Editor Note: This narrative may be expanded by the Editor, who experienced family and work issues to prevent its completion for this publication:
Our guest speaker on September 21st was Tim Wiebel, Vice President of the Manning Rotary Club. Tim outlined how a small town of 1,300 in West central Iowa faced the farm crisis of the 1980s by coming together and forming a local development partnership of many avenues that now has led to the creation of a World Class Heritage Center, a very vibrant downtown as per the Mainstreet USA example, construction of new housing of many types, renovation and cleaning of existing properties, expanding a municipal utilities program that has since funded/fostered many community projects, construction of a modern hospital/medical complex, implementation of a data center that compliments the community, underground electrical and fiber, further consolidation and construction of a regional school system, and many others. It is quite a success story that many other communities should follow.