Click here to read more entries from Dave’s column, ” Ramblin” or to buy his book, ” Ramblin’ Reflections of Hidden Iowa .” A dozen years ago, about the time I married my wife, Suzanne, her oldest daughter, Megan, heard the Allman Brothers Band’s song “Ramblin’ Man” on the radio. “Is that Dave’s song,” Megan asked. “Yep,” her mom [...]

  Happy birthday, Lincoln Highway. Our nation’s first transcontinental automobile route turns 100 this year — officially on Oct. 31, 1913. But, the Lincoln Highway has always been a favorite Ramblin’ topic, whether it’s the Youngville Cafe or the Tama bridge or old routes in Cedar County or through Marion and Cedar Rapids. So, what [...]

CEDAR RAPIDS — Discover the Art in Intarsia, a wood art show to raise money for the establishment of a woodworking shop for veterans, will be held Saturday and Sunday at Hawkeye Downs in Cedar Rapids. “Our mission is to build clubs for intarsia carvers around the United States,” said Joannie West of Cedar Rapids, [...]

  CEDAR RAPIDS — Even though Kevin Dochterman, 48, has never married, he’s helped support 50 children. And it’s worth every penny of the $600 or so he sends them every month. “They need the help,” Kevin says, simply. They are children in Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia. In India, Indonesia and Thailand. In Ghana and [...]

  CORALVILLE — Harry Connick Jr., tickled the ivories of the shiny Steinway & Sons Model D, a 9-foot concert grand. Lang Lang, a 30-year-old New York-based Chinese concert pianist, played that keyboard, too, as well as a similar grand with a subdued satin finish next to it. And, behind them, on a brighter sounding [...]

  For more than two decades, from the late 70s until 2000, Frenchman and former Coe College instructor Andre Girod bridged the gap between the United States and France with an aggressive foreign exchange education program that involved 80,000 American and French fifth-grade students. Now Girod has documented the experience in his book, “French-American Class: [...]

  VINTON — If bricks and mortar can ever represent community cohesiveness and generosity, the building would look like Virginia Gay Hospital in Vinton. A new program — The Plaza of Heroes — cements that notion, for it pays tribute to people who have kept the hospital alive. Small cities like Vinton, population 5,300, often [...]

  If old pictures could talk, we’d know what those guys with guns have been up to as they pose beside a car with a rear window shot out. Thing is, none of them are talking. And the picture has no information. But, after running into it in an old scrapbook, Keith Techau of Lisbon [...]

CEDAR RAPIDS — Seniors in Cedar Rapids are getting restless. After the Floods of 2008, they lost the Witwer Senior Center in the central business district. The replacement, at the Ecumenical Center and Green Square Meals site at 605 Second Ave. SE doesn’t compare, with 2,500 square feet of shared space to 12,000 square feet [...]

MARION — “Happy birthday, Abe,” I say, greeting Lance Mack in the food court at the Marion Hy-Vee. “Why, thank you,” he replies. “I feel good for a man of 204.” Yes, today is Presidents Day, the Federal holiday that celebrates the births of George Washington (Feb. 22, 1732) and Abraham Lincoln (Feb. 12, 1809), [...]

  CEDAR RAPIDS — When I met Paul Glenn, he was prepared to celebrate his 54th birthday as if it would be his last. Diagnosed with advance renal cell carcinoma, a non-curable kidney cancer, doctors told him to go home to die. He sat in a wheelchair in his Mechanicsville home, his shoulders slouched under [...]

CEDAR RAPIDS – The Witwer Senior Center, displaced by floodwaters nearly five years ago from its longtime downtown Cedar Rapids location, is exploring the option of opening a new center in Czech Village. An architect with OPN Architects, Inc., of Cedar Rapids is drawing up plans and calculating renovation costs for the former Novak Heating [...]

HIAWATHA — In the old days, during The Great Depression of the 1930s, most kids loved the arrival of new mail-order catalogs so they could make up their “wish lists” for Christmas. Annabell Harger, who knew her family was so poor those wishes would never come true, instead relished the transfer of the old catalog [...]

  Bringing thousands of books — and the improved literacy that goes with it — to a small Philippine Island village wasn’t supposed to be this difficult. It wasn’t supposed to take seven years. But, now that it has finally happened, with about 8,000 books gathered through Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, the children [...]

Will Rogers or Mark Twain or some lesser known wise guy first said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” I’ve come across a lot of forks. In other words, I’ve gone one way when I could have gone another. Sometimes it was my choice; sometimes it wasn’t. You know what [...]

CEDAR RAPIDS — As the Cedar River left its banks, rising floodwaters threatened St. Patrick’s Catholic Church four blocks away. The Rev. Steven Rosonke lit a votive candle at the altar of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Nine days later, after hundreds of homes and businesses had been destroyed, after electric lights in all of them [...]

CEDAR RAPIDS — Although the St. Patrick’s Catholic Church parish was founded in 1891, its rebirth after the Flood of 2008 leads off the four large display cases of its new history wall unveiled Sunday. Among photos of the flood is a T-shirt proclaiming “St. Patrick’s is back!” You’ll also find other interesting memorabilia, from [...]

When longtime advice columnist Dear Abby (Pauline Phillips) died on Jan. 16 at age 94, Bruce Eichacker of Amana recalled her visit to Cedar Rapids in 1978. For there, sitting in his family room, is the framed thank-you letter he received from her after he sent his classic Rolls-Royce with uniformed chauffeur to pick her [...]

The old gal sat stoically in the Rockwell Collins hangar as several dozen of her dearest friends ate a buffet lunch nearby. The white bulbous nosecone of the 1964 North American Sabreliner 50 test aircraft showed some wear, but the front edge of her wings still shined shiver. In a matter of minutes she’d be [...]

NEWHALL — In his small workshop off the garage, Don Kerker slips a piece of wood over the saw blade, tightens the blade and scrolls away. He turns the wood this way and that, around the oscillating blade, to create a small intricate cutout that in the scope of a project helps to tell a [...]