In Memory of Virgine Wurr

Back: Bob, Virgine, Dave, Jim
Front: Tom, Verl, Don

Click to see Virgine and Earl's obituaries

In Memory of Earl Pfannkuch

Lorene, Earl

Iowa No. 7

Earl Pfannkuch, Louis & Selma Vennink, Liz Witt, Lorene Pfannkuch

Messages from the Manning Chamber of Commerce

	Dancing with the Stars
Newsletter	Manning Habitat home
Legislative Forum	Heart to Heart

This week you can read the complete Page 1 & 3 of the Monitor.

Please consider getting a subscription to the Monitor - which will help the community stay strong.

Remember if you advertise your business/organization or want to announce a birthday/anniversary in the Monitor your ad will also be posted on the Monitor web page - a little more "bang for your buck."

Veterans' project continues
We still need lots of information and pix

On page 3 this week we finish with Heinz Detlefsen's military service, which is part of the series "Reflection Of Our Community."

I hope you will consider getting a subscription to the Manning Monitor.
We will continue with the 250+ WWI Veterans in a month or so.
We will be listing each WWI Veteran individually until we get through all of them. Some we have no pictures and information and others we have more. Hopefully readers of the Manning Monitor will be able to help us out with more.

Manning Monitor Advertising - online

Click on the Monitor link above to see larger images of the ads and other ads placed in the February 2 Monitor.

Struggling with the history of Manning's Veterans.

For the last few days I have been trying to figure out who Joe Steen is in a few pictures I was given that came from Mary Steen's sale.
Merlyn & Bev Irlbeck lived next door to the Steens in the 1960s and acquired a small box of old pictures from the sale. For years the pictures were stored in an old shed on the Irlbeck farm until Merlin ran across them the other day and gave them to me to scan.

This is all the information I previously had about Joe which came from his tombstone.
Joe Steen (1891 - 1961) Iowa PFC Company M 325th Infantry WWI-PH
We have Mary's obituary (Joe's wife). She was a Hagedorn, a sister to Gus, Otto, Bill, Henry, Charles, Louie, Herman, and Dora Petersen and Rose Prickett.
Mary had 2 previous husbands which makes Joe her 3rd husband - as far as we know Joe & Mary had no children.

Eventually I'll get Joe's obituary from the Monitor microfilm but until then I won't have much to go on.
Here are a few preview images and hopefully someone will be able to ID the people in the picture - especially if someone knows which one if any is Joe.

Now that we have Joe Steen's obituary we know that he had a brother William Steen (also a Veteran) of Knierim, Iowa; and sisters, Mrs. Ella Dittman, Harris, Minnesota; Mrs. Minnie Sonksen, Mrs. Bertha Schmidt, Mrs. Elsie Petersen and Mrs. Hans Pfoltner. Their parents were Fred and Catharine Steen.

Click to see Joe Steen's pictures

If you can help with the Steen history please email David Kusel right away

Albert Claussen
376th Service Squadron

Scanning Albert Claussen's 2 albums - nearly 700 pictures worth of history.
Al is a 1940 graduate of MHS.

Over the next weeks and months I'll be working with Al on his military pictures and history. We will be interviewing Al sometime this spring. In the meantime I'll be showing some of Al's pictures here and will set up a separate web page at a later point.

In San Francisco: 2 of Al's buddies with Al on the right

Alcohol warning in Manila.

Fortunately, Al had pictures of other Manning Veterans in his albums and below are a few of them.

Leonard & Warren Farrell

Warren Petersen

Bob Rostermundt

Bud Barnes

Al Claussen, Bob Carlson, Bod Nogle - tank at Hollandia in New Guinea

One of many photos of planes Al worked around (NOT Al in picture).

Japanese peace party I.E. Shima 1945

Al and his parents lived on Nameless Street in Manning. This became somewhat of a conundrum for Al when giving his address to the military personnel.
"That address was another thing when I was in service… they thought I was joking and was told we need your correct address soldier." Albert Claussen

If you can contribute to any of the Manning Veterans shown above email David Kusel right away

Edmund Claussen
136th Infantry Regiment, U.S. Army
brother of Albert Claussen

Edmund was born and educated in Manning through Ninth Grade, when his family moved to Winterset, to farm. His parents were Herman H. Claussen and Anna (Diederich) Claussen. He completed school at Patterson H.S., Patterson. He was drafted in the Army in 1951, with basic training in Ft. Rucker, Alabama. His service duty took him to Baumholder, Germany. He was a Rifleman and Company Clerk, 136th Infantry Regiment. After his honorable discharge in 1953 he attended Iowa State University, where he received his B.S. Degree in Agriculture Education in 1956. There he met and married Kathleen (Manning) Claussen from Clinton. They had three children.

A picture taken by the Lyden Studio - probably of the old Corson family farmplace northwest of Manning in Iowa Township.

Probably the 50th anniversary of Ben & Mary Corson

John Newell has this picture but apparently has no connection to the Manning Newells - Win Newell lived south of Manning. Ronald Hansen purchased Win's farm in 1965.

We are hoping that someone might recognize this farm house which was located somewhere west - northwest of Manning, probably near the Iowa Township Cemetery.
The reason why John Newell had the Lyden pictures is because some of his known relatives visited this Manning home and brought home copies.

If you can help with the Corson history please email David Kusel right away

I found the Lyden picture on this website. Lyden pictures

The Corsons who are buried in the Iowa Township Cemetery are Benajah, Hannah, & Mary.

2011 Manning Year in Review.

If your name is listed but I have little to no information and pictures about you then that will be all that ends up in the book - unless you send me more.
It is up to you to dig out the pictures and information, write down your service information, and send it to me.

There have to be several hundred other "younger generation" names I don't have.
I have been collecting a Manning Veteran database since 1995 but now need more help to get the names of the rest of the Manning Veterans.

Right now I have 1000+ Veterans' names.

Click to see the tutorial

If you simply don't want those old family pictures you inherited please don't throw them - send them my way.
A lot of times I can recognize a face or location in those old pix.

One thing to keep in mind while you are looking for pictures - if they are glued in old scrap books please do NOT try to pull them out or cut them out. I can scan the whole page of the scrapbook and crop out the pictures you want to use in the book. If you attempt to forcibly remove the pictures you will probably damage them and when I scan them that damage will probably show up. This means I'll either have to use my graphics program to touch up the damage which can take a lot of time, or if they are badly damaged I just may not even take the time to scan them.

If you have old Manning family and Veteran photos to share please email David Kusel

Please remember that sharing should be a two-way street. You may not have ever lived in Manning but had relatives who lived here many generations ago. If you are reading this it probably means you are doing research.
If you visit my web pages looking for information (and maybe find something) but don't in turn share what you have then you may be hindering your own research.
If you share pictures and information you have with me then I can place some of that information on my web pages which may be found by someone else who in turn may be able to add even more information.
You aren't going to find very many websites that have been operating on the Internet since 1996 that freely offer as much detailed and widely ranged information as on my web pages.
I don't charge, have popup ads, or force you to log in, and I frequently add new information.
Another incentive for sharing is that all of the pictures and information I have stored on my computer hard drives will eventually be placed on a "DVD of Manning" and copies will be archived in the historical society building in Des Moines and several local libraries.
This will help prevent the continued loss of information that has been occuring over the generations.

Just as a reminder: the Manning History book committee is now starting a Manning area Veterans' history book project.
Most people connected to the Manning schools did not submit any school pictures and information - YET if you purchased a school history book you'll soon find out that there are tons of pictures and information for hundreds of students and the schools as a whole in that 544 page book with color pictures.
For those of you who have this school book I know you'll be going back to it quite often to see who graduated when and with whom for years to come.

So for those of you who are Veterans or have/had Veterans in your family - will you come forward?
The history book committee will do their best to get as many pictures and information about the 1000+ Manning Veterans but we can't do it all by ourselves.

How many communities do you know that have published 5 history books? The first one was the History of Manning 1898, then the 1981 Manning Centennial book, next the 2006 Manning Quasqui book, and now the 2009 Manning School history book. Probably the last book to be published will be the upcoming Manning Veterans' book - unless someone comes forward in the next generation to take over these projects after I'm gone.

By now some of you have seen or received a school history book.
I hope you are happy with the results - I am!!!
The quality of the images/pictures, especially the color is fantastic.

This school book will give you an idea of the quality that will be in the Manning Veterans' history book.

One thing you will probably notice in the school book is that your picture is probably not in there unless you or someone else submitted it along with their pix. Not even 1 person per grade submitted school pictures but because I have been collecting Manning history for over 30 years and there were a few individuals and alumni members who submitted pictures we were able to come up with a good sampling for each class. Of course if everyone would have submitted pictures and information we would have never been able to fit it all in the book. Even though your picture may not be in the school book if you take a look at the 3 sample pages down below there are around 170 different students and teachers alone. Some pages have less pictures and others have more.

Will you help with the Veterans' history book project? The same may hold true with the Veterans' book - If you are a Manning connected Veteran or are presently serving and do not submit your military connected pictures and infomation you probably won't be in this once-in-a-life-time Manning Veterans' history book. With a limited number of volunteers we can only do so much on our own but will try to get pictures of as many Veterans as we can. There are over 1000 Manning Veterans so we have a long ways to go before the book can be published.

Manning Veterans are slowly coming forward and below are 2 examples. We will eventually get more pictures and information for these Veterans to put in the book but for now this is what I have to show to you.

Ed Meiers

One thing that many Veterans and people who are submitting information have not fully understood is that this next Manning history book is specifically a Veterans' only book. It won't be like the Centennial or Quasqui history books were, where there is a Veterans' section along with other community aspects. This book will be ALL Veterans' information (and the post auxiliaries) - hence it won't be a "Name, Rank, and Serial Number" only history but we want a complete history for each Veteran.
For instance - below is Louis Boell's picture and the information that was published in the Veteran section of the 1982 Aspinwall Centennial history book. It has the basic information but we are looking for more and I spoke to Louie by phone and he sent more pictures and information - also for his brothers.

To see what Louis submitted click on the link underneath "Are you a Manning Veteran" shown below.

Note: we also want some family background such as parents and grandparents. All too often you will only see just the Veteran's name with their basic military information but without the family connections it will be difficult for future historians and genealogists to know for sure who this person belongs to.

Please e-mail me about your Veteran questions manningveterans@davidkusel.com

The United States flag
is proudly displayed here and NO other flag is as IMPORTANT!

1 Manning citizen served in the War of 1812
38 served in the Civil War
1 served in the Indian War
2 served in the Spanish American War
300+ served during WWI
550+ served during WWII
87+ served in the Korean war era
65+ (more names need to be found) served in the Vietnam era
55+ (many more names need to be found) served from 1975 to present

25 paid the ultimate price with their lives defending the U.S. Flag