More than 50 residents attended the “Mount Vernon, Lisbon and Me” storytelling event, sponsored by the Mount Vernon Area Arts Council, Wednesday, July 6.
The event was the first of four scheduled days of activities for the Heritage Days celebration in Mount Vernon this year, and featured the stories of seven residents.
Many stories talked about what has made Mount Vernon and Lisbon home to these residents.
Mount Vernon-Lisbon Police chief Doug Shannon recounted the first time he had ever been the communities was to purchase his first car from Plaza Auto Auction when he was 16.
He returned to Mount Vernon in 1990 as an officer with the Mount Vernon-Lisbon Police Department.
“Mount Vernon is a special place,” Shannon said. “Me and my family made the decision to move to Mount Vernon in 1995 from Marion, and my wife and I raised our children here. I never dreamed that my career in law enforcement would keep me in a community like this for so long.”
Shannon shared a few stories from his time on the force, like stopping an attempted murder at Hardee’s when he was less than a block away blocking traffic for another reason on Hwy. 1 or dealing with the fallout from breaking a drug trafficking operation in Mount Vernon.
Shannon noted that as his career is winding down in law enforcement, he can’t imagine having any other community for his family to grow in.
David Hurst, former counselor at Mount Vernon Schools and with Grant Wood AEA, recounted how he came to the community nearly 24 years ago.
When he was hired by Grant Wood AEA, he gave himself one day to find a home in the area, and he found that location down south of Mount Vernon along Ivanhoe Road.
Hurst noted that as he stayed in Mount Vernon and got closer to the community, it changed his definition of family.
“We spent so much more time with our friends in the community that they slowly became our family,” Hurst said.
Hurst shared his discovery of an oriole nest he found in Mount Vernon, and compared the orioles to the people who live in these communities.
“Orioles are an edge species,” Hurst said. “They build their nests on the edge of tree branches. Mount Vernon and Lisbon residents live on the edge of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. We may work in those communities, or forage there, but our true home is here in Mount Vernon.”
Grant Freeman told how Mount Vernon has slowly become home to him over the years.
Freeman noted in his later high school years, he viewed Mount Vernon not as a place someone goes to live, but as a place people go to die. He went to college as far away as he could in Tacoma, Wash., and made a promise never, ever to set foot in the town again.
Freeman noted he made several trips back to the community to visit family and friends, and each of those trips seemed to last longer and longer.
Until 2015 when he returned to Mount Vernon. He’s been one of the head speech coaches for the community since 2015, but every year he submits his resignation, and every September he’s accepted the job again.
Over the course of the last eight years, Freeman has realized that this town has become his home.
“Now, I have no plans of going anywhere,” Freeman said. “I’m even considering buying a house and starting a family in this community.”
Freeman said he recently accepted a job with Lisbon Schools as the director of plays and musicals for the school, as well as continuing on as head large group speech coach for Mount Vernon.
Amy White, Lisbon Library director, shared her story of how she came to be the director.
White grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, and as a child loved books. Being from a rural destination, however, her chances of checking out books from a library were few and far between, and she had to settle on the books she got for birthdays and holidays to build her own library.
After high school, she went into library studies and worked at a campus library. She met her husband, and they moved to Iowa.
“One day, this young woman was reading the Sun newspaper and saw they were looking for a library assistant for 2-5 on Saturday afternoons,” White said.
White recounted a few years later, the head librarian stepped down and she applied for the job. She also noted the ways the communities have changed and grown, with neighborhood boundaries between the two towns shrinking as well.
Joe Jennison, director of Mount Vernon-Lisbon Community Development Group, recounted the story of how this community came together following the tragic loss of a worker on the water tower.
His office in the Visitor’s Center was near the water tower, and he recounted hearing the scream and impact. His reaction after the event was to pray in his office. It was a decision he beat himself up over for a number of times.
In the days following, members of the community asked what they could do to help the family, and that’s where Jennison knew exactly what to do, as organizing people was the strength of his job. He organized collection and communicated with the family about the intentions of the town to build a bench as a memorial to the man who fell, as well as helped plan a memorial service in the park.
Jennison attended the funeral of the man in Clinton and reflected on the man’s last job.
“Your son died in a place where people care about each other,” Jennison said.
That man’s mother would later visit the water tower and reflect that while her son was buried in Clinton, if the family wanted to spend time with their son, this is where they would visit because it is where she felt her son still was.
Gabriel Guardado, a citizen originally from El Salvador, shared how the community of Mount Vernon had embraced him and his wife and made them a part of the community.
When Gabriel met the woman who would be his wife, he spoke very little English, but he did go up and ask her for her phone number.
Amy remembered him asking for her phone number, and she reiterated it wasn’t something she ever did, but somehow in the way he asked, she provided the number.
The two began communicating with one another. One of Amy’s conditions was that Gabriel needed to learn to communicate with her in her language, but the two started falling in love. When Amy announced a year later she was thinking of moving back home to Iowa, Gabriel decided to move with her in Iowa.
In 2011, they moved. For a stretch of time, they were nervous to be out and about in the community, because Gabriel wasn’t documented yet. The call to attend church, though, brought them into United Methodist Church in Mount Vernon, where members of the congregation welcomed them and brought them into the community. In 2015, Gabriel got his green card.
Within the last year, Gabriel finally completed his citizenship.
“I’m very thankful because this community has made us feel welcome,” Gabriel said.
The last storyteller of the evening was Tawnua Tenley, teacher and individual head speech coach at Mount Vernon, who recounted her own journey.
Her original career goals were to be a pediatrician and live in a big city loft apartment after high school.
Her family moved around a lot growing up, and she was never in the same town for more than a few years until she was in her mid-20s. When she was looking to go to college, she first did a few years of service with the military.
She married, moved into Los Angeles with her husband and started college.
A few years later, she didn’t have enough money to continue college, had a failed marriage and a young son, and was struggling financially in Los Angeles.
“I’d maxed out my credit cards on groceries and spent my last few dollars on asthma medication my son needed,” Tenley said. “I remember a day I was trying to get my son into a daycare, and we had his nebulizer and as I was trying to get into the daycare, the medication for the nebulizer slipped out and hit the floor and shattered. I didn’t have the money to replace that medication. That was my rock bottom.”
Tenley asked a friend for assistance, which he provided, but asked her what her plans were. When Tenley said she planned to finish college, but couldn’t in Los Angeles because it was too expensive, he asked why she couldn’t go home with her parents instead?
Her family now lived in Iowa City, and Tenley discovered it was a great place to stay and finish college. She applied to Mount Vernon a few years later as a teacher, sending her letters of recommendation to the district and applying to other places as well.
Tenley added she was the graduation speaker for the class of 2003 and the message she shared was that students would find the clarity she had found in her failures that eventually lead her to Mount Vernon and the life she had here.
“I’ve had a very rewarding career in Mount Vernon, despite living in a small town, one of the things I never wanted to do,” Tenley said. “I truly found home here.”
Lisbon head librarian Amy White tells her story at the Mount Vernon, Lisbon and me event.