Denis Boerjan called a week and a half ago, and asked me to say something

today about why history is important. Since then, I have thought about it. There

are 10 words that I will start with:

The roots of the present / are deep in the past.

History, therefore, has a great importance in the present.

This building for which ground is broken today------------ has great importance.

Why? All of us are on our journeys in life.

Our life's journey is influenced by other people and their thoughts.

Influenced by the place we exist in,

The things/objects we use on that journey.

The Smithsonian Museum holds dear/

the history of what our journey as a nation is.

This building will hold dear the history, the story, of Mitchell County.

Did you have a teacher that you remember on your life's journey?

One that influenced you?

I had a high school history teacher----Miss Griezer. She and Miss Ruth Gethmann,

my typing teacher rented a house together.

And when you are 15 or 16 years old--------they were very old/gray hair, wrinkles----

probably a full 55 years of age-------

actually a full 30 years younger than I am now.

Miss Ruth Gethmann, my typing teacher, was a bear about accuracy and speed.

I can see her now, standing with stop watch in hand in Room 104 telling us to

begin typing the page with no mistakes-----charting our progress on the wall--noting

errors----Encouraging us with kindness to go faster.

Do it right the first time.

There was no Xerox Memorywriter to push a button and the carriage would run

back and lift the ink off the wrong character and automatically print the right one.

There were no computers-----no delete button

No wipe out a line with a swissch of the mouse

No cloud ----no cyberspace.

The Royal Typewriters in Room 104 went clicety clack---all 30 of them.

I

A Royal typewriter was a thing in my life's journey.

I used one from my Dad's office to type my Master's research paper---

Or perhaps it was a Royal typewriter in one of the typing cubicles in the

basement of the Donald Rod Library on the University of Northern Iowa campus.

Miss Gethmann's drive for accuracy and speed resulted in the FBI coming to the

New Hampton High School------No not to arrest her------but to interview her

students as potential typists for their FBI Washington DC office.

Accuracy and speed saved time and money and got things done.

It made Miss Gethmann's life famous with them and gave her purpose.

She touched the future----- and with those typed FBI files-----

She touched the past at the same time.

Now, Miss Griezer, my history teacher, was wise.

That was her saying that I started with:

The roots of the present / are deep in the past.

In 1956, I asked her if there would ever be a WW3 since WW2 was the war to end

all wars. She paused, smiled and said, in 1956: "if there is a WW3----

it will be in the Middle East-----

And it will be over oil."

History not only informs us of the past.

History shapes the present.

History sometimes explains the future.

History might lay down the path to take in the future.

The roots of the present are deep in the past.

In 2008 when my son-in-law was serving in the Army in Kabul, Afganistan and my

daughter was in Germany back at the base awaiting their first child, I went to

Germany to help them.

And while there, I toured Auschwitz, the German prison camp.

Places with names like Auschwitz, Dachau, Treblinka are names from the past--from

the Nazi atrocity against mankind. History that should never be forgotten.

That is why the German government now makes it mandatory that all

German high school students before they graduate are to tour those historically

preserved blood-drenched----

Satan- drenched ----pieces of earth called prison camps. A preventative measure

so that there is an understanding developed that never ever again should such an

atrocity happen-----that one ego-driven man might instigate, motivate, intimidate

a whole nation to wipe out an entire race of human beings.

History tells us about those evil thoughts, about wars, about politicians,

of castles and kings and queens------

1 prefer the history of common people, their struggles to tame the wildness of a

continent called America so as to make a home and to survive.

Or the history of the land itself-----the rise and fall of mountains, of dinosaurs, prairies----

of the changing earth.

John Madson in his book, entitled "Where the Sky Began" starts out talking about

our country before it was what it is now.

How tree covered our county was---

That there was a time "if a squirrel climbed a tree at Plymouth Rock,

It could travel all the way to the Mississippi River without its feet ever touching

the ground." That is where the sky began and the Great Plains opened up.

Imagine the sacrifices, the labor to clear all those trees with ax and oxen,

to build homes, to clear a field, to plow that field to raise food. They used many

of the articles you will house in your history building.

To me history is not dead. It lives, it instructs, it teaches, it predicts.

The roots of the present are deep in the past.

Back in the 1970's a Riceville woman's group undertook the task of preserving

Saratoga #4, commonly called the Buresh school, a one room schoolhouse of

pioneer vintage in Section 20 of Saratoga Township. And by undertaking the

responsibility and cost of repairing, rebuilding, painting, they supported the living

history day that the Riceville School District had already started in the early

1960's.

That continues to this day when every 2nd grade class (including Casandra Leff one

of my former students who sits in the audience today) -when every 2nd grade

child that goes there in the pioneer dresses we sewed, the bib overalls, carries a

lunch bucket, writes on chalk tablets, plays "Annie Annie over" at recess---uses

3

the outhouse and drinks water from a clay crock-----all of this so that they

understand and feel the experience of the past.

It is why our Mitchell County's trail, the Wapsi- Great Western Line Trail, has

preserved the former rail bed as much as possible for a useful recreational and

healthy purpose and to serve as a conservation resource of wildlife and of original

prairie. The trail is a history of prairie and a history of past transportation put to a

useful purpose.

It is why the Trail Committee of volunteer Riceville citizens commissioned and

paid for an artist's sculpture along the trail at the Acme ghost town site to

represent the history of a train wreck in Section 9 of Afton Township. That

sculpture is a teaching tool.

How do you instruct children about the transportation of the past? To see how

difficult it was? How to appreciate what they now have? Can they even

comprehend a young man walking in the dead and cold of winter from New

Haven to Riceville to pick up a letter? How do you give them an understanding of

a world where getting goods and services was only by walking and horse?

How does a child accustomed to a supermarket with mounds of vegetables and

fruits grown in fields from the far corners of the world realize the treasure in their

hand ----when they pick up an orange?

The sculpture at Acme along the trail is called, "The Legend of the Oranges".

Two intersecting circles of steel abstractly represent the collision of two trains

who meet head-on in Section 9. Within the circles of steel is welded a steel

replica of a wooden orange crate filled with oranges. The train from the south

carried a load of oranges.

In those days it took time to clear those tracks. It meant days of time when those

oranges would spoil. The Railroad Company chose to disperse them to the

farmers of the area.

How glorious! How joyful for the farmers' families!

Can a contemporary child fathom the joy of that gift? Of a time when a child

might get one orange and only one orange at Christmas?

Hamlin Garland, Pulitzer winning author of Mitchell County, expressed it

this way when he was older, and wrote in December of 1911 in the Ladies Home

Journal: " ... I doubt if my children will ever know the keen pleasure (that is almost

pain) which came to my brother and me in those Christmas days when an orange

was not a breakfast fruit, but a casket of incense and spice, a message from the

sun lands of the South."

History teaches and gives us understanding. Someday in the Mitchell County

museum there might be a Royal typewriter that goes clickty clack. It will mean

something to me.

When I told my two granddaughters, Elena and Rosilyn, that today I was asked to

say something about why history is important, I asked them if they thought

history was important. 10 year old Rosie, without a beat, without a pause, said,

---6 words----- instead of Miss Griezer's 10 words---

She said, "History tells us who we are."------ The wisdom of a child.

Planning for the new Mitchell County Historical Museum has been underway for several months. The new museum, estimated to cost approximately $2.2 million dollars, will be located at the Cedar Valley Memories site west of Osage on Highway 9.

Plans include a steel-constructed Morton building that will encompass a 72’ by 81’ space located between the current Smolik building (on the north) and the office area (on the east). The formal entry will face west. The new space includes a large open exhibit area, office, cataloguing and research areas, as well as new restrooms.

With construction planned for the summer of 2024, substantial money will be needed as expenses arise. We are initiating a Capital Campaign to both provide funds for the immediate construction as well as ongoing expenses associated with operation of the facilities. We are also in the process of planning community events to raise funds, as well as apply for any available grant funding.

Can you be a part? The preservation, conservation and interpretation of our county’s artifacts and records deserve a place that is safe, secure and able to take a variety of donations. We believe that our vision for the current museum meets those needs and will take us well into the future. We also believe that our new location provides more opportunities for displays, events and educational programming.

Please consider being a member of our society, at whatever level of support you can provide.