A Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper
Last week we celebrated not only the Fourth of July but also the 35th anniversary of The Storm Lake Times.
Our first edition came out just before the Fourth in 1990, and featured the upcoming Star Spangled Spectacular as the lead story. Storm Lake native Bill Hopkins was the Grand Marshal of the parade that year. He was one of the U.S. State Department’s top Russian translators and worked with President Ronald Reagan during meetings with Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev negotiating the end of the Cold War.
The first issue also reported about two men who were rescued from the lake after their sailboat overturned. Life jackets were credited with averting tragedy.
Just a little over three years ago The Times bought our competitor, the Pilot-Tribune, and merged it into the bigger, better newspaper you are reading today. We’ve come a long way from our modest beginnings in July 1990.
WE’RE FINALLY seeing some road repair progress in and around Storm Lake. In three days last week Seneca Street, from St. Mary’s to Lakeshore Drive, was resurfaced with new asphalt in just three days. It was one of Storm Lake’s worst streets.
Also, highway 110 that runs 15 miles from Schaller to the west shore of Storm Lake was finally resurfaced and open to traffic again last week. We’re been crabbing about that cowpath for years. Now it’s smooth as silk.
Blacktop crews were also at work in Storm Lake early this week, resurfacing Shoreway Road and Northwestern Drive between Shoreway and West Fifth Street.
It’s good to see this street work finally getting done.
When I was a young reporter here in the 1970s, the city had an annual paving program that rehabilitated 20-30 blocks of streets every summer. After most of the streets were rehabilitated the city got away from that and our streets seem to have been forgotten. Asphalt life is about 25 years. Most Storm Lake streets haven’t been resurfaced in over 40 years. Infrastructure is like owning an old home — you have to keep on top of all the little things or before you know it you’ve accumulated a big expensive mess. That’s kind of where Storm Lake is now with our streets and water system.
OUR LITTLE BUNGALOW on Cayuga Street once again hosted family — mostly Tolans — from across the nation over the Fourth of July. We always look forward to this reunion of Mary’s family, which hails from Pocahontas, but over the years they’ve all moved away to faraway places with strange-sounding names. We had folks from California to Washington, D.C.
One of the highlights is a visit from our granddog Wrigley, Bridget and Branden’s mini golden doodle who thinks she’s a human. She received plenty of attention from all the people in our house.
The group headed back to the Princess City on Saturday where we visited the grave of Doc and Isabelle Tolan, whose headstone reads, “I’d Rather Be At Wrigley Field.” They were die-hard Chicago Cubs fans but they did not live long enough to see the North Siders win the World Series in 2016, ending a 108-year drought. Doc and Isabelle didn’t see it, but Bridget and Justin made the pilgrimage for them that year and witnessed history in one of the World Series games in Chicago. There’s a memorial brick for Doc Tolan in the sidewalk behind center field, next to Harry Caray’s statue. It reads, of course, “I’d Rather Be At Wrigley Field.”
When our son Justin — now 35 — was a little boy, whenever we went to visit Mary’s folks Justin had to see the statue of Pocahontas at the east side of town. He called her “The Angel with the Big Nose.” We made the visit with him again Saturday. Her nose is still big.
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