Booby Driscoll: Iowa's Forgotten Child Star

Bobby Driscoll

He was supposed to live forever.

That was the point of Peter Pan, wasn’t it? The boy who never grew up. The one who could fly, laugh at danger, and still make it home for bedtime. For a while, Bobby Driscoll every bit of him, from the crooked grin to the sparkle in his eyes.

 

He got his start a long way from Neverland: Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 1937. His father sold insulation. His mother kept the house. Ordinary stuff. Then the family moved west, chasing clean air and a little luck. A barber thought the kid had “it” and sent him to a Hollywood agent. That’s how it worked back then. One minute you’re getting your hair cut, the next you’re under contract at Disney Studios.

 

He was nine years old when Walt Disney signed him—the first child actor the studio owned outright. “A fine, sincere boy,” Disney said. Bobby called Walt “Uncle Walt.”

 

Then came the hits. Song of the South. So Dear to My Heart. Treasure Island. Critics called him “a natural.” One said he carried the film “with warmth and genuine feeling.” By thirteen, he had a miniature Oscar, and his face was as familiar as Mickey’s ears.

Rise and Fall of Rock Island Gangster John Looney

John Looney

John Looney ran Rock Island like a man conducting an orchestra of crooks, cops, and terrified politicians who couldn’t tell whether to bribe him, arrest him, or beg for a job. He wasn’t one to hide in the shadows—he built his pulpit and screamed into the microphone. In 1912, the Rock Island Argus said, “Mr. Looney has taken leave of his senses,” but they were wrong. He hadn’t lost them. He’d sold them to the highest bidder.

He was born in 1865 or 1866, the son of Irish immigrants who believed America rewarded hard work. It didn’t. It rewarded nerve, and Looney had a surplus of that. He studied law, passed the bar, and by 1889 was prowling the Rock Island courthouse in a cheap suit that somehow made him look dangerous. People remembered the eyes—too bright, too still. You could tell he was thinking of angles, leverage, a thousand and one ways to make a buck.

The newspapers described him as “ambitious and fearless,” which was code for ruthless. He practiced law for a while, but law was just another racket. He wanted something bigger, something that could make or break reputations. So he created the Rock Island News, a scandal sheet dressed up as journalism. It was a blackmail factory disguised as a printing press. For a fee, your name stayed out of the paper. Refuse, and the next morning your sins were spread across the front page. “The people of this city are being held hostage by a madman with a printing press,” the Argus wrote, and they weren’t wrong.

Trading One Hell For Another St. Elizabeth's Hospital Fire Davenport

Firefighters responded at just after 2 a.m.

January 7, 1950, began quietly at Mercy Hospital’s St. Elizabeth’s psychiatric ward in Davenport, Iowa. One nurse was away in Des Moines, leaving Anna Neal in charge of nearly seventy patients. Another aide, Josephine O’Toole, was off duty and asleep upstairs.

Shortly after 2 a.m., Nurse Ellen Hildebrand spotted flames rising from St. Elizabeth’s and alerted her supervisor. Within minutes, smoke filled the halls.

Hospital worker Murray Francis, fifty-seven, saw the fire from the main building. He kicked in the door, carried patients to safety, and then helped firefighters man a hose. Merchant police officer Bill Stagen arrived as crews battled to break through barred windows. He saw women clinging to the iron bars, screaming for help, then disappearing into the smoke.

Patrolman Richard Fee was the first police officer on the scene. Flames poured from the upper windows. Firefighters doused him with water before he climbed into a bucket, ax in hand. Breaking through a window, he found six women huddled together “like bewildered animals.” He pulled them out, describing the bitter cold outside as “trading one hell for another.”

Mother Place Mitchelville Iowa Baby Farmer

A young woman handing her baby over to Mother Place

Back in 1895, Mother Place was just Mrs. Martha Place, a widow who looked exactly like every widow looked in rural Iowa—gray dress, gray bun, gray outlook on life. She lived on a little patch of land near Mitchellville, and kept to herself, which everyone said was respectable until it suddenly wasn’t.

Her business was simple, if you didn’t think too hard about it. Women from Des Moines or nearby towns would arrive, holding bundles they didn’t want to hold anymore. They’d hand them to Mrs. Place—and she’d take them in exchange for a few crumpled bills and the promise they’d be “well cared for.” Nobody used words like “adoption” or “surrender.” It was more like handing over a problem that couldn’t be fixed.

To the neighbors, it all looked perfectly ordinary. They’d see her hanging laundry, waving from her porch, or tending her garden. Maybe a baby’s cry drifted through the open window now and then, but it wasn’t anything you asked about. In 1895, if someone said they were running a “baby farm,” that was just what it was called. Nobody stopped to ask why it sounded so terrible.

Who's Haunting the Hotel Julien in Dubuque Iowa

Hotel Julien (circa 1930)

There’s something strange going on at the Hotel Julien in Dubuque, Iowa. It doesn’t look haunted at first glance, but if you spend the night—look out—because you just might meet Public Enemy No. 1.

Locals say it’s haunted by the ghost of Al Capone. He rolled into town in the 1920s, and took over the entire eighth floor. His men spread out like killer bees, patrolling the hallways, their jackets bulging where guns hid.

Some say he owned the place, or had a stake in it. The hotel had been struggling for years. Then overnight, it was transformed into the finest joint in town. Suspicions, yes—but people understood, curiosity could buy you a case of lead poisoning.

Then, as quickly as he came, Al Capone disappeared—back to Chicago, and a fast-growing empire of booze, women, and bullets. But something stayed behind.

Murder of the Huber Brothers in Carroll County Iowa

The sheriff gave it one more look before removing the bodies

There’s something foul in the soil of Carroll County. You can feel it even now — that twitch behind the eyes of the people who still talk about “the Huber boys.” Two brothers, Henry and John, farmers, hard cases by every account. Dead in their own kitchen in 1874 — skulls split like kindling, blood on the stove door, an axe standing proud in the corner like it had just finished its shift.

 No robbery. No fire. Just two men beaten to a pulp on a weekday morning, and a county that couldn’t decide whether to pray or sharpen its knives.

 

The papers called it “the Carroll County Horror.” What they meant was: somebody ended a family with a tool meant for chopping wood. The sheriff rode out with one deputy, two cigars, and no idea what he was walking into. The neighbors had already turned the place into a sideshow—poking at footprints, whispering about money, jealousy, the usual frontier rot.

They Caught Him With His Pants Falling Down

Whynak Johann

Every murder story starts with a question. This one has three: Where does love end? Where does insanity begin? And why do they always live in a rented room above someone named Bessie?

 In 1910, Whynak Johann married Marie in Vienna, Austria. He was built like a bull—five-nine, 190 pounds, all muscle. She was tiny, ninety-five pounds soaking wet, with a face that said, I could survive anything except this marriage.

 

Two weeks in, he marched off with the Austrian Army. Marie got sick and went home to her parents. When Whynak returned, she was living with her ex-boyfriend, Franzl Hervieu. Most people would take the hint. Whynak didn’t.

 

In 1913, moved to Davenport, Iowa, and got a job at Kohl’s Packing Company, making $2.50 a day turning animals into dinner. He sent for Marie. To his shock—she came.

 

They rented a two-room apartment at 1226½ Harrison Street for a dollar a month from Bessie Estess. Marie took in boarders; Whynack brought home paychecks. Love in the immigrant slums—cheap beer, sausage smells, and dreams of not freezing to death.

 

Then Franzl showed up. Again.

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.

Burlington County Poor House

It stood like a castle or medieval fortress on the edge of town, except no one went there willingly.

The Burlington county poorhouse served as Des Moines County’s refuge for the poor, sick, and elderly. Locals called it the “county home” or “poor farm.” Every county had one back then.

It was a working farm where residents, if able, helped raise crops, tend animals, and kept the place running. The steward and matron lived on-site, managing the chores and caring for dozens of “inmates,” as census records coldly described them.

County funds kept the operation going, with a doctor visiting regularly and local officials inspecting the grounds. Life there was simple and sometimes harsh, but it offered shelter to those with nowhere else to go.

A small cemetery nearby held the graves of those who died without family. Like other poorhouses across Iowa, Burlington’s stood as both a symbol of compassion and a reminder of hard times.

Goodrich Hotel Council Bluffs Iowa

The Goodrich Hotel stood at 8th and Broadway in Council Bluffs, built by local businessman Walter S. Goodrich. For years, it was one of the city’s best places to stay—solid, respectable, and busy with travelers coming off the trains.

A fire in March 1922 lit up the downtown skyline. Firefighters saved the building, though the damage left scars that never fully healed. The hotel reopened but never quite regained its old polish.

By the 1970s, the Goodrich had shifted from hotel to low-rent apartments. The building was sold in the early 1980s, and talk of demolition followed, possibly to make way for a parking lot.

Hanging of William Barger Jackson County Iowa

William Barger was hung in June 1857 by a group known as the Iron Hill Vigilance Committee. Barger had killed his wife in 1854 at Bellevue in Jackson County, Iowa. He had accused her of infidelity. She sued for divorce. At the time of her murder, Mrs. Barger lived with a relative in Bellevue. Barger bored a hole in a fence near the house. Then he waited for her to open the door. When she did, he shot her dead.  

He pleaded insanity and was tried for murder twice. The first jury was hung, and the second found him guilty. After that, Barger’s lawyer didn’t think his client could get a fair trial in Bellevue, so he got a change of venue to De Witt in Clinton County for his third trial.  

The Tipton Advertiser justified the hanging, saying, “That the law was sluggish is evidenced in the time Barger has been suffered to lay in the jail at the expense of the county, even when it was judged and positively known that he was guilty.” In effect, they said, if the law doesn’t do it, the people will.

Wartburg College Clinton Iowa

Wartburg College (circa 1900)

Wartburg College was built by German immigrants who thought knowledge should serve both God and common sense. They weren’t wrong. In 1894 they planted their red-brick fortress on a hill in Clinton, Iowa — a solid slab of faith and discipline staring down the Mississippi like it owned the view.

It wasn’t fancy. It was tough. Classrooms, chapel, dorms, dining hall, library — all jammed into one building like the world’s most righteous machine. It smelled of chalk dust, coal smoke, and boiled potatoes. The professors ran a tight ship. Latin for the mind. Math for the soul. Theology to keep you honest. They preached that the world might hold together if everyone just studied a little harder.

The students learned, prayed, shoveled snow until their fingers cracked. They lived by the bell and the book. The streetcar clanged up from downtown, packed with frozen kids in heavy coats. They studied Scripture, philosophy, bookkeeping — whatever would keep them from going under.

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.

Downtown Clinton Iowa (circa 1930)

 

Downtown Clinton, Iowa. (Circa 1930s, pencil drawing after a vintage postcard)

John Looney Rock Island Gangster

John Looney and Lawrence Pedigo
outside of his Rock Island home

Homegrown Rock Island gangster John Looney might have lived in Illinois, but his influence extended into the underworld in Western Illinois and Eastern Iowa. This is a drawing of Looney and Lawrence Pedigo outside the Looney Mansion at 1635 20th  Street in Rock Island, Illinois.