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)

Chancy J. Stevens Montour, Iowa Mayor

In 1927, the Des Moines Register profiled Chancy J. Stevens of Montour, Iowa, believed to be the oldest mayor in America at age 94. Stevens had served as mayor for 18 years.

He came to Iowa from New York as a young man and first settled in Indiantown, two miles north of Montour. He supported prohibition, equal rights for women, and the woodshed as a corrective measure for wayward youths.

(picture from the Des Moines Register. December 25, 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)

Santa Claus Delivering Toys

This image of Santa Claus and his sleigh appeared on the front page of the Des Moines Tribune, Christmas Day, 1925. (I colored and touched up the black and white artwork)

The Doo Dads Reach Candy Land

Does anyone else see the beginnings of Dr. Seuss in this image and story?

The Doo Dads reach Candy Land

The dudes had to leave the land of the long-legged Doo Dads without finding any reason for their long legs. They scrambled back into their machine and started in the quest of new adventures.

They were chattering away and laughing merrily when they began to wrinkle up their stubby noses, and altogether they said, “What is that I smell?

(Colored image from the Des Moines Tribune. February 25, 1922)

Iowa Congressman Oscar Heline The Man Who Refused to Shut Up

Oscar Heline erupted out of the farm crisis like a man done waiting for permission. He wasn’t polite. He wasn’t polished. He was the human bill collector for every bad policy and blind bureaucrat that helped wreck the countryside. He’d watched neighbors lose everything, and he wasn’t going quietly.

In the early 1930s, Iowa farmers were getting chewed to ribbons. Prices tanked. Land vanished. Entire communities folded like cheap card tables. The entire system felt wired for failure, and the people running it acted surprised every time it blew up.

Heline didn’t bother with committees or measured tones. He helped form the Farmers Holiday Association—a movement that felt less like a meeting and more like a pressure cooker ready to pop. They blocked roads, shut down markets, and stared down sheriffs and bankers with the dead-eyed resolve that makes a man rethink his job. Critics screamed “radical.” Heline shrugged. What else do you call trying to stay alive?

Washington started hearing the noise. Soon Heline was advising the Roosevelt administration, stomping through the halls like someone sent to collect a debt. He didn’t deal in jargon. He talked about farm auctions that felt like funerals and families smothered by bank notices. He pushed for anything—price supports, production cuts, whatever—if it kept farmers from being scraped off their land like roadkill.

Alice Finn Miss Popularity Winner 1927

Alice Finn of Des Moines, Iowa, won the 1927 popularity contest hosted by the Publix Theaters. She played several parts in the theater’s shows, and appeared on stage in, “In Dutch.”

Pencil drawing of an image published in the Des Moines Register on July 8, 1928,