Former Iowa Congressman Jim Ross Lightfoot is sharing the story of his life in a new memoir called, “Climbing Mountains With God.” Lightfoot says the book is about the importance of faith in helping meet life’s challenges.
“That’s what life is — it’s a bunch of mountains,” said Lightfoot. “They pop up in front of you and you’ve got the choice of either trying to climb them, or just sitting on your fanny and doing nothing. If you don’t try to climb them, sitting on our fanny is about all you’re gonna’ accomplish.”
Born in 1938 in Sioux City, Lightfoot graduated from Farragut High School in 1956. After serving in the U.S. Army and Army Reserve, he worked for IBM as a customer engineer and was eventually transferred to Oklahoma, where he later worked as a Tulsa police officer. Returning to southwest Iowa in the 1960s, Lightfoot joined the KMA radio farm department and stayed until 1984, when he was elected to the U.S. House, serving until 1997.
Lightfoot says he decided to write the book after recalling things his father said.
“My dad had all these wonderful stories to tell about riding his pony to school, and growing up in the Great Depression,” he said. “He and my mother renting a four-room house, and subletting two rooms so that they had enough money to live on. He farmed in the daytime and cut wood at night. She did sewing, and so on. All those years — almost 20 years at KMA — I had a tape recorder sitting right beside me and never once did I turn that recorder and get any of those wonderful stories he had to tell.”
He says he came to an epiphany of sorts in writing his memoir.
“As I was writing it,” said Lightfoot, “it occurred to me that, hey, I didn’t do all this stuff. I was just a tool. God used me to do it, and I believe that’s what’s life is all about. I’m still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up — so, we’re still working on it.”
Lightfoot also recalled the mountains he faced in attempting to pass his first bill in Congress, one aimed at helping farmers during the farm crisis of the mid-1980s.
“I was green. I was a freshman. I didn’t know ‘come here’ from ‘sic em’ and I had to learn the ropes,” he says. “I wrote a bill that basically gave farmers some financial relief and allowed lending institutions to step outside the rules that are the Banking Commission had on them so they can negotiate with farmers and suppliers and so on. There are a lot of people sit down and made some fantastic deals which never would have happened otherwise, but it saved all of them and they stayed in business.”
The book “Climbing Mountains With God” is available through his website, jimrosslightfoot.com.
(By Mike Peterson, KMA, Shenandoah)