Iowa Life: Stories That Endure

♪♪ The Tjernagel family's story of survival begins in the 1850s when they emigrated from Norway and settled here on a place they called Follinglo Farm.

Over the decades, they built a life here, raising short-horn cattle, crops and generations of children.

On December 9, 1968, Peter and Marie Tjernagel and their family were just about to enjoy their evening meal, when tragedy struck.

♪♪ Sigrid Tjernagel Hanson: Mom had just come out from the bathroom into the kitchen and Mike was getting dad up.

Mike Tjernagel: Dad had rheumatoid arthritis and so I was getting him ready.

It sounded like a jet and I think I mentioned to him, boy that one is low.

Ingeborg Tjernagel Schey: Just this incredibly loud sound.

We had sonic booms over the farm, so we were kind of familiar with that.

But this just wouldn't stop, it wouldn't stop, it just kept getting louder and louder and then kaboom!

(explosion) Sigrid Tjernagel Hanson: Then I went over the table, landed at mom's feet and when I got up that whole wall was gone.

There wasn't a stove, an oven, anything.

And then the upstairs came down.

So, we started running.

♪♪ The explosion sent burning wreckage onto the farmhouse engulfing it in flames.

Miraculously, all seven family members who were home that night escaped.

♪♪ Sigrid Tjernagel Hanson: I kept turning around because I just couldn't believe, I just couldn't believe it, and it just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger and we were driving away from it, so it should have been getting smaller.

And it just blew my mind until we were on the way to Story City, I was convinced that it was the oven the blew up.

And Mary Ellen said, she just reached over and said, no, it was an airplane.

♪♪ 25 minutes earlier, an Iowa Air National Guard F-89 Scorpion left Des Moines.

The pilot was Captain John Rooks of Eldora and the radar operator was Lieutenant Larry Thomas of Ogden.

They were on a training mission with three other Iowa Air Guard planes.

Terry Greenfield: I worked in personnel full-time.

I saw the two guys.

They'd always come in together.

Night flying usually started around five or six o'clock and lasted for about 90 minutes.

The F-89J Scorpion, it was one of the first jets in the Air Force.

We called it the lead sled because it took the whole runway to get off the ground.

So, they were out doing a little bit of dogfighting type of thing.

The crew got kind of behind on the rest of the other two airplanes and the bigger plane they were protecting and they got kind of lost and they were up pretty high and they somehow became inverted.

And the yard lights looked like stars.

They didn't believe they were instruments.

They thought they could see where the sky was.

So, they were pulling back on the joystick to go higher, but they were actually going lower, and they were kicking in the afterburners to go faster to get more lift and they were actually going faster into the ground.

♪♪ Sigrid Tjernagel Hanson: I believe with all my heart that he tried to steer it as far from a populated area.

And I don't know if that's true or not.

Maybe he just couldn't do anything.

But in my mind, he did all that he humanly could.

Mike Tjernagel: And they basically should be heroes because they were training to defend this country.

♪♪ The loss was heavy for the pilot's families.

But somehow, the Tjernagel's escaped with only minor injuries.

♪♪ Ingeborg Tjernagel Schey: That was a big moment for all of us was like, yeah, it's all gone, everything.

Mike Tjernagel: That's a terrible thing when you finally realize the only thing you have is on your body and then not everything was mine.

Sigrid Tjernagel Hanson: By the next night, we were in a house, and that house had -- Mike Tjernagel: It was totally furnished.

Sigrid Tjernagel Hanson: -- beds.

Mike Tjernagel: Totally furnished.

Beds were made.

Everything -- the cupboards were full.

Sigrid Tjernagel Hanson: There were Kleenex boxes, there was toilet paper, there were toothbrushes, and this was before email and texting.

This is word of mouth.

Everybody did what they could, they came together.

Ingeborg Tjernagel Schey: And then the Christmas tree.

Sigrid Tjernagel Hanson: When we moved in that Tuesday night, there was this Christmas tree with the boxes of decorations underneath it so that we could decorate it.

They thought we would enjoy doing that.

Ingeborg Tjernagel Schey: That was so sweet, so thoughtful.

Sigrid Tjernagel Hanson: And that was very thoughtful.

♪♪ The support of the Story City community would fortify the Tjernagel family in the trying days to come.

Just a few weeks after the crash, Pete Tjernagel passed away, and the responsibility for rebuilding fell to Marie.

She would need to go to school, find a job, and begin what would turn into a four-year process of requesting compensation for the damages to their property, their farm equipment and the loss of the entire 1968 crop.

♪♪ Mike Tjernagel: The insurance company was willing to settle, but she was advised not to, let's see what the Air Force -- Ingeborg Tjernagel Schey: And then throughout all of this time, she has to list everything that was in the house that we lost, everything.

Sigrid Tjernagel Hanson: The purchase, when we purchased it, the purchase price, and the value.

State and federal government squabbled over who would take responsibility.

Marie Tjernagel: The frustration and the suspension and the, oh, you name it, it has been so hard not knowing.

You can't make plans.

You don't know if the money is coming.

You don't like to borrow because the interest rates are so high, when you don't have any idea when the money will be coming in.

Ingeborg Tjernagel Schey: So, she was kind of stuck between two great big bureaucracies and nobody was listening to her.

They were ignoring the plight of two families in Iowa.

Dean Borg: This is all that remains of the Clarence McCarville farm home east of Cresco.

An Air Force F-102 crashed into it this morning.

The incident at the Tjernagel farm was the second crash in Iowa that year.

Six months earlier, a Wisconsin Air National Guard plane went down near Cresco.

That pilot safely ejected.

But his plane destroyed the home of Clarence and Emma McCarville.

Years later, the McCarville's were still living in a chicken coop.

Numerous newspaper articles detailed the family's situation, drawing attention to the problem.

Senator Harold Hughes proposed legislation for the relief of the Tjernagel family.

The people of Story City came through again when a sociology class started a petition and collected 14,000 signatures.

And, when President Nixon came to Iowa to dedicate Lake Rathbun, Governor Bob Ray spoke to him about both families' claims.

David Oman: Ray, finally in a fit of pique, said I'm not going to take this anymore.

And as Commander in Chief of the Iowa Guard, signed a document that grounded the Guard.

They couldn't fly a plane, they couldn't fly a chopper, they couldn't move a truck, they couldn't drive a Jeep.

He just, you're done.

♪♪ Iowa Governor Robert Ray said he was fed up with all the delays, which he said was a bad case of government buck passing.

He ordered all methods of transportation of the state's Air and Army National Guard units grounded.

The order put nearly 1,700 vehicles out of business.

But the daring move worked, and less than 24 hours later the Air Force dropped their opposition to the claim.

Governor Robert Ray: It was drastic action and I intended it to be because if that's what it takes to get the federal government to realize they have a responsibility to people in this country, then I was willing to do that.

Afterall, they're there to protect our people, not destroy them.

♪♪ Sigrid Tjernagel Hanson: This isn't just the Tjernagel story, this is a Story City story.

Mike Tjernagel: That's true.

Ingeborg Tjernagel Schey: It's an Iowa story.

It's a small-town story.

It's a story of hope -- Sigrid Tjernagel Hanson: It's a story of a woman who never wanted to tell that story.

The story inspired Sigrid's daughter Jenn and her husband Marcus to produce a podcast chronicling the tragedy.

It's called Follinglo.

Jenn Hanson-dePaula: I had known of the story my whole life but I didn't know the details.

And so, just getting to hear these perspectives and the individual stories, it just brought up a whole new level of respect for my mom, my aunt, my grandmother, everyone.

Ingeborg Tjernagel Schey: The worst can happen, but it doesn't have to ruin your life forever.

Sigrid Tjernagel Hanson: We were all placed exactly where we needed to be.

And the worst didn't happen to us.

The worst happened to the pilot's family and the navigator's family.

We didn't lose a brother, a husband, a father.

♪♪

Kevin Mason is many things.

He's a professor at Waldorf University in Forest City.

He has a Ph.D. in rural and environmental history.

He's a researcher and writer.

A blogger, a documentarian, a camera operator, outdoor enthusiast, and to the core, an Iowan.

Today, he has taken his research to Walnut Wood State Park in West Des Moines.

He's in the middle of a project to document the development and history of all 83 state parks in Iowa.

This is part of a bigger research project for me on public lands where I go through Documenting all of the state parks in Iowa may sound like an ambitious task, but it's nothing new for Kevin.

In 2021, he made his way from Montrose to mini walk on a total of 371 miles all by foot.

I have a better idea of what I'm trying to work on.

Where last summer, it's like, I don't know.

I had no idea what I was doing.

So what compelled this history professor to take his research for a hike.

So the idea for the walk across Iowa started actually during the Iowa State Fair in a garage on the north side of Des Moines, the rural neighborhood at my sister's house where I was talking with her partner, who's a high school social studies teacher, and he because he got to read this book, Albert Lee wrote this journal in 1835 with this military expedition called The Dragoons that went across Iowa.

We should do it.

And it became kind of this running joke.

There's a lot of things like this tend to be.

But in my training as an environmental historian, one of the things stuck out in my mind was that I was changed more than perhaps any place on earth.

98% of Iowa's land surface changed from 1835 through the conversion of agriculture until now.

What if I went and tried to retrace the route of the 1835 Dragoons, which in doing so created this incredible source base that gives us a snapshot of what Iowa looks like in 1835.

At the moment before Americanization and the conversion to agriculture begins.

And so I just decided to go for it.

Hello, Kevin here with notes on Iowa.

And today I'm going to talk to you a little bit about day four of my walk across.

Big things that stood out to me, the series, The Importance of the River was really driven water.

It had been a very hot previous eight days as I made my way from Prairie City For 21 days, Kevin set out along the Des Moines River to retrace the historic route.

Rain, heat and country roads all turned into unique challenges, all while trying to record his observations.

Captured video, fly a drone and log and document the route.

There was a part of this that was about me proving to myself that I could do it and that this was a thing that I was going to be committed to seeing all the way through, no matter what that might look like.

So I made it.

I had a crazy idea.

I started.

After his journey, Kevin found a new appreciation for the changes which define the past, present and future of Iowa, and that appreciation continues to expand.

It's selfish to say, like, it's kind of doing this for me, and then it really became about other people.

A lot of the time.

I remember as done by Eddie Ville on this gravel road, and I just walked up this giant hill, and it was kind of the point where, like all right, I'm just out here walking.

And this guy stopped.

We ended up having this conversation and he kind of turned to me after we're talking.

And yes, I've lived here my whole life and I've never thought about any of those things, but I'm going to go check out the Buxton location where that coal mining town used to be, because you told me it was just over here and opening those doors.

And that's a real conversation in real time.

But opening kind of that up, that's been one of the parts of this that's been something I didn't really expect at all.

People really care about the places they're from and the history that's close to them.

It forces me to really be careful in my research, be respectful of people's viewpoints, people's experiences.

And so it forces me to constantly be keeping in mind that it's not just some abstract thing I'm talking about, that the past is real and it influences the moment we're in and that people remember these things.

And that's where I think like Notes is actually going is I know I want to just keep pushing myself to learn new things, to better understand this place, and then to communicate that to other people.

That could look like a lot of different things in the future.

And I'm sure it will if I'm lucky enough.

If you grew up in a small town in the mid-to-late 1900s, chances are you probably bought candy or school supplies from a Ben Franklin store.

♪♪ With its signature red and white storefronts, the shops were once a staple of Main Street America.

The stores were famous for having a wide variety of merchandise.

Shoppers could purchase fabric, kitchen utensils, toys, stationary, and everything in between.

Named after Founding Father Benjamin Franklin, the company used his likeness in reference to his thrifty nature.

The first iteration of the chain was created in the late 1800s as a mail-order company called Butler Brothers.

By the 1920s, Butler Brothers had rebranded into Ben Franklin.

♪♪ The company operated under a franchise system where stores were independently owned.

At one point in the 1970s, there were an estimated 2,500 stores nationwide and more than 100 in Iowa.

♪♪ As larger craft stores and big box chains began to dominate America's retail landscape, many Ben Franklin stores found it difficult to compete and closed.

♪♪ The Ben Franklin Company eventually went bankrupt in 1996.

But a handful of stores managed to stay open for many years by operating independently from the parent company.

Yet, one by one, the remaining Ben Franklin's across the country continued to shut their doors, often times due to the owners retiring.

By 2023, there was only one Ben Franklin store left standing in Iowa.

♪♪ (doorbell rings) We're starting to get in our summer items, so our seeds and everything are coming in, and some of the decor items.

♪♪ Northwest Iowa natives Lori and Phil Warnke have owned the Ben Franklin in Sheldon since 1991.

The Warnke's are from Northwest Iowa and moved to the central part of the state for various jobs before coming back to Sheldon to take over the store they grew up going to.

Lori Warnke: I used to come here every Saturday with my mom and siblings and do our Saturday shopping and candy and school clothes and notebooks and pencils.

Yep, we grew up here.

Phil Warnke: We had four boys in our family so we didn't do a lot of shopping, it just wasn't worth the torment for our mother to put her through it.

But we came here and bought candy whenever we could.

We bought all our school supplies.

This part of the stores is the domestics and towels and blankets, sheets, those types of things.

The fabric department is the entire back corner.

And then the craft department runs all along here with beads, cross-stitch.

♪♪ We are not the type of store like a pharmacy or a grocery store where you have to buy food or you have to pick up medicines.

We're the type of store that sells things that are fun to buy, that they are hobbies or games or activities or things that you do for fun rather than things that you're required to have.

So, when you come in a store like ours there's a lot of surprises, where when you go into a chain store it's pretty predictable what you're going to get.

Games are all here, models kind of come through here.

♪♪ The competitive advantage of Ben Franklin stores is the ability to tailor merchandise to what the community wants.

And now, more than ever before, the store stocks a heavy dose of nostalgia.

♪♪ Lori Warnke: We might be something vintage, they see the Ben Franklin, they remember their childhood, they stop in, they visit with us, we've gotten letters, we've gotten old memorabilia from people.

♪♪ Lori Warnke: This was a buying guide for new store owners.

It's kind of a fun little book someone found when they were cleaning out.

Some other little cars that someone brought to us.

They were cleaning out grandpa's house and they thought that we would enjoy them.

♪♪ Hi there.

Hi there.

Are you finding everything?

I need a shower curtain, or a shower cap.

Do we have such things anymore?

Right over here.

All right!

You're going to be in style.

All right, not a Gigi shower cap -- Phil Warnke: It's really fun to watch especially the older people.

They get out of their cars and their faces light up and they're excited to come in and a lot of them take out their phones and take pictures and coming in our store reminds them of the store that they grew up with, that they got their first piece of candy with their allowances, they got their school supplies, all of those kind of things.

The younger people drive up and say, what's this?

What's a Ben Franklin?

But the people that are in their 40s or older, they grew up with Ben Franklins as a part of their community.

♪♪ It's worth mentioning that many five and dime stores that were once Ben Franklins continue to thrive, just not under the original name.

So, why do the Warnke's keep the Ben Franklin branding?

Phil Warnke: It's familiar to customers and it's been here for almost 100 years now.

It's pretty hard for us to change it.

And even if we did change it, it still would remain the old Ben Franklin store.

So, it's just a little bit of nostalgia for us too to keep that name as long as we can.

Cathy, please call the front.

Cathy, call the front.

♪♪ Phil Warnke: We wake up every morning and we're anxious to come to work and this has been a way of life for us for 33 years and we still find excitement in coming to work and meeting our customers and being a part of the store.

♪♪

♪♪ [Ary Bermeo] The Maintenance Shop, also known as the M-Shop, is located on Iowa State's campus in the Memorial Union in the basement area.

It's a small concert venue.

It's pretty great.

♪♪ [Ary Bermeo] Knowing that there's been legends in this room, I do get goosebumps thinking about it.

♪♪ [Ary Bermeo] But yeah, just the environment in here whenever there's a show is completely electric.

♪♪ [Allison Talyat] This year we're celebrating the 50th anniversary of the M Shop.

It's kind of crazy to think about as a 21-year-old.

[Jim Brockpahler] The programming comes from Student Union Board, or SUB as we call them.

They're the ones that are booking the entertainment, working with those entertainers, doing the promotion and the marketing.

I'm the one staff member involved, otherwise it really is a student-run space.

♪♪ [Allison Talyat] The M Shop is significant to me since it was one of the main draws that brought me to Iowa State.

Now that I've been working in the M Shop, I've met some people who have got me connected and helped support me with exploring concert photography.

So, I take photos at most of our shows when I'm able to.

I'm hoping to continue in concert photography once I graduate.

♪♪ [Ary Bermeo] Having Robin and Linda Williams back here in the M Shop is huge, especially for this year.

They have been performing at the M Shop since the year it opened.

So, it's great to even meet them.

I'm 21 years old, M Shop was born before I was.

It's pretty cool to see the genuine history in person.

♪♪ [Robin and Linda Williams] We're here at this point in our lives where we can take the gigs we want.

We don't go out on the road and beat ourselves to death like we used to.

We get to come to places like the Maintenance Shop because we want to.

♪♪ [Robin and Linda Williams] The Maintenance Shop has been a real big part of our lives.

[Robin and Linda Williams] It's always like coming back home in a way.

It's just always a great place.

[Alex Brown] Back at the beginning of the year we had a rededication of the space and during that I was working the bar.

And so, I like to say that I was the last bartender of the first 50 years and the first bartender of the next 50.

And I like to bring that up a lot because I think it's fun.

♪♪ [Alex Brown] Whenever I'm working here it's a leadership opportunity.

It's working with people and getting better communication skills while still having fun.

[Alex Brown] So, the performing arts director and the Student Union Board helps to organize Grandma Mojo's improv comedy, open mic nights.

Those are opposite weeks from each other.

And then three times a semester we bring in a professional comedian.

Grandma Mojo's is made up entirely of students that audition to get in.

They hold auditions every year.

And so, it's always kind of a revolving door of funny people.

And it's one of the funniest things you can see on campus.

(laughter) ♪♪ [Jim Brockpahler] 50 years ago in 1974 this was the mechanical department or our maintenance shop at the time.

The students championed to turn this into a live music performing venue.

And history was born.

[Allison Talyat] So, the stained glass is really significant.

The students were looking for something to bring to the venue and there was an auction at a local church.

And originally it was in one piece, but they tried putting it on stage and obviously it was too tall to fit.

So, they split the arched part of it and the rectangle part of it and that way both are still present in the venue.

♪♪ [Jim Brockpahler] Going into the 80s when IPTV, when Iowa PBS was here doing the blues series and the jazz series and these amazing artists that have all played in front of that same stained glass and it was broadcast to the nation thanks to IPTV, Iowa PBS for putting the M Shop on the map, so to say.

(applause) ♪♪ [Dan Rice] I was the actual first full-time manager of the Maintenance Shop in 1980.

When I started it was already very famous worldwide because of the public television show, the Jazz at the Maintenance Shop.

So, we didn't have to go out and get a lot of people.

They all wanted to play here.

They wanted to see it.

They wanted to be a part of what we had here because they could see it on TV.

♪♪ [Dan Rice] When Iowa Public Television, now Iowa PBS, when they came and did the blues show it put us on the map in terms of Iowa, nationally, internationally.

♪♪ [Dan Rice] John Lee Hooker, Hooker was probably my favorite show in the whole time I was here.

It was done on a hot June night.

♪♪ ♪♪ [Dan Rice] Albert King was interesting.

If you watch that show he had a broken finger, big old white bandage.

It was kind of wild.

♪♪ [Jim Brockpahler] That history of the M Shop, the history Iowa State has and kind of what it means to all the students involved from 1974 to now is amazing.

♪♪ [Alex Brown] It's a huge source of pride.

You get to help carry on something that you know is so iconic.

And to say there's all these eras of people doing this before me.

And it's nice to know that I've earned my place here in the M Shop, that I've made a difference.

It's fun to get to keep it alive.

♪♪ [Ary Bermeo] I hope that what we're doing now is good work so that we can continue it on in the future.

And maybe, who knows, 75, 100 years later we've still got the M Shop.

I think that it's something that can be kept alive if protected.

♪♪ Thank you!