RONALD B. SCHLICHTE

Even though I am only 39 years old, it seems I have witnessed many changes not only in my life, but around me. I grew up on a farm in Granville, northwest Iowa. The population of the town was about 350 people and we were all Catholic except for one family who were Lutheran. Of course, Catholicism was dominant, but our religious faith was an important factor in our lives.

There was also a consciousness of derivation. Ten miles away was Orange City which was a center for the Dutch community. My name indicates ours was a German background. Although my grandmother was second-generation American, the family still spoke Genuan or broken German. Rumor has it that my great-grandfather had a threshing machine and gave an incentive to entice fellows to work on a Saturday. He made it known that those who showed up could pick any of his daughters to date. My Grandfather John worked on a Saturday and he hand-picked Cora out of the group as the one he wanted to date. The expectation was that where your grandparents were raised, you were raised, and that's where your kids would be raised. We move around a lot more than we did then.

Another difference is the size of families. An incentive for large families may have been that everybody was needed to work on the farm. When I was a kid in a family of nine, we all worked. Now we can't afford large families and there isn't that much work. However, my grandmother came from a family of 15, my mother and father each came from a family of nine, and together they had nine children. I still know a lot of my cousins but I have second and third cousins that came from Grandmother Penning's side. I have no idea even who they are. My dad said that in 1953, when Grandpa died, there were 57 of his cousins at the funeral. My dad also had 57 cousins. How many that would make for me, I don't know.

So the size of families has changed. One summer I worked on construction, and of those of us swinging the hammers, I came from the smallest family with nine. One had 13, another had 12, and yet another had 11. Even in my family of nine, I have three children, Jim and the others each have two. Now a family of five kids is considered large.

The school systems are another example: My elementary education and high school were at Floyd Valley, which doesn't exist any longer. They consolidated with Morris/Orange City about three years after I graduated. Even my high school doesn't exist any longer. It is now a middle school. After high school, I began looking for a way to pay for my college. I suppose it was natural for me to have been influenced by my father having been in the Korean War, my brother Jeff who served six years in the Army from about 1977 to the early 80s, and a brother-in-law who was in Vietnam. For our family the military has always had a positive connotation and I saw the opportunity for income while serving.

I joined the National Guard. There was a Mechanized Infantry Unit in LaMars, Iowa, which is about 15 miles from the farm where I grew up. I signed up and went there from February 1987, and was there until the fall of '88. I enrolled in Northwest Missouri State in Maryville and transferred to a Light Infantry Unit in Clarinda. I stayed there through my college career and graduated with an Education degree.

I found a teaching position in Middle School in Deep Water and Lowry City, a consolidated school called Lakeland, about half way between Kansas City and Springfield on Harry Truman Lake, which is north of the Lake of the Ozarks. Ironically enough, showing the Lord has a good sense of humor, I bought my first house in Osceola, Missouri. I met and married Tracey, an English teacher, at that time.

Next, I was offered an elementary principalship and was the Elementary Principal in a Catholic School in Clinton, Missouri. All this time I stayed in the National Guard. When I started teaching in Missouri, I was driving about 4 1/2 hours to get to my National Guard unit and that was taking its toll on me and the family, so I transferred units. By this time I had reached the rank of E/6 or Staff Sergeant. The only option I had in order to keep my rank and be closer to my unit, was to transfer to Whiteman Air Force Base, where I became their NBCNCO. That translates to Non-Commissioned Officer for their Nuclear Biological and Chemical Division. I stayed there until August 2001, and I was then able to get out for personal reasons. The military has done a lot of good things for me. I learned a lot there and was able in the course of all this to earn my Masters degree at CMSU — Central Missouri State University at Warrensburg.

The National guard was a good experience. I spent one weekend a month, and 15 days in the summer There were times when there were winter camps but being a school teacher, I wasn't free to attend those. Within that time, we were given military training When I was with the mechanized unit they had tanks that took us from place to place. We dismounted, learned to set booby traps, and do other infantry tactics. When I went to the light infantry units we did somewhat of the same thing except we had to walk everywhere or were taken in helicopters and dropped off somewhere in the woods.

We learned how to do combat missions to find enemies, to do smoke screens and other means of deception to be able to get through. I found it very interesting to dig fox-holes and learn some of the military tactics. They have chemical night-sticks that glow in the dark. We cut those up and put them in a black trash bag. We wrapped that up and put it beside an explosive device. When the "enemy" tripped the wire, all that liquid stuff went spraying everywhere as it if were shrapnel, so if someone was hit by it, walking in the woods at night, he would be glowing. These were some of the educational games we played.

When I got into the nuclear/biological and chemical detail, I dealt with everything from protective masks, making sure they were fitting properly on the soldiers, to doing M-8 alarms, in which we would detect if there was a chemical agent in the air. If we were outside, we would put them in different areas. If the wind was blowing and they detected something, an alarm went off and my job was to make sure they worked. Also, I was to make sure the rounds that detected if they had radiation in them were working and were up to standard. Fitting people with their masks was another important function.

When I became a divisional NCO, I had supervision over an entire division. I would have to plot "downwind messages." If there were an explosion of a chemical agent, let's say north of Osceola, and the wind was coming from the northwest, I would calculate how much of Osceola would be affected, who would be in the path of that wind, and who would be out of it. For instance, the eastern side of the city might be affected but the western side wouldn't. I'd have to be able to plot all that and report to my commanders where the smoke and chemical agent were going, then we'd have to go in and clean it up, detect what kind of agent it was and set up sites to decontaminate, setting up local hospitals, or other facilities.

The only time our unit was called upon for duty was in the flood of 1993, when I spent just short of a full month sandbagging. We spent 10 days in Hamburg, Iowa and then went to Des Moines. That was a good diet plan. I lost about 18 pounds. We had a hot breakfast and evening meal but for lunch we had dehydrated food. After three weeks, we ate the candy out of it and disposed of the rest. I wasn't called up for Desert Storm and got called up shortly after Afghanistan. My career in education combined with National Guard service dovetailed nicely.

I had been a school administrator for six years when a roommate of mine from college called and offered me a position with Edward Jones Investments. Of course, there were many factors to consider. I liked the thought of freedom to run own business. I wouldn't have to report to someone every day. In my school administrative position, I had to be involved in school board meetings and it behooved me to attend extra curricular activities. My days were long. The only advancement in the school system was the superintendency, and superintendents move every seven to ten years. I didn't want that. I was offered another administration position in Nexa, Missouri. My wife and I talked it over and I said, "No, the reason I didn't want to be a basketball coach any longer was all the traveling to different schools."

The bottom line was that I applied and got the position. I have completed three years here and started my fourth. I discovered Edward Jones is a great company to work for. I didn't realize until this friend told me to look into it, the contrast is that when you work with other large investment companies there are many brokers. Here I am the only person — my assistant and I are the Edward Jones' representatives in Osceola. I have a supervisor in St. Louis, who goes through my paper work, my trades and all that, which is good. I feel comfortable with the position. I've always worked and been good with numbers. On the whole, this position has given my life more stability than education did, and is better for my family. Tracey and I have a 10-year old, David; an 18-month old, Jackson; and we had a new baby in November 11, 2007 — Abigail (Abbie).

When we had made the decision to take a position with Edward Jones, we were given a choice of location. We could have chosen Colorado, Louisiana, or any state I wanted, and they'd have found me places there. We wanted Iowa. Then we were given about four different communities from which to choose. When Tracey and I came from Missouri, we looked at a few. We were supposed to go to Winterset and I was to work with Mark Pearson, but there was a complication. At that time, I wasn't licensed in investments. I believe Edward Jones is the only company that will hire those who are not brokers and make them brokers. With other companies, an applicant has to be licensed for them to accept the application. About a month before school was out, Mark called to say I'd been bumped. Tracey and I both feel that the Lord leads us where He wants us to go, so we simply considered the remaining options. One was East Des Moines, the Beaverdale area. Each of us had gown up in a small town, I was a teacher and an administrator in a small town. I had no desire to go to a city. We looked at Adel, but we chose Osceola because of its size, and we liked the school district. Having been a school administrator, that was important to us. We liked the fact that it is on this side of Des Moines. Tracey's family is around Kansas City and Windsor, Missouri, and this puts us closer than somewhere north. The bottom line is we liked Osceola, and thought it more than coincidental that we are back for the second time living in a town named Osceola.

Tracey had taught high school English eight years in Missouri. Now we have been here three years. The first year she drove to Des Moines to teach at Roosevelt, the next two years she drove to Norwalk to teach. However, having another baby, having to take time off from work to have the baby, and also paying for 2 1/2 kids in daycare, we penciled it out and decided she'd stay home for a couple years. Whatever the Lord gives us, we will go from there.

We attend the Catholic Church, which was my roots. I was a Catholic school principal, I belong to Knights of Columbus and some of the church organizations. This is another change that happened during my lifetime. I like the changes the church has made. For one thing, we are more ecumenical. We didn't used to recognize other religions but now we accept that the Lord has different paths for everybody. We used to wonder if those of other beliefs were or were not going to heaven. Now we know it isn't ours to worry about. It isn't our choice. We know God is a forgiving God and we need to make our journey and relationship with God as strong as possible. I like the change from Latin to English. It seems to have taken a long time for us to do that.

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Last Revised October 19, 2014