A Commitment to Place

Some years ago, I was invited to speak to a service organization in Storm Lake, Iowa.  Prior to the engagement, I stopped into the local newspaper, The Storm Lake Times, to do an interview.  I was interviewed by a young journalist named Tom, whom I later learned is the son of Pulitzer Prize editor, Art Cullen. 

Tom was excited about where he lived and what he did for a vocation, and he was proud of having attended a high school that is easily the most diverse in the state of Iowa.  “What did you like about your experience?  Why was it important to you?  What would you have changed?” 

In other words, I found myself interviewing him.  Tom’s story fascinates me because it is a narrative that is antithetical to that of many of the young people who depart small town Iowa for opportunities elsewhere.  He is young, educated, and extremely capable and, yet, he chooses to commit to, in the words of Garrison Keillor, that place that “time forgot.”

Iowans have never been very good about self-promotion. For example, I had to move away from the state of my birth to learn about Herbert Hoover and Norman Borlaug.  Many of you probably know of Hoover as being the one-term President that was ousted by Franklin Roosevelt.  What is less known is that Hoover’s most important accomplishment was having lead relief efforts for feeding over a billion people, first, in Belgium and, then, after the War, in Central and Eastern Europe. 

Another Iowan, Norman Borlaug, father of what became known as the Green Revolution, saved over a billion people from starvation in Mexico, Pakistan and India through his innovation of a new semi-dwarf, high-yield, disease and drought-resistant variety of wheat.  So it’s not at all surprising to me that I had to visit a bookstore in Pennsylvania to learn of Iowa’s most recently under-publicized native son, editor of the The Storm Lake Times, Art Cullen.

We Iowans tend not to draw unnecessary attention to ourselves, though Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from a Heartland Newspaper certainly deserves all of the attention that we can give it.

Art Cullen is a dying breed.  He is a small town newspaper editor who actually writes his own editorials.  He is as obnoxious as he is fearless; introspective, insightful, wrong, passionate, off-the-mark, and prescient.  He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the effects of agricultural runoff on Iowa’s rivers, lakes, and streams.  But Storm Lake is much more than the subject upon which the Pulitzer Prize was awarded.  It’s a wonderful biography of rural America.  It’s beauty.  Its challenges.  Its triumphs.  It’s people.  It’s diversity.  And its message to America.

During a professionally restless period, years ago, I heard a sermon where the preacher challenged the congregation to “bloom where they were planted.”  I don’t know why, for sure, but for some reason, I heard that expression in a way like I had never before heard it.  Bloom.  Invest.  Situate.  Commit…to where you are or, as in Cullen’s case, to the people, place, challenges, and opportunity that is Storm Lake, Iowa. 

That commitment translated into founding a newspaper that is published twice per week so that the community can be informed.  That commitment translated into welcoming immigrants from different parts of the world who spoke unfamiliar languages, and practiced customs different than Germans and Norwegians from a century ago.  That commitment translated into becoming an advocate for those in need of a friend, and a critic of those too far removed from the day-to-day challenges of working in meat-processing plants or trying to teach mathematics to a classroom full of children whose first language is not English.  Good editors make good friends and powerful enemies and, every once in a while, they’re acknowledged for blooming where they are planted.

I am pretty certain that Art Cullen and I are about as opposite as opposites can be on the political spectrum.  In today’s political economy, that contrast should obviously separate us in some pretty important ways.  That’s not the case for me, though.  I find myself wanting to get to know Art Cullen.  I respect his tenacity, and I admire what some will refer to as his irrational commitment to place; particularly to a place that time forgot.

Storm Lake is both a biography and a road map.  And it is one important example of why some places thrive in the exodus otherwise known as rural America.