have a good job history, did I?”

Nope.

But, that was 47 years ago — Aug. 23, 1964 — when handshake loans were common in small-town banks, when “who you knew” was more important than “what you knew” to land a job and when gophers were such a problem a bounty was paid for their paws.

Not long after Karen started at the Benton County Savings Bank a man walked in with a brown paper bag.

“He dumped them right out on the counter, gopher paws,” Karen says, cringing to this day.

It might have been a dime a paw, Karen isn’t sure. But, she started at $55 a week because that’s what she asked for on the application.

“That must have been what Prentiss (Folvag, bank president) told me I’d be paid,” she says. “I must have already had the job.”

Growing up in Norway, Karen graduated from high school in 1959. Prentiss ran into her on the street and asked if she wanted to work at the bank. She’d already lined up a job at the school.

After a year, Karen became an operator at Norway Telephone Company, plugging wires into a switchboard to connect callers. But that job ended six months later when automated equipment made her job obsolete. She was commuting to Iowa National Mutual Insurance in Cedar Rapids when she reapplied at the bank.

The application asks how long she planned to work. Her response: “…‘till we have a family. I am not able to say when that will be.”

She had Lori in 1966, Mike in 1968, and soon divorced. As a single mom, she couldn’t afford to quit, not that she even thought about it.

Able to type 68 words a minute, Karen enjoyed learning to operate the posting machine. These were the days when accounts didn’t have numbers but went by names. When you could write counter checks for purchases. When coins were counted and put into rolls by hand. Of course, there were no computers, no ATMs, no debit cards.

In 1973 Karen helped hire Marj Becker, current vice president and branch manager.

“When I came in to interview for the position,” Marj says, “I was totally intimidated because she was sitting behind the counter.”

But, they’ve since become best friends.

The bank changed hands a couple of times and was renamed BankIowa in 1998. Karen advanced from secretary/teller to assistant cashier, cashier and vice president in 1991. But, in a bank with four or so employees, she always waited on customers.

“I’ve had excellent people to work with, excellent customers,” Karen says. “That’s the hard part, like a second family.”

But, after being part-time for a couple of years and turning 70 on Dec. 5, Karen decided, somewhat reluctantly, to step into retirement

“I’m having a hard time,” she says, “picturing me not working.”

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A nurse leads him, dressed as you or I might dress, from room to room where sick children wish, more than anything, to be home for Christmas. To see the brightly wrapped presents under the tree. To know that Santa Claus remembers them.

In one room, the man reaches into his sack. He pulls out a doll for the little girl to cradle in her arms. He hands a letter to the parents.

“Merry Christmas,” he says to the smiling girl. “I hope you like this doll.”

“Merry Christmas,” he says to misty-eyed parents. “I pray that your child will get better.”

In a moment he is gone.

For yes, there is a Santa Claus. And he resides in the hearts of people who give anonymously and unselfishly, especially this time of year.

“I do it in memory of my mother,” says this Mr. Anonymous who lives in Marion. “She was the most wonderful, decent, sweetest woman I ever knew,” he says.

Almost 20 years ago, as she lay dying in a hospital, he gave her a doll she had dreamed about owning for years.

“I’ll never forget the look on her face,” says this son who would give his mother a final kiss goodbye less than two months later.

Yes, we’ve heard about the anonymous Santas and Mrs. Clauses this year. Across the country, they’ve paid off Kmart layaway items. They’ve left food at the doorsteps of homeless shelters. They’ve dropped valuable coins and diamond engagement rings in Salvation Army red kettles.

In his comfortable Marion home, one with tall ceilings and a fireplace and family photographs on the walls, this local Mr. Anonymous tells his story.

“I’ve always thought it was the most selfless act,” he says. “When you want nothing in return.”

In his 60s, he fondly recalls growing up in the South where his father was a successful farmer. He would grow up to be successful, too, in finance, the media, as a college educator. But he’d always remember a newspaper story about a man who gave anonymously to charities. And he would never forget watching television episodes of “The Lone Ranger.”

Every week, after completing his good deed, the Lone Ranger rode off into the sunset followed by the phrase, “Who was that masked man?”

For 17 years Mr. Anonymous has contacted officials at St. Luke’s and Mercy in Cedar Rapids about children who will be in the hospital during Christmas. He spends $200 to $300 shopping and makes the rounds.

“Nobody,” he says, “recognizes me. Nobody knows who I am.”

Not even his family, who will learn about this upon his death with the hope that it inspires them to pay it forward.

“If we all gave more to people in need without recognition, we’d all be better off,” Mr. Anonymous says. “I would hope somebody would read this and say, doggone it, that’s something I ought to do.”

Mr. Anonymous smiles.

“I’ve gotten my reward,” he says. “Oh, my goodness, I’ve gotten my reward.”

It is, he knows, that same contented feeling that swells the heart of every Santa Claus.

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“I’ve tried five of them; these are the only two I’ve been able to finish.”

He uses freshly cut hard maple so it’s still moist, turning the modified bowl on a lathe, cutting here and there, shaping here and there, finishing it in one day before the wood is too dry.

“Look,” he says, holding one up to the light. “You can see right through it.”

That fragile nature is why Harold broke the brims right off the other three hats while making them.

Accustomed to selling everything he makes, Harold, 73, isn’t quite ready to part with either of the hats. He’ll probably try another one when he finds the time.

“People say, Harold, you’re not retired,” says the 37-year physical education teacher at Colesburg and Manchester. “I say, yes I am. I’d doing what I love to do.”

As a hunter and a fisherman in his free time, you can find Harold out in a tree stand with his crossbow at the ready or, for two weeks every month during the summer, at his cabin on Minnesota’s Leach Lake catching Northern Pike. (He once caught a 54-inch, 45-pound Muskie.)

But, you’re just as likely to find Harold at his saw or lathe, with a carving knife or a paint brush as he works beneath a magnifying glass.

To say he’s meticulous is as obvious as saying the early bird gets the worm. Once, after carving a robin, Harold dug up a night crawler and put it in the bird’s mouth. That provided inspiration to spend another nine hours carving the worm that now dangles from the robin’s beak.

With dozens upon dozens of awards, including some world championships during his nearly 40-year career as a carver, Harold still loves the birds, but not the feathers so much.

“My business is The Wooden Feathers,” he says. “That has been the biggest pain the butt for me. It’s a pain to make the same thing over and over.”

He will produce 40 nearly identical feathers at a time, paint them and mount them. Each takes about three hours, selling for 420 to $40 each.

“I usually like to sit down and work on one thing at a time until I get it done,” he says.

That can mean some days working from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. It can mean 20, 50, 100, 300 hours per bird. As a result, when Harold takes orders, people have to give him plenty of lead time. His goldfinch sells for $190, a wren is $220, a mallard, $700.

While he’s thought about making an eagle, he has resisted the urge.

“I figure that would take 2,000 hours, cost $20,000,” he says. “It would take me a year to do an eagle.”

Usually, if Harold calculated his hours to the sale price, even for a ruffed grouse he once sold for $13,500, he’s not even earning the equivalent of a teacher’s salary. But that’s not the point. Carving, whether it’s a 400-hour blue-winged teal, a black ash burl bowl or a fragile wooden cowboy hat, is his passion.

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She smiles as customers enter the McDonald’s fast food restaurant near Walmart on Marion’s east edge, even though she’ll be cleaning up after them.

She hums to herself as she refills the straw and napkin dispensers, wipes down the pop machine and sweeps the floor

“You can see this is a real high pressure job,” laughs Georgia Windenburg as the broom whisks along the floor.

At an age when most people retire, Georgia not only works 11 hours a week here but also 36 hours every two weeks for the hot lunch program at Kennedy High School in Cedar Rapids.

“I don’t like not to work,” she says. “I love being around people.”

It’s a rather slow night, unusual for this McDonald’s, or Georgia would be out talking to more people. So, instead, she talks to me. She is the type of employee every business would be lucky to have.

“We just love our Georgia,” confirms Wendy Schmitz (left), first assistant manager at the McDonald’s.

It was her father, Hugh Hutton, a loved, respected and admired man, who inspired Georgia.

“He just set a good example. If you did something, you did it right and you’d never have to go back and do it again.”

Hugh Hutton had the Clover Farm grocery in downtown Marion, (now the Maid-Rite) when Georgia was born. She remembers first grade when she and a friend picked apples to eat on the walk to the store.

“Did you get permission?” he asked.

“No,” she replied.

“You’re stealing.”

“When I got home,” Georgia says, “I got one swat from the razor strop. It wasn’t child abuse. I never did that again.”

But, she’ll tell you, that’s not the biggest lesson he taught her.

“Not to step in his garden. You get in the garden, you work.”

In 1951, her father inspired her more when he got throat cancer. At age 51 and told he had a 1 in 100 chance to survive, Hugh closed the store, had surgery, taught himself to talk again and lived to be 88. He opened Hutton’s Tropical Fish where Georgia worked before buying it in 1966 to operate it for 22 years.

Upon retirement, Georgia became bored. She worked at Sun Mart grocery for 10 years before retiring again. A few months later she returned to Younkers where she’d worked before the fish store. She’d also worked at Linn-Mar schools hot lunch program, which was a natural for joining the one at Kennedy.

Not one to mince words, Georgia felt a little of her father come out one day when she heard a student in line swear. She threatened to take three boys to the kitchen to wash their mouths out with soap.

“I’m sorry, grandma,” one of the boys said.

“They never did that again,” Georgia says. “They talk to me all the time now.

“Kids are good today,” she adds. “They just need to be disciplined.”

In her spare time she likes to gamble (blackjack) and watch TV, but only NFL football and poker tournaments.

“I’m not an Iowa fan, not since they got rid of Tom Davis,” she says. “The best man they ever had.”

Yes, he reminded her of her father. Or Keith, her husband of 58 years. They have four children, 10 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. So, after each shift at McDonald’s, Georgia picks up a couple of sundaes, a caramel one for herself and a chocolate one for Keith. Work has its rewards.

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Spooky?

Nah. The eyes are not alive; they belong to dolls. Cloth head dolls, China head dolls, metal head dolls. Flossie Flirt, Betsy Wetsy, Chatty Cathy.

The birth dates of the dolls range over more than a century, from the 1860s into the 1970s.

“Come visit your childhood,” says Janet, 68, who opened All Dolled Up on earlier this year at 915 Eighth Ave. in Marion. “A lot of these dolls are from the boomer period.”

But you won’t find even one version of the most popular doll ever.

“I don’t do Barbie,” Janet says. “That’s a whole ‘nother shop.”

But artistic dolls (right) occupying a sofa near the front door, many with human hair. They range in price from $250 up $400.

“I think anything more than that is a car payment,” Janet says. “I just don’t do it.”

Instead, most dolls are around the $100 mark. They’re a continuation of not only Janet’s childhood on a farm just outside Farmersburg, but the doll shop she had in Rockford, Ill., for 11 years.

With Janet’s retirement on the horizon her sister, Nancy Simon of Cedar Rapids, talked her into opening a shop in the area. When Janet visited Marion, she was like a child falling in love with her first doll.

“I am so impressed with Marion,” Janet says. “They have an uptown group that’s always coming up with something.”

She leased this 1865 house with a wraparound porch, found an apartment in Marion and moved four U-Haul truck loads of dolls to Iowa.

Janet’s mother loved dolls, so Janet and two sisters would look in a catalog, add the doll they wanted to their Christmas list with the page number and the doll would appear beneath the tree.

“When people said there was no Santa,” she says, “I said there is. I probably believed longer than most kids.”

Janet, who has taught high school English and worked the last 24 years in the office of a newspaper clipping service, started a doll club in Rockford in 1986. She opened her first doll shop in 2000 and it grew to cover 5,000 square feet when the lease ran out this year.

All Dolled Up offers repair service, free layaway and accepts credit cards. Janet has no Internet site or Facebook page, preferring instead to meet customers face to face, especially children.

“That’s the next generation of doll collectors,” she says. “We fuss over them.”

Open the front door and Janet enthusiastically leads you on a tour of wax head dolls, papier-mâché dolls and bisque dolls from Germany’s golden age, 1890 to 1915, before factories were converted for World War I.

The shop has 15 Shirley Temple dolls, the oldest from 1935, that sell in the $150 range. If you’re looking for something earlier, a 1924 Flossie Flirt (right) with rolling eyes is $125 while 1950s Betsy Wetsy dolls are $60 to $150. The 1960s Chatty Cathy dolls, because they don’t work, are around $85.

“In my 11 years in business, I’ve never had one that worked,” Janet says. “Those strings were just pulled and pulled.”

Great Christmas presents of the past, these dolls still fascinate Janet and make her feel good as she works in her festively decorated shop.

“To have a house like this for my hobby,” she says, “was always my dream.”

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Everywhere in the world Christmas is celebrated. And, nearly everywhere, it seems, Edith and Bob Summers have collected a Nativity set upon their personal visit. In all, over the last 50 years, the Iowa City couple has collected more than 600 Nativity sets.

“I tell my wife we have a disease,” laughs Bob, 73.

“Rather than looking for a lot of souvenirs, we look for Nativity sets,” adds Edith, 75.

Some are as small as your little finger; others have figures that stand two feet tall. The couple doesn’t go for those you display in the yard and, of course, it’s impossible to include a living Nativity Scene in the collection.

But, if you’re interested, about 400 of the Nativity sets are on display this weekend at the First Mennonite Church at 405 Myrtle Avenue in Iowa City. The display is open from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. tonight, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and 1:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Sunday.

Every year, about 300 are displayed in the Summers home. Last Christmas, that included 37 in the main bathroom.

“They were small ones,” Edith laughs.

While they love the one nestled inside an egg they brought home from Russia, they’ve got a special place in their hearts for one about the size of a dollar coin made from Sculpey clay by granddaughter Anna Truszkowski, 11, of Coralville.

Most, however, are tabletop size and accompany tales of their travels.

Behind glass in a nightstand beside their bed, for instance, sits an ornate set from China.

“You see them made in China, but they look like they’re made for Americans,” Edith says. “We don’t like those,”

So, the couple had this one made. The Chinese figures include the three wise men who represent three different dynasties. Since it couldn’t be completed before they left, they paid for it and had it shipped home. But they waited six months until it finally arrived,

“There’s not another one like it in the world,” Edith says.

The same can be said for the one from Finland acquired a month ago.

“Oh, you won’t find one here,” a storekeeper told them. “We aren’t very religious here.”

But, the Summers located one with a unique feature — Mary, Joseph, the Christ Child, the three wise men and the shepherds are all faceless.

In contrast, a set from Naples, Italy, not only has distinctive faces on all figures, but also very colorful clothes, the wise men on horseback and an old-world stone backdrop.

“We like the ones that reflect the ethnic quality of the country they come from,” Bob says.

Their first Nativity set, carved from Olive wood, was purchased in 1962 at a church bazaar in Iowa City and helped raise money for the third-world country where it was made. They paid $5 for that one; have paid up to $1,000 for another.

“This is the fun time of the year,” Bob says. “We go down to the basement and get them out and we remember where we were, where we got them.”

Married in 1961 after they’d met at the University of Iowa where both worked in research labs, the couple first traveled the United States with their family in a station wagon, sleeping in a tent. As a gastroenterologist at the University for 41 years, Bob’s research allowed them to travel internationally beginning in 1974 with a visit to England and Germany. They’ve been to Australia, India, Thailand, Brazil and Egypt last year just before the unrest there. But, they’ve never been to Bethlehem where the Christmas story was born.

“We planned it several times, but something always came up,” Bob says.

They were set to visit for their 40th anniversary, Edith says, but the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center made them leery of travel.

“Some day,” she says, “We will get there.”

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Today, Dec. 7, the survivors of that surprise attack remember it as if it was yesterday, only their numbers dwindle as rapidly as the surviving soldiers of World War II.

“We had one in Dubuque, one down near Muscatine, they’re both gone,” says Pearl Harbor survivor Bob Ulrich of rural Lisbon. “A fellow up in Waterloo, he’s gone.”

One by one the survivors in Iowa have died until four remain, says Bob, a former state president and district director of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. In addition to Bob, they live in Newton, Mason City and Greenfield.

“If there are any more out there, I sure wish they’d contact me,” he says.

Bob is one of the younger survivors, having turned 18 just before the bombing. His parents had signed for him to enlist at 17 so he could join older brother, George, in the Navy aboard the USS California.

The Pearl Harbor Survivors Association was formed in 1958 so people would not forget. To belong, a service member had to be within three miles of the island of Oahu between 7:55 a.m. and 9:45 a.m. that day.

As the 50th anniversary of the bombing approached, membership grew tremendously to more than 15,000. That’s when Congress issued a special medal to those who had survived. It’s also the year the Iowa chapter, on Nov. 11, dedicated its Pearl Harbor survivors monument at the Iowa statehouse.

Now, just 20 years later, national membership stands at less than 3,000.

“This January 1, we are disbanding the organization,” Bob says. “We’re going to turn over all of our records to the Museum of the Pacific which is on Ford Island there at Pearl Harbor.”

Most of the surivors, once numbering more than 80,000, have died. Many can’t travel to reunions any more.

“We all knew it was coming,” Bob says. “We knew we were a dying organization.”

Bob has visited Pearl Harbor six times, the last four years ago. But today, on the 70th anniversary of the bombing, he will most likely stay home rather than attend a memorial service in Cedar Rapids or gather, as he did in the old days, with other survivors in Des Moines.

“I can’t drive any more,” Bob says. “I don’t even get out to the end of my driveway except to take the garbage out once a week.”

Macular degeneration has rendered Bob legally blind. His aching legs force him to use a cane to walk. Yet, ask how his health is and he’ll say, “I can’t complain.”

This has been a tough year for Bob. His wife of 66 years, Byrdena, died June 20. He lost two brothers and a nephew in the spring.

On Dec. 7, 1941, he first lost a brother.

Bob had purposely joined George on the USS California where, among the 1,200 sailors aboard, they shared the same 20-man mess hall break. On Dec. 4 George turned 20, as Bob turned 18, so they celebrated with two cakes. When the Japanese attacked, Bob was transfering oil on the starboard side to help balance the ship while George worked on the port side transfering ammunition. A 1,000-pound bomb hit the port side and with three torpedoes sank the ship.

“There was a big sheet of fire coming down the harbor,” Bob recalls. “We were told to abandon ship, but somehow that flame split so we got back on it.”

George would disappear. Bob would survive not only that attack, but also the sinking of the USS Lexington during the Battle of the Coral Sea and the sinking of a mine sweeper in the Mediteranian Sea.

“I shouldn’t even be alive,” Bob says, nodding his head. “I always figured when my time was up, my time was up.”

His mother, who received word in the spring of 1942 that George had perished, held out hope that he was alive. “You just couldn’t convince her,” Bob says.

Even in 1949, when their mother received a letter that George’s remains had been identified and buried in Bakersfield, Calif., “My mother could just not swallow that that was him.”

Bob knows different. Today, he has survived 70 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor. His brother died that day.

“I hope you get the message out there to people that war isn’t worth it,” Bob says. “There’s no glory in war.”

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

PEARL HARBOR COMMEMORATED:

The 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor will be commemorated at 10 a.m. this morning at Ellis Park in Cedar Rapids with three volleys of rifle fire and the laying of a memorial wreath in the Cedar River. The ceremony will include remarks from Cedar Rapids City Councilman Chuck Swore and conclude with the playing of taps, says Rod Thompson, commander of Marion American Legion Post No. 298. It is a cooperative effort of area American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars and AMVETS organizations.

PEARL HARBOR SURVIVOR FACTS:

On Dec. 7, 1941, about 84,000 sailors and soldiers were stationed at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked. (About 2,400 military personnel were killed.)

In 1990, more than 15,000 survivors belonged to the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association as the 50th anniversary approached.

Today, about 8,000 Pearl Harbor survivors are still alive with 2,700 of them members of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association.

About 20 chapters of the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors around the nation have been formed to keep remembrance alive.

What a great way, I thought, to kick off my 17th annual unusual gift ideas column.

This time of year, as you might be caught between Black Friday bedlam and perusing Christmas lists, “Of Time and Place” could make an ideal gift for antique lovers, art aficionados and those who can be hard to please. Plus, all proceeds go to the Friends of the Solon Public Library for books, materials and educational programs.

This colorful poster was put together by longtime Mount Vernon photographer Bob Campagna with photographs of 18 elaborate windows decorated in the library by Toni Russo of Solon. Bob, whom I’ve known for a couple of decades, and Toni, whom I met and wrote about last year, are both extremely talented and it shows.

Toni’s window themes have ranged from Harry Potter to Flanders Field, incorporating “timeless treasures” in a unique way. For instance, last year, her window paired old decorations from Armstrong’s Department Store in Cedar Rapids with fall poems by Carl Sandburg and Emily Dickinson. It included old books and illustrations from the 1910 book, “A Year with the Fairies,” to illustrate the change from fall to winter.

The posters sell for $10 each or $25 if you’d like it in a black acrylic frame. To order, email SolonLibrFriends@aol.com or call Sue at 624-2632.

Speaking of windows, as I’ve window shopped this year — in stores and online — I’m amazed at the plethora of technical gadgets, from sophisticated games and remote-controlled cars with “spy” cameras to more cellphone accessories than you can carry.

How about a pair of gloves that keep your hands warm while allowing your index finger and thumb to manipulate the touch screen on your smartphone or electronic tablet? I’ve seen them many places for $20 and up.

Not happy with soda in a can? For a hundred bucks you can buy the Genesis Home Soda Maker to produce your own sparkling water or flavored soda.

You’ve no doubt heard about the Sleep Number bed that’s air-adjustable. Now, at those exclusive stores, you can buy an adjustable pillow that works in a similar fashion.

My favorite unusual gifts catalog, Hammacher Schlemmer offers such gifts as a fingerprint recognizing espresso machine ($3,200) and an amazing 13-inch tall robot ($2,400). Another great place is Sharper Image where you can become a real spy with a pen camera ($150) and an infrared camera ($180) to take pictures in absolute darkness. Kids would love it, to catch Santa in the act.

Too crazy?

OK, as long as I’m making gift-buying suggestions, I’ll plug my book, “Ramblin’: Reflections of Hidden Iowa.” It’s a hard cover coffee-table-style book with more than 100 columns (and photographs) commemorating the upcoming 30th anniversary of my first Ramblin’ with Rasdal column.

“Ramblin’: Reflections of Hidden Iowa” sells for $34.95 at The Gazette offices (Cedar Rapids and Iowa City), Barnes & Noble in Cedar Rapids (I’ll be there signing books from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Dec. 17) and other Eastern Iowa sites including Grandma’s Corner Closet in Kalona where I’ll be signing books from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday.

You also can purchase the book online at thegazette.com and scroll down to the “Ramblin’ Book” icon near the bottom. While you’re on The Gazette website, check out my blog, Ramblin’ With Rasdal, which has returned. Its icon is about a third of the way down the page.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

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

On Dec. 3, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., I’ll be at Laree’s at 306 First Street East in Independence.

On Dec. 10, from 10 a.m. to noon, I’ll be at Grandma’s Corner Shop at 405 B Avenue in Kalona.

On Dec. 17, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., I’ll be at Barnes & Noble at 333 Collins Road NE in Cedar Rapids.

“Ramblin’: Reflections of Hidden Iowa” was issued Nov. 18 by The Gazette to commemorate the 30th anniversary of my first Ramblin’ with Rasdal column that appeared in May, 1982.

The coffee-table-style book, which sells for $34.95, features more than 100 columns selected from throughout the years as I visited places in Iowa from Waukon to Brighton, from Toledo to Maqueketa and, of course, Cedar Rapids and Iowa City.

The book is available at The Gazette in both Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, at Barnes & Noble in Cedar Rapids and Coralville, and at various other locations around Eastern Iowa.

If you can’t stop somewhere to pick up your copy, you can order one online by following this link.

Like the “shouting” script that flashed across the silver screen in movie trailers of long ago, “The Call” has it all.

And more!

Because, “The Call,” premiering at 6 p.m. Saturday at the Traer Theater uses all local actors. And its purpose is to ensure that movie fans in this northern Tama County community of 1,500-plus citizens can go to the movies for decades to come.

“People come in happy and they leave happy,” says Mona Larsen, 50, who grew up in Traer and has managed the theater the last three years. “I think it’s important to be involved in the community. I have a lot of great memories of this theater.”

Traer has had a theater in one form or another for more than a century, from silent picture shows at the opera house before 1910 to a brand new CinemaScope-screen theater that opened, then closed, in the ‘50s.

The staple has been this theater, owned by the commercial club, and now the chamber of commerce, since 1958. From 1971 to 2001 it was managed by Mike Reuman and his family who also have a men’s clothing store down the street.

“I remembered as a kid going there,” Mike says. “It was ten-cents admission and ten-cents for a box of popcorn.”

He also recalls an uncle talking about his work in the projection booth before “talkies.”

Through the years the theater has been upgraded — air conditioning installed in 1977, new projector in 1990, and complete interior renovation for a reopening in 2006.

It’s time to keep the momentum going with a $60,000 upgrade to digital projection equipment if the theater is to continue to draw patrons away from televisions, DVD players and video games.

Hence the local movie project which came about after Jolene Holden got a part in nearby Clutier’s production of “Hometown” earlier this year. It was made by Scott Thompson of My town Pictures of Wisconsin.

“I had a great time,” says Jolene, 52, (center). “I thought, why don’t we do it here?”

After contacting Thompson, auditions were held this summer, 26 actors were chosen, a script was written and filming took place over seven days. The 90-minute movie is now ready to go with showings at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sunday and 7 p.m. Monday. Admission is $5. (You can see some clips at www.mytownpictures.com)

“I’m selling autographs,” laughs Patty Suess, 56, (left) who owns the Sunnyside Tavern and Cafe down the street and plays a tavern owner.

“It was fun,” she adds. “We got to interact with a lot of people we wouldn’t normally mingle with.”

Larry Hassman, 65, (right) a veteran of high school and community productions, enjoyed playing Jarvis who pokes fun at people who speculate about movie’s mystery.

“It was a common goal, knowing we were doing something for the community,” Larry says. “It wasn’t really work.”

What’s going on in town?

Who is James Lincoln?

Why does this guy keep calling me?

Find out in “The Call.”

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

The book, “Linn County Soldiers and Sailors Serving Our Flag,” pictures veterans in uniform. Some pictures are large groups in front of the courthouse before they left for war. Other pages depict collages of individual military portraits. One page says “Cedar Rapids,” another “Marion.” There’s “Springville,” “Mount Vernon,” and “Linn County,” too.

“I went through this book and found a lot of names of people who were around Marion when I was a kid,” says Steve, 87.

He was born five years after World War I ended and raised in Marion. He remembers the hard times of the Great Depression after his father, George, lost his job at the packinghouse in Cedar Rapids. As the tenth of 11 children, Steve helped with the family gardens planted on vacant lots George rented.

“Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday we’d load up our vegetables on that old Model-T truck and we’d head to Cedar Rapids.”

From 19th Street SE, they’d drive down Second Avenue and up Third Avenue ringing doorbells and shouting “The vegetables are here!”

“The women would run into their houses for their purses and buy from us,” Steve says. “We just kept going until we sold all we had.”

As winter approached, the family harvested horseradish and spent the winter preparing, canning and selling it.

Steve’s father was nearly 70 then, so hadn’t fought in the war. But late in 1941, after Steve had graduated from Marion High School, he learned the meaning of war on the homefront as he worked in the tin shop at Ned Jones Heating Company.

On Dec. 2 Steve turned 18, on Dec. 7 the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, on Dec. 8 Ned asked Steve to get another job.

“I was in the first war,” Ned said. “I know what happens. We won’t get our materials. We won’t need you.”

Steve hired on at the LaPlant Choate plant until he went into the service in 1943. His mother, Minnie, didn’t want him to go. She had a brother killed in World War I and two older sons in the service.

“I never really did get into combat,” Steve says, which was a relief to her as he served as a tank gunner in France and Germany. His mother met him at the train station upon his return. He still remembers her words.

“My God, Steve,” she said, “You left as a boy and came back a man.”

Through a career mostly in industrial sales, Steve married, fathered four children and has six grandchildren. He has grown to appreciate history, especially that within a family. He can’t remember who gave him this book, published by the Soldiers and Sailors Club of Marion, but he knows how important it is that it be preserved.

“I think somebody from the county should have this,” Steve says. “I don’t know if there’s another copy around.”

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

Irene, 92, lives on about $800 a month. That’s $675 in Social Security benefits and $120 from her Kmart pension. Yet she thrives on volunteering.

For three decades the Cedar Rapids woman has given her time at least once a week, mostly at St. Luke’s Hospital, but also to drive senior citizens to appointments, for shopping and to visit friends.

Irene proudly wears her volunteer award pins, one from the Iowa governor’s office, another from the White House.

“I’ve got about five or six of ‘em,” she says. “I do the job. I’m there.”

A no-nonsense woman who stands five-foot tall, Irene grew up unwanted and timid. Born northwest of Charles City, her parents rejected her.

“I was a disgrace to the family because I was a skinny thing,” Irene says.

Her intolerance for milk so irked her father that he hit her hard against the neck, an injury she still feels today.

Despite doing regular farm chores, her parents kicked her out of the house after she finished eighth grade.

“I never had high school,” she says. “I wanted to go, but my dad wouldn’t let me.”

By pleading, Irene was allowed to live in the unheated attic until she was 18. That was 1937, in Cedar Rapids by now, when she had no education, no experience and jobs were impossible to find.

She managed to get hired at the YMCA cafeteria, although she hated it.

“I was very timid. Scared to be in public.

“The college kids would come in and tease me,” she continues. “I said, I don’t like this. I’ve got to get over this.”

With a new reserve, she applied to drive a city bus. Finally, on her third try, the manager stopped laughing. (Women didn’t drive buses in those days.) He had her drive a bus for him and hired her. She’d be on-call.

“I told him, ‘shove it.’ I had to have a job.”

Fortunately she talked her way into Quaker Oats putting premium dishes into cereal boxes. Career-wise, she moved on to office work and, in 1945, retail sales at S.S. Kresge which became Kmart before her 1984 retirement.

Irene married twice, the first for less than two years; the second for 19. She had three children, but her son died at age 33.

Irene began volunteering before she retired. For years she spent one day a week watering the plants at St. Luke’s.

“It took me seven, eight hours a day pushing an 18-gallon tank of water,” she says. “It didn’t go easy. I saved a lot of plants for them.”

A mastectomy after breast cancer three years ago and colon cancer surgery in June forced Irene to quit volunteering, especially driving others around. She cared for her own plants, more than 100 including her late grandmother’s Amarillas and Christmas cactus. But she soon grew restless and returned to St. Luke’s.

“I fold towels,” she says. “I got a sittin’ down job.

And, when she’s not there, you may see her tooling around in her little red Ford Focus or walking through the mall or just out and about.

“I can’t sit here and do nothin’,” Irene says. “I love volunteering. I’ve got to be around people.”

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

Bernard "Scotty" Scott of Cedar Rapids examines one of more than a dozen wooden model ships he's built from scratch of LCI 343 which he served on during World War II. Photo was taken Monday, Nov. 14, 2011. (Dave Rasdal/The Gazette)

CEDAR RAPIDS — Creating models of tall-masted clipper ships and large-scale battleships is fine for some hobbyists, but Bernard “Scotty” Scott prefers to keep his ship building close to his heart. He builds replicas of LCI 343, the 158-foot-long landing craft he called home for 22 months around New Guinea during World War II.

“We were what you called McArthur’s Navy,” says Scotty, 86, with a laugh. “And they didn’t like McArthur much.”

You read very little about these little workhorses and their sisters, the LCT and LST. But the LCI, just 23 feet wide and drafting only six feet of water when full, had a 75-ton capacity allowing it to transport 182 enlisted men and six officers in addition to a crew of 24.

“Down hill, with a tail wind, we could make about 18 knots,” jokes Scotty, a teenage machinist who watched over the eight 6-cylinder 225-horsepower engines originally built for buses.

As a retired painter from Quaker Oats and, previously, an automobile body shop, Scotty began building his models a decade ago in his wood shop. He prefers to call his hobby “cobbling.”

On a pair of shelves in his garage sit four of the more than a dozen wooden models he’s made from scratch — one 48-inches long, one 36-inches and two 30-inches.

“They didn’t come out as good as I wanted so I just stuck them out in the garage,” Scotty says. “By the time I get done, I’ll probably have the other side of the garage lined with them.”

The detail work includes the guns, sliding unloading ramps and ropes troops held onto, all painted warship gray. An American Flag flies from the control tower of each.

As a veteran, Scotty remains humble. “It’s just something that happened,” he says. “It’s something we did. That’s the way it was.”

Born when his parents lived on I Avenue NW, a few blocks from the H Avenue home he’s shared with his wife, Wanda, the last 31 years, Scotty was sworn into the Navy in 1942, less than three weeks after he turned 17.

“I went because I wanted to. No one pushed me, that’s for sure.”

Maybe it was for the money. As an apprentice painter, his father, Henry, made a nickel an hour for 60 hours a week.

“When I joined the Navy,” Scotty says, “I had seven bucks in my billfold. That was the most money I’d had in my life.”

In the Navy, he was in “hog heaven” with three meals a day, a free room and $50 a month.

Only once did he have a close call — a mortar shell hit the ship, killing some Australian troops. Otherwise, the war was uneventful. “We had awful good protection from the Fifth Air Force. We only saw Japanese planes four times all together.”

Scotty fought a different battle in 2008 when the June flood wiped out his house. But with help from friends and his own hard work, he and Wanda returned 10 weeks later. And it wasn’t long before he was back making his ships and giving the best away, even though he lost his plans in the flood.

“I still make the same mistakes I made before,” Scotty laughs. “But I can’t watch television all day.

“I’ll probably make at least another one,” he adds. “I want to make a good one.”

“For another year, for sure,” Kurtis says. “Friends and family. And, I guess, for what’s left of my health.”

Paralyzed from the neck down with spinal cord injuries, Kurtis reclines in his wheelchair. He stretches out by rolling the back of his head on a button and can drive the chair with a “sip and puff” tube at the corner of his mouth. When thirsty, he sips Sprite through another straw. When friends call, he answers his cellphone via a headset.

“I honestly think,” says the eternally optimistic Kurtis, “if I could have aggressive therapy, I could get upper arm movement, if not walk again.”

He shrugs his shoulders slightly. His eyes twinkle. He smiles.

“He has about the same injuries Christopher Reeve had,” says his mother, Sherrie Coghlan. “They say he’s been able to live this long because he grew up with it.”

Reeve, who played Superman in the 1978 movie, became paralyzed in a horse-riding accident in 1995 at age 42 and died nine years later.

Kurtis was 13, riding his bicycle after 5 p.m. on Nov. 14, 1991, in Marion when he was hit by a car and thrown upon its windshield. His injuries turned him into a quadriplegic, necessitating constant care even today.

“We’ve come a long way since then,” says his mother, who lives with Kurtis. “Now he’s doing his bucket list.”

Yes, at 33 this young man is thinking about what he wants to do before he dies.

Kurtis would like to visit Las Vegas. He dreams of some day flying in an airplane. He’d love to attend a Green Bay Packers football game. And, maybe, some day, with advancements in technology, he’ll be able to drive his van.

He checked off riding in a stock car in the summer of 2003. He nearly accomplished sky-diving a few years later, although a last-minute glitch with insurance canceled that. Last June he took a boat ride on Lake Macbride.

“It was a blast,” Kurtis says. “The only thing I was nervous about, you see on TV, you see people walking out to the boat on a floating dock. I’m thinking here’s me, 450 pounds, out floating around.”

But boat owner Sean Payne of Marion and a volunteer crew managed to load Kurtis and his wheelchair aboard the pontoon boat.

“He like, totally redid it for me,” Kurtis says. “He tore half his boat apart so I could get on it.”

With life jackets packed all around, Kurtis sat in the back of the boat as Sean sped off.

“We were at full throttle,” Kurtis says. “It was as if we were airborne.”

Through the years Kurtis has skimmed over one challenge after another, despite regular hospitalizations, infections and a collapsed lung. His stepfather, Dave Coghlan Sr., who has been with his mother since 1987 and married her in 1993, pushed him to excel.

Kurtis transferred from Linn-Mar to Marion to graduate high school. Hard work in physical therapy strengthened his diaphragm so he didn’t need a respirator. He completed some college but a cut in state benefits prevented him from earning a Kirkwood Community College degree.

This weekend, Kurtis was surrounded by the love of two-dozen family members for Thanksgiving. On weekend evenings, you may find him at the nearby tavern sipping a Miller Lite and singing Karaoke. He still idolizes his stock car hero, the late Dale Earnhardt, and has a checkered flag hanging above his bedroom doorway.

Kurtis, bucket list in hand, is determined to make it to the finish line.

“I decided from the beginning,” he says, “I wasn’t just going to sit around.”

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

“We were what you called McArthur’s Navy,” says Scotty, 86, with a laugh. “And they didn’t like McArthur much.”

You read very little about these little workhorses and their sisters, the LCT and LST. But the LCI, just 23 feet wide and drafting only six feet of water when full, had a 75-ton capacity allowing it to transport 182 enlisted men and six officers in addition to a crew of 24.

“Down hill, with a tail wind, we could make about 18 knots,” jokes Scotty, a teenage machinist who watched over the eight 6-cylinder 225-horsepower engines originally built for buses.

As a retired painter from Quaker Oats and, previously, an automobile body shop, Scotty began building his models a decade ago in his wood shop. He prefers to call his hobby “cobbling.”

On a pair of shelves in his garage sit four of the more than a dozen wooden models he’s made from scratch — one 48-inches long, one 36-inches and two 30-inches.

“They didn’t come out as good as I wanted so I just stuck them out in the garage,” Scotty says. “By the time I get done, I’ll probably have the other side of the garage lined with them.”

The detail work includes the guns, sliding unloading ramps and ropes troops held onto, all painted warship gray. An American Flag flies from the control tower of each.

As a veteran, Scotty remains humble. “It’s just something that happened,” he says. “It’s something we did. That’s the way it was.”

Born when his parents lived on I Avenue NW, a few blocks from the H Avenue home he’s shared with his wife, Wanda, the last 31 years, Scotty was sworn into the Navy in 1942, less than three weeks after he turned 17.

“I went because I wanted to. No one pushed me, that’s for sure.”

Maybe it was for the money. As an apprentice painter, his father, Henry, made a nickel an hour for 60 hours a week.

“When I joined the Navy,” Scotty says, “I had seven bucks in my billfold. That was the most money I’d had in my life.”

In the Navy, he was in “hog heaven” with three meals a day, a free room and $50 a month.

Only once did he have a close call — a mortar shell hit the ship, killing some Australian troops. Otherwise, the war was uneventful. “We had awful good protection from the Fifth Air Force. We only saw Japanese planes four times all together.”

Scotty fought a different battle in 2008 when the June flood wiped out his house. But with help from friends and his own hard work, he and Wanda returned 10 weeks later. And it wasn’t long before he was back making his ships and giving the best away, even though he lost his plans in the flood.

“I still make the same mistakes I made before,” Scotty laughs. “But I can’t watch television all day.

“I’ll probably make at least another one,” he adds. “I want to make a good one.”

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

As we tried new things at The Gazette, I’ve been posting my Ramblin’ columns at the Eastern Iowa Life blog. I will continue to do that but will now also post them here. Plus, here I’ll post additional comments and notices. So please bookmark this blog and follow me here.

As you may know, The Gazette has come out with a book features some of my Ramblin’ columns from the past 30 years. Yes, I began Ramblin’ in May, 1982, so that anniversary approaches. The coffee-table-style book, “Ramblin’: Reflections of Hidden Iowa” retails for $34.95 and is now available at The Gazette, at Barnes and Noble in Cedar Rapids and for order online at ??. It will be available at other locations in December so stay tuned.

In the meantime, I’m signing books from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. tonight at Barnes and Noble, 333 Collins Road NE, in Cedar Rapids and from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Monday at The Gazette, 500 Third Ave. SE.

Stop to see me, buy a book and I’ll sign it for you.