- Covid had closed in on us, and we were ready to burst out. My good friend Ellen Belle and I moved forward to reach out to her north-central Iowa contacts in Kossuth County to answer this question. She grew up on her family’s farm there, much like the one I grew up on in northeast Kansas. We were looking for a young leader willing to try working with us on something important that could begin to help rebalance the out-of-balance effects of national politics there.
This imbalance glowed at both of us from the television maps of the 2016 and 2018 national elections. Blue urban islands like Denver and Des Moines lay scattered in a national sea of red rural counties. We had begun to hear stories of uncivil behaviors pushing for rigid political uniformity back in our home counties, threats to the political diversity we grew up with when our county party leaders held each other reasonably accountable but with basic respect.
Many of you reading this grew up on similar farms and in similar small towns spread across our continent. Our rural kids were shaped by the varied main street business people, farm families, teachers, and leaders in our schools, churches, and volunteer organizations. Their memorable personalities surrounded our childhoods and youth with familiar faces. They or their successors continue to recognize and delight in us when we’re back home to visit our friends and relatives. Are you, like us, still in close contact with friends and family in your home county? Those soul-deep bonds reach across the miles of farmland between our homes back then and the city ones we’ve chosen now.
The off-balance behaviors Ellen and I were hearing about were these: a fourth-generation farmer and community leader unceremoniously insulted by the owner of a principal local business at a community meeting simply for being a registered Democrat; disrespect and sabotage of campaign yard signs that’s become a new norm; ugly, insulting postings causing county Democrats to close down their original Facebook page, and; a beloved, multi-term Democratic county sheriff, weary of contending with frequent, community-destructive negativity to do with politics, resigned, choosing not to run for any further public office. We saw this last as a special loss: the leadership of a key, experienced county talent who could have been elected as the county and District’s Iowa House Representative, perhaps following Kossuth County farmer Dolores Mertz’s much-admired tenure as the District’s State Representative. (For our beginning, see my 9/2/22 My Rural America op-ed “I Just Want It Done” with its story of Dolores’ local and statewide impact through her eleven straight Iowa House terms that she began at age 60).
Ellen and I decided to respond to these growing imbalances by seeing if there were some better alternatives we could work on with local leaders. Still, we had no leader identified to ally with. Brenda Bormann immediately solved that problem for us.
An engaged community leader, Brenda is a retired thirty-four-year Algona Public High School teacher who farms with her husband, Ellen’s brother, not far from Ellen’s home farm.
“Contact Josh Manske,” she told us. “A former student of mine. He’s talented, with a strong work ethic and a big heart for public service. He’s back living and working in Algona after playing on a championship golf team at Grandview University and pursuing an international eight-year professional golf tour.”
He sounded promising to us, even before we discovered that at age 31, he was chairing the Policy Committee of the Iowa Farmers Union Board. And that was before, in our second year of work together, National Farmers Union also brought him onto their Board, one of three Junior Members appointed nationally.
Josh, definitely a busy young Iowa rural leader, knows and loves farming as it’s done now, managing and working his family’s land while envisioning setting aside a thirty-five-acre plot devoted to next-generation sustainable farming. An independent sort, he’s developing his own insurance business in the Kossuth county seat of Algona. On top of that, he shoulders his Farmers Union responsibilities. Josh is a strong young leader but open to even more leadership challenges and alliances.
He liked what he heard from us, even when Ellen, with her Iowa-blunt humor, got up-front and honest with him, “So. Here we are. Ready to make your life harder.”
Josh laughed. And he agreed; we could develop a small team effort to see if we might create better options oriented to community needs rather than the negative political behavior underway in his and Ellen’s home county. He provided a first, encouraging answer to the question I started with above. We hope a few other urban immigrant farm kids might get interested in answering for themselves, too.
Stay tuned for my next My Rural America Op-Ed—if you’ve gotten curious to see what Josh, Ellen, Brenda, and I helped get off the ground in Kossuth County these past two years.
David Engelken is a writer, musician, experienced urban community organizer, and retired public school Spanish teacher. And Iowan and a Coloradoan Engelken is intrigued by …