A couple of years ago I fulfilled a lifetime dream of writing a book about a love affair with a my hometown of Lawler. I grew up there—from my birth in 1944 until leaving for college in 1964. My little book, “Depot Street Memories–The Lawler Stories” resulted from my experiences in this northeast Iowa village of 500 people, described by me as “a town of character and a town of characters.”
I have received hundreds of emails, letters, and phone calls from present and expatriate Lawlerites all over the country, thanking me for capturing some of the past in print. All correspondence had a similar theme: It is a great place to live now; and it was a great place to live back then.
In the final chapter of my book, I wrote, “Today the depot is gone. The stories are mostly gone. Main Street almost does not have the same DNA as my Main Street. But somewhere in Lawler little kids are living an absolutely perfect life. They may not realize it right now. Someday they will. They may be taking the people and events and buildings and sounds and smells and games and friends around them in Lawler for granted. But that’s okay. Because someday they will realize what a slice of Heaven that small Iowa village really is.”