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Justin Brady: Come with me to a magical place where being labeled the pork queen is a compliment. Where being nice is just a way of life and where all leaders of the free world must pass through. Welcome to Iowa. Whether you’re a current Iowan, an Iowa expat, or an Iowan at heart, this show is for you. This is the Iowa Podcast, real Iowans, real talk. No drama. I’m Justin Brady, and I know that a huge election just happened, I know everyone’s thinking about that. But the reason you’re either elated or frustrated today is because you were given a choice to vote. You were given a choice to vote in a free country for the person and the people who will lead that country. That’s not actually something many people in this world have the have the choice to do And it’s all because of our veterans and of course veterans day is quickly approaching And today we have Pat Kinney the oral historian at the grout museum district in waterloo to discuss just that Pat, thank you so much for coming on the iowa podcast. I really appreciate it You bet, Justin. And, uh, for those that don’t know, Pat is a saint because he has been helping me diagnose technical issues connecting this morning for like 15 minutes. So Pat, I appreciate the patience and sticking with me. Uh, first of all, let’s, let’s discuss the oral. You have this, and this is actually the reason I wanted to have you on the show, because you have this really incredible project going on in Waterloo. It’s called the Voices of Iowa Project. It’s essentially an oral. History of veteran stories. Can you explain what that is?

Pat Kinney: Sure. Um, well, it was started in 2001 by my colleague, Bob Niemeyer, who’s the museum historian. He’s a state recognized historian. The thinking was that, you know, you hear, you hear veterans tell stories, you know, and, um, you know, as your family member, you might hear him and you go, boy, we got to get this recorded sometime. Well, that’s kind of the job we do. We sit down with them. It takes about an hour. We ask them about their military service experience. We video record the interview. Um, we have it in our, in our archives, uh, here at the museum and, uh, we use them for our exhibits and we provide, uh, the person we interview the veteran with a, with a recording of, of the interview and that they can share with family and friends. And they end up becoming family keepsakes. Some of these veterans pass away and they use those recordings of funeral visitations, um, uh, to share with family. Um, it, we have. We have 2, 300 oral history interviews, uh, mostly veterans, some farmers, some local history, and we’ve started a, uh, a black history project too. Um, but it’s one of the largest collections of oral histories around. Um, we’ve even helped, uh, we helped a couple years ago, Senator Grassley’s office do some oral history interviews here for the Library of Congress. And it’s all ears and branches of service going back to, uh, World War II and um You know, some of those folks have passed on and that’s why it’s kind of underscores the importance of getting folks stories recorded while they’re still with us. You know, I’ve had a couple of folks that have passed away within days or weeks of us doing an oral history interview and we’re really grateful that we got them when we did, you know. And that happened just a couple months ago, actually.

Justin Brady: Yeah, absolutely. So is there the, uh, obviously there’s a ton of Veterans Day content I’m going to discuss with you, but does the, uh, the Voices of Iowa project extend beyond just veterans? Because you mentioned veterans, but then you mentioned, like, farmers. Can, well, what’s the full scope of the project?

Pat Kinney: Um, we have done, we expanded in the farm interviews, um, through, um, grants we got through silos and smokestacks, which is a national heritage area emphasizing history of industry and agriculture, um, kind of the northeast corner of the state. Uh, the Farm Bureau has supported us in the past. Um, Bob Niemeyer has handled the bulk of that. Um, he’s gone out, interviewed farmers where they are, century farms, um, different aspects of that. We had a. We had a prohibition exhibit here at the museum, I don’t know, a year or two years ago, and, you know, drew from a lot of the farm interviews for that, because a lot of these people, we kind of combined the Depression and Prohibition era, and we had, we had a pretty decent number of bootleggers in Iowa, if anybody knows the rest of the state’s history. Yeah.

Justin Brady: I mean, there is the Templeton Rise story everybody thinks of, but apparently that wasn’t in isolation.

Pat Kinney: Well, there was a, there was a fella named Al Capone that used to set up shop at the Julian Dubuque in Dubuque and he had a hotel in Bloomfield where he’d come and pick up his wholesale liquor from bootleggers around here. I’ve heard of him.

Justin Brady: I’ve heard of him. Yeah. So you said a 2300 video interviews of Iowa vets and then you give the DVDs to those families. That’s, that’s a lot. And you mentioned these were all hour long video projects. Can, can you tell me how you find the vets and how you capture this? You go to them, you bring a camera crew. Is this basically what goes on? It sounds like a ton of work.

Pat Kinney: Yeah, well, some folks want to come here because the ground museum district, we have the Sullivan brothers, Iowa veterans museum, which is the museum for all Iowa veterans. It’s named for the five brothers in Waterloo who died together during World War II, but it’s for all Iowa veterans. So some folks come and they want to see the museum along with doing the interview. So that’s, you know, it’s a kind of a treat for them to come, but we will go to people where they are. We’ve, Bob and I went down to Camp Dodge and we interviewed, uh, now retired, uh, Adjutant General of the National Guard, Ben Correll, and a lot of Guard soldiers there who had been multiple deployments, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sinai Peninsula, going out to Sac City. I’d been out there on a freelance journalism project, made some contacts with folks out there, and I doubled back and did some interviews, worked through the county veteran affairs director there. We. Worked with the folks at the Veterans Memorial Building down in Cedar Rapids, lined up several interviews down there. I’m working on some of the Quad Cities right now. Um, yeah, we’ll, we’ll go to people where they are, because this is a statewide museum and everybody, any veteran, any Iowa veteran is. Eligible to be interviewed

Justin Brady: is the goal then just to collect as many Iowa stories from veterans as possible And you’ll basically the grout museum district will send you or whoever else to do that.

Pat Kinney: Yeah, that’s pretty much it We want to we are that we are a repository for these stories and you know And we let we share those stories with the vets so they you know We give them recordings so they can they can share it with their family, too You And, and, you know, we use excerpts from these in our, in our exhibits, you know, like if we’re, if it’s an anniversary of a certain event, like D Day or the Battle of the Bulge, we have three or four interviews of veterans. We can pull those out, take excerpts from them. We also have a, an online platform. Um, we do Voices of Iowa, oral history snippets, um, you know, a little five minute excerpts from the interviews. Um, Bob and I went down five years ago down to Van Meter and interviewed Bill Knapp. you know, founder of Iowa Realty. He piloted a landing craft at Okinawa and he had a lot of stories to tell. So we put a, yeah, we put a clip of him online too. And, uh, you know, we’ve had other ones like that too. Um, it’s kind of like a, you know, it interests people. It kind of gives them a flavor for how we do it, what folks do. And the other thing is, you know, a lot of veterans will say, you know, I was like, well, I didn’t do too much. I didn’t kill anybody. I wasn’t in combat. That doesn’t matter. Everybody had a job to do. Everybody had something better. Of service that they did, you know, um, had a fellow come in and he was, he said, though, well, I didn’t too much. I was sitting in a submarine, listening to radio signals off of Russia. And we’re going, dude, nobody, how many people get to do that? Tell us, tell us more, you know?

Justin Brady: That’s, and that’s like, uh, obviously, uh, code breaking and listening to signals was a huge part of the war. That’s an enormous part of the war. Um, but it is, it is funny. Like The armed services, there are a bunch of roles to win a war and to protect freedoms. And all those roles individually don’t seem that significant, but when they’re collected, they seem way more significant. The, the process of, like, recording all of this, I mean, as someone who records things for a living, um, you know, it, it sounds very daunting. How do you index all this? Like, you mentioned that when an event will happen, you’ll push up that video, but for anybody who has, like, recorded videos before, like, how do you organize All of it and find it and make sure that you’re pulling the right videos for the right event. And how can people access all that information? Like, it seems like a really tough task in and of itself.

Pat Kinney: We have all of the interviews, uh, here at the museum library. And they’re available to the public to come see. Um, we have a top notch IT director Jonathan Etringer and he compiles these and we have them in a queue and we can access them and you know, a lot of it is we remember some of the folks we interview because their stories are pretty outstanding,

Justin Brady: you know,

Pat Kinney: between Bob and I, I mean, I, when I was, I’ve been here about six years and I worked for the, worked for Larlow Courier for 30 some years. So between the two of us, we’ve interviewed an awful lot of veterans. A lot of stories stand out and we remember them and, you know, but, but we, we also have them, you know, categorized and filed and, uh, We had some help from some folks at the, at the University of Northern Iowa Library, too, um, that they pulled together a big Iowa Veterans Remembrance Project, where we’ve got a kind of a online directory, too, of folks at service and whether there’s a, whether there’s a video available of them, that kind of thing.

Justin Brady: You mentioned, uh, earlier on, and this is a story that I feel like is, um, some, many Iowans do understand and know the story, but many Iowans have absolutely no idea what you’re talking. So, I want to go back to it, because it’s a really powerful story, and it actually changed how the armed services work. But, you mentioned the Sullivan brothers. They were the Sullivan brothers. Tell us that story, but also tell us like their relationship with the grout museum district.

Pat Kinney: Sure. Um, George Francis Joseph Madison and Albert Sullivan were the sons of Thomas and Alita Sullivan of Waterloo. They enlisted, um, Right at Pearl Harbor, they had a friend who, uh, from just north of here in Fredericksburg, who was killed on the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor. Um, so they all enlisted, and they enlisted on the condition they’d be allowed to serve together, and That was a departure from Navy policy, but they stuck to their guns. And then the words of the oldest brother, George Sullivan, he said, we stick together. So they waived it and they allowed them to serve on the same ship, which was the light cruiser USS Juneau. Um, the Juneau was involved in the Naval battle of Guadalcanal. Um, it was a nighttime, god awful naval battle. If you’ve ever seen the movie, In Harm’s Way, it’s almost kind of like that. Um, the Juno and other damaged ships were coming back to port afterwards, and, uh, the Juno was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine, and it exploded, and There were of the crew of nearly 700. There were only 14 survivors and all the Sullivans were lost. Um, one of them survived the sinking but died at sea, um, on raft later on. Um, so, uh, that was a terrific loss for the community. It got a lot of You know their enlistment and their deaths both got a lot of nationwide attention. Um, president roosevelt, uh commissioned a destroyer To be named for them. He changed the name of the ship called it uss the sullivan’s It’s the first ship in the navy that was named for more than one person It served in World War II in Korea, um, and it was, uh, ironically, it, it was, um, and it had a, it was known to have a tamarack on a, on a smokestack for the Brothers Irish Heritage, but it participated in a large number of sea and air rescues of downed sailors and airmen, and just kind of ironic given the way the brothers died. Um, that ship was decommissioned and it’s in Buffalo, New York now at a military park. There’s a second ship. USS Sullivan’s DDG 68, it’s a guided missile destroyer, was commissioned in 1997 and that’s based in Mayport, Florida, still on active duty. It’s had multiple deployments. It’s been, you know, it was just not too long ago in the Red Sea. On deployment, you know, given the current situation with the in Gaza with the Hamas Israel war, um, it’s been on on deployment with with the British Royal Navy did a world cruise. They’ve had multiple deployments. It’s, um, you know, they really work. And, um, The connection with the museum, we, you know, uh, one of the founders of the museum here, Ed Gallagher, was an attorney in town, and he was, uh, he was a Navy World War II vet, and he thought there should be some larger recognition for the Sullivans. There was a park, you know, we had, we got the, the commission center, the convention center was renamed for them, and now we have a plaza there by the convention center for them, but this museum, it was an addition onto the Grout Museum, was built and opened in 2008. And. It has, we have permanent exhibits of every era of, of wars and conflict in which Iowans served and, um, you know, um, and, and, and the family is still connected. Kelly Sullivan is the granddaughter of Albert Sullivan, the youngest of the brothers, and the only one who married.

Justin Brady: And

Pat Kinney: she is the official sponsor of the current, uh, Currently serving U. S. S. S. Sullivan as her great grandmother was of the first ship. She’s probably one of the most active sponsors in the Navy and just a wonderful, uh, Ambassador for community and for the Navy and for Iowa, um, we’ve had ship reunions here at the museum of the sailors that had served on both USS the Sullivans, but she’s, you know, she’s an intrinsic part of this museum and her father, Jim, who was The only child of the five brothers. He’s, he’s still alive too. He’s retired, live in Waterloo.

Justin Brady: So the, the, uh, grout museum district is a lot of Iowa history and of course Waterloo history, but the, uh, Sullivan brothers, Iowa veterans museum is a part of the grout museum district, but this one is focused on veterans, obviously. Did I get that right? Yeah.

Pat Kinney: Yeah. And statewide. Yeah.

Justin Brady: Now it’s statewide. Tell me now. Oh, I see what you mean. It’s focused statewide.

Pat Kinney: Yeah, our, we, we, it’s honor, we say we’re honoring all Iowans who served, um, one of the features we have in the museum, we’ve got a little reflective area, kind of like a little chapel area, and there’s a rolling scroll of every Iowan that ever died in service in, to our country, um, going all the way back, and just a rolling scroll, people can come and see, and if they have a family member, they can stop it and see if, you know, they can find a family member there too, um, there, you know, there’s other aspects too, we’ve got a, you know, information kiosk where we’ve got photos and biographies of every island that was killed in Vietnam. A Vietnam veteran helped compile that for us. Um, and it’s, you know, I mean, you can do a electronic rubbing like you could as if you visited the wall, you get a paper print out of a rubbing and it means a lot to a lot of folks because that’s pretty immediate conflict because a lot of people had, you know, parents and grandparents and brothers and brothers, friends who served in it. So,

Justin Brady: It’s easy, you know, we’re kind of in an era where, uh, I feel like for some reason, it’s easy to forget all the past sacrifices people have made, which is why it’s good to have Veterans Day so we can go back over this and, Uh, we can remind people that, uh, a lot of people had to put themselves in harm’s way so that you all can enjoy the life you have here in Iowa. Are there any, I mean, obviously you’ve recorded, uh, I mean, I don’t know if you’ve done them all yourself, but 2, 300 total interviews so far, which is, is very significant. Are there any that to you really stick out, like any, any that you really remember distinctly?

Pat Kinney: This wasn’t an interview, but it was a nice project. One of the things I was researching is we’re kind of doing, we’re trying to compile Iowans who were killed in Korea. And I ran across a gentleman here who, from Waterloo here, who enlisted in the Korean War at a very young age. And he was killed very early in the war. And it looked like he didn’t make it out of high school. And, and I, uh, so I contacted the athletic director at East High School here in Waterloo. And said I found this fella and I found some newspaper clippings and I said it doesn’t look like he even graduated. I said, I know Some folks that, that, that some school districts give honorary diplomas to soldiers whose service was interrupted or they were in service. And it ended up, we found some family members and presented the family with an honorary diploma on behalf of that, that gentleman, um, he was, and it turned out he enlisted when he was like, I don’t know if folks signed for him. He lied about his age, but he was only about 15 or 16 when he enlisted because he was 18 when he died. The document, because his headstone records were, you know, show that. So, and he was, he was in one of the first units sent to Korea. And it was, uh, at that point they hadn’t completely desegregated. So it was a, it was an all black unit, but they were one of the first ones that were engaged in combat in Korea. He got overran early on in the war and he was killed, but we wanted to honor the family. And we got, it turned out there were several family members. In fact, his stepbrother was the first. Black police detective in the Waterloo Police Department, so we really, it was really satisfying to make that connection. Oh, yeah. That’s an honor. The soldier.

Justin Brady: That’s incredible. Are there any other stories that come to mind? I mean, I have a lot of questions for you, but this is, that’s, I mean, I, I can’t help myself but to try to tap the, the, you know, memory, the memory part of your brain for all these stories you’ve collected.

Pat Kinney: Well, and I, this one wasn’t for the paper, wasn’t for the museum, but I did this when I was a reporter for the paper, there was a Korean veteran that I interviewed over in Evansdale, which is a little town about 5, 000. East side of Waterloo here and that guy with his fellow was bedridden and he’d had, I don’t know, he had multiple bronze stars and purple hearts and he was involved in Korea early on he, you know, he was captured for a while and escape capture from the North Koreans, he’d been out in a rice paddy, just a lot of stuff like that. He was just really bedridden, but I got the interview and I had to get really close to hearing him and everything. Um, I got, after that, I just, after I left the house, I just kind of pulled over and kind of had to collect my emotions a little bit. And he, he passed away a few months after that, but I was glad we got that interview and got his story. And I think his family was too.

Justin Brady: Yeah, that’s incredible. The Waterloo, you have this designation, a World War II heritage designation. Can you explain what that is?

Pat Kinney: The National Park Service started a program about a year and a half ago to, uh, where one city from every state was designated as the official American World War II heritage city for that state. Um, Tim Hurley was a former mayor here. Um, heard about that, wanted to get after it. So, uh, current mayor Quentin Hart put, uh, former mayor Hurley in charge of a committee to kind of put that together. We assembled an application, um, between Bob Meemeyer and myself. We did a lot of research for it, along with Brian Schoen, who’s the head of our metro planning organization. And, um, last December, between the holidays, the National Park Service, uh, designated Waterloo. As Iowa’s official World War II American Heritage City. The Sullivans were a big part of it. Also, it was because of the massive amount of war production we had here in an industrial community. The John Deere tractor works converted to producing transmissions for Sherman tanks. We had, uh, Other industries producing packs, raft packing companies, supply and need for the troops, uh, just a lot of industrial production. I, you know, my, my mom worked in a defense planter during the war. She remortar shells that associated manufacturing in Waterloo. I mean, it was a pretty sizable motive mobilization and a kind of a microcosm of what happened in the rest of the country. Plus our national guard battalion here who has served multiple deployments since nine 11, Our National Guard Battalion here, 1st Battalion, 133rd Infantry Regiment. It’s called the Ironman Battalion because it served more, it served 611 consecutive days in combat in World War II, fighting up through Italy. It was in this bloody awful siege of Monte Cassino, which if anybody knows history of World War II, that was, that was an awful mess and a long, long struggle. And they were in that, that’s where they got the name Ironman Battalion. So there’s a lot of different, you know, tangents to go on, but that is similar as a whole package. Got the, got the Park Service to designate us as Iowa’s World War II heritage city.

Justin Brady: Now you said there’s only one per state?

Pat Kinney: Yes, one per state. There’s been 38 designated so far.

Justin Brady: Oh, yeah, because this is a recent thing. You were designated, I think you said this, maybe not, December of 2023, and so there’s only 38 designations so far nationally.

Pat Kinney: Yeah, yeah, and you know, it’s timely that we got this because next year is the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Justin Brady: Oh, right.

Pat Kinney: So, we’re kind of just trying to get our arms around how we can use this to commemorate. You know, that’s those folks who sacrifice, um, you know, we have another project going on at the museum here where we have, we were donated years ago and we just discovered it. We have the, we have the flag from our national guard battalion here, which, um, according to our, um, artifacts registrars research, it is the first flag, any American military unit carried into Europe and world war two. National, National Guard, National Guard Battalion, yeah, set foot and they landed in Belfast in Northern Ireland and we found a Life Magazine article and newsreels where they were carrying the flag. Down the streets of Belfast and we’re trying to restore that that flag now and we’ve applied to a grant for a grant from the National Daughters of American Revolution did a lot of local fundraising here for local veterans posts and individuals, because we had to get a local marriage for it so it’s kind of a perfect storm of events if we can get that get that flag restoration project underway in conjunction with what’s going on with American Heritage City. I mean, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s great timing.

Justin Brady: How much does a flag restoration cost out of curiosity? And then what is, I’m really curious about that and what’s involved.

Pat Kinney: It depends on the age. Um, We got a quote from a company in Minneapolis on this particular flag, and it’s, the quote was just under 10, 000.

Justin Brady: Oh, okay.

Pat Kinney: We’ve raised, we’ve raised more than 5, 000 now for the local match for the, for the DAR grant application. Older project, older flags take a lot more, you might remember the state of Iowa did a massive Civil War battle flag restoration project, and I think a lot of those flags are still at the Iowa State Capitol. Um, We did one here with a Civil War regimental flag from a local unit in Cedar Falls, it’s on display here at the museum, but it has to be, and that cost a lot more because it was so much older, it’s, you know, 80 years before World War II even, but it has to be displayed flat, because if it’s, it’s, it’s so old, it’d be granulated, if you tipped it up on its side, it would just kind of collapse, so we have to have it You know, just kind of laid out flat, and it’s encased, and you know, and not in direct light, um, but that, and that’s, but this flag was in, obviously it’s more recent, so it’s in a little bit better shape. It’s got some wear, and you know, we just want to get it encased, preserved. Put it on permanent display here at the museum with an explanation as to what it was and I bet you know And the guard soldiers in town are really enthusiastic about it, too We have you know, the guard veterans too that served in the same battalion or from you know, really interested in it

Justin Brady: Yeah, absolutely. Uh now obviously like I said earlier the um, Sullivan brothers Iowa veterans museum which everybody for veterans day, you should definitely check out there in waterloo You But it’s a part of the Grout Museum and the Grout Museum, what you call the Grout Museum District. Um, obviously, I appreciate you coming on here today, and I want to give you the opportunity to discuss what the Grout Museum District even is, so that people know what that, what that’s all about.

Pat Kinney: The estate of Henry Grout, who was an entrepreneur and developer in town here, uh, his estate established the What was originally the Grout Museum of History and Science, um, the items were on display in the 30s, but an actual building, museum building opened in 1956. There’s been renovations and additions. One of the biggest ones being the Sollenbrug Ira Veterans Museum, which opened in 2008. Um, we have kind of a campus. We also have, there’s a city park between us and the other buildings on our campus. We have the, uh, Bluedorn Science Imaginarium, which is about 30 years old. I think it opened in 1993. And that’s just a lot of buildings. science and hands on stuff for kids. Um, kind of like the science station in Cedar Rapids, we inherited some of the, actually some of their exhibits when, when they closed after the flood in 2008 too. And we have two historic houses on campus, the Rensselaer Russell House and the Snowden House. Um, they are, oh god, 19th century Italianate architecture and on the National Register of Historic Places. And, uh, We use those once in a while for special events, but we have all kinds of education programs here. We have a 25 year old museum school program where they bring third graders from school districts all over our local area here to the museum for a week where they can just tour all the buildings and see everything we have to offer. Um, we’ve been doing it so long that some of the first museum school students are now actually teachers themselves and bringing their kids.

Justin Brady: That’s awesome.

Pat Kinney: Yeah. And Kelly Sullivan is a third grade teacher in Cedar Falls, and she brings her kids every week. Oh, interesting. And one of the other things we do is every Wednesday morning from 10 to noon, we have a free veterans coffee, but today’s, today’s the day, it’s a Wednesday, it’s going to start when we’re recording this, and it’s going to start in about 10 minutes. Kelly brings her students in, she brings the vets coffee, and You know has kids make up thank you cards and stuff like that to give to the vets and they just get a big thrill Out of it. We get about two or three dozen vets every week.

Justin Brady: It’s absolutely amazing and uh, my grandpa served in world war ii and Uh, you know, it’s one of those things that at the time he told his war stories and he told you know things He was involved and he spared us with the more ugly stuff after he passed that’s when My sister actually compiled a book about his notes and things he did and where he served And he, you know, we didn’t realize just how active he was and how close, you know, how many close calls he was a part of. Obviously you don’t tell children those stories, but, um, you know, and it’s so, it’s just amazing to me that I’m like, you know, at the time I didn’t understand I was a little kid. I wasn’t, you know, kind of rude. I don’t remember how old I was, but you don’t really appreciate these stories as much. I mean, obviously I loved grandpa and his stories were really cool. But now i’m like wow You know now i’m a professional interviewer and I have so many more questions I have thousands of questions for him that I can’t ask and so it’s really incredible to me That you are all capturing all these veteran stories on video Like that is just amazing and you’re building this huge like, um, huge project over 23 100 video interviews of vets so if people want access to that and they want to see videos They want to look up some of these stories Are they digital like they come there and then you can pull it and they can watch it there Is that how they access it or their computers that they just like can search through by date. How does that process work?

Pat Kinney: Yeah, there’s there’s computers down in the library. They can look them up. They’re stored digitally. Okay,

Justin Brady: got it.

Pat Kinney: If they want to if they want to sample, you know, get samples of some of our interviews They’re on our web page too, which is groutmuseumdistrict. org

Justin Brady: Grout Museum District. Okay. Got it. Groutmuseumdistrict. org.

Pat Kinney: Yeah. And there’s a Voices of Iowa option on the main webpage. Click on that. You can pull up some of the interviews.

Justin Brady: Awesome. And we’ll make sure to link to that in the show notes as well. Pat Kinney, oral historian at the Grout Museum District in Waterloo. Thank you so much for coming on the Iowa podcast for this special Veterans Day episode. I really appreciate it.

Pat Kinney: My pleasure. And, you know, if anybody’s listening to this. If you know or love a veteran, get them to us and tell their story while they’re still with us, you know, it’s, uh, it’s important because the kids need to know about it and their service needs to be commemorated, no matter what they did. I’m actually,

Justin Brady: I’m glad you said that because yeah, we have a lot of, uh, veteran families that listen to this show. And so like Pat, I’ll echo what you said, Pat, if you have a veteran, In your family and their stories untold, please get in touch with Pat and his team to get that video recorded that you may not understand the significance, but people in your family absolutely do, and they will want to hear this story later. Uh, Pat, can you give the website out one more time, please?

Pat Kinney: It’s, uh, droughtmuseumdistrict. org, G, G as in go, R O U T, museum, district, all one word, no dots between, droughtmuseumdistrict. org.

Justin Brady: Pat Kinney, thank you so much for coming on the Iowa Podcast, I appreciate it.

Pat Kinney: Thank you, Justin. Great. Thank you.

Justin Brady: And to my fellow Iowans, Iowa expats and Iowans at heart. Thanks for listening and subscribing to the Iowa podcast.