The Annals of Volume 67, Numbers 2 & 3 Iowa Spring/Summer 2008 SPECIAL ISSUE: HISTORIANS REMEMBER IOWA A QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF HISTORY In This Issue FIVE HISTORIANS—H. Roger Grant, John D. Buenker, Rebecca Conard, George McJimsey, and Franklin D. Mitchell, all native Iowans except for one “Naturalized Iowan”—describe their experiences as Iowans and analyze how those experiences shaped their perspectives as historians. KATHLEEN M. SCOTT introduces the Iowa Polio Stories Oral History Project, a new collection housed at the State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City, that captures the voices of the people who were most affected by polio: polio survivors as well as physicians, pediatricians, and nurses. Their words reveal how they felt, how they coped, how their communities responded, and how they survived the anguish of the “dreaded” disease. PAMELA RINEY-KEHRBERG reviews three new books with comple- mentary portraits of family farming in Iowa and the Midwest in the early twentieth century. Front Cover Youngsters participate in a scrap metal drive in Hampton during World War II. In this issue, five historians reflect on how such experiences shaped their perspectives as historians. Editorial Consultants Rebecca Conard, Middle Tennessee State R. David Edmunds, University of Texas University at Dallas Kathleen Neils Conzen, University of H. Roger Grant, Clemson University Chicago William C. Pratt, University of Nebraska William Cronon, University of Wisconsin– at Omaha Madison Glenda Riley, Ball State University Robert R. Dykstra, State University of Malcolm J. Rohrbough, University of Iowa New York at Albany Dorothy Schwieder, Iowa State University The Annals of Third Series, Vol. 67, Nos. 2/3 Spring/Summer 2008 Iowa William B. Friedricks, guest editor Contents 131 An Albia Childhood H. Roger Grant 147 Growing Up Iowan—Sort of! John D. Buenker 165 P ublic History and the Odyssey of a Born-Again Native Rebecca Conard 181 Naturalized Iowan George McJimsey 196 An Out-Migrant’s Tale Frannklin D. Mitchell 212 The Iowa Polio Stories Oral History Project Kathleen M. Scott A QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF HISTORY FOUNDED IN 1863 Copyright 2008 by the State Historical Society of Iowa ISSN 0003-4827 Review Essay 219 DWIGHT HOOVER, A Good Day’s Work: An Iowa Farm in the Great Depression MILDRED ARMSTRONG KALISH, Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm during the Depression CARRIE A. MEYER, Days on the Family Farm: From the Golden Age through the Great Depression by Pamela Riney-Kehrberg Book Reviews and Notices 224 OWEN W. MUELDER, The Underground Railroad in Western Illinois, by Galin Berrier 226 VIRGIL W. DEAN, ED., John Brown to Bob Dole: Movers and Shakers in Kansas History, by John E. Miller 227 AUGUST SCHERNECKAU, Marching with the First Nebraska: A Civil War Diary, by Paul Fessler 228 DAVID DARY, True Tales of the Prairies and Plains, by J. Thomas Murphy 229 BERND C. PEYER, ED., American Indian Nonfiction: An Anthology of Writings, 1760s–1930s, by Lee Schweninger 230 LAURENCE M. HAUPTMAN AND L. GORDON MCLESTER III, EDS., The Oneida Indians in the Age of Allotment, 1860–1920, by Emily Greenwald 231 JOAN M. JENSEN, Calling This Place Home: Women on the Wisconsin Frontier, 1850– 1925, by Paula M. Nelson 233 WILLIAM B. FRIEDRICKS, Investing in Iowa: The Life and Times of F. M. Hubbell, by Eric J. Morser 235 LAWRENCE H. LARSEN, ET AL., Upstream Metropolis: An Urban Biography of Omaha and Council Bluffs, by Jon C. Teaford 238 MOHAMMAD A. CHAICHIAN, White Racism on the Western Urban Frontier: Dynamics of Race and Class in Dubuque, Iowa (1800–2000), by Kristin Anderson-Bricker 240 GREGORY SUMMERS, Consuming Nature: Environmentalism in the Fox River Valley, 1850–1950, by Terence Kehoe 241 PETER FEARON, Kansas in the Great Depression: Work Relief, the Dole, and Rehabili- tation, by J. Christopher Schnell 243 JAN OLIVE NASH, Iowa City Municipal Airport: Opening the West to Aviation, 1918–2007, by Janet R. Daly Bednarek 244 MARK DEWALT, Amish Education in the United States and Canada, by Frank Yoder 246 ABIGAIL FOERSTNER, James Van Allen: The First Eight Billion Miles, by Roger D. Launius 248 DOUGLAS REICHERT POWELL, Critical Regionalism: Connecting Politics and Culture in the American Landscape, by James R. Shortridge New on the Shelves Historians Remember Iowa: An Introduction BY GUEST EDITOR WILLIAM B. FRIEDRICKS I AM NOT A NATIVE IOWAN, so it might seem strange that I had a hand in this special issue, which considers the Iowa experience and its impact. Let me explain. I was born and raised in southern California and came to Iowa in 1988 when I joined the history department at Simpson College in Indianola. Serendipity, you might say, led me to Iowa history. Shortly after I started at Simpson, a college trustee suggested that I write a history of the Des Moines Register. I took up the recommendation and have been researching and writing on Iowa topics ever since. Those pursuits brought me into contact with Annals of Iowa editor Marvin Bergman, and in the fall of 2006, he invited me to serve as the guest editor for an upcom- ing issue of the Annals. Part of the job entailed developing a topic for the special issue. At the time, I was reading a number of memoirs, includ- ing Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Wait Til Next Year. In that book, Goodwin turned her critical skills as a historian on herself, re- counting her childhood in New York in the 1940s and 1950s. Rather than taking a nostalgic trip into her past, Goodwin en- twined her story with the many complexities of American life at mid-century. Goodwin’s memoir gave me an idea. Why not ask promi- nent historians with significant ties to Iowa to consider their own years in the state? After several discussions with Marv, we decided to do just that. We asked five historians—four are THE ANNALS OF IOWA 67 (Spring-Summer 2008). © The State Historical Society of Iowa, 2008. 129 130 THE ANNALS OF IOWA native Iowans, the fifth moved here as a child—to focus on themselves and analyze their experience in Iowa. We also wondered how their Iowa years might have shaped their per- spective as historians. Finally, instead of using the standard process of having submitted articles assessed by anonymous reviewers, we had our five contributors comment on their peers’ essays and then engage each other in their final drafts. The assignment was difficult on several levels, largely be- cause historians generally think and write about others, not themselves. Nonetheless, Roger Grant, John Buenker, Rebecca Conard, George McJimsey, and Frank Mitchell undertook the challenge. As you will see, they’ve written revealing, personal accounts of periods and places in Iowa, sometimes poignant, sometimes humorous, but always with the broader currents of American life and thought in mind. Their stories are at once similar and different; elements of a common Iowa culture emerge, but variations due to time, location, and gender are also evident. Taken together, these essays tell us much about what it means to be an Iowan. I found the essays stimulating and interesting. I hope you do as well. My thanks go to Marv for giving me this opportunity and to our five contributors who carried out the task with grace and aplomb. An Albia Childhood H. ROGER GRANT AT TIMES I have thought about how my childhood in Iowa has affected my life. Such reflections usually occur when I re- turn from out-of-state to visit family members and friends or to attend high school reunions or other functions. If I had been raised in Ohio or South Carolina, I might have had similar ex- periences, but not necessarily. A small-town midwestern up- bringing, in my mind, offered a special set of challenges and opportunities. I grew up in Albia, seat of Monroe County, located in the rolling landscape of southern Iowa. Shortly after the turn of the twentieth century, my paternal grandparents, Samuel “S. M.” and Rose Heimann Grant, arrived in town. Grandfather Grant, who two decades earlier had emigrated from the highlands of Scotland and later settled in Kansas City, Kansas, and had mar- ried my Berlin-born grandmother, saw Albia as a place of pos- sibilities. The family business became S. M. Grant & Company, a wholesale fruit and vegetable firm located in a two-story brick building on East Washington Avenue in the heart of what resi- dents called the “Farm Block.” After graduating from high school, my father, Harry, born in Olathe, Kansas, in 1900, joined the concern and helped to expand operations. H. Roger Grant, Kathryn and Calhoun Lemon Professor of History at Clemson University, received his B.A. degree from Simpson College in 1966 and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Missouri in 1967 and 1970. In 2003 his alma mater awarded him the Doctor of Humane Letters. A prolific railroad historian, he has recently completed his latest book project, Twilight Rails: Railroad Building in the Midwest, 1905–1930, forthcoming from the Uni- versity of Minnesota Press. THE ANNALS OF IOWA 67 (Spring-Summer 2008). © The State Historical Society of Iowa, 2008. 131 132 THE ANNALS OF IOWA My maternal grandfather, Henry “Hank” Dinsmore, came to Monroe County from Kirkville in neighboring Wapello County, where his father had been the beloved village physi- cian. Initially, though, he lived in Hiteman, a bustling coal- mining camp in Guilford Township northwest of Albia. There he met, courted, and in 1901 married my grandmother, Kath- erine Beerkle, a native of Creston. Her father, a German-born butcher, held the lucrative fresh meat concession awarded by the Wapello Coal Company, which dominated the Hiteman economy.