Remembering Storm Lakers who made a difference

Storm Lake lost some good people over the past couple of weeks.

My old friend Bill Hott, age 74, passed away unexpectedly Feb. 11 after a long and impressive career in music.

Bill and I were in a rock band in high school during the 1960s, The Gladiators. Bill was a guitarist, I played keyboards. Other members of the group were Joe Schmitt on guitar, John Meyer on drums and frontman Dan Smith. Bill and the others were great musicians. I was not. But we had fun playing hits by the Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Dave Clark 5 and other hitmakers of the 1960s.

Bill also taught guitar during his high school years, but his greatest talent was as a singer. Sister Matthew, the choral director at St. Mary’s High School during the 1960s, thought Bill walked on water. He had a beautiful rich baritone voice. He was a student of Robert Pfaltzgraff, the great choral director at Buena Vista College during the 1970s, and Bill gained acclaim of his own when he became choral director at Dow City and then Wall Lake View Auburn. He developed one of the best high school music programs in the state at Wall Lake View Auburn over 30 years. His choirs performed frequently on Iowa public television during the holidays, and traveled the nation, including New York City. They were the equals of many college choirs.

Bill proved you didn’t have to be rich or famous to have a positive influence on people. He may have been “just” a high school teacher in a small town in rural Iowa, but he positively influenced hundreds if not thousands of young people during his long career.

Unfortunately, while we lived only 28 miles apart, we never got back together over the intervening years despite our best intentions. After 50 years of thinking “I need to catch up with Bill,” I finally went to see my old friend when it was too late — at his funeral last weekend. But I was able to reconnect and share his memory with his wife, Doris, their children and grandchildren, and brother Ron.

BETTY SCHMIDT, who died Feb. 18 in Lakeview, Minn., at the age of 85, was instrumental in starting The Storm Lake Times. She was one of our original employees. Betty’s newspaper experience was invaluable getting the first issue off the press on June 29, 1990. She laid out pages on the computer, which was a new experience for all of us since desktop publishing was just getting started. We were the first newspaper in the state to be composed entirely on computers, and Betty warmed quickly to the challenge and did an excellent job designing ads and pages. She had a good eye and was an artist in her own right. And she kept her good humor when things could get hectic, as they often do in the newspaper business.

We couldn’t have done it without Betty.

GEORGE SCHALLER, Storm Lake banker, conservationist and artist, died Feb. 16. Our friendship with George went back decades.

In 1969 Tony Bedel and I staged a film festival in Storm Lake. George and his wife Marcia were supportive of our project and encouraged us two college students who had a new idea for the old hometown. It may have helped that they were both artists.

In 1990 I had another new idea for the old hometown — starting a newspaper. George supported this dream too.

After cutting back on his work at the bank in recent years, George often dropped into our office on Friday mornings to see how things were going with the Fourth Estate. He was a fiscally conservative and socially progressive Republican; we are fiscally conservative and socially progressive Democrats. We got along well and had many friendly discussions about the state of the world and Storm Lake. George was the fourth generation Schaller to lead Citizens First National Bank. The Schaller family has been instrumental in the growth of this community, especially the college, hospital and schools.

GENE HACKMAN, Oscar-winning actor who died last week at his home in New Mexico at age 95, lived in Storm Lake in 1946. A classmate, Marianne Waldstein, remembered him. She walked to school with him when she was a senior and he was a sophomore at Storm Lake High School.

“He was a new kid in town,” Marianne remembered. She lived near West School and they met at the Little Store, a tiny grocery near West Fifth and Vestal Streets. They walked together 12 blocks to what was then Storm Lake High School, now South School Apartments, on Cayuga Street.

“He was a nice kid,” Marianne recalls. “But he didn’t stay very long.” Hackman left school at age 16 and lied about his age to enlist in the Marine Corps. He never returned to Storm Lake and never mentioned his life here in his biography. Hackman, his brother Richard and mother moved to Storm Lake from Danville, Ill., after his parents divorced. We don’t know what brought the Hackmans here. We have heard they lived on Otsego Street.

Marianne, who is now age 95, lives in Waverly, where she and her late husband Arne retired in 1999 after raising their family in Storm Lake. Arne was a farm manager who worked for Stalcup Ag Service for many years and served as state senator in the 1980s. Marianne was a teacher. Thanks to Marianne, a long-time friend, for her memories. And thanks to the Waldstein family for their positive influence on our community.