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Packing 40 years of memories, Iowan heads to Barbara Bush’s funeral

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Barbara Bush and Becky Beach.

An Iowan who was a personal assistant to Barbara Bush for 4½  years is making her way to Texas to pay her respects to the former first lady.

Sixty-two-year-old Becky Beach of Des Moines first met Mrs. Bush 40 years ago as a volunteer, in the Bush home in Houston, addressing invitations for campaign events.

Beach was soon hired as Mrs. Bush’s personal assistant as George Herbert Walker Bush launched his campaign for president.

“I did her scheduling, her press, traveled with her, took the dog to the vet — all those glorious things,” Beach told Radio Iowa. “Back in the late ’70s, early ’80s, we didn’t have a press corps. There weren’t advance teams…Secret Service. None of that happened until he became the nominee for vice president.”

In the lead up to the 1980 Iowa Caucuses, Mrs. Bush visited each of Iowa’s 99 counties and Beach was there for each stop. Beach says on one wintry day, the woman who drove the car did something that surprised Beach and Mrs. Bush.

“We came out of the motel and she was using her hairdryer to melt the ice that was in the lock, so we could get into the car,” Beach said.

Beach worked for Mrs. Bush throughout the 1980 campaign and for the first part of George H.W. Bush’s first term as vice president. Beach left her job as a personal assistant to the future first lady at the end of 1982, but has been recruited back into the Bush family orbit several times since to work on campaigns and coordinate events.

“After 40 years of working with them, I lived at their homes both in Houston and Maine and in D.C.,” Beach said. “She would frequent say: ‘I will have accomplished my goals if my family still comes home.’…I know that was extremely important to her. She just loved her family.”

Beach uses words like “regal” to describe the former first lady.

“Elegant, honest, funny, witty — but the main thing I really remember about her is her love of family and their love of her,” Beach said. “She always wanted people to feel important if they were in the same room with her. It didn’t matter if they were the people washing the dishes or a president or another a head of state.”

Beach last saw Mrs. Bush in person about 18 months ago.

“All of the gals that traveled with her — I was the first, and then the subsequent ones — we all had surprised her in Houston and had lunch with both President Bush and Mrs. Bush,” Beach said. “I sat next to her at lunch. She remembered all of the times and all the fun things we used to do. We were just doing a little reminiscing.”

Beach and the other women who traveled with Mrs. Bush plan to meet privately as a group this Friday night in Houston. Beach will be among the 1,500 invited guests at the first lady’s private funeral on Saturday.

Granny Basketball fundraiser in Spencer showcases six-on-six game

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A few dozen women will be playing Iowa’s original six-on-six style of basketball at the end of the month in Spencer. Organizers of the “Granny Basketball Tournament” — a fundraiser for the Clay County Heritage Center in Spencer — say the games will be based on rules from the 1920s

“We wanted to have an activity that showcased our exhibit for this year at Clay County Heritage which is called ‘The Starting Six’ and it’s a tribute to women’s six-on-six basketball in the county and in Iowa as a whole,” says Stephanie Horsley, director of Clay County Heritage.

Thirty members of the “Granny Basketball League” will be at the Spencer High School Fieldhouse on Saturday afternoon, April 28 to give a live illustration of six-on-six basketball. That evening, a team of local players will play the traveling squad in a game that starts at 6:30 p.m.

“We have almost 50 ladies signed up,” Horsley says. “Not all of them will play, so during the exhibition game’s halftime there will be a parade of players and so any gal that has signed up to participate, they will parade in with their hometown team and get recognized.”

Money raised by the event will support the Clay County Heritage Center that opened in Spencer nearly six years ago. The Granny Basketball League has 30 teams that play in Iowa and eight other states. The group’s goal is to help preserve the history of original six-on-six basketball. The rules in the 1920s divided the court into three sections and players were only allowed in the section to which they were assigned. The two-dribble rule is also enforced.

The last official six-on-six game for Iowa high school students was the 1993 state championship game between Hubbard-Radcliffe and Atlantic.

(Reporting by Matt McWilliams, KICD, Spencer)

Iowa lawmakers honor ‘space ninja’ Peggy Whitson

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Senator Jack Whitver and daughters Elin and Ella with Peggy Whitson.

Iowa legislators passed a resolution praising astronaut and southwest Iowa native Peggy Whitson this morning.

“It’s really a fantastic honor to be back here and to have you guys honor me like this. It’s very special,” Whitson said during remarks on the House floor. “I will tell you that I never forget my Iowa roots.”

Whitson is a Beaconsfield native, a graduate of Mount Ayr High School and Iowa Weslyan College in Mount Pleasant. She has spent 665 days in space — a record for a U.S. astronaut.

“Everyone’s always asking what made me successful and I would have to say that learning the work ethic of a farmer was key to that,” Whitson said. “My parents — the hardest-working people I know and being from Iowa has been a fantastic experience for me and one I’m very proud of.”

The resolution passed in the House and Senate noted Whitson’s persistence. Whitson applied to be an astronaut five times before she was accepted into the program in 1986. Representative Cecil Dolecheck of Mount Ayr noted April 12th is an important date in space history. April 12th, 1961 is the data a Russian astronaut made the first manned space flight. April 12th, 1981 was the date of the first Space Shuttle launch.

“I believe it worked out nicely that the Iowa State Legislature will be honoring Iowa’s own record-breaking astronaut on the same date in 2018,” Dolecheck said.

Female legislators praised Whitson as a role model for girls considering a career in science. The resolution passed today in the House and Senate noted Whitson has been called a “space ninja.” It formally thanked her for encouraging boys and girls from towns of any size to “dream big and reach for the stars.”

Unclaimed Iowa property is up for sale on eBay

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Unclaimed spoons for sale.

State Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald is offering up unclaimed property from across the state on eBay. Fitzgerald says this is part of the Great Iowa Treasure Hunt, which receives hundreds of unclaimed items every year.

Most of the items come from one source “Banks turn over to us lockboxes where they haven’t been able to find the owners. If they’ve looked for three years and can’t find them, they turn them over to the State Treasurer’s Office,” Fitzgerald says. “And we’ve looked for a minimum of five years for these people — and the law requires us to sell these items.”

The latest items are up for bids online through May 17th. “We have some peace dollars, and we have silver-plated spoons, and we have a two-piece wedding band, things like that,” he says. Fitzgerald says proceeds of the sale go to the state treasury.

He says the proceeds will go back into the general fund to be spent by the governor and legislature.  Fitzgerald says anyone who comes forward and proves the items belonged to their family can still get the money for them even after they have been sold. Fitzgerald says the lock boxes are the only items that get turned over to his office.

Unclaimed Kennedy necklace for sale.

“I’m holding over $318 million for Iowans — and almost seven million shares of stock for Iowans,” Fitzgerald says. ” We want to return to them the money. That’s why we always ask them to go to the GreatIowaTreasureHunt.com put in your name and see if you are on there.” Fitzgerald hopes to continue holding these auctions.

“It is our intention to probably do it once a month — because we have so much stuff — that we will probably pick up the pace if things continue to go well,” Fitzgerald says. Fitzgerald says the online auctions have made it much easier to sell the items and makes them more accessible to everyone in the state.

“We’ve had ’em at the state fairgrounds, we’ve had them at hotel ballrooms in downtown Des Moines. They take a lot of work, they are very expensive to put on — and sometimes they cost more to put them on than what you get from the auctions,” according to Fitzgerald. “These eBay auctions makes it available to everybody in the state. If you live in Sioux City or Davenport you can call up the internet just as easily as anyone in Des Moines.”

You can see the items on sale by going to the ebay site and searching for unclaimed Iowa property.

 

 

Students from Central College take part in annual Service Day

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Central students during previous service day.

About one-third of the students, faculty and staff at Central College will be somewhere other than the campus in Pella today.

A group of about 650 from Central will be fanned out in dozens of other central Iowa communities performing a host of tasks as part of the college’s annual Service Day. Cheri Doane is coordinating the one-day effort.

Doane says, “It ranges everything from outdoor work like landscaping and tree planting and preparing the earth for gardens to projects where people will sit down and chat with people who are aging at long-term care facilities.” Other projects include transplanting native prairie plants at Neal Smith Wildlife Refuge, performing music for people with Down Syndrome and transcribing records for a Marion County cemetery and entering them into a database.

“We send out a notice to our community partners in January and ask them to propose a project,” Doane says. “We try to fulfill every project that is submitted but this year we had so many, we had to wait-list a few projects. We do have around 70 projects, requiring different skills and abilities.” Volunteers from Central will contribute to projects in Pella, Knoxville, Oskaloosa, the Des Moines area, Ottumwa, Newton and Otley. Project sites include schools, food banks, churches, community gardens, parks and senior centers. Doane, the director of Central’s Center for Community-based Learning, says the Service Day is a win-win.

“Many, many times, community organizations simply don’t have the staff to meet particular needs so we know they win,” Doane says. “We know that our students, faculty and staff win because they have an enjoyable day and they get to know a group of people with whom they might not already be connected.” She says this 12th annual, single-day event provides hundreds of hours of volunteer service, valued around $75,000.

(Photo courtesy of Central College)

 

Maharishi University conference focuses on making an impact on the world

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A conference opening today in southeast Iowa is focused on how to make a difference in the world.

Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield is hosting the gathering, “ChangeMakers: Disruptors Transforming the World for Good.” Event producer Michael Sternfeld says the conference features speakers from a variety of backgrounds who will discuss their individual efforts that grew to change lives around the country and in some cases, globally.

“A change maker is someone who sees a need in the environment and looks for solutions,” Sternfeld says. “Those solutions are sometimes out-of-the-box. We sometimes have these really tough solutions in society, opposing forces, what do you do with them? A disruptor is someone who disrupts the status quo and finds a solution to a problem that no one ever thought of before.”

Among the speakers, Colombian humanitarian Father Gabriel Mejia, MoveOn.org co-founder Laura Dawn, and Dusty Baxley, a U.S. Army veteran and executive director of Boulder Crest Retreat. Sternfeld says acclaimed filmmaker and “global disruptor” David Lynch will also be appearing via Skype.

“Disruptors are the people who make change in our society,” Sternfeld says. “It’s not academic, it’s practical. How to become a change maker. I’ve asked each of the speakers to really hone in on this, how they got started, what was their vision.” The conference runs through Saturday and is free and open to the public, but seating is limited.

(By David Fannin, KMCD, Fairfield)

 

Celebration begins for 100th year of Woodbury County Courthouse

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Outside the Woodbury County Courthouse.

A special event is scheduled for noon today to kick off the centennial celebration for the Woodbury County Courthouse in Sioux City.

Curator of history Matt Anderson will give a tour of his exhibit featuring items taken from the courthouse’s 100-year-old time capsule. County spokesman Jim Jung says 5 days of celebration are planned from May 1st through the 5th.

“From out-of-town speakers to tours for students, essays from students, a banquet, and we’ve got a medal being struck for the anniversary,” Jung says. The time capsule contained a treasure trove of historical artifacts from 1918 in addition to items relating to the original courthouse which was built in 1876 — from documents and photos to rare coins.

Inside the Woodbury County Courthouse.

“We’re going to put those things on display in the courthouse so people can see those before the celebration,” Jung says. “Everything was preserved perfectly. We’ve gotten things that are great. We found an original invitation to the dedication ceremony for the cornerstone. On Monday, May 1st, we’ll have a proclamation and re-dedication of the cornerstone.”

The courthouse was designed by William Steele and Jung says it’s the largest public Prairie Style structure in the world. “The courthouse is part art, part architecture,” Jung says. “It interprets for the people and it interprets the law for the people. That’s what it’s all about, those things and then there’s some murals inside do the same thing. All of the other decorations, the terracotta, there’s buffalo heads in the alley, there’s an eagle pointing westward.” Something modern has been added too, a new audio-visual tour of the National Historic Landmark.

(By Woody Gottburg, KSCJ, Sioux City)

 

Central Iowa skatepark named after man who gives big donation

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Proposed Des Moines skatepark.

A Des Moines businessman has donated $1 million to an effort to build a large skatepark in Iowa’s capital city.

At a news conference this morning, Nix Lauridsen said he was frustrated to see the project was struggling to take shape, more than a decade after it was proposed. “All I had to do was sign my name to a check, but it was a big check,” Lauridsen said. The $3.5 million skatepark, to be built along the Des Moines River near Wells Fargo Arena, will be called Lauridsen Skatepark.

Brad Anderson, the project’s campaign co-chair, says donations from the Lauridsen Family Foundation and others mean the dream of placing a world-class skatepark in downtown Des Moines will become a reality.

“We have raised $2.5 million of a $3.5 million project,” Anderson said. The 65,000 square-foot skatepark would be one of the largest in the country, according to Anderson. He’s now hoping to attract at least 1,000 more individual donors.

“That can be anywhere from five dollars to one million dollars…however much you’re willing to contribute to this important project,” Anderson said. Construction of the skatepark could begin in the fall. The City of Des Moines donated two acres of land for the project.

Nix Lauridsen founded The Lauridsen Group in 1994. The company develops various health and nutrition products for animals and humans. Headquartered in Ankeny, The Lauridsen Group has more than 50 manufacturing and sales locations in 20 countries.

 

 

Character Counts seeking nominations for Iowa Character Award

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Just less than a month remains for Iowans to nominate someone — or an organization — which lives up to the six pillars of character.

Those are: Caring, Citizenship, Fairness, Respect, Responsibility and Trustworthiness. Amy Smit is spokeswoman for the Robert D. and Billie Ray Center at Drake University, which sponsors the Iowa Character Awards.

“We want everybody to take a look at their community and look at those people who are being good examples of character and nominate them for an Iowa Character Award,” she says. The awards recognize the role of Iowans who have lived up to serving their communities and the state. Smit says it’s simple to nominate someone.

“Go to IowaCharacterAwards.com and tell us a little about who you’re nominating and why you’re nominating them and hit ‘submit,'” Smit says. “If you want to attach a couple of letters of recommendation, you can do that, too. We really look forward to getting those nominations. It makes us feel good about the state that we live in because there’s so many great stories about great people that come in.”

The deadline for nominations is May 1st. The winners will be announced in June with the recognition banquet to be held July 20th in Altoona.

(By Pat Powers, KQWC, Webster City)

 

Waterloo wins grant to document history of neighborhood key in Civil Rights movement

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The City of Waterloo is getting more than $47,000 in grant money to document a historically-black neighborhood.

Due to segregation, hundreds of the town’s African American residents once lived in an area known as Smokey Row. The fight for civil rights in the Cedar Valley grew out of that neighborhood. Ed Ottesen, with the city’s historic commission, says that history will be documented.

“There’s been a lot of physical loss of homes in that area,” Ottesen says, “so we’re trying to do this before we lose too much more.” By 1915, some 400 African Americans were living and working in Waterloo. The Smokey Row neighborhood, where they were required to live, was bordered by train tracks and many residents lived in boxcars provided by the railroad.

Ottesen says studying the neighborhood could lead to a national historic designation and a boost in economic development. Ottesen says, “To some extent, yes, it’s a sense of pride, but there’s also still tax incentives still in place that developers can come in, and at least in commercial properties, to be able to rehabilitate them and fix them up.” The grant will fund a building survey and the collection of oral histories.

(By Kate Payne, Iowa Public Radio)