Iowa State Cyclones Cross Country Running Team 1922

 

Iowa State Cyclones Cross Country Running Team 1922. 

(left to right): Brown, Rathbun, Holcomb, McIntyre, Coach Art Smith, Hollowell, and Seaton.

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.”

Quaker Oats Baseball Team Cedar Rapids 1929

Quaker Oats baseball team champions of the M and J league.

Top row (left to right): S. Dale, manager, W. Heck, J. Bunting, M. Koch, Ed O’Connell, C. Prabel, G. Cronkite, and T. Hardiman.

Bottom row (left to right): F. Kerres, H. Gallagher, E. Bishop, H. Michaels, G. Garden, and E. Smith.

Cocker, the team mascot, in foreground.

Picture: Cedar Rapids Gazette. September 8, 1929.

Clara L. Brandt Muscatine Iowa Philanthropist

Clara L. Brandt grew up in the wooded country outside Muscatine. She and her sister Emma spent their childhood exploring those rock formations along Pine Creek, so when people started chipping at the stone and hauling off souvenirs, Clara took it personally. She bought the land to keep it safe.

She kept things simple. She hired a watchman, fixed what vandals damaged, and let scientists explore the ravines. She wasn’t trying to build a park; she was just doing what made sense to her.

When Iowa set up its Conservation Commission, she and Emma donated the land—first the main 67 acres, then the family homestead beside it.

Those donations became the core of Wildcat Den State Park. The cliffs, the quiet trails, the cool shadowed canyons—they’re still there because she paid attention when most people didn’t think places like that needed saving.

Her generosity didn’t end with the land. In her will, she supported her church at New Era, helped Moline Lutheran Hospital, and provided for people she cared about. She used the income from her Chicago property to keep those gifts going.

Clara Brandt died in 1930.

The Man Who Kept the Army Talking: Charles McKinley Saltzman

Charles McKinley Saltzman was born in Panora, Iowa, in 1871—skinny, serious, and wired like a man who already heard radio static no one else could pick up. He graduated from West Point just in time to catch the Spanish–American War, where the Army still fought like it was 1864. Saltzman rode with the 1st Cavalry, and earned two Silver Stars for keeping his head while everything around him smoked and rattled. Officers said he had “the calm of a telegraph pole in a lightning storm.”

While other men were polishing sabers, Saltzman was climbing poles in the Philippines, stringing wire across mountains and jungles, keeping messages alive in places where nothing stayed alive for long. A Manila paper said he “could coax a signal through a brick wall and across a typhoon.” He took the compliment and kept working.

In 1912, he was in London, sitting among diplomats and radio wizards at the International Radiotelegraph Convention. The world was trying to agree on how to talk through the air without stepping on each other’s transmissions, and Saltzman showed up like the one man in the room who actually understood how the equipment worked. One observer said he “handled radio law the way a pianist handles a keyboard—precise, patient, and deadly.”

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.

Christmas Celebration at Southside Community Center 1927

A Christmas party at the Southside Community Center in Des Moines brought together a small team of “elves” who helped Santa hand out presents and candy to neighborhood children. The helpers—Mary Forte, Victoria Vito, Mary Pasinelli, Marjorie Cardamon, and Mary Rand—lined up beside Santa, played by Olphonus Bisignaro, as families came through the center for the holiday event.

The moment was captured in the Des Moines Tribune on December 27, 1927.