maly, too: These Kids Sure Know How To Throw a Party

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

These Kids Sure Know How To Throw a Party

Roosevelt's ''54 graduates had their cake and ate it, too, at their 60-year reunion

By RON MALY

Cedar Rapids, IA --Members of the 1954 Roosevelt High School graduating class are in their late 70s now, but they proved again over the weekend that they still know how to throw a heck of a party.

Actually, it was a three-day party--Friday night, all day and night Saturday, plus a Sunday morning finale--throughout most of the west side and some of the southeast side of Cedar Rapids that was put on by the '54 Roughriders to celebrate their 60-year reunion.

Roosevelt's 1954 graduating class numbered 164 students. Sixty was a significant number in July, 2014. Sixty class members and their spouses and friends attended the reunion. And 60 members of the class have already departed for the big classroom in the sky.

Casual was the uniform of the weekend as a bunch of fun-loving folks gathered to re-live the old days and talk about their kids, grandkids and great-grandkids at the all-you-cared-to-eat pizza bash Friday night in the Parlor City Restaurant on Third Street Southeast, on the 2-hour bus trip Saturday afternoon through the northwest, southwest and southeast sections of the city, at the buffet dinner Saturday night on the second level of the Cedar Rapids History Center on First Avenue, and the buffet breakfast at a Hy-Vee on Sunday.

Cedar Rapids has done a wonderful job of revitalizing itself following the horrible flood of 2008, and it was a pleasure for me--a native of the city and a 1953 graduate of Wilson, the other public high school on the west side at that point in time--to see and hear about the progress that's been made.

Cedar Rapids had four public high schools when Maxine and I were kids. The east side schools were McKinley and Franklin, and the buildings are still intact and are being used for elementary and middle school classes.

Maxine got better grades in the classroom at Roosevelt than I got at Wilson. I know she worked a lot harder on the books than I did.

And....

There's a photo [a favorite of mine] in the 1954 Roosevelt Roundup yearbook showing homecoming queen Judy Thomas and attendants Daisy Burgess, Beverly Clarke, Maxine Koehn, Kathy Miller, Carolee Williams and Louise Ahlgren riding in a convertible at halftime of the Roughriders' most important football game of the season in Kingston Stadium.

It made me the proudest and happiest guy in the world when Maxine Koehn became Maxine Maly on May 4, 1958 at Trinity Lutheran Church in Cedar Rapids.

Roosevelt's 1954 graduating class has had tremendous leadership since the 164 seniors left school.

Rae Jean Guthrie Kilberger and the other eight members of her reunion committee haven't missed a beat.

For a while, Roosevelt's '54 class held reunions every 10 years. No they're held every 5 years. Indeed, the next reunion has already been scheduled. It'll be held in the second week of July, 2019. It says so in the book containing biographic material and as-they-look-now photos of the graduates that was handed out Saturday night to class members.

We hadn't been to a Roosevelt reunion since the 20-year event was held in 1974, so it was a pleasure for me to see Maxine recognize friends from high school she hadn't seen or talked with in 40 years.

I wanted to talk with Dave Wessel, a '54 Roosevelt grad who played basketball at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, then coached some outstanding high school teams in Davenport.

Wessel and his wife, '54 Roosevelt grad Kathy Miller, got there for the Saturday night banquet. Dave told me he's still coaching basketball at Rivermont Collegiate in Bettendorf

Remind me sometime to tell you more about Dave and Kathy.

Remind me, too, to tell you about Dave and Sandy Snyder of Deland, Fla. Sandy wrote that she and Dave "were planning to be at the reunion, but his death in August, 2013 changed that."

Remind me to tell you about Janet Rosdail Schambacher of Newhall and Joanne Hays Hennessey of Marion, who were among Maxine's good friends at Roosevelt, and spent lots of time catching up with old times during the weekend.

Remind me to tell you more about the Saturday night banquet, when Mary Ann Kucera [originally from Davenport] asked if the two seats next to me at the table were reserved.

"I saved them for you," I told her.

She asked if I was a Roosevelt graduate, and I told her I was a Wilson kid.

"Wilson is a great school. It was the newest school in the old four-school system in Cedar Rapids," Mary Ann told me. "It was built in 1928."

"How do you know so much about Wilson," I asked her.

"Because I was a member of the Cedar Rapids School Board for 23 years," she answered.

Mary Ann was there because her husband, Howard Kucera, was a '54 Roosevelt graduate.

Fellow 1953 Wilson graduate John Tessman was at all of the activities with his wife, 1954 Roosevelt graduate Jean.

The Tessmans are in the process of moving from Iowa to Lenexa, KS. Also present was Richard Morningstar, a 1954 Wilson graduate whose wife is the former Judy Thomas.

It was fun for me to touch base with both couples, and to talk with the two guys about their years at Wilson.

But the weekend wasn't about Wilson.

It was about Roosevelt, and the 1954 Roughriders did things up in their usual bigtime way.

JOLTIN' JOE GOT IT STARTED

When Ron Maly was a kid in Cedar Rapids, he wanted to enter an essay contest, and he did. He wrote about Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees being his favorite baseball player. For finishing second in the contest, Ron won a Louisville Slugger baseball bat autographed by DiMaggio. Ron later wanted to be the first person in his family to attend college, and he was. He earned a degree in political science from the University of Iowa, and did what all political science majors do. He became a sportswriter. He had, after all, covered high school football, basketball and baseball games for the Cedar Rapids Gazette while he worked parttime during his university days. Ron wanted to sit in the press box and write about an Iowa-Minnesota football game, and he did. It happened while he was the sports editor at the Albert Lea [Minn.] Tribune, and the game was at Memorial Stadium in Minneapolis. Ron wanted to cover a World Series, and he did. Also when he was working for the Albert Lea newspaper. Ron wanted to cover Rose Bowls, Sugar Bowls, Orange Bowls, Cotton Bowls, Holiday Bowls, a Freedom Bowl, a Sun Bowl, a Super Bowl and NCAA basketball tournaments, and he did those things after he moved to Des Moines. Ron was a four-time sportswriter of the Year in the state of Iowa [the years were 1977, 1978, 1994 and 1996]. In 2006, he was named a charter member of the University of Iowa's media Wall of Fame in the Kinnick Stadium press box. A photo of the plaque that's displayed in the press box is displayed above this story. Following Ron's retirement from the newspaper business, a publisher asked him if he wanted to write a book about the rich football tradition at the University of Iowa, and he did. The hardback version of "Tales from the Iowa Sidelines" was a best-seller, and so was the revised, softback version. Now he's been asked by his publisher to update the book for a second time. He's in the process of doing that at the present time. Ron considers being asked to update a best-selling book for the second time to be the supreme compliment, considering the Hawkeyes won just four games in the 2012 season. When Ron isn't working on books, he's busy traveling and spending time with his family. Indeed, he attends the athletic, theatrical and musical [both vocal and instrumental] events in which his six grandchildren participate. He also writes about anything that interests him for his many websites. Every chance he gets, Ron proudly wears his America Needs Farmers T-shirt.

The Hawkeyes' Rich Football Tradition, Revisited

I mentioned a while back that I was in the process of updating my Tales from the Iowa Sidelines book. Updating it for the second time. The original hardback edition of Tales from the Iowa Sidelines [pictured at the right] was published in 2003, during the 10-3 season, when coach Kirk Ferentz and his Iowa football team had a 10-3 record that included a 37-17 victory over 15th-ranked Florida in the Outback Bowl and after the Hawkeyes went 11-2 in 2002. That book was a best-seller, so the publishers came to me again in 2005, a season that finished with a breathtaking 30-25 victory over No. 11 Louisiana State in the Capital One Bowl on New Year's Day, 2005. Because buyers had cleaned out the the shelves in the bookstores, the publishers wanted to know if I'd do an updated version of the book. I agreed, The revised, soft-cover edition [pictured at the left] was published in 2005. Warren Holloway, who teamed with quarterback Drew Tate on a miraculous 56-yard touchdown pass to win the Capital One Bowl, was featured on the cover. That book, too, turned into a best-seller, So I had reason to feel very good about my years as a published author. It's not every day that a the original version is a best-seller, and so is the updated version. Then, imagine my surprise when I received an e-mail from a senior editor at the publishing company last fall, wanting wanted to know if I was interested in doing a second updated version of the book. It came at a time when things weren't going well for the Hawkeyes in the 2012 season. They lost their last six games and finished with a 4-8 record. Frankly, the thought of doing a revised edition of the book during a 4-8 season seemed to be a stretch. "Maybe producing a revised edition in a year or two would be a better idea," I told the publishers. "We'd like to do it now," I was told. "Let me think about it," I said. After a few days of thought, I accepted the idea. I talked myself into the idea that this was the supreme compliment--being asked to do a second book update during a 4-8 season showed strong confidence by the publishers in me and in the Hawkeyes' football program. So I got back into the business of interviewing players and coaches again, going to postgame press conferences, weekly press conferences and a scrimmage in West Des Moines. After a press conference in Iowa City, I did a one-on-one interview with coach Kirk Ferentz, and mentioned to him that I was in the process of doing a revised edition of my two best-selling books. I congratulated him on the excellent things he had done for Iowa's football program--all of which contributed to the success of my books. "I think Coach Fry had more to do with it," he told me, bringing up the name of Hayden Fry, his one-time boss at Iowa and a man who brought Iowa's football program back from the dead in the 20th century. That's modest Kirk Ferentz for you. Even though the 2012 season wasn't something Hawkeye coaches, players and fans will recall with any special feeling, Ferentz has a 14-year record of 100-74 at Iowa that includes two 11-victory seasons [2002 smd 2009], two 10-victory seasons [2003 and 2004], plus he's been the Big Ten coach of year in 2002, 2004 and 2009, and national coach of the year in 2002. Indeed, Ferentz has done some wonderful things at Iowa City, and I fully expect his success to continue. I've concluded my writing for the second update of Tales from the Iowa Sidelines, and the senior editor has furnished me with an early look at the book. Not only are the Kirk Ferentz years included in the updated version, but so is the stuff I previously wrote about Howard Jones, Dr. Eddie Anderson, Heisman Trophy winner Nile Kinnick and the 1939 Hawkeye Ironmen, Ronald Reagan, Ozzie Simmons, Ossie Solem, Randy Duncan, Alex Karras and lots of other legends from Iowa's rich football history. I expect the book to be in stores soon. I hope you like it.