By CHUCK OFFENBURGER SHENANDOAH, Iowa, March 23, 2022 — In the 150 years of public education in this southwest Iowa community, our beloved alma mater Shenandoah High School has graduated a whole lot of very high achievers.  There’ve been great farmers, very successful business professionals, physicians, engineers, professors & teachers, clergy, All-American athletes, opera singers,…

By CHUCK OFFENBURGER CARTERSVILLE, Ga., March 14, 2022 — Oh what a brunch today in this town northwest of Atlanta! I think it was my first Waffle House stop in about a decade. (We don’t have many, if any, back home in Iowa, do we?) I chanced to be served by supreme saleswoman Betty Reagan,…

By CHUCK OFFENBURGER JEFFERSON, Iowa, Feb. 4, 2022 — In an extraordinary and long life of 104 years, Alice Hamilton Walters, of Jefferson, had already become a legend.  She’d donated generously to several public fundraising campaigns over the past 20 years.  And for a half-century or longer, she’d been a leading community volunteer, especially with…

By CHUCK OFFENBURGER JEFFERSON,  Iowa, Feb. 4, 2022 — With the news that in her will, the late Alice Hamilton Walters, of Jefferson, left an estate of more than $2 million – and that nearly half of it is being given to the people of Greene County through a couple of foundations – everyone is…

By CHUCK OFFENBURGER SHENANDOAH, Iowa, Dec. 21, 2021 – This evening here in my ol’ hometown, our longest-serving mayor, Dick Hunt, probably one of our best ever, will swear-in his successor, Roger McQueen. What makes this especially noteworthy is that Hunt is also one of our grandest characters. I now interrupt this salute to once…