Iowa Life Episode 211

[Charity Nebbe] Coming up on this episode of Iowa Life, we celebrate the reopening of a small town grocery store.

I did this because the community needs it and because I love the community so much.

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[Nebbe] We'll tour the magnificent stained glass windows at St. Luke's in Dubuque.

There are 110 windows. It's the 5th largest collection in the country.

[Nebbe] We'll learn more about what it takes to pursue college level gymnastics.

The daily challenges is what drives me to do this. It's a new thing every day and it just pushes you to be better.

[Nebbe] And we'll remember President Nixon's visit to Iowa in 1971.

I want those decisions that affect rural America made by people who know rural America.

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[Nebbe] It's all coming up next on Iowa Life.

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Funding for Iowa Life is provided by --

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The Pella Rolscreen Foundation is a proud supporter of Iowa PBS. Pella Windows and Doors strives to better our communities and build a better tomorrow.

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And by, the Lainie Grimm Fund for inclusive programming at the Iowa PBS Foundation.

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[Nebbe] Hi, I'm Charity Nebbe and this is Iowa Life. I am standing beneath an extraordinary collection of stained glass windows at St. Luke's United Methodist Church in Dubuque. We will learn more about what makes this church so special in a few minutes. But first, consider what happens when a small town loses its grocery store. It becomes a lot harder to get fresh food. But residents also lose an important social hub. The whole community suffers. When Mulholland Grocery in Malvern burned down in 2021, Tom Mulholland knew that he needed to rebuild.

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[Tom Mulholland] Malvern is an old town, 150 years old.

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[Tom Mulholland] Rolling hills all around it. 30 miles from the Missouri River and the border, we're 30 miles from the state of Missouri. It’s a beautiful small town but we're close enough to the city, to Omaha.

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[Tom Mulholland] We've got a lot of good things going on in this community. And that's one of the reasons why it was so important to rebuild my grocery store after the fire.

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[Tom Mulholland] I had gone home about 5:15 that evening and 15 minutes later one of my employees called. I hadn't even taken my coat off. I was just sitting in my chair relaxing. And one of my employees called and said, you've got to get back down here, the store is on fire. And I ran in the front door and I opened the door to the back room and I couldn't even see my hand this far in front of my face, the smoke was so thick and black.

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[Tom Mulholland] There were 27 fire departments that showed up that night to help fight the fire from all the little towns. There were farmers that were bringing water in tank wagons and things. The fire continued for hours.

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[Nebbe] Mulholland Grocery could not be saved. The store was gutted and two days later high winds knocked down the only brick wall left standing. The store had been a fixture in Malvern for generations and because it was the only grocery store in town, the loss was felt immediately.

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[Tom Mulholland] My great-grandfather started this store with a partner as a dry goods store back in 1875. It used to have everything that you needed because people didn't commute to Omaha.

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[Tom Mulholland] When I was young there were four grocery stores here. There was one right across the street, there was one down the street, there was one up on top of the hill. You know, and now for three years there was nothing here. So, people's diets changed. People were buying, maybe going shopping every few weeks or once a month or something like that, relying more on boxed goods, relying more on canned goods instead of fresh products. You couldn't get any fresh meat, any fresh produce or vegetables. It took me about a month to decide that yes, I was going to rebuild.

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[Tom Mulholland] There were so many people that were doing whatever they could to help support me and to show me that they were going to be there, that I knew that's what I had to do. It was very difficult at times. But then there were also so many good things that happened.

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[Tom Mulholland] My store is smaller than what I had before, but the space is laid out much better, more efficiently. We've got new equipment instead of the old equipment that we had. So, there's a lot of things that are better. My utility bills are half of what they were before the fire.

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[Tom Mulholland] I started cutting meat in my dad's store, his partner's store, when I was eighteen. I'm known a lot for the sausages that we make. I make potato sausages, Swedish Potatis Korv that people drive 3 hours for to pick up every year from Ames. I'll tell people on Facebook that we just made a batch, which is about 28 pounds or so. It doesn't make it through the day. This little tiny story has sold over 600 pounds of ham salad since we opened. You know, and I'm out at the moment. It helps the rest of the store too. I say, people may be coming in for the meats, but they're going to grab a head of lettuce, they're going to grab a gallon of milk while they're in here, and that helps turn those things over faster and helps improve our purchase power. But it doesn't just help me. They stop at other businesses and tell their friends about what they found in Malvern.

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[Donna Miller] The day they opened I walked in and went, yes, because it was so amazing to have them back, to know that instead of having to get in the car if you forgot something and run a distance, you could just come up here. But I think the biggest thing is all of a sudden Malvern is complete again. We have our own grocery store and it makes a town a town.

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[Tom Mulholland] I've had so many people that have donated to try to help us and to get us to where we are. I still went into debt three-quarters of a million dollars to get this store open. But I did this because the community needs it and because I love the community so much.

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[Tom Mulholland] I want this store to be here for the next generation, for the next 20 or 30 years, for this community because it's important. People don't want to move to a small town that doesn't have a grocery store. But one of the other things is that small businesses feed off of each other and it's important to be here.

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[Nebbe] St. Luke's United Methodist Church in Dubuque has more than 100 windows created under the direction of Louis Comfort Tiffany making it one of the finest collections of Tiffany stained glass in the Midwest. It is also a treasured spiritual space for the community.

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I've had a lot of people say, you know, I've never seen those windows.

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I didn't even know they were there.

Nobody in town knows that it exists.

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[Nebbe] In 1893, parishioners of St. Luke's congregation commissioned Louis Comfort Tiffany, the son of the famed jewelry maker, to make stained glass windows for their newly built church. This was after seeing his work displayed at the Chicago World's Fair.

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[Cheryl Vahl] There are 110 windows. It's the 5th largest collection in the country.

[Mary Armstrong] Dubuque has a lot of art and the windows I think are just part of that. They show that this has been established for a long time.

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[Mary Armstrong] Anybody that say they don't know about it, I say well just come, I'll show you around.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Welcome to St. Luke's.

Thank you.

So, where is everybody from? Missouri and Illinois. In 1896, there were 5 windows in place. Those are --

Pay attention to the faces, they're always beautiful, very often expressive.

Anyone can walk in off the street and say, whoa, those are beautiful. But when you know something about how they are done and what went into it, you see them on a deeper level.

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[Nebbe] While Tiffany used many new and different techniques to make his stained glass stand out, Favrile glass was his most well-known. With help from a chemist, he used high temperatures to infuse the colors into the glass while creating various textures and densities. He later patented the process.

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[Cheryl Vahl] They're not made like that anymore and we've learned a lot about how they are made.

The window production was done in a studio where Tiffany only hired single women for their dexterity and because they wouldn't be bothered by the demands of children and home life.

[Nebbe] The women who worked in Tiffany's studio had different titles depending on their jobs. There were the cartoonists who transposed the drawings from the small scale to a much larger grid on a glass easel. There were pickers, women who picked out the glass to be used in each window. And there were cutters, women who snipped the glass and attached it to the easel using beeswax. Tiffany would then come and either approve the women's work or shatter it with his cane.

 

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[Cheryl Vahl] We're doing what we can to preserve the art. So many of his creations have been destroyed or lost and you see them on Antiques Roadshow that they have been purchased at garage sales and nobody knows what they are.

[Nebbe] After over 100 years, the windows were badly in need of repair. The lead was getting soft, causing the windows to sag. Years of using coal to heat the church had obscured their vibrant colors.

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[Cheryl Vahl] It was in about the 1980s they started fundraising for the restoration.

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[Cheryl Vahl] I remember the angel and the lilies window, her hands were black as were her feet. And after she was cleaned you could see her fingers and her toes.

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[Cheryl Vahl] All the restoration is funded by people who come and see the windows and make contributions.

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[Cheryl Vahl] With the restoration, people have become more aware of how unique they are and they have become more of a valued treasure.

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[Mary Armstrong] People come because this is a large collection and they are large windows. They just come to see what Tiffany is really like.

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[Mary Armstrong] They don't have to go to a big city or they don't have to go to a museum, they can just come here to Dubuque and here they are just waiting to be seen. I've had several people who say they don't know how we can even listen to a sermon with these windows. And a lot of people just like to sit and just look at them.

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[Cheryl Vahl] Cherishing what you have and taking care of that piece of history is important.

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[Nebbe] It takes talent and dedication to pursue gymnastics at a collegiate level. Athleticism meets artistry at Simpson College in Indianola where both the men's and women's gymnastics teams have achieved some remarkable milestones.

 

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[Colin Payne] In the simplest terms, gymnastics is mastery of movement, learning how to move and use your body in ways that a lot of people would think impossible.

[Emily Barrett Payne] Simpson College decided to add women's and men's gymnastics in September of 2021.

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[Emily Barrett Payne] Myself and my husband decided to make that leap together and go through that interview process and take those positions and move down here. Now we just finished our third year as a program. The big thing especially with that first class was that we didn't really have anything to show them. So, that just required a lot of buy in on their part to help us create a program here. Morgan Svec is our first senior. That very first year she was our only Iowa athlete on the team. Prior to Simpson adding gymnastics, Simpson was not even really on her radar.

[Colin Payne] We have found a place that gymnastics is attractive to. At this point, between the men's and women's programs we're at 49 athletes. That is a big number in three years for an institution like Simpson that is looking at 1,200 students enrollment. Men's gymnastics there's only 15 programs in the whole country in Divisions I through Division III and there's only three including Simpson that are Division III. So, for us to add another program is just a huge piece to show that we can grow an Olympic sport, a non-revenue sport can grow in the current NCAA environment.

 

[Milo Stanley] Being a part of a new program and creating a legacy that no one else has done before, all these teams are being cut and we're finally adding a new team, it's something very special and important to me.

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[Milo Stanley] I was around ten years old when I first started gymnastics and I'd say just the daily challenges is what drives me to do this. It's a new thing every day and it just pushes you to be better. So, in the past I've qualified to NCAA championships the last two years and that is definitely another goal of mine this season. Being able to compete at such a big competition with the best athletes in the country, it's truly an amazing experience.

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[Alex Catchpole] Some of the meets at the beginning of this year we went against really big schools. We went against Michigan, we went up against Air Force, Stanford, OU, really top dog contenders for the NCAA title. I was able to win the p-bar event title against the Naval Academy. It lights a fire inside of me to get even better, to do even more. As a gymnast, I'm focusing on achieving the best work that I can possibly do and that takes everything for me. There's a lot of days where I come in and I'm tired, I'm hurting and I'm thinking to myself, I don't really know how I'm going to get this done today, but I've got to focus up and really think about what I want to get out of that day. And how can I make that day a success no matter how I feel?

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[Emily Barrett Payne] Gymnastics is one of those sports that you start when you're really young. Some people call it an early specialization sport. So, I started gymnastics when I was four, but didn't really get into it until I was eight and went to the University of Denver and my senior year, I competed beam quite frequently. Beam you have to be calm when you're on that event. It requires a lot of mental focus and concentration.

[Brooklen Morgan] Before my beam routine, I walk over to the chalk, I wipe my feet in there, I wipe my hands on there, rub them together and then I just walk up to the beam, I do a couple of taps and then I'm more of just the type of person to lock it in, get on the beam and do what I know how to do. I actually had elbow surgery in the summer. So, I was very uncertain what this season was going to look like and fortunately I was able to get back at the end of preseason and make beam and floor lineup every single meet. I was throwing up the highest scores I've ever thrown up and I was genuinely having fun. And I think at the end of the day that is the best thing I can ask for is just enjoying what I'm doing and exceling at it all at the same time.

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[Brooklen Morgan] To be a successful gymnast, it takes a lot of hard work and drive and you have to be able to be really resilient and have that grit and know that you're going to be knocked down so many times and you're going to be expected to get up and do it all over again because you have to fail to succeed and that's not just something that you have to do in gymnastics. It really just translates well into life.

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[Izzy Brown] I started gymnastics when I was seven, but I had a couple of baseline skills before that and yeah, I've been doing gymnastics ever since, so I think that's about thirteen years. Usually when I'm competing floor, I'm mostly just feeding off the energy of my team and I also think about trusting my legs, so trusting all the training that we put in, in preseason and all the cardio that we've done to prepare.

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[Izzy Brown] I think gymnastics will benefit me really well throughout life. It has taught me dedication, resilience, it has taught me how to be a leader. I feel like I've already become a totally different person that just works harder and is just dedicated to finish everything through the best that I can.

[Kaelyn Tally] So, I started gymnastics when I was about two years old. So, I'm going on almost 20 years of gymnastics, which is crazy. That's my whole entire life. The vault I do that qualified me to nationals is called a hand front half out, or the book term is called a hand front tuck with a half twist. It's a 9.95 start value, so a 9.95 is the closest start value you can get to a 10.0 in college. It's a forward entry vault, which is not something that you commonly see in women's gymnastics.

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[Kaelyn Tally] I put in so much work into that vault and into my gymnastics and seeing it pay off in the scores and the event titles and obviously now qualifying to nationals I think is just really rewarding for me.

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[Colin Payne] We bring value by bringing in quality student athletes. That's how we bring value to Simpson. I think it's a hopeful story and it's a positive story for all non-revenue and Olympic sports.

Find the ground underneath you, bring your feet to the spot.

[Alex Catchpole] I hope that more schools start up a program and give athletes the opportunity because that's really what men's gymnastics is for me, an opportunity to continue my dreams and to continue in the sport that I love.

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[Nebbe] Before we say goodbye, let's dive into the archives to remember President Nixon's visit to Iowa in March of 1971.

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[Narrator] It's a long way to come for 8 electoral votes. Of course, they'll drop in for a day around election time. But on March 1, 1971 it was different. Richard M. Nixon went out of his way to come to Iowa. He hadn't been here since the election, but it was worth waiting for. In his executive wake came staff members, cabinet members, governors, three airplanes, two cars, a brood of Secret Service men, the Eastern Press and Mrs. Nixon. Now, that sort of thing hadn't happened since Franklin Roosevelt participated in a farm conference at the capital in 1936. Furthermore, it was announced that the President would address the legislature, which as far as anyone could tell had never been done by any president.

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(roosters crowing)

Chicago meat trade yesterday, beef trade was slow, choice steer and heifer and utility cow beef all were steady.

[Narrator] This is Leonard Doolin and he's a farmer. He farms about 700 acres just outside Nevada in Story County. On March 1st, while Richard Nixon was preparing for his trip to Des Moines, Leonard Doolin was doing his chores.

[Leonard Doolin] I think that a person should look up to the President regardless of what he's done because he's bound to have been a pretty fair sort of a man in order to be President. I've always felt a person should look up just a little bit or people should respect him enough not to even hold any demonstration against him.

The family farmer is going to be out of existence. Private enterprise are going down the drain.

[Narrator] Nixon carried the state comfortably in 1960 and '68 and whenever he came the nation's breadbasket more closely resembled a May basket. Of course, that was before Laos, before the lowest parity since the Depression and before suspension of the law requiring union wages on federal construction projects.

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[Richard Nixon] If the lessons of the past decades mean anything to us, they mean that as power has been concentrated more and more in Washington, D.C., as decisions have been increasingly made by a remote control, the special needs of our rural communities and of the great Heartland of America, more and more have either been neglected or even gone unrecognized. I want those decisions that affect rural America made by people who know rural America. And the people who know a place best are the people who live here. The best fed country in the world pays less of her budget for food than in any country of the world. This is an indication of what the farmer has done for America. And when the farmer and American agriculture has done that, when it is the most productive of all of the various phases of our economy, certainly American agriculture and the American farmer deserves a fair share of America's increasing prosperity.

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[Leonard Doolin] In Des Moines, I think you'd have more or could do more good if he'd have stayed in his office I think because from what I've read and seen on television I really can't see that he's accomplished too much by coming out. And I realize it must have cost quite a bundle for him to come out here and visit the Midwest. And I think this is maybe a vote getting thing for the next election. Again, this is just one man's opinion. I really can't see what good he's done.

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(tractor engine)

Steers and heifers were fully steady. Demand only fair for clean hided cattle as they say it. Slaughtered steers, choice --

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[Nebbe] That's it for this week. Thank you for joining us as we explore a few of the ways that human endeavors make our lives richer and more meaningful. I'm Charity Nebbe. See you next time for more Iowa Life.

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Funding for Iowa Life is provided by --

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The Pella Rolscreen Foundation is a proud supporter of Iowa PBS. Pella Windows and Doors strives to better our communities and build a better tomorrow.

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And by, the Lainie Grimm Fund for inclusive programming at the Iowa PBS Foundation.