Out in Greene County, Iowa

A Christmas story about two 53-year-old men in west Iowa, both of them stirred by the real spirit

By CHUCK OFFENBURGER
December 24, 2007
COOPER, IOWA

Let me tell you about two men in western Iowa, each of them 53 years old, but other than being the same age, they are about as different as two people could be. And then I will explain how one recent evening, each played a prominent role in a moment of Christmas spirit I’m sure I will never forget.

VINCENT J. LEINEN IS AN EARLY-RETIRED SALES AND MARKETING DYNAMO, who now splits time between his own home in the Los Angeles area and his Iowa hometown of Dow City (pop. 500).

He, three sisters and two brothers grew up as the children of the late Lavern Leinen, who operated a creamery in Dow City, and his wife Estelle Leinen, who still lives in the family home in the community.

“I loved growing up in a small Iowa town,” Vincent said. “It was perfect for me. I did the normal high school things – football, basketball, baseball, track, choir, the student plays. And I was pretty involved at church.”

Vincent J. Leinen

The high school was Dow City-Arion, which was formed from a 1956 consolidation of the schools in two neighboring towns along U.S. Highway 30. It lasted until the last class of Greyhounds graduated in 1989, and subsequently Dow City and Arion kids have gone to the Boyer Valley Schools here in Dunlap.

At St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Dow City, back in December of 1971, the CYO (Catholic Youth Organization) teacher Virginia McDermott Rasmussen took young Vincent Leinen and others in her class to a nursing home in nearby Denison, where they sang Christmas carols to the residents.

Leinen loved the experience.

“As a kid, I’d always had a real affinity for the elderly,” he said. “They seemed like living history books to me, and I loved history. When we sang at the nursing home and I saw how much that seemed to mean to them, I was very moved.”

ON TO OMAHA. He graduated the next spring from Dow City-Arion, then enrolled at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. When the holidays rolled around again, he and a college buddy Tom McCurdy rounded up a bunch of students and went caroling at a nursing home in that city. It quickly became an annual tradition for them, now stretching 33 years there.

Leinen graduated from UNO, worked a year in business in Omaha and then headed to the Los Angeles area, where he began his sales career. And he and new friends in California began going Christmas caroling to a nursing home out there every December, too, and still are 26 years later.

In business, he spent most of his career working for First Brands Corporation, selling such consumer products as STP fuel additive, Prestone anti-freeze/coolant and Simoniz cleaner. He was very good at it, made a lot of money, managed it well and by his mid 40s he was easing toward retirement from the job.

So what does the life-long bachelor do now?

“Community service,” he told me. “I’m re-prioritizing my priorities, I sometimes say. Now it’s not about doing something for the dollars for me. It’s about doing things that are meaningful and that make a difference.”

Ever loyal to his hometown, he has thrown himself into the organization and work of the Dow City-Arion Alumni Association, which sponsors an annual all-school reunion on Memorial Day weekend. This past May, the 100th of those reunions drew 560 alumni. Every year now, the “Greyhound Award,” which Leinen started, is given to a member of the alumni who has distinguished him or herself professionally or personally.

Some things Leinen organizes just for fun. Each summer for years, he has been coordinating a trip to California by 250 friends from across the U.S. to the famous Playboy Jazz Festival, which is held on a mid-June weekend at the Hollywood Bowl. More than 35,000 attend to hear the greatest jazz players in the world.

BUT LEINEN’S FIRST LOVE IS STILL THE TRADION OF ORGANIZING CAROLING PARTIES AT NURSING HOMES EVERY DECEMBER. He and friends are now doing this in eight cities – Los Angeles, Jacksonville, Kansas City, New York City, Newton (New Jersey), Omaha, Scottsdale and for the past three years here in Dunlap (pop. 1,150). Leinen normally attends three or four of them himself.

In L.A., his caroling group sometimes mushrooms to 250 people. In Omaha this year, there were 130, and in Kansas City about 85. Leinen rounds up a fun band, a piano player and then persuades media personalities, athletes, well-known musicians, business and political leaders to come join the group. There are refreshments for 30 minutes, then an hour of entertainment that includes singing, quick greetings from the visitors and recognitions from local governing bodies. The nursing home residents are all given vases of fresh flowers.

Leinen and his pals coordinate all this on an Internet site www.ReachForTheStars.com/caroling. They can often get the refreshments and flowers donated from local businesses. In Dunlap, Leinen talked the Knights of Columbus chapter shared by the churches in Charter Oak, Dow City and Ute – he’s a member of the group – into preparing, assembling and donating song packets. When there aren’t enough donations to cover expenses, Leinen or his friends cover them.

He handles the arrangements and the promotion in local media with the tenacity of a bulldog.


Vincent Leinen, with a chorus of visitors behind him, is shown here when he was ready to start leading the caroling on a recent night at the Dunlap Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in the western Iowa town of Dunlap.


All residents of the nursing home received a vase of fresh flowers after the caroling

So why, really, does he keep doing this? What does he hope comes from it?

“We want to bring happiness and joy to the residents of the facilities and at the same time instill a heightened awareness in the carolers of what they may be taking for granted in their own lives,” Leinen says in a written explanation. “Many of the people in these homes don’t have their health or family. We all need to be reminded that it’s important to feel blessed and happy with what we already have in life, and less concerned with what we don’t have. The holiday caroling festivities are a very fulfilling opportunity to give and receive joy, happiness and holiday spirit to and from the elderly residents, care-givers and participants while enhancing one’s own perspective or appreciation of life, health and family. Bottom line: Everyone greatly benefits from the festivities, and together we can make a difference and the world a better place.”

Of course he’s right. But how many of us in our hurried lives say such things, and how many do it?

Leinen started up one of his caroling events at the Dunlap Nursing and Rehabilitation Center because it’s where his father Lavern spent the last 14 years of his life, when he was suffering from Parkinson’s disease.

“They took great care of my father here,” Leinen said the evening of December 13, as he looked out over the crowd of residents and visitors filling the community room of the 30-year-old, exceptionally nice facility. It’s the third time he’s brought a caroling event here.

IN THE FRONT ROW, READY TO START SINNGING, WAS BERNIE KONZ, the other 53-year-old man from western Iowa I want to tell you about.

Konz sat twitching, occasionally twisting, in his wheelchair. There were braces on both of his ankles and lower legs, and maybe on one of his arms. I’m not sure of that because what captured my attention was his smile, and how he was talking to all those around him, to his fellow residents of the care center as well as to the visitors.

And of course, you can’t help but notice that he is two to three decades younger than most of the other residents. What must have happened to put him here?

A few phone calls in subsequent days threw me into deep reflection about how there are people like Vincent Leinen, and for that matter Chuck Offenburger, whose lives are blessed beyond all understanding.

And then there are people like Bernie Konz, who seems to have been dealt such severe challenges, decades of illness and occasional misery that – come on God! Can we maybe have a break for Bernie?

But wait. Who’s more grateful for what he’s got?

HIS PHYSICAL CHALLENGES STARTED EARLY. Bernie Konz is the youngest of the two children of Joseph and Betty Konz, who farmed southeast of Neola, in an area northeast of Council Bluffs. His sister Diane, now Diane Mason of Omaha, is five years older than Bernie.

“When Bernie was nine years old, he was diagnosed with diabetes, and that’s when his health problems started,” said Betty Konz, who is now 81, retired and living in her own home in the town of Neola.

Bernie himself says that, looking back on it, “we probably didn’t get it controlled right, and that led to other problems.”

Bernie Konz

As a young boy in the Neola Tri-Center Schools, he was riding a motorcycle one night, lost control – there was some speculation whether it was a diabetic reaction – and collided with a pick-up truck. He broke a leg so severely, said Betty, “that the surgeon had to open it up nine times. Peritonitis set in, and it was touch and go. But that surgeon was able to save his leg.” And maybe his life.

He said later in high school, when he was trying to run, one leg “would kind of buckle underneath me, and then I started getting this hard pain in my leg. I didn’t know what it might be.”

Bernie graduated at Tri-Center High in 1973, went to optometric training at Metro Tech Community College in the Omaha area. After graduating from that program, he went to work in Omaha, eventually married and had three daughters. He and his family lived in Neola.

By the middle 1980s, his relationship with his wife was deteriorating. About 1990, they were divorced, Bernie’s health seemed to be deteriorating, too, and his parents told him to come live with them on the farm. That arrangement worked all right at first, with both Joe and Betty working at trying to help Bernie with his diabetes, and his increasing “shakiness.” But Joe died in about 1993, and Betty “knew that Bernie and I could not stay out there on the farm by ourselves.” So they moved into Neola.

His health problems continued to become more serious and by the late 1990s, “my own health wasn’t the greatest,” said Betty. “Trying to take care of Bernie as best I could had me just about at the breaking point. It was getting the best of me.”

That’s when her daughter Diane suggested to her mother and Bernie that it was time to consider some kind of nursing home with a rehabilitation program. They agreed, and that’s when Bernie Konz moved into the Dunlap facility.

A HARD START IN HIS NEW HOME. There he was, about 45 years old, his diabetes raging, terribly shaky, estranged from his children, in a nursing home.

And then they diagnosed what part of his shakiness is – multiple sclerosis.

Little wonder that at first, Konz did not like being in the home.

“I didn’t want to be here at all then,” he said. “I was scared half to death. I thought one of the nurses was making fun of me. Everyone else was so old.”

But the staff worked through his bluster, began giving him great care and Konz began to make friends with the nurses as well as the residents. There has been an amazing turn-around in his spirit and attitude in his eight and a half years.

“I try as best I can to help everybody,” Konz told me. “If other residents get down and depressed, I go talk to them. I tell them to just turn it to the Lord, and he will help them. I tend to go on the Lord for a lot of help. I’ve known him through two religions – Catholic and later Congregational – and I know he’s there for us.”

Katie Spellman, the facility’s administrator, says that the other residents have now elected Konz as president of the residents’ council. “Bernie is always a very positive person now,” Spellman said. “He’s always one to try to help. He knows everybody here and talks to them all.”

Konz said that he has “to have help all the time, but the nurses and everybody else are always here for me. I don’t have to worry about anything at all.” He said he knows his condition can make him difficult to help, with his flailing. “I just try to be as havoc-free as I can,” he said, then adding with a laugh, “and I try to cause everybody else only a little havoc now and then.”

His mother Betty Konz said “it is a great relief for me to know that this is working out the way it has for Bernie. All I wanted was for him to have a good home where they’d treat him decent and take good care of him. I worried so much about whether we’d find a place. This home in Dunlap has turned out to be wonderful. My daughter and I try to go visit him every other weekend, and we love seeing how he knows all the residents, and they all seem to like him. And the nurses take great care of him.”

There is now some contact with his daughters, too.

THE FESTIVE DUNLAP CAROLING EVENT began right on time on December 13, with the “German Czech Band” oompahing gathering music. Special visitors – familiar names to the residents – were clearing their throats and preparing to sing Christmas carols. There was Bernie Saggau, a Denison native who headed the Iowa High School Athletic Association and thus directed boys’ sports in the state for more than 40 years. Ken Malone, now of Omaha, who played in two great rock ’n’ roll bands that used to tour western Iowa – “The Great Imposters” and “The Del-Rays.” Randy Grossman, veterans sports director for Denison radio station KDSN. Dr. RoseMary Mason, a Denison physician, with her violin. Marilyn Grote on the piano. Current Iowa State Senator Jim Seymour, of Woodbine, who serves the area. Former State Senator and 1974 gubernatorial candidate Jim Schaben, the well-known auctioneer from Dunlap. Others.

Leinen would call one of the notables forward to reflect a moment with the residents, then the visitor would lead everybody in singing a carol. Bernie Saggau led “White Christmas.” I did “Deck the Halls.” On we went, through 12 numbers.

Senator Seymour read a formal greeting from Iowa Governor Chet Culver.

Then former Senator Schaben, following Leinen’s directions, came forward to read a greeting and thank-you from the Iowa CareGivers Association, recognizing the employees of the Dunlap Nursing and Rehabilitation Center.

But wait, said Leinen, the whole staff of the nursing home needed to come forward and stand in a line with Schaben in front of the assembly. That took some time, and things seemed like they were starting to drag. Then Leinen insisted that administrator Katie Spellman recognize each of the employees by name and position. That took more time, and busy visitors started checking their wristwatches.

Then finally Schaben, wearing his trademark auctioneer’s cowboy hat, began reading the CareGivers Association’s thank you.


Jim Schaben, of Dunlap, a former legislator, gubernatorial candidate and auctioneer, is shown here reading the letter of appreciation for the staff of the Dunlap Nursing & Rehabilitation Center, with the staff members lined up on both sides of him.


Vincent Leinen (left front) and Bernie Konz (right front) are the two 53-year-old men who met recently during a moment of genuine Christmas spirit that Iowa writer Chuck Offenburger says he'll never forget.

Thanks, the letter began, for all the care, concern and love you give to all these elderly and specially-challened residents in your facility. Thank you for taking all the extra steps that make it such a good one. Thank you for being welcoming to visitors. Thank you for this, and for that.

And it was right about then that Bernie Konz, who most of us visitors did not know, began squirming and twisting in his wheelchair there in the front row, and then he just seemed to erupt. He blurted out something that absolutely stopped Schaben’s reading. In fact, everything seemed to stop for it.

“That is exactly right, what you are saying there!” Konz almost yelled, and then he moved his gaze back and forth across the row of employees.

“I am so grateful to all you people standing up there. If it weren’t for you people and all that you do for me, I’d be a dead man. There’s no way I’d be alive. Thank you! Thank you so much!”

Standing behind Konz, I was astonished. Schaben, obviously jolted as much as I was, lowered the microphone for a few seconds, and looked admiringly at Konz. Schaben regained his own composure and then said softly into the microphone, “And thank you for saying that.”

For all the planning, organizing and scripting Vincent J. Leinen had done, it was that unscripted and spontaneous moment that went to the heart of what he is after.

“That’s what it’s all about,” he said later, when I asked if he’d been as touched by Konz’ interruption as I had. “That’s what the whole thing is for.”

Life is good, at Christmastime and every other time. Life is good.


You can reach the columnist by e-mail at chuck@Offenburger.com.