I had the pleasure of meeting with Mr. Krull when he was named Citizen of the Year. He was a fine gentleman.
A Rome City resident since the summer of 1930, a long-time Lions Club member, an active church member and a family-oriented man, Gerhard Krull is being honored for his years of dedication to his community. As Citizen of the Year, he will serve as Grand Marshal of Chautauqua Days in August.

He worked for over four decades at one place – Kneipp Springs – and he has been retired for 27 years now. Well . . . retired just means he no longer has a formal job. Trim and fit at 92, he is a gentleman who bridges both the old and new worlds – literally and figuratively.

He was born in Germany, got his secondary education there, and then came to the United States in 1930 as a very young adult. In his career as farm manager at Kneipp Springs, he was always alert to new developments in agriculture, taking a course in veterinary science in Chicago and working with professors at Purdue University.

One of his projects has been to compile a scrapbook of his life, here and in Germany. One day, it occurred to him that he had one scrapbook, but six kids. So he had copies made and the man who did the work looked at him when he came to pick them up and said, “Mr. Krull, you sure had an interesting life.”

Gerhard Krull laughs as he tells the story, eyes twinkling. His memories come easily from him for he is a friendly, candid man, recalling humorous incidents – such as first meeting his wife, Eileen, while delivering sweet potatoes – with ready laughter . . . and later telling of his wife’s smile shortly before her passing with a catch in his throat.

He says, “We had 57 wonderful years together . . . and that smile is always with me.” Continue reading Gerhard Krull: 1909-2008 →

Yes, my brother-in-law is employed by the University of Iowa and lives in North Liberty and he is flooded out of work, but not out of home. I would ask him to be my flood correspondent but I fear the report would have to read beep* bleep* bleep* bleep* bleep* bleep* bleep* bleep* bleep*ing and so forth.

In the last big flood – the one of ’93 – my father-in-law, who lived in Illinois but worked in Keokuk, Iowa could only reach his office by riding a “dug out of mothballs” trolley across the top of the dam, climbing down one ladder to the bottom of the lock and climbing up another to get out on the other side.

Ah, and the summer my husband flew off to report for duty in Guam, his dad had to take him to a little tiny airport to get a tiny plane to take him to an airport with bigger planes. If I remember correctly, we would go down to the water-caressed bridge that crossed from Iowa into Missouri and murmur “ah . . . . oooh”.

I’m at odds with myself today, so guess I’ll see if I can even out.

Here’s a forgotten garage on Sylvan Lake in Rome City. It’s a dammed lake, created as a feeder for a now defunct canal. One year the embankment showed weakness and the water level had to be lowered; it stayed that way for a couple of years.

Say, look, there’s a chimney . . . and maybe a story there. A chimney on a garage?  Maybe it doubled as a getaway.