I grew up in Elkhart County, Indiana, and my first interaction with Kalona, Iowa was with a customer from Kalona who came to my father, a fruit buyer on the Benton Harbor Michigan Fruit Market. We bought a lot of red haven peaches that went to Kalona for the home canners. Then I attended Hesston College and got to know a bunch of IMHS and Mid Prairie HS graduates who loved the Iowa Hawkeyes and would pile into the cars every Thursday and Saturday to Listen to Zipper Zabel of WHO Radio Des Moines who broadcasted the Iowa Hawkeye Big Ten Basketball games. OK, I am from Indiana where a Des Moines Register columnist wrote about the Indiana decision to finally form class basketball ratings for state tourney, OMG! He described Indiana as a place where every church had a basketball court in the parking lot! OK, OK, my uncle was a pastor at a local Mennonite Church that had a basketball court in the rec room!

After graduation I headed back to Indiana and my best friend at Hesston, from Fisher, Illinois, was living in Iowa City because he was getting married to a girl from Wellman and wanted me to be in the wedding. I went and he convinced me to attend the U of Iowa because I wanted to be a pharmacist. He said, “I do” and I said, “OK” and moved to Iowa to attend the U of Iowa. My in-laws’ family had roots in Kalona, Miller and Hartzler. Kalona has been a bedrock of my connection to Iowa!

I am writing to let all of you who attended Hesston when I did and family relatives in the Kalona area that I think of you often, and Dr. Doug Fast!

Abe Brubaker

Jones, Michigan