By CHUCK OFFENBURGER
JEFFERSON, Iowa, May 30, 2026 — Several days ago, I happened to be talking to Carter Petterson, who’d just graduated from Greene County High School here. He was telling me he will enroll this fall at Warburg College in Waverly, and so I asked him, “Have you had a chance yet to learn about Wartburg’s great tradition of ‘Outfly,’ as they call it?”
Sure have, he said. His immediate smile was assurance he indeed knows.
“Outfly” is a student-called “day-off” at Wartburg. It is a revered and respected tradition that one day a year — usually in the spring? — the student body president can summon the college president before breakfast and ask for an Outfly declaration. The college president, by tradition, declares it. Then everybody on campus — students, faculty and staff alike — spends the day outdoors, blowing off steam and having a whole lot of fun together.
“Well,” I told young Petterson, “I’ve long said that I’m ‘an Outfly kind of guy,’ and in fact, I was Grand Marshal of Outfly once years ago.”
I think that gave me new cred with him.
The logo of our state celebration this year.
I bring this up because the state of Iowa, indeed the whole nation, has an “Outfly” kind of opportunity happening this year, maybe right when we need it. It’s the “America 250” celebration, honoring the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Each state has its own version of it. Ours is “America 250 Iowa.”
Forget about whose initiative this might have originally been. Oh, give him credit for a decent idea. But then ignore that he has apparently now started up an almost rival celebration he’s calling “Freedom 250” and seems to want that version of it to be more political.
Let’s focus on “America 250 Iowa,” and make it work.
Gov. Kim Reynolds appointed Lt. Gov. Chris Cournoyer and Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig to be co-chairs of the task force planning the state celebration. I’ve appointed myself as watchdog against anybody trying to make our celebration too partisan, and if they do, I’ll bark.
Many of our annual Iowa events are putting a special emphasis on history and heritage this year. Many special events are being held, too. I urge you to attend, participate, have a ball and maybe learn something while you’re doing all that. You can get a schedule that’s being continuously updated by clicking on this link.
I’m into this, being “an Outfly kind of guy.”
Or call me “a ‘celebrations’ kind of guy.” I like ’em!
When I was growing up in the 1950s and ’60s, someone made me aware that Iowa had had a grand centennial celebration in 1946. I was impressed when I learned what that meant.
In 1971, my hometown of Shenandoah had its centennial celebration, actually naming it the “Shentennial.” I was thrilled, as a young reporter and photographer for The Evening Sentinel there, to write the lead story for the 100-page special edition we published. (I believe I was also chairperson of the “Shentennial Media Hog Calling Contest,” with our four local media outlets then each sponsoring a contestant.)
Five years later, the U.S. Bicentennial celebration confirmed my love of history, and I’ve been studying, reporting and celebrating it ever since.
In 1994, I went along and covered a group of World War II veterans from Iowa on a trip to Paris and the Normandy region of France, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the D-Day invasion.
And in 1995 and ’96, I got involved in a big way in the Iowa Sesquicentennial celebrating 150 years of statehood.
Actually, the Sesquicentennial started for me a couple years earlier, in early 1993, when Gov. Terry Branstad called me at the Des Moines Register. He told me that he and former Gov. Bob Ray, whom Branstad had persuaded to be chairperson of the Sesquicentennial, had just hired a young former Iowan, Scott Raecker, to come home from Colorado and become Iowa Sesquicentennial executive director. “Would you consider doing a column about Scott to kind of introduce him as he starts traveling around the state to set up Sesquicentennial events?” Branstad asked, and I did just that.
There are two especially memorable moments for me from that interview with Raecker, whom I liked immediately.
First, he told me he had “a secret agenda” for the trips he was planning around Iowa. Oh? I assured him he could tell me, and that I’d only tell a few people. “I want to find two things,” he said. “I want to find Iowa’s best-singing Rotary Club, and I also want to find the best chicken-fried steak in the state.” I concluded my column on Raecker by revealing his secret agenda, and that brought him invitations from all over Iowa.
The other memorable moment for me from that Raecker interview was when he asked me how long I’d been at the Register, and if I was intending to stay. “Twenty-one years here,” I said then. “And the truth is I’ve decided I want to stick around at least long enough that I get to cover the Sesquicentennial celebration. Anything after 1995 will be gravy.”
He kept my secret, and I stuck around at the paper until ’98.
Part of my fun during that celebration was helping organize, lead and cover the “Iowa 150 Bike Ride/ A Sesquicentennial Expedition” in 1995. There were 308 of us who rode our bicycles 5,048 miles, from Memorial Day to Labor Day, from Long Beach, California, to the steps of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. All along the way, we were inviting people to travel to Iowa in 1996 for the Sesquicentennial events. (One of our mottos on that bike trip was: “100 days, 5,000 miles, a million smiles!”)
Some might remember that a part of the Sesquicentennial was an “Iowa Folk Life Festival” celebrating our heritage and accomplishments, then accepting an invitation from the Smithsonian Institute to bring our show to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., as part of the Smithsonian’s own summertime folk life festival.
Gov. Branstad and I were both there on the National Mall, sitting in the shade of a tent and chatting with visitors, when another secret popped out.
“So, what do you want to do next at the Register?” he asked me in a quiet moment.
I told him what I’d told Raecker three years earlier, that my plan had been to stay at the paper so I could cover the Sesquicentennial, then probably move on to something else.
“Well, that’s interesting,” Branstad said. “I’ve never told anybody this, but the main reason I decided to run for a fourth term in 1994 is that I wanted to be governor during the Sesquicentennial.”
Turns out he’s “a ‘celebrations’ guy,” too.
One more memory from the Sesquicentennial, and it’s something we should all keep in mind this summer as we celebrate “America 250 Iowa.”
After we had the “Folk Life Festival” in Washington, D.C., in July of ’95, we brought it home and, that August, presented the whole thing again on the grounds of the Iowa State Capitol in Des Moines. One of the panel discussions we featured in both places was on the topic “Politics in Iowa.” There were just two panelists, who sat together in front of a live audience, discussed both the history and current issues of politics in our state, and then answered questions from the audience.
The two panelists were Steve Roberts, of Des Moines, then the state chairperson of the Iowa Republican Party, and C.J. Niles, of Carroll, then the state chairperson of the Iowa Democratic Party.
It was the most informative, interesting, fun and civil discussion of politics I’d heard — before or since. It can happen!
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You can comment on this column below or write the columnist directly by email at chuck@offenburger.com.
