Carl Oehl, ambassador of the Amanas, dies

Carl Oehl dedicated his life to promoting the place he loved, the Amana Colonies.

A well-known mainstay in the seven villages that make up the Amanas, Oehl passed away Thursday night, just a few days after his 87th birthday.

'He will be deeply missed,” said Greg Hergert, manager of the Amana Meat Shop. 'I don't think they make people like that now.”

Oehl was a familiar face at the Meat Shop in recent years, greeting customers and tourists from his stool at the back of the store. After his wife Fern passed away five years ago, chatting with people at the Meat Shop became his refuge, his grandson Travis Sheely said.

'If he didn't know you, he wanted to meet you. To him, strangers were people he hadn't made friends with yet,” Sheely said.

Oehl, who lived most of his life in the same Amana house he was born in, owned the Colony Market Place restaurant in South Amana for 28 years before retiring in 1994. He also served on the state restaurant and tourism boards, and traveled nationally and internationally as a representative for those groups throughout the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s.

An early pioneer of making the Amanas a tourist destination, he ran the Amana on the Hill restaurant at the Iowa State Fair for over 20 years and worked tirelessly to promote the villages.

More recently, he served as the Amanas Oktoberfest buergermeister, the honorary head of the festivities. Even after giving up the title after nine years, he remained an ambassador for the event. Posters and advertisements featured his face, and he made media appearances promoting the festival.

When Oehl's mobility decreased with age, he started driving around town on his golf cart, using it to get to the meat shop, and riding it in local parades and festivals, often decorated to promote the Meat Shop.

'Promoting Amana was his big thing to the end,” Sheely said.

Sheely said Oehl had friends all over the world that he regularly talked with. Hergert said Oehl would correspond with tourists he had met once - and they would return to Amana just to visit him. He was known for hosting friends and strangers alike in his home.

'Everywhere we went from here to Chicago, it didn't matter - if we walked into a place, someone was like, ‘Hey, Carl!'” Sheely said. 'It was kind of crazy.”

Before his career promoting the Amanas, Oehl joined the Navy and was stationed in Chicago before moving back to the Amanas and marrying Fern. They had two children, Scott Oehl and Carla Oehl, one grandson and one great-grandson.

A visitation will be held at the Middle Amana Church on Monday from 4 - 7 p.m., and a funeral will be at St. John's Lutheran Church in Homestead at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, July 29.