A Midwest Roadtrip 2023 - Ledyard, Iowa

Today was an important day on our trip. Today we visited the locations that inspired us to plan this trip in the first place. 

We started the day in Fairmount, Minnesota. This was the town my grandpa and his mother, my grandma Opal, would drive to around 30+ miles each way on Sunday to go to church. There is still a branch of the church here and my grandpa wanted to attend. 

The sacrament meeting was at 10 am, so we decided to get some breakfast first. There was a free breakfast at the hotel and my grandpa was all about it, but it looked like a sorry excuse for breakfast to the rest of us so we went to Edie’s restaurant. It was a fabulous little small-town diner. They had delicious food and even freshly squeezed my grandma Sue’s orange juice by hand. 

After breakfast, we went to church at the Fairmount branch. It is a small congregation that meets in a small church building (my grandpa liked to tell people that when he attended the branch they met in the Knights of Pythias hall.) We stuck out like sore thumbs so of course everyone wanted to know our story. My grandpa told everyone he was a founding member of this branch. Most people could remember people 20, 30, maybe even 40 years back, but my grandpa's time here was way before then. There was one older gentleman who remembered my grandma Opal and there was one man who knew my grandpa. Darrell used to be married to my grandpa’s cousin. They chatted for a few minutes. A couple of primary girls came over to shake my grandpa’s hand. They didn’t really know who he was but understood from the announcements that he was somehow famous. On our way out the door, they gave my grandpa a bag of donuts as a Father's Day gift. He was thrilled. 

Our next stop was Blue Earth, Minnesota. This is where my great-grandfather Aeilt and my great-grandmother Opal are buried. They chose to be buried here because they are buried next to their beloved grandson Duane Arno Troff. Duane died when he was 3 years old. He survived polio as a young child only to succumb to a brain tumor. It is a tragedy. My grandma Opal greatly loved that little boy and when an opportunity presented itself she bought the plots next to his burial site. 

Before we had made it to the Riverside Cemetery in Blue Earth we stopped by the biggest attraction in town (literally). Right off the main road through town is a statue of the Jolly Green Giant (there used to be a green giant canning factory in Blue Earth). The canning factory is gone, but the 55.5-foot tall green giant remains, size 78 shoes and all. It is an impressive and somewhat random sight.

Our next stop was the Riverside Cemetery. Before we came on this trip my grandpa told me he didn’t know where Aeilt and Opal’s graves were in the cemetery. We assured him it would be fine. Alison and I are scrappy and figured we could find the gravesite. I spent some time scouring the internet to see if I could find the location of the plot, but I had no success. We decided to show up at the cemetery and look around. Often at old cemeteries, they have a map of the plots and a listing of the graves. Sometimes this is in a publicly accessible building. Here it was probably in the office which is only open M-F. We were out of luck there. We drove around the cemetery which was much larger than we expected. There were hundreds or maybe even a thousand graves. Finding Aeilt and Opal felt a little bit like finding a needle in a haystack. My grandpa didn’t think we would be able to find them and was feeling ready to move on. Alison and I would not be deterred. We parked the car in a shady spot and told my grandparents to wait while we walked the cemetery. We split up and would have walked past every grave if necessary (maybe I have a little of that Troff stubbornness too.) not 30 seconds after we started walking Alison found the graves. My grandparents couldn’t believe it. 

We had some flowers that we bought the night before. We did not want to show up at the cemetery empty-handed. My grandpa was pleasantly surprised that there was a large pot of flowers on his mother's grave. Decades ago she paid a flat fee to the cemetery to have a pot of flowers placed on the grave a few times a year into perpetuity. My grandpa figured they would have given up on it by now, but the Memorial Day flowers were still there and looked lovely. 

A couple of notes about the graves. My grandma Opal’s grave does not have her death year. That was disappointing. Now that we know that we are going to work with my grandpa to get it taken care of. The other interesting thing about the graves is that my great-grandfather's name is spelled Eilt. This is the way his name was spelled at birth. My grandpa said his father was teased as a child because kids said he had a girl's name so he changed the way he spelled it to be Aeilt to make it more masculine. 

Our next stop was Ledyard, Iowa. This is my grandpa’s hometown. It is where he was born and grew up. While he lived there his family had at various times a farm and a store and a restaurant. Ledyard has been as big as a 300-person town. Today it is home to around 121 people. So it is just a small place. 

Ledyard is in the middle of flat farmland. For miles and miles around there is nothing but farmhouses and wind turbines. Those were new since the last time my grandpa was here in 2009. There are lots of wind turbines here today. As we drove into town Grandpa began pointing out places he remembered. We would pass a creek and he would tell us about bumming a ride out to the creek so he could go fishing as a boy. He also pointed out how much things have changed since his youth. He pointed out where the Troff family farm used to be, it is now in the middle of a field of corn that is part of a much larger farm. My grandpa kind of regrets that the farm did not stay in the family. How different all of our lives would be.

Ledyard is a very small town. We drove around and Grandpa pointed out where the store and restaurant used to be. We saw the site of his old high school which has also been demolished. We drove by the Lutheran church and then up a gravel road to the cemetery. Today the corn fields are planted right to the edge of the cemetery, but when my grandpa was a kid there used to be a grove of trees behind the cemetery and my grandpa would gather tender asparagus. 

The main street in Ledyard

This cemetery was quite small. On the hill, there was an entire Troff section. Among my family buried here are the graves of my family members who emigrated from the Netherlands to America. These include my great-great-great grandfather Hemme Troff, my great-great-grandfather Jan (John) Troff, and my great-great-grandmother Diederike. Visiting cemeteries and remembering our ancestors is an activity that is important to Alison and me. Stories have a way of bubbling to the surface when you are standing at the graves of the men and women who came before us. 

The Ledyard Cemetery

My great-granduncle and aunt

My great-great-great-grandfather

My great-great-grandfather

My great-great-grandmother

The Troff farm would have been out in these fields somewhere

After the cemetery, we had a long drive across Iowa. We were heading from Ledyard to Dubuque. It was around 3.5 hours of driving. Going across Iowa gave us a really clear picture of why this area is called the heartland. It is miles and miles of fields we drove for a couple of hours and hundreds of miles before we came across the first town or city of any real size (Waterloo, Iowa). 

Along the way, my grandpa told us many stories about growing up in Iowa. When we went through Buffalo Center my grandpa talked about his uncle who used to live there. He would visit Opal in Ledyard and give her a hard time about her membership in the church. My grandpa also told us there used to be a roller rink in Buffalo Center. They would advertise at his mom’s restaurant and would give his family passes to the roller rink. One day my grandfather arranged to go to the roller rink with a friend and he said he had a bad feeling about it but decided to go anyway. On the last scare of the night, they were skating backward and my grandpa fell hard and lost half of his front tooth. 

We also drove past Mason City, Iowa. This city was the town that inspired The Music Man. My grandpa said that when he was growing up there would be a big festival in the summer where marching bands from all over Iowa would come to Mason City to march. My grandpa told us about marching in his woolen band uniform playing a bass horn. 

After a long drive, we arrived in Dubuque, Iowa. It was Father’s Day so I made reservations at a place called Caroline’s restaurant. It turned out that no reservations were necessary because the restaurant was fairly quiet. They sat us in a booth at the back of the restaurant. It was a nice quiet place to share a meal. After we had eaten we sat and talked for a long time. 

A mural in Dubuque

A street in Dubuque

After dinner we had one more stop I wanted to make. We drove to Eagle Point Park which overlooks the Mississippi River. The Mississippi River is quite wide at this point. It was quite a sight. It was well worth the stop. 

This was a special Father’s Day. My grandpa has been the most consistent fatherly presence in my life. I love him and I owe a lot of the person I am today to his influence. He has been there for me at some of the best and some of the lowest moments in my life. We haven’t always had the close relationship we enjoy today. My grandpa can be gruff, stubborn, and at times seem aloof. That can be hard to see through as a kid. Under that exterior, my grandpa is a big teddy bear. He loves his family deeply and would do anything for them. In recent years, Alison and I have enjoyed a close relationship with my grandparents and we have gotten to share cherished moments with them. This Father’s Day which was focused on my grandpa’s life and legacy was one of those moments we will always cherish.