There are so many treasures to be found at the Eagle Grove Historical Museum, all you have to do is look.
When Trudy (Hanson) Koch, Jane (Read) Frasier, and Merry (Anderson) Conaway, all from the Eagle Grove High School Class of 1970, gathered together there last week, they discovered that.
The trio of classmates met Ron Mohr at the Museum on Monday, Aug. 30 to present a print of the Eagle Grove High School. It was made on behalf of former Eagle Grove Art Teacher Richard Heggen’s family. From the moment they walked in the door you could tell a flood of memories came rushing back to them. They each walked in a different direction and you could hear them saying one-by one, “Remember this?” “Remember when?” They even made a few confessions saying they remembered being kicked out of the building once or twice back when it was still the library. They laughed when they talked about how kids that did get kicked out and how they would come around to the lower windows and make faces at the kids back inside the building.
There seemed to be items everywhere that triggered memories, but perhaps none more than in the “School Room” and the “Sports Room.” Koch was the first to discover a hidden gem with personal meaning when she found a drawing she did of the library back in elementary school. It made her chuckle to look at her young artistic talents. She had even drawn and labeled several classmates in her picture. It was fun when the women looked through the stack of drawings that were behind Koch’s.
Next on the list of discoveries were somet Thank You letters the class wrote after a field trip to the Carnegie Library as it was known back then. As they read through each of them, they would add on the last name of the student who wrote them and signed with only their first name. Some of them were even able to guess who wrote them before they came to the name on the back page. There were a lot of smiles as they reminisced.
When they moved on to the sports memorabilia room, they talked a lot about the school’s 1970 state track championship team.
The ladies appreciated the opportunity to take a trip down memory lane, the knowledge and input from Mohr about items in the museum, the information tags that have been so carefully placed on items, and all of the volunteers and donors who have made this preservation possible. The Eagle Grove Historical Museum is the work of many great minds, volunteers, collectors, and of course, community members. It is here for people of all ages to enjoy, for Eagle Grove natives to return home to enjoy, or for new people in town to learn a little bit of history about the place they now call home. If you would like to look around, hours are posted on the museum door, or you can contact Mohr.
