Big city Christmas gift to a tiny Iowa town
It was 50 years ago when little Imogene's most famous native son proved he hadn't forgotten where he came from
IMOGENE, Iowa — On a Sunday morning in late November, 1972, my mother Anna Offenburger and I were walking out of St. Mary’s Catholic Church after mass in my hometown of Shenandoah in the southwest corner of the state. I was home for the weekend from my new reporting job at the Des Moines Register. I looked up to see an old friend Evalyn Saner, standing near the back of the church, waving for me to come talk to her. She worked for decades as an invaluable utility player for KMA radio there.
“You’re always looking for stories to write,” said Evalyn. “You should have been in Imogene yesterday. My cousin Gene Leahy and some of his pals from Omaha came down and used a bunch of left-over Omaha Christmas decorations to decorate up Imogene. It’s never looked this good!”
I knew that Eugene Leahy had grown up in Imogene, a town of perhaps 100 people back then. It was and is a spunky little Irish community seven miles north of Shenandoah.
I also knew that Leahy was making quite a name for himself in Omaha after being elected mayor in late 1968.
He announced and then led a huge transformation of downtown Omaha, ordering old buildings torn down and developing beautiful “Central Park Mall.” It was an urban park, a pedestrian mall maybe a block wide and about six blocks long with trails, fountains, a huge adult-sized slide and swing sets. It quickly became one of the most popular places in the city, and eventually, it was renamed Gene Leahy Mall in his honor.
Early-on, Mayor Leahy also made “good will visits” to small towns around western Iowa and eastern Nebraska, telling folks that they are always welcome in Omaha, which was then a city of 350,000 and now is much bigger.
And it seemed like no public stunt was too bizarre for Leahy. In his second year in office, he agreed to take part in his fun-loving hometown of Imogene’s annual slapstick talent show. They had him sit bare-chested in an old washtub and pantomime the words to “Rubber Ducky.” The Omaha media loved it.
So, after that Sunday morning mass in ‘72, when Evalyn Saner was telling me about the fun I’d missed in Imogene the day before, I was kicking myself.
“I suppose the Omaha World-Herald and the TV stations were all over Gene and his buddies coming in and decorating Imogene,” I said.
“No,” Evalyn said. “I don’t think there was any press there at all.”
Hmmm, I thought.
I called my news bosses in Des Moines, told them about Imogene’s unexpected decorating party and that no Omaha media had covered it. They told me to get right to work on a story, and that we’d surprise our competitors at the Omaha newspaper and TV stations. Mom and I had a quick lunch, and I took off for Imogene.
My photo of the Imogene mayor and some of his town’s new decorations, as published on page one of the Des Moines Register.
There I found Imogene Mayor Denzil Gray, snapped a photo of him with some of the new decorations and listened to his excited story about all that had happened the day before. He said months earlier, he’d seen Omaha’s Mayor Leahy at an event, and asked if the big city would have any extra Christmas decorations that Imogene could use. Gray was shocked on that Saturday morning when Leahy called and said he and some friends would be down that day to help Imogene get ready for Christmas.
I got Mayor Leahy on the phone that Sunday afternoon, and he fleshed out the story for me.
“A while back, I called Charlie Mancuso,” the mayor said, naming the widely-known manager of Omaha’s Civic Auditorium and Rosenblatt Stadium. “I asked him if he could round up some spare Omaha decorations for Imogene. He called me back Friday and he not only got the decorations, he also had some of his work crew and a couple of Omaha businessmen who are friends of ours — they all wanted to help.”
Leahy told me an Omaha sign company agreed to loan him a big boom truck that the volunteer workers could take to Imogene and use to put the “new” Christmas displays and lights up on the town’s three utility poles on main street.
When word got out that Leahy was “coming home” for the first time in 18 months, the locals all turned out, as you can imagine. And in my story, I used Mayor Leahy’s description of how the beer was flowing in the town’s two taverns and many of the visitors were challenging the locals in games of pool.
“We also put up a loudspeaker system on the street, and we had Christmas music that was being played from inside one of the taverns,” Leahy said.
Back in Shenandoah, I put the film from my camera on a bus that was going to Des Moines. I alerted the Register photo department to pick it up and process it for next day publication. Then I rattled out a story on my portable typewriter, and dictated it to the news desk.
On that Monday morning, I enjoyed heck out of seeing the story displayed prominently on page one of the Register, knowing our Omaha competition didn’t have it.
And 50 years later, it remains one of my favorite Christmas tales.
Here’s the top of my long-ago page one Christmas “scoop.”
You can comment on this column below here, or write the columnist directly by email at chuck@offenburger.com.
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Great feel-good story!
We need these stories of kindness and generosity to counterbalance all the horrible news. Thank you!
About Imogene. For readers unfamiliar with the area, Imogene is a wonderful town. My spouses’ family farm is outside of Imogene. Years ago, national TV did a story on Imogene--the mayor, postmaster and tavern owner were all women (the tavern owner was my mother-in-law). Over the years, I attended several church functions in Imogene’s St.Patrick church (weddings, funerals, baptisms). An awe inspiring church, with a great group of church ladies, as well.