The five members of the Dexter Museum have worked regularly during the off season, organizing and preparing displays for opening day, the first Sunday in May.
Pat Hochstetler is also on the Dexter cemetery board, the board of Directors of the Madison County Genealogical Society, and a newly elected Penn Township Clerk. She and her husband live on the farm where the United Airliner first crash landed January 19, 1955. They still have the $25 check given to her inlaws to pay for the fences torn out by the accident.
Gloria Neal, my sister who retired after teaching junior high art for 34 years, has found her museum niche by assembling Dexter history into notebooks. She was too young to remember it, but she attended the 1948 National Plowing Match, when President Harry Truman gave an address to an estimated 100,000 people just north of Dexter.
Doris Feller is married to the son of Marvelle Feller, whose family car was stolen by Bonnie and Clyde after the shootout in Dexfield Park. Not only that but Marvelle had to show Clyde Barrow how to shift gears in the car since it wasn’t a Ford, which was Clyde’s go-to getaway car. Doris wrote about the Barrow Gang and Dexfield Park for the book Reflections Along the White Pole Road for the White Pole Road Development Corporation. She was a long-time member of Questers.
Rod Stanley, a retired history teacher and coach, endorsed Leora’s Dexter Stories: The Scarcity Years of the Great Depression and also Leora’s Early Years: Guthrie County Roots. He is a historian, speaker, also a member of the Guthrie County Historical Village and Museum Board. Rod has also contributed to Our American Stories.
Mary McColloch (not pictured) is also a long-time librarian, for years at Dexter, now with the Stuart Library.
The regular season for the Dexter Museum is from May through October. At other times you may contact Rod Stanley at 641-757-9173; rstanley@netins.net, or Doris Feller at 515-833-2717. They’ve made the Dexter Museum a fun place to visit.
The site of the Bonnie and Clyde shootout is on private property, but Rod has permission to take interested people to see the area. He gives programs about them, as well as other local history.
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I love the small, hometown museums. I miss taking the back roads like we did when I was young.
That’s one of the reason we enjoy going to Guthrie Center–back roads! We usually get there one way, then take another back to town.
Good plan!
I grew up in Dexter. My grandparents Jim and Roxy Meister. I was taken into Des Moines my freshman year of high school to live with my mother. Dexter is and has always been my home. The things that are on display there that belong to Grandma and Grandpa are things that I worked with and used because I helped Grandma with her loom. I help Grandpa messing in his shop which he didn’t like but I did it. Anyway. I thank all of you members of the museum board. I appreciate your work. Take good care and help. Probably see you again one of these days. Marilyn frost black
One whole corner of the museum is dedicated to Jim Meister’s tools! https://joynealkidney.com/2019/06/06/jim-meister-dexters-master-blacksmith/
Good luck to the Dexter Museum Board for a successful opening day!
Thank you! I think they’ll be open a while tomorrow because of a Bonnie & Clyde run from Dexter to Stuart. After the shootout in Dexfield Park in July 1933, B&C returned to the area and robbed the Stuart bank the next spring! (The same bank yeggs tried to rob in 1921, killing the Stuart nightwatchman. Grandpa Clabe Wilson became the next nightwatchman.)
What an impressive group of people keeping Dexter’s history alive!
Especially for a town of 640 souls!
Even more impressive!