By PVT. JOHN H. TOLIVER JEFFERSON, Iowa — It might have looked like the columnist Chuck Offenburger was marching with the “Schoolboy Soldiers of Rippey” in the Bell Tower Festival parade Saturday morning in this west central Iowa town. I guess I might look like him. But allow me to introduce myself. I am Pvt.…

By CHUCK OFFENBURGER RIPPEY, Iowa, May 25, 2026 — You can see and almost feel what the Memorial Day service was like in 27 photos that we share here today.  More than 200 people turned out to see and hear the story of the “Schoolboy Soldiers of Rippey” portrayed by Greene County High School students…

By CHUCK OFFENBURGER RIPPEY, Iowa, May 23, 2026 — After a year of research, hands-on learning and practice, Iowa history students at Greene County High School and members of the Greene County Historical Society on Monday, May 25, will launch a new public recognition of the Civil War service of the “Schoolboy Soldiers of Rippey,”…

By CHUCK OFFENBURGER RIPPEY, Iowa, May 16, 2026 — In recent years, when the color guard of this town’s Kinkead-Martin Post #583 of the American Legion has done its Memorial Day salute to the dead in the Old Rippey Cemetery, the Legionnaires and someone playing “Taps” on a trumpet would often be the only people…

By CHUCK OFFENBURGER RIPPEY, Iowa, April 4, 2026  — This is the third time I’ve started to write this column in the last six months. Hopefully it happens this time. The topic: What must have life been like around the pioneer town of Rippey back in 1860 and 1861, in that year before the Civil…