KALONA

Although he hasn’t walked the streets of Kalona for over 30 years, you may recognize his name: Robert (Bob) Kallaus was publisher of The Kalona News from 1969 to 1992. Ask current publisher Ron Slechta about how he ended up in Kalona, and his story always begins with a phone call from Kallaus.

Although Kallaus passed away mere months after selling the newspaper, he has his own story, and part of that story was being drafted into the U.S. Army’s 28th Infantry Division in February 1951.

It wasn’t an ideal time for him to be called up: just a few months prior, in September 1950, he married Dora Sleichter, and in a few more months, they would welcome a new baby. But the Korean War was underway, and so he left with other Washington County men for basic training at Camp Atterbury, Indiana, and Dora went to live with her parents.

In November 1951, Kallaus boarded the U.S. Naval ship General S.D. Sturgis, bound for Bremerhaven, Germany. He served his 24-month term, as was typical for draftees at that time, in Stuttgart, a U.S. Occupation Zone. Soldiers here were primarily tasked with maintaining the occupation, assisting in the recovery and development of West Germany, and deterring Soviet aggression.

The Private First Class returned home in February 1953, and he and Dora resumed civilian life in Minnesota, where he attended Dunwoody College in Minneapolis, then went to work for a newspaper in Redwood Falls, where they lived until returning to Kalona in 1969, when the couple purchased The Kalona News.

Her dad was “kind of a quiet guy,” daughter Mary Litwiller says, and he didn’t talk about his years of service. But she remembers her parents running the newspaper in the 1970s, when news was contributed by citizens and the Kallauses’ job was to solicit advertisements, layout the paper on a linotype machine (one they donated to the Kalona Historical Village, where you can see it inside the Wahl Museum’s streetscape exhibit), and print it at the Kalona office.

“Sometimes they got home at 6:30 a.m. in the morning,” she says, recalling the long nights required by the weekly print schedule.

They grew the newspaper, doubling circulation, while also selling other paper products, like notepads they cut and glued themselves, and funeral programs that they printed on site.

“We have a lot of memories as kids,” Litwiller says of herself and siblings. “They’d have to package all the papers into great big duffel bags, and [Dad] would have a truck, and he’d back up and put them on, and we’d ride them down to the post office.”

After the newspaper was sold and Kallaus passed, Dora continued to live in Kalona until she too passed just last year, in May 2024. Litwiller says her mom continued to read The Kalona News, or The News, cover to cover for the rest of her life, and as befits a newspaperwoman, left her children files and files of newspaper clippings.

When Litwiller saw the opportunity to honor her dad with a veterans banner, which will line select Kalona streets starting this month, she took it.

“I thought, Dad deserves that,” she says. “I guess because we’ve just lost our mom, I’m like, Yeah, I want to do something for one of them.”

Veterans will be honored through the veterans banners for the first time this year, thanks to the Kalona Chamber of Commerce in cooperation with the City of Kalona and Richmond Ladies Auxiliary.

When you’re on B Avenue, 4th Street, and 6th Street, look up; when you see Robert Kallaus, remember his story.