Polk County Juvenile Home 1927

The Des Moines Register printed this picture of the Polk County Juvenile Home on March 15, 1927. The home was located at Hull Avenue and East Sixteenth Street in Des Moines.

Lewis Worthington Smith Drake University Poet

Lewis Worthington Smith was an English professor at Drake University from 1906 to 1940. He believed writing mattered. Style wasn’t decoration. Ideas should stand up to pressure.

He belonged to the Poetry Society of America and the Authors’ Club of London, alongside writers who shaped modern literature. Locally, he was active in Des Moines intellectual circles like the University Club and the Prairie Club. That mix—Midwest roots with international reach—defined him. He was proof that you didn’t have to live on the coasts to think seriously about culture.

 

Smith wrote eighteen books, ranging from criticism to broader reflections on language and civilization. Ships in the Port used metaphor and reflection to explore stillness, waiting, and transition. The Mechanism of English Style broke writing to its moving parts, treating prose like a machine that had to work cleanly and efficiently. The Skyline in English Literature examined how writers used cities, horizons, and modern landscapes to express ambition, anxiety, and change.

 

He didn’t chase trends. He asked how English actually worked—and what it revealed about the people using it.

No Justice For Evelyn Lee

Evelyn Lee

Nine-year-old Evelyn Lee was playing near her Des Moines home on Saturday afternoon, May 10, 1930, when she disappeared in the woods along Four Mile Creek. 

Two days later, E.M. Wessels stumbled upon Evelyn’s battered body while digging up shrubs in the same woods, just south of the Youngstown Bridge on Scott Street. Investigators quickly determined she had been choked to death by a left-handed attacker. Footprints found at the scene matched Evelyn’s shoes, and showed her attacker might have been a man with a crippled right foot. 

Detectives wasted no time in narrowing their search to two suspects—Carl McCune, 34, and Elmer Gibson, 35—scrappers who had been spotted driving a beat-up 1926 Ford roadster loaded with barrels and scavenged items. Witnesses recalled seeing the pair in South Des Moines that Saturday, drinking heavily and behaving erratically. 

The manhunt ended on May 15 when police apprehended McCune and Gibson at McCune’s mother’s house in Des Moines.

Evelyn’s parents were devastated. Her stepmother learned of Evelyn’s death when Agnes Arney, a reporter for the Des Moines Register, showed up at her door.

He said He Was Going To Kill me And My Baby

Katherine and Paul Eberle

Paul Eberle was crazy. No one questioned that.

His chauffeur, Harry Schultz, heard Eberle tell his wife, “I don’t see why I don’t kill you, Katherine.”

Schultz watched Paul Eberle threaten the lives of his wife and child again and again. Once, he saw Eberle on the edge of killing himself. Another time, he said, “I’m going down in the basement to cut my arteries.”

Schultz and Katherine followed Eberle downstairs and watched him sit in a chair next to the furnace with a razor blade pressed to his wrist.

Eberle had many strange obsessions and addictions. He was a cigarette fiend, buying them in boxes by the tens of thousands. He drank coffee constantly and used drugs. His moods swung so fast, you never knew how he’d act.

Others noticed it too. John McDonnell said Eberle acted like a man with a permanent chip on his shoulder, ready to do battle at any time.

Dance Troupe of Miss Elizabeth Werblosky

Miss Elizabeth Werblosky

Miss Elizabeth Werblosky brought her ballet troupe to the stage of the President Theater in Des Moines on June 1, 1930, for a full evening dance recital that aimed to show just how many directions the art form could go.

The program featured thirty-three numbers, each one designed to illustrate a different phase of dance. Werblosky shaped the show from top to bottom, conceiving all but five of the pieces herself.

One of the evening’s most striking moments came in “Death and the Maiden,” with Julius Goldensen appearing as Death, wearing a mask that gave the number its eerie edge. The mask was designed by Clara Jane Goddard of Drake University, adding a strong visual punch to a performance built around movement, mood, and storytelling. (colorized pictures from the Des Moines Register. May 25, 1930)

Dancers (from left to right) Dorothy Abramson, Margaret
Ann Chambers, and Jean Schneider

The Bat, The Bite, And The Midwestern Freak Show

January 1982. The Blizzard of Ozz plays Veterans Memorial Auditorium, and for a few chaotic seconds, Des Moines became the center of the American freak show.

Ozzy Osbourne is onstage. Lights slicing through smoke; guitars loud enough to rearrange your organs. The crowd is packed in tight. Denim and teenage adrenaline fill the auditorium.

Then something comes flying onto the stage. Small. Dark. Flopping wings.

A bat.

Depending on who you ask, it was a rubber toy or the real deal—a dead bat someone had brought like a twisted party favor. Either way, it lands near Ozzy’s boots, and that’s when reality shifted.

Ozzy picks it up. And bites it. The crowd watches, unsure how to react. They aren’t horrified. Just stunned. Like their brains need a second to catch up and decide—is it part of the show or some new-fangled Ozzy Voodoo ritual?

Then it hits. Screams. Cheers. Confused people, unsure how to react.

Afterward, Ozzy said he thought it was rubber. Maybe, but— There’s something unsettling about it. Grabbing something off the ground and biting it.

 The moment lives on, one of those stories that’s too ridiculous to die. Forty years later, the legend persists. And the question—reality or sideshow.

The Joye Sisters Betty Ballard and Bobby Jean Lewis

Betty Ballard and Bobby Jean Lewis, better known as the Joye Sisters, were a Des Moines singing duo in the 1920s and 1930s. They headed to Mexico in May 1928, but were forced to turn back after a series of unfortunate events.

While in El Paso, they saw two Negroes lynched for attacking two white girls. That “horrible sight,” said Miss Ballard, “seemed to forecast the nightmare” of events.

They were detained in Juarez, then sent home because of the Revolution. They told reporters, “The queer taste of the Mexican food and a rumor that the revolutionists were poisoning all the food made them refrain from eating anything.”

No matter, the girls didn’t intend to let a bit of bad luck discourage them. They planned to return to Mexico in a few months after things cooled down.

Blood on the Beat: Remembering Des Moines Policeman Ollie Thomas

Policeman Ollie Thomas

Nobody agrees on the number, but the official count says seven. Seven shots cracked through the humid August night like the city itself had snapped.

August 21, 1925, near Fourth and Grand.

Some poor bastard heard the first few go off and thought it was just a car backfiring. Then two shots boomed louder than the rest, the kind that don’t lie about what they are. Gunfire always has a signature. Anyone who’s heard it knows when the lie ends.

Moments later, a bareheaded man came flying out of an alley and tore east down Grand Avenue like hell had suddenly remembered his address. The witness said the build looked right. The speed looked right. The panic looked right. Bootlegger energy, all of it.

By the time the echoes finished bouncing off brick and glass, Patrolman Ollie Thomas lay dead.

They found him crumpled at the bottom of a stairway landing, soaked in his own blood. Two bullets did the job. One through the abdomen. One through the head. Both traveling downward. That detail stuck with the detectives like a splinter in the brain.

Will Higgie Dances the Charleston Atop the Des Moines Register & Tribune Building

(from the Des Moines Register.
 August 26, 1925)

In August 1925, Des Moines got a rooftop performance no one forgot. Will Higgie—one of the original creators of the Charleston—strutted onto the roof of the Des Moines Register and Tribune building alongside his partner, Dorothy Ryan, and turned the city skyline into a dance floor. Below them, crowds looked up as the pair showed off the fast-kicking, rule-breaking dance that was sweeping the nation.

Later, Higgie let everyone in on a little secret. That famous “naughty wiggle” everyone loved? It wasn’t part of the original dance at all. It didn’t show up until after the Charleston was already loose in the world—proving that even America’s wildest dance craze was still evolving, one rooftop at a time.

Basements Barns and Bad Amplifiers: Iowa's Garage Rock Years

Des Moines in the mid-60s was supposed to be quiet. Flat. Corn-fed. God-fearing. That illusion died the first time a kid turned a cheap Silvertone amp all the way up in a basement and realized the walls could shake like a riot. The Midwest learned how to sweat that night. The garage bands came crawling out of rec rooms, Legion halls, gymnasiums, and half-finished basements all across Iowa like insects drawn to voltage.

The air smelled like beer, Brylcreem, overheated transformers, and teenage panic. Nobody knew they were building a scene. Scenes were for cities with music writers and better lies. These kids just knew the songs had to be fast, loud, and lethal. The parents were upstairs. The cops were somewhere else. The floor shook anyway.

Iowa didn’t have Sunset Strip clubs or Detroit ballrooms. It had VFW halls with bad carpet. Catholic school gyms with folding chairs. Roller rinks that smelled like rubber, popcorn, and spilled Coca-Cola. Stages made from plywood and rusty nails. The sound systems were a crime. The volume was the point.

YWCA Doll Farewell Party 1927

In January 1927, the Y.W.CA. hosted a farewell party for a group of dolls they were sending to Japan for the National Doll Festival there. The Des Moines Register explained the dolls were being sent to promote friendship with Japan.

Picture: (front row) Patricia Merrill, Naoma James, Mildred Williams, Ruth Partch, Ann Merrill, and Keith Merrill, Jr. (Standing) Bo Mahler, Babe Bartolomei, Mary Alice Mallum, Doris Stewart, Margaret Findley, Pauline Kauffman, Louis Orf, Myrtle Thompson, and Nicolina Bartholomer.

(from the Des Moines Register. January 9, 1927)

Salvation Army Food Distribution Des Moines 1921

The Salvation Army fed several hundred Des Moines families on Christmas Day, 1921. Brigadier William Andrews, his wife, and staff distributed dinner baskets, containing a chicken, potatoes, coffee, sugar, corn, and various fruits.

The picture shows Brigadier William Andrews and his wife, giving a dinner basket to an elderly couple.

(from The Des Moines Register. December 25, 1921)

Mason Motor Car Company Des Moines Iowa

Mason Motor Co. ad, 1906

The first thing you need to know about the Mason Motor Car Company is that it never should have worked. Not in Des Moines, not in 1906, not in a state where most people still trusted a good horse over any contraption that hissed, rattled, and tried to kill you on a dirt road. Yet for a few bright, reckless years, two brothers with machine oil on their hands and speed on their minds tried to drag Iowa—kicking, screaming, and occasionally bleeding—into the automobile age.

Fred and August Duesenberg weren’t normal. They looked at a peaceful bicycle and thought, What if this thing went 60 miles an hour and tried to shake its rider’s fillings out? The Des Moines Daily News called them “the sort of young men who consider mechanical noise to be a form of conversation.” They were tinkerers, racers, mechanics, engineers—whatever you want to call them—but above all, they were hungry. Hungry for speed, recognition, and the clean snapping sound an engine makes when it finds its rhythm and behaves. So when Des Moines attorney Edward Mason threw some money at them and said, “Make a car,” they didn’t hesitate. They built the Mason, a small, explosive two-cylinder machine that rattled windows, terrified horses, and made its owners feel like they were cheating death—or at least borrowing trouble from it.

 

Hopkins Bros. Baseball Team Des Moines

 

Hopkins Bros. Baseball Team

Top of letter: “Smoke” Madigan, Thomas, Bowman, Parsons, Honska.
Bottom of letter: Franklin, Evans, Fahey (manager).
Left side: Crandall, Mendenhall.
Right side: Wilkinson (captain), Wasson.

(Des Moines Register. June 17, 1906.

Thomas Mayberry Hero of the Kirkwood Hotel Fire

The Kirkwood Hotel at the turn of the century

There were roughly 150 people in the Kirkwood Hotel in Des Moines when it caught fire early on April 5, 1929. Six people died in the inferno. A dozen more were hospitalized. Several jumped from fourth-floor windows trying to escape. They didn’t make it.

 

A night clerk told investigators he put out a small fire in a linen closet at 2:15 a.m. Forty-five minutes later, the fire was back. When he tried to reach it, the smoke stopped him.

 

Porter Thomas Mayberry turned in the alarm around 3 a.m. “I went back to wake people up,” he said. “Women and men were screaming and moaning, and the smoke was terrible.”

Des Moines High School Music Train 1927

On May 5, 1927, over 250 high school musicians climbed aboard a special train in Des Moines, their instruments packed tight and their nerves running high. They were headed for Iowa City on a rare out-of-town adventure that promised music, competition, and the excitement only a long train ride with friends can bring.

The group was a lively mix—the North High band and orchestra, the East High boys’ glee club, and the Valley Junction Orchestra, among others—all gathered together for the big trip. For many of them, it was their first time traveling with a full musical ensemble, and the train cars buzzed with rehearsed melodies, last-minute tuning, and the hope that their performance might just be the one people remembered.

Picture: Des Moines Tribune. May 6, 1927.

Samaritan Mission in Des Moines Iowa

Bread & soup line at Samaritan Mission in Des Moines

The line outside the Samaritan Mission on East 5th Street often began forming before the sun was up. Men, women, and children waited quietly for a bowl of soup and a piece of bread. Major Leroy Howver, who ran the mission at 308 E. 5th, promised they would keep feeding people all winter if that’s what it took. And by the look of the crowds, it was going to take a lot.

That first day told the entire story. Some people were so hungry they didn’t take time to carry their soup home—they ate it right there in the mission. Others brought whatever they could find to hold enough food to share with their families: big kettles, dented buckets, even old lard pails. One elderly woman arrived with two tiny tin cups. She filled them, and sat down, too tired and hungry to wait. A young child in ragged clothes carried a kettle almost as big as himself.

The Samaritan Mission was undenominational and survived entirely on donations. In a winter when so many had nothing, the mission gave out more than soup. It offered a place where people could stand together, warm up, and remember they weren’t forgotten. On good days, the mission had food, clothes, and coal it could send home with needy families.

Picture and storyline from the Des Moines Register. December 21, 1924.

How Santa Claus Came to Des Moines in 1923

Santa Claus on his way to the Younker 
Brother store, with acting mayor,
Mrs. C. H. Morris

Santa blew into Des Moines on November 17, 1923, long before anyone expected him. Kids weren’t ready. Parents weren’t ready. Even the weather wasn’t ready. Yet there he was, swooping in like Christmas couldn’t wait another minute.

By sunrise, thousands of children were already downtown, crowding the sidewalks and pressing their noses to the toy-land windows of the big stores. One reporter joked the shelves held enough toys “to fill the bags of 10,000 Saint Nicks,” and judging by the wide-eyed faces in the crowds, most kids believed that was true.

 

The Des Moines Tribune swore that “never in the history of Des Moines has Christmas spirit gotten off to an earlier start than this year,” and they weren’t kidding. There was a Christmas parade, free taxi rides, and chocolate teddy bears—real chocolate teddy bears—dropping out of the sky.

 

Santa made his grand entrance a little after nine o’clock at the Harris-Emery store. He didn’t sneak down a chimney or clomp in with reindeer hooves. He went big. He flew over Des Moines in a high-powered airplane, circling the city like a jolly red barnstormer. Kids pointed at the sky. Mothers shaded their eyes. Fathers muttered things like, “Good grief, he’s actually doing it.”

A Short History of the Savery House Des Moines Iowa

 

Savery House (circa 1930s)

The Savery has been part of Des Moines since the 1870s, when the first Savery House opened downtown. It was a gas-lit affair where businessmen in stovepipe hats struck deals and ladies in bustled skirts watched from behind their fans. James C. Savery built it with his wife Annie, a suffragist and reformer.

The early Savery burned down, was rebuilt, and burned again—twice. Each time, Des Moines rebuilt it. Every city needs a place where strangers cross paths and stories linger, and the Savery refused to vanish.

In 1919, the current Savery rose eleven stories on Locust Street, a mix of brick and limestone. The Chicago firm H.L. Stevens & Co. gave it Georgian lines and symmetry that suggested order in a world still recovering from war. Each of its 233 rooms had a private bath, which was a small miracle at the time.

Harry Truman and Eleanor Roosevelt stayed there. Carol Channing demanded a window she could open before agreeing to spend the night. In the 1980s, Tiny Tim made the Savery his home, strolling the halls in his trademark tuxedo, humming to himself.

Highland Park College Des Moines Iowa

Highland Park College (circa 1906)

Highland Park College in Des Moines was basically Hogwarts for sensible Midwesterners who didn’t have time for wizard nonsense.

Students rode the streetcar up from downtown. They studied — literature, science, bookkeeping — basically all the things your great-grandparents did before Wi-Fi and television. The professors were serious types who believed learning could save civilization, which seems unlikely in retrospect.

The college didn’t last. It got taken over by Des Moines University, and later Drake University. But for a few good years, Highland Park College was buzzing — full of earnest kids and big ideas and maybe a couple of disastrous romances that still haunt Des Moines.