NED AND MARTHA (KETCHAM) COX

Martha

My parents are Harry and Marje Ketcham, whose story is also in this book. I was born in Osceola, Iowa on a Friday before the new hospital opened on Monday. It was my Dad's first day at work at Iowa Southern Utilities. In those days men just took the wife to the hospital and dropped her off, let her have the baby, then came back to see what she had. Dad put in a meter upside down that afternoon, so they realized his mind wasn't on his business, and sent him home! There were three children in our family. I have an older brother, Mike, and a younger brother Kirk.

I started kindergarten in Osceola. Mom said I would tell her I'd run to school crying because I was so upset about going to school, but I would stop and dry my tears before I crossed the street to elementary, then I would go to school at East Elementary.

When I was 14, Dad was transferred to Creston. He told us in January that we would be moving, and I thought my life, as I'd known it, was over. I cried all night long. I would have been going into ninth grade the following year, and I didn't want to leave Osceola. Nevertheless, we moved to Creston and it wasn't as bad as I thought. I finished school there, graduated in  1971, and enrolled at Southwestern Community College in a secretarial course.

Ned and I went to high school together but we didn't pay too much attention to each other. He came back from college the first year for a New Year's Eve party to welcome 1972. We ended up at the same party and started dating, becoming more and more serious to the point that after I graduated from the secretarial course in 1972, I moved to Ames for nine months and had an apartment while he went to school. I stayed in the dorm and worked for a professor of engineering at Iowa State University. When Ned decided he needed to go back to Creston and pick up a couple credits at Southwestern that summer, I moved back to Creston and lived with Mom and Dad. During that time I worked at Wellman Dynamics in Creston.

Ned was finishing school at UNI (University of Northern Iowa) in Cedar Falls when we were married in 1974. We still didn't know where we were going to live or what jobs either of us would have in Cedar Falls. The day we were married, Dad and I went out to find housing one weekday before the fall term started. Having a dog in Creston that I couldn't bear to leave, kept us from being eligible to live in the married housing units. However, south of Cedar Falls by the Hill/Piper Museum, we found a duplex trailer. It was 14' wide and 35' feet long, which made for cozy living but it served our purpose. Ned and I had the same values and goals with the result that we paid for Ned's schooling without any school loans ever. That required a few sacrifices but it was worth them. In addition to Ned's schooling, both of us always worked — in fact, in those years all we did was work. Ned was employed by a gas station, and I started working for the American Soy Bean Association in Hudson, Iowa.

One of our enjoyments involved our "baby," our little dog, Dusty. We picked her out when she was just four weeks old. Ned's dad named her because the first time we brought her to meet Mom and Dad, he held her, petted her, and remarked that she was "dusty." So Dusty she became. The first day we had her, she showed she was a fiesty little creature. She wouldn't let my dad in the house when he came for lunch at noon! Every night Ned and I would pick her up and take her for a car ride that included an ice cream cone. The very first time we took her to a lake, we walked along the dock, and she ran right past us. This little tiny thing jumped right off the end of the pier into the water. I was screaming at Ned to go get her. "She's going to drown!" He said, "I'm not going in there. She will swim." Sure enough, here she came swimming to us.

Pets are pretty important in our family's lives. We have five granddogs. Last Christmas the family gave me a bracelet with all their pictures in it. One daughter has asthma and is allergic to dogs, but she has two cats. So we also have two grandcats. The exciting thing about this is that we will be having two grandbabies this year. One is due September 22th, 2008, the other November 4th. We got to go see the ultrasound of the one due in September. It is a little boy, and we saw his spine and rib cage — it was totally amazing. I know he waved at us. He can't wait to see his grandma and grandpa. Ned says it wasn't a wave. It was the beginning of a golf swing.

We were in Cedar Falls two years. From this point, our lives joined because every move we made was because of Ned's positions in various communities.

Ned

I was born and raised in Creston. Tomorrow (June 2) I turn 55 and then I will be the same age as Martha for a few months. Dad was a railroader on the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy which is now Burlington, Northern, Santa Fe. He was gone at least one full day every time he left on a run, sometimes two days, sometimes longer. Mom went back to work during my childhood, but I had three sisters, older than I — by 6 years, 8 years, and 11 years, or something like that. They were always my baby sitters so I was never left alone.

Came the first day of kindergarten I was thinking, "Okay, I know I am supposed to go to school," but I was getting pretty hesitant about it. My sisters teased me about how terrible it was going to be. I decided I didn't think I wanted to do that, so to get me calmed down, Dad said, "Okay. You go to school today, and if you decide you don't like it all, you won't ever have to go back." At that point, he got on the engine and went to Lincoln, Nebraska. He disappeared for two days. The next time he showed up, I thought, well, I made it through a couple days and they weren't too bad. I just went back. Thirteen years of that experience and 32 years of my professional experience, I keep going back to school every day. I guess that is kind of typical of men. We are pretty good at talking the talk but not so much at walking the walk.

Going into junior high was an interesting experience. We had an extremely mean-spirited principal named Mr. Hobbs. Russell Hobbs was a great man but he didn't let anybody know how much he liked kids. We had to walk up and down the hallways with our shoulders touching the walls, weren't allowed to talk in the hallways or do this and that. It was an experience. It stayed with me and I have adopted some of those things into the way I ran my classrooms. It was in junior high that I got to meet all the kids from the Creston neighborhoods. They were more spread out than they are in Osceola.
I was pretty active in sports, played football, basketball, golf and baseball. I was probably better in football and basketball; but golf I've played now competitively for 43 years. One would think I'd get good at it, but I'm not. In high school, it was a team sport. Since then I play in tournaments which are open to anybody who can pay the entry fee and play. But even if it is just two guys out on the golf course, I still am very competitive. I want to win and try as hard as I can all the time. It's a good stress reliever.

One day during our junior year of high school, the counselor came to us and said, "You need to take this thing home, fill it out and bring some money from your parents so you can take ..." — what turned out to be the ACT (American College Test) exam. My buddies and I took the ACT and really didn't know what it was. We knew we had to show up on a Saturday morning and sit by ourselves and take this exam. I didn't think about it again until quite a little later that spring, when the same counselor came back and said I had scored pretty well and "Do you know what you want to do with that?" If I knew which college I wanted to go to, it would be possible that she could help get me get a scholarship. I told her I hadn't thought much about it. I knew I intended to go to school but didn't know where.

The counselor arranged an application so I could apply for the Navy ROTC (Reserve Officers' Training Corps) scholarship. I went to Ames for that, but I had an offer to play football at UNI and an offer at Iowa State to play football for them. Of all the decisions I have made in my life, that is one I regret — I didn't play. I've always thought I would have enjoyed the experience. In fact, at Iowa State I was in the old gym playing basketball by myself— shooting a basket at one end, running to the other end and shooting, back and forth. The Iowa State University head line-coach saw me and invited me to walk on. It was the fall of '71, and I remember it like it was yesterday. I really wish I'd have done that but having not done so, things worked out pretty well.

I went two years to Iowa State when the Vietnam War was just winding down. I was at sea one summer and got a chance to be on a destroyer for six weeks, on a submarine one day, and on a large frigate one day to see what that was like. I decided I didn't really like being out in the middle of the ocean, not able to see land. I would look down into the Atlantic which was gray and ugly. It looked like death to me, and I was thinking I really didn't want to be in that water very badly. Then they took us down to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. I spent two weeks there. That was a little better, but it was a Communist nation, ships from Russia going up the harbor. That kind of thing unnerved me.

After that they gave us the nice part — two weeks in Jamaica, St. Thomas, and St. Croix islands. We would go out and do maneuvers until afternoon, then we could have shore leave and do whatever we wanted to. By then Martha and I were dating and I thought I'd find something kind of neat for her. I found a pair of black onyx earrings, which I brought home and gave her. I also bought six sterling silver champagne goblets with hand crafted carvings on them. I got home with my sea bag and the last things I packed were the goblets. They were on top when my mom grabbed the bag and whipped it open even before we were in the house, all the while saying, "What did you bring me?" She opened the box with the six sterling silver goblets and exclaimed, "Oh, these are so nice! Thank you so much! I really love them." I thought of Martha and, "Well, dear, there go your goblets." It was probably 25 years later before I told my mother the real story and she knew I hadn't brought her anything. Now we have the goblets back.

Vietnam was basically over by the time my second year of ROTC was completed. They gave us an option out of the Navy because the war was over and they didn't need as many officers. The scholarship had given me a full ride — tuition, board and room, and all my books were free. In addition, they gave me $100 a month to stay in the Reserves. The second half of the first year, the $100 was going for telephone bills as I was talking from the dorm in Ames to Martha back in Creston. It was kind of expensive and I was missing the fun of taking her out. During the second year, Martha had come to Ames and that $100 bought pizza and movies and dinners. We had a good time on that $100 a month.

Those were the first two years when I was in Ames. I had a decision to make because I didn't have to stay in ROTC. I really didn't know what I wanted to do. I moved back home and did the first semester working in a furniture store of a long time family friend. I took three classes at SWCC (Southwestern  Community College thinking what to do, what to do. A couple who were good friends of my mom and dad came to visit that summer. He had been a successful coach. We talked one Saturday about what I might want to do for a career, and I realized I wanted to be a teacher and a coach.

UNI (University of Northern Iowa) was the best place to go for training so I applied, enrolled, moved up there, and roomed with one of my longest-time friends and buddies. I think we met when we were toddlers in Sunday School. I had a nice time with him as a roommate in my third year of school. I was still dating Martha pretty regularly. In fact, we were engaged by then. I didn't have enough money to ask her to marry me. I'd lost my scholarship and now I was paying for tuition, books, board and room.

I hitchhiked back and forth quite frequently from UNI to Creston, which was quite a distance, but we could still do that in 1972 and 1973. The next spring I asked Martha if she would marry me and she said, "You've got to ask my dad for my hand." She made me do it, so I asked him. I think I can still hear him whooping and hollering and jumping up and clown saying, "Yippee, yippee, yippee!" After which he said, "Sure, I'll agree to that."

I had the engagement and the wedding planned. That summer I worked in Creston and stayed at home, delivering milk for Anderson/Erickson. I made a huge amount of dollars — $35 a day, which was big bucks at that time! We were able to save quite a lot because, as Martha told, the first year we were married, 1974, we were living in the duplex trailer and not going out much. I wasn't sure we would survive those close quarters but when we were newlyweds, it was okay.

As soon as we were married, I started going to summer school, too, to get done because in the transfer from Iowa State to UNI I lost a bunch of credits that I had to make up. The two physics courses I took in two quarters were the same as an entire year at UNI. I remember that distinctly. I ended up going to summer school two summers there, got my first job, and from then I went to summer school 13 consecutive summers to get my BA, then my MA, and then my specials degree. We did it all without any loans or gifts or grants.

While going to UNI, I worked for a Skelly Service station next to the campus. I rode my motorcycle to work, got there at 7:00 A.M., I worked until 9:00 A.M., did classes until two or three in the afternoon, and went back to work at the gas station until closing. I rode the bike back home after dark and studied. Crazy schedule, but it didn't get too crazy until the first snow in Cedar Falls. I still only had my motorcycle and Martha had a car to go to her work in the other direction. My boss felt sorry for me, so he gave me his old car to drive back and forth for the winter.

We couldn't afford a telephone, which made Martha feel really cut off and homesick, because for the first time, she couldn't even call her mom and dad. We couldn't afford any luxuries while I was making $1.25 an hour and Martha's wages not much more. On Sunday evenings our entertainment was to go to the grocery store and buy food for the week. I remember taking $5 to buy the week's groceries. In the summertime it was a good place to go because it was air conditioned, and our trailer was  not.

Finally, college graduation! I remember distinctly being pretty excited. I was going to graduate and everything was going to work for us! I got my cap and gown, jumped in my old beat-up car, drove home to show them to Martha, and got stopped by a cop! I was going too fast. That was one of three speeding tickets in a month because I had exciting news for Martha. And money was so tight! Eventually Martha got kind of ticked at my enthusiastic but poor driving.

I sent six letters applying for teaching jobs in western and southwest Iowa. I probably sent many more but I had six that were responded to with requests for interviews. Out of six interviews, I was offered five different jobs. I was thinking "There's nothing to this." I was to teach language arts 7-12. That was a big deal back then — a male secondary teacher that was in language arts was relatively rare. They liked that in preference to having all women teaching it. I could also coach football, basketball, track, and softball or baseball. I could even go to wrestling and volleyball.

Underwood

I chose a school district where they were going to build a brand new school, a new facility. We went to work at Underwood, 10 miles on highway 191 North of Council Bluffs, wedged between the Loess hills and the interstate in the western portion of Iowa. I spent six years there coaching and teaching. While we were there, Martha worked as secretary for the superintendent of schools. One day a girl came in from study hall. She said, "Do you have anything I could do in here? I really don't like the study hall teacher." Martha asked, "Who would that be?" She said, "Mr. Cox." Martha didn't say a word, she just chuckled. I had 96 kids in study hall and I was in there as a rookie by myself. I didn't put up with much foolishness. Remember the junior high principal, Mr. Hobbs? He ran a tight ship. So did I.

We bought our first house in Underwood. It was a one-room schoolhouse they moved in from the country. They wanted $17, 750 for it. We were so excited. We said, "Okay, we'll do that but we don't have any money for down-payment. The superintendent shrugged, "Don't worry about that." I said, "But I won't have any money at least until the first paycheck." He said, "How about if we start with the third paycheck?" So we got our loan and took care of all that and by the third or fourth paycheck we were able to take care of our obligation. Insurance, principle and interest was $125 a month, which included taxes — $60 every six months. Things have changed!

By then we had to stop driving privileges for my grandfather so we took away his car. He had hit a tree in his front yard, side-swiped a garage door and dinged it up. He was still going downtown and causing havoc so they had to take his license from him I inherited his old beat-up `64 Dodge. That gave us a second car, which as it turned out, we didn't need. We could both walk across the street to the high-school building, where the superintendent's office and my high school classroom were. We didn't even need one car and had two.

Our first two daughters were born while we were in Underwood — Marianne and Christina. Mary was my mom's first name so we thought it would be nice to have that, but the gal who lived in the other end of that duplex trailer for 2 1/2 years was Mary Ann. We got to know her real well. How could we not? We lived on top of one another. We liked the name and it stuck.

Martha took a leave of absence from the superintendent's job when Marianne was born, thinking she'd go back. But as soon as she saw the baby in the nursery, she knew she could never go back to work. She felt badly about telling her employer she would not be coming back but she did. We still needed her income to supplement mine, so she started baby sitting. That way she could stay home and still bring in some income. She had her hands full with a total of five children, the oldest being our daughter, who was not yet two. I was no help. I coached every sport which demanded that I be gone every night.

I taught there six years and in those six years, we moved to Ames for six summers while I went to school. We'd pack up the baby bed, take the crib apart, put it in the U-Haul, take it up there, put the crib back together, but we had so much fun. The first year, we just had Marianne, and we lived in Pammel Court. It was comprised of Quonsets, which were built for veterans after WWII. The Quonsets were made of tin and they really pulled in the heat. We sat outside a lot and took the baby's high chair outside to eat dinner because it was intolerably hot inside. We were in the middle Quonset hut, with another one on each side of us. We used to tease that when they sprayed for bugs, all the cockroaches would run to the center one where we lived. Martha vowed that when I became president of Iowa State University, we would take turns inviting different streets of Pammel Court to our house to eat. We would feed them and they could sit in the air conditioning to eat their dinner.

Pammel Court became home to foreign students so we were the only white couple in all the Court. We sublet from somebody for the summer, which was probably illegal, but that is what happened. These were primarily people with very dark skin and our daughters are extremely light complected with very blond hair and very blue eyes. Other residents would hover around and talk to us, asking if they could take a picture, and if they could touch her skin and hair. It was just like we were a freak show. When Martha went to the Laundromat, she had Marianne in a front pack, the wash in the wagon. One day she looked around and realized she was the only English-speaking person there. Coming from a small town, we weren't accustomed to that. The second year we lived in Ames for the summer, we had two children so we lived in Hawthorn Court and it was nicer. No roaches!

Nebraska City

I decided I wanted to be a principal, so I began working on my Master's. I didn't have as much luck getting that principalship right away. A parochial school in Nebraska City was looking for one. I was born and raised a Presbyterian with that denomination's teaching deeply imbedded in the thinking of my parents, my grandfather, two of my great aunts, and the same was true of Martha's side of the family. My grandparents and great aunts were very narrow-minded people, who didn't like anyone who wasn't a Presbyterian.

For that reason, when I went to apply at Nebraska City, I didn't tell them. Finally they found out where I was working and were mortified when I, a Presbyterian, got a job in a Catholic School 7 — 12. Of course, I went to Mass every day with the kids, and on Friday special Masses. One time, for a reason I don't remember, I took one of our daughters to a service. She cried and cried and finally the priest, my boss, stopped the whole service, looked down and said, "You will have to excuse her, she is Presbyterian." I discovered, as I told the family, "These are some of the greatest people I've ever known. I don't care what you think, this is where I am and where I am going to stay,"and stay I did, for five years. We had our third daughter, Abigail, there. Martha worked as a licensed day care provider, licensed in Nebraska.

While we were in Nebraska City, my principalship was at Lourdes Central Catholic School. The name came from the town in France where Mary appeared. There was a shroud with her image on it, and lots of healing miracles. This school had a convent, seven or eight nuns, and three priests. It was a little different when I had to reprimand a nun or priest for improper teaching or mismanagement of one of the students. But we got through it. While I was there, beside being 7-12 principal, I also took care of all the superintendent's jobs except for paying the bills. Because that position was filled by a priest who didn't want to go to conference or state meetings, or do the state forms and reports, I did all those things. I also drove the bus between middle school and elementary both in the morning and afternoon. I cut the grass both places and the athletic field, shoveled the snow in the wintertime, and in my spare time evaluated teachers and helped kids. It was a great experience. There were very nice people in Nebraska City, and we enjoyed their parks. We couldn't do much else because the pay wasn't all that good.

Our children were at the age — five, four, and two — when Martha was also having challenging experiences. I was seldom home to help at times when another adult would have been useful. For instance, I attended every function every night and when Martha could, she'd gather up the three kids and go, too. "Gathering" began with dressing them, which she did one by one. She would dress one, set her on the sofa, dress another one, set her on the sofa, then the third. On one occasion, when she went back to the living room, ready to say, "Let's go," the second one was saying, "Hot! Hot!" and taking off her dress. Here she was standing totally naked and Martha had to start all over again. This was after she had run the day care all day and the last child didn't leave our home until between five and six o'clock. Both our jobs were demanding.

Our girls, also, had to make some concessions. With the children whom she baby-sat arriving early, Martha couldn't load up and take our girls to school, so the two older girls went to school with me, leaving at 7:00 A.M. Those two girls did a really good job of being able to get up and around. We made a mistake with the third one. We weren't in that situation by the time she came along and we battled every day trying to get her out to the car in time, not to make everybody late for school.

One job that Martha and I did together at Lourdes was to run Bingo on Sunday afternoons down in a Community building basement. In spite of our having hardly any money, we had to get a sitter for our girls. We couldn't attend church that day because the Presbyterians didn't get out before we had to be down in the basement selling Bingo cards and pickle tickets. Pickle tickets have tabs to pull off and those who had the matching number won. They loved buying pickle tickets! I ran the Bingo game and Martha sold pickle cards. Another negative aspect was that those who attended smoked like chimneys. It wasn't one of the advantages of my position.

Overall it was a good experience, but it wasn't paying very well and there was no retirement package at all. I needed to go back to public school. I applied to Nisha Valley which is a town between Red Oak and Glenwood. It is made up of the small towns of Henderson, Hastings, and Emerson. It was a little school on the side of the highway outside of all the towns. We stayed there just three years. There was a lot of conflict between board members and the townspeople. I was a principal but the superintendent got himself in lots of problems and I felt very uncomfortable staying there. We decided that was enough at the time when a job came open in Avoca. I had always thought that would be a good place to work. It was.

Avoca

I applied, had an interview, and went to Avoca knowing it would only be a year. They were going to do grade sharing and then consolidate, so I got to work through that planning with Shelby, Hancock and Avoca. It was a good experience putting the staffs together, and the kids together. That was really fun. While in Nebraska City, I was going to a college and finished my specialist degree. When we moved to Avoca, I started working on the next degree, which is really just short of a PhD. I didn't want to do the dissertation so I settled for a certificate of advanced studies in educational administration.

In Avoca, I worked extensively on the reorganization and that worked out well. I was pleased with that but wanted to be a superintendent. At that time, all three girls were in school and Martha was working downtown on their newspaper for kind of a tyrant. Her first duty every morning was to feed the three cats and clean their litter boxes. She is a highly skilled secretary and here she was doing that kind of stuff!

I have told about my work, but we have always been a family and it has been tough on the girls, moving them all those years. We've wiped a lot of tears with a lot of moves. When we moved from Nishna Valley to Avoca, we didn't tell the girls until I had accepted the job. When we told them, we were in the van, on our way for me to sign the contract, and the newspaper wanted to take a picture of the whole family. Instant tears when the two girls realized we were taking them out of school to go to Avoca. All three were crying. Pretty soon the youngest stopped, looked at Martha and asked, "What are we crying about?" That broke the tension! She was in pre-school and started to school in Avoca.

We had a really nice house in Nebraska City. We had rented a house in Nishna Valley. We bought another pretty-nice house in Avoca. When the time came for me to be a superintendent, I looked around western and southwestern Iowa. Sidney was open and I applied, interviewed and got that job. It was different, however, than principalships. I still think it is pretty easy to get a job. But we made it look too easy because when our daughters apply for a job and don't get them, they are heartbroken. I always say, "Your dad made it look too easy."

Sidney

We moved to Sidney as their superintendent and were there seven years. I worked there beginning July 1 and school started August 20th. On the first day of school, I went to school before the kids had to arrive, which was not uncommon. Martha was to bring our girls and I watched for them. I was in the parking lot and saw three or four or five school buses unload as well as parents unloading kids. There was a lot of congestion and I am fearful of kids getting hurt. While I was standing there, I saw a strange car stop and my wife and my kids got out of it. I didn't understand what was going on.
I discovered later that when Martha had gone out to take the kids to school, she found our youngest daughter already in the back. The girls fought over who was going to sit where, and she had the special spot where she wanted to sit. The other two got in and they took off. Martha slowed to tuna a corner and the one who had gotten in early yelled what Martha thought was, "Grasshopper!" Abby jumped up on the back of the seat, our other daughters jumped out of the car while it was still moving! Martha was frightened and angry! She yelled, "What is wrong with you guys?! For a grasshopper?!" And the youngest one said, "No, Mom, it's a possum!" There was a possum underneath the seat inches from her little sandaled feet and every time they hit a bump it would hiss and show its claws.

They were all out of the car and it was all Martha could do to get it in "park," and get her­self out. A neighbor came along and took them to school so they wouldn't be late, then took Martha and me back to the car. They had closed the door because Martha wanted me to see the animal so I wouldn't think they had all gone crazy. There he was! He had his teeth and claws out and was hissing like crazy. I poked him with a stick and made him jump out of the car. He walked into the grassy neighbor's yard. Martha had goose-bumps up her legs all day long. She imagined that possum probably went home and told his family, "You will never believe what happened to me today!"

Before we left, Sidney built a new school house, but the impetus really started in my second year because of what happened the first year. The possum event was the first week of school and then there was Labor Day weekend. On Tuesday after Labor Day, I was watching the buses and kids again, and getting the feel for how the district ran, and up drove the State Fire Marshall inspector. He demanded a tour of our building so I said, "Sure, go right ahead." He took a legal size pad of paper and went in with me.

Three hours later we came out of the elementary building after he had taken notes and notes and notes, to be followed by four hours inside the junior/senior high building. We finished that and he said, "Well, here are your choices: close this building today or I'll arrest you and put you in jail, because this is unsafe." I said, "Today? The second week of school and my first year as a superintendent? I can't do that today. Can you give me some slack?" He stopped and thought and acted real hesitant, then he said, "Okay. I will be back Friday afternoon and you will have the basement of the high school cleared." That was four classrooms, the counselor's office and all the freshman lockers. Then he said, "You'll have to do this and this and this with all the other stuff," and had 11 or 12 pages noting things that were wrong.

I hadn't realized it was that serious, but it was so bad that in elementary they didn't even have fire alarms or smoke detectors — not even pull down alarms or anything. Plus it was totally encapsulated in asbestos, so to put any of the smoke alarms up we first had to remove the asbestos. A special technique was required to do that. I cut my teeth on some pretty serious issues. I was fortunate to have good principals and teachers who took care of themselves a lot during the first couple years. I learned later a rumor was going around that I had called the Fire Marshall and told them to come to do this, because I was really brought into Sidney to build a new school and get the bond issue passed.

Their existing school had been built in 1918. The foundation had failed. The floors were very uneven, and steps weren't safe. Electrical stuff was terrible. I was telling the public all this and one lady said, "If you knew it was so bad, why did you move here?" I said, "So I could give your kids the opportunity to go to school in a nice schoolhouse." It was quite a battle.

The second year we got heavily into campaigning for a new schoolhouse. It really brought out people who were narrow-minded, against paying any tax because they wanted to keep every nickle for themselves instead of replenishing what society had given them, which was a pretty good education. On the other hand there was this great swell of people who wanted to do the right thing, their minds on what was good for kids. In this really small town, we had several meetings attended by 200 or more people.

During that time, we made decisions to find not only the young families who were all hepped up. Their kids were in school and they wanted a nice place for them to go. We also wanted to find the old lions that had been the power structure in the town for the last umpteen years, and we found two men who fit that bill. We asked them to be on the steering committee. As they learned more and more, they went back to their groups of older, more mature retired folks, listened to their questions and gave them the facts as they knew them. Talk back and forth helped us select the site, and helped us receive the report about the building being old, run down, needing to be replaced. When the old lions said, "It doesn't make sense to stick a million dollars in the old building, when we could get a new building for maybe $2 million," that made all the difference. (It ended up being $3.3 million.)

We worked awfully hard on that bond issue — 94 or 95% of all the registered voters in that school district came out to vote. The ballot was complicated. Instead of asking one question or sometimes two, to go to a maximum of $4 per thousand, this one had three questions — if we were going to build anything, and if we were, were we going to build towards A or towards B? To get the offsite, new stand-alone building, they had to say yes on the ballot three times. Our financial people told us that was way too complicated. "People who live here will never understand that." I thought for about 30 seconds and realized that was exactly how we were going to get that done, and I told them, "I am going to quote you to say the guys from Omaha and Lincoln don't think you are smart enough to to nderstand this." Then they will figure it out. They said, "Go right ahead, because we're going back to Omaha and Lincoln. We're not going to live here. You are."

So when it came to time to say 'yes' or 'no,' 82% voted yes, and the 2nd and 3rd ballot got 77% each. We needed 60% so it was an overwhelming landslide. That was a real highlight. It was a very nice school. All three of the girls graduated from there. It was my privilege to hand the first two their diplomas. Typically the board members do that but they said if I wanted to, I could.

The district bought 25 acres on the outskirts of Sidney. We moved one school day about April 14. We had 22 teachers to move — 22 classrooms, books and 300 kids. We thought it would probably take all day but we had arranged for 20 farmers to volunteer their assistance with pickups and trailers. We assigned a teacher to each farmer, and kids in each class to load and then unload at the new building. By 10:30 that morning the entire place was moved, totally set up, all ready to teach! The staff got together and said, "O.k. Let's go to teaching." I said," It is now the 4th hour, go to your classes, I don't care if you teach a thing. Just visit with the kids. That's what we'll do," and the principal said, "Yes, that's what we're gonna do." That school district is still in pretty good shape.

Before our third daughter graduated, I took a hiatus and accepted a job in northwest Iowa at Hartley-Melvin-Sanborn. It was a good enough school, but Martha really didn't want to move there. Our roots are in southern Iowa. Additionally, we had a senior in high school, and it wasn't fair to expect her to move. From Martha's perspective, "Abbie and I had a wonderfully fun year. A student teacher lived with us for six months. She had been our older daughter's good friend when we lived in Avoca. It was just like a big slumber party the whole year Ned was gone. We 'did' nails — toe nails, finger nails, and laughed and laughed our heads off."

Osceola

We have now (in 2008) been in Osceola five years. The most exciting, revolutionary change that has been accomplished is just now finished. We have moved from the office space beneath the post office. It was pretty ugly. For handicapped people it was a real struggle to get down to pay their bills or see me. The steps were terrible. Most of the winter they were wet because the water ran down them when it rained or snowed. There was mold on the floor.

In contrast, the new building is a delight to be in, and it is paid for, which is a bigger delight. We didn't have to have a bond issue. Each of the secretaries will have a new work space with new furnishings. One side of their work space faces windows that look out across the pond, trees, and grass. They are pretty excited.

First we will move the TAP (Tradition Alliance Program) house, which program is to teach special education kids how to function. The number who need extraordinary help is growing a lot. This provides for kids who are in transition between high school and the world of work. It helps them deal with such issues as where are they going to stay, how are they going to earn a living, if they need to go to a shelter or if they can live on their own, if they can be trained to do a different job, those kinds of things. Their room has a kitchen with refrigerator, stove, washer, dryer, sink, cabinets, storage room. They have classroom space and casual living space.

There is space for the alternative high school and the Four-Oaks classroom. In fact, the largest portion of the building by far are classrooms, and the largest of those is the Alternative School, which is about 1500 to 1800 square feet.

The district continues to expand our services. We now take kids who are three years old and teach them to brush their teeth, eat with utensils, and in general the rudiments of socializing with other children; and we may have some until they are 25. We have an increasing number of kids who speak Spanish at home, not necessarily speaking English, and their parents don't speak English. We have hired another ELL (English Language Learning) teacher because our Hispanic population is growing. We are providing more and more services.

We also hired another behavior disorder teacher for high school kids. There were too many to be in one class and shipping them down to Mt. Ayr for the whole year, paying a driver and $4 a gallon for gas, additionally wasting the kids' time for an hour down and an hour back was not practical. So we are going to retrofit a storage area and put in carpeting and air conditioning to have the classroom here.

There are some pretty rough kids and some pretty tough places in Clarke County. In my graduation address this year I said, "You need to hold yourself to a higher standard." I wanted to say "Don't settle for what your parents have shown you," but I didn't. I stopped short of saying that. I said two or three times, "Hold yourself to a higher standard." I feel there is a lot of potential that doesn't get tapped because the kids don't know they can do it, even after we have had them for 13 years.

We have found our dream home on Grade Lake. Scritchfields built the house in 1962. We had the privilege of meeting Erma, who is now deceased. We wish she could see what we have done inside, painting, putting in new floorings, ceilings, cabinets and counter tops. We have also worked on the outside. Scritchfields had a gorgeous set of annual flowers that had been overrun with weeds. Between Martha, her aunt Shirley Pennock, and others, we have done some back-breaking work on the lawn but it has been worth the effort. It is really a neat place. We love looking at the lake. There are geese there, adults and babies. We've enjoyed them this spring. One has eight babies and two more have shown up with another couple these last weeks. Now a white duck has appeared. They are so much fun to watch.

We have also found a church home. Church is a vital part of our lives. In all the places we lived, the only town where we didn't find a church home was Underwood. I'm not sure if we were just too young and inexperienced or whatever the reason, when we attended church, it was back home in Creston. When we lived in Nebraska City, we had a great church home in the Presbyterian Church, but really interacted as much with Catholic churches. As we moved different places we've had great church homes, but the best is here with Chuck DeVos at the Assembly of God. He and Helen have been terrific people for us.

When we moved to Sidney, Martha got a career. She recalls, "I started working for the hospital in Hamburg, Iowa, doing medical transcriptions, and at the end of my very first day, the HR (Human Resources) person met me at the door on the way out and asked, "What do you think?" I said, "It is what I have wanted to do my whole life." I just worked and worked. When the Director of Medical Records quit, they gave me the job so I got to do that for four years. I went back to school every Saturday during the winter and earned my certified professional coding certification.

"I had a real passion for that hospital and the job I was doing. That was some of the reason, also, I resisted going up north to live because I had found something I really liked — I had always just settled for second best everywhere we went because there weren't a lot of openings in small towns. I would have to take whatever came along and try to do it to the best of my ability but I really loved the medical records department. It was tough leaving that job."

We were hoping she would go into medical records in Clarke County Hospital but that didn't work out, so she works at home in her office in the front of our new home. She works for Allegiant Health out of Omaha. She sits in her office and types medical records all day, clocks in by phone, and clocks out by phone. Everything is done by e-mail or telephone. She is really good at it. She gets reports after a month of typing day after day, hour after hour, 100% accuracy. I don't know how it is possible to be accurate because many doctors in Omaha and Council Bluffs are foreign born, heavily accented, and not very adept at dictating. She gets a little incentive pay for typing fast as well!

I have been fortunate to be surrounded with women my whole life. I had three sisters, work now in the superintendent's office with four women. I have three daughters and a wife. Even every dog we've ever owned was also female! (Grin)
All three of our girls are successful. They all graduated from college with our financial help. All three went to Northwest Missouri State University. The oldest, Marianne is now 29. She and her husband live in Savannah, Missouri. They both work in St. Joe, which is about a 20-minute commute. He works for Snorkel company. They make the booms on big utility trucks that have to reach up and fix utilities and lighting. Marianne recently changed jobs and is working for a doctor who does Bariatric surgery — lap band or stomach stapling. They live in a little 14-acre acreage just outside the town with three dogs, a bunch of cats, and are next to a forest where there are turkeys, deer, and all those animals. Most exciting of all: Marianne is pregnant and expecting in November.

The middle daughter, Christy, is a special ed teacher for pre-schoolers at Corning, Iowa. She has been there three years. God has given her a gift that is unbelievable . She loves to go to work every day with kids with autism, Downs syndrome, and even those who are blind. They may be five years old and can't walk, or are not diaper trained. She has an affinity for working with those kids and is getting an education beyond what she had at Maryville. A few days ago she had to take a little girl (3) to the dentist for an abscessed tooth. The dentist asked, "Would you hold her while I x-ray her?" She said, "Sure." Then she said, "Would you hold her while I pull it?" That poor little girl was kicking and screaming, while Christy held her and the mother sat in the other room.

When the children need new clothes or have spoiled theirs, Christy will supply them with items she has picked up at to Good Will and garage sales — pants, coats and shoes. Then she makes up a story about how they were ruined in some way and she had to replace them. "Just take this ." In one way it's not a big investment, but in another it is a huge investment in evidence that someone is caring for the kids. She has one little girl (also 3) who picks out her own clothes and dresses herself — and then by herself gets her book bag and is out for the van driver to pick her up.

Usually after a weekend her diaper will still be dripping when she arrives at school. The first question that comes to mind is why she is wearing diapers at three years old? The smell is so bad, Christy often has to bathe the children before they can even start class.

Our third daughter. Abby, is married and lives in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Her husband is in management for HyVee, so she has followed that track, being a department manager for health foods at a Sioux Falls HyVee. They bought a beautiful house, that doesn't need anything done to it, and they are pretty entrepreneurial. They didn't think they could quite make the house payments on their salaries, so they rent out the basement two bedrooms to-other people who also work at HyVee. It is a lot cheaper for the renters than having their own apartment, and it helps Abby and her husband, Michael, with house payments.

They work hard but also play pretty hard. Today they are out at the lake with a wave runner — a small boat they sit on. It is kind of like a motorcycle on the water. We hope Abby's not on it because she is five months pregnant and shouldn't be falling off a wave runner. She is very light complexioned, fair skinned, susceptible to burning and skin cancer, but last weekend they went to the beach. The water was really cold and she just sat on the beach watching, talking to Michael, her husband, and got sun-burned awfully bad. I just chuckled and said, "Your mother taught you better than that."
Our life has been blessed. Martha and I come from great families. Our parents have had major influences on our lives. We hope we have been positive influences on our children, their spouses and soon to be grandchildren.
For all that we have, we give thanks to God.

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Last Revised October 11, 2014