He served as chairman of the building committee of the Dallas Center
Presbyterian Church which was dedicated on February 14, 1914. He
helped organize the Iowa Society for Crippled Children and was one of
the first presidents of that society.
On February 14, 1906, he was united in marriage to Frances B. Schamel,
and to this union were born a son, John S. and a daughter, Helen
L. He also had three grandchildren, Joan, Linda and Charles Ray,
who are the children of John and his wife, Neita Rhinehart.
Conway Morris (1894-1966) was born at Waukee, Iowa, and attended Waukee
High School and Capital City Commercial College in Des Moines. He
later came to Dallas Center and became a progressive farmer and
long-time resident of this community. He married the former Mary
Drake. Their children are, a son Robert D. Morris, and two
daughters, Roberta Cramp and Jeanette Acheson.
Mr. Morris, a Republican, served three terms in the Legislature as a
State Representative (1951-1956). During this time, he served on a
number of committees including agriculture, judiciary, conservation,
drainage and flood control, fish and game, mines and mining, roads and
highways, horticulture, ways and means, police regulations, and safety
and law enforcement. He was chairman of the conservation committee
during his third term (1955-1956).
He was a member of the Delta Lodge, Consistory, Za-Ga-Zig Shrine of Des
Moines, Cribbage Club and a former Rotary member. He served 25
years as a member of the Dallas County Board of Education. In his
later years, he was an active participant in the Avion Travelcade.
Leroy H. Petersen was born in 1915, on a Cedar County farm near Wilton
Junction, Iowa, the eldest of five sons of the Henry Petersens. He
married the former Mary Cleo Fox of Waukee, Iowa, and is the father of
three sons, Robert, deceased, Warren, and Richard, who is a senior at
Dallas Community High School in Dallas Center.
Mr. Petersen attended rural school graduating form the Muscatine High
School. He attended Augustana College, Rock Island, Ill., and
graduated from Grinnell College in 1937. He planned to teach but
unexpected job offers changed his plans. He became associated with
the Aetna Life Insurance Company, Hartford, Conn., as a Home Office
Representative with the Group and Pension Division.
Since 1934, he has actively engaged in farming and owns and operates a
grain and livestock farm between Grimes and Dallas Center, specializing
in corn and hog production. He continues in a general insurance
partnership with his brother. In 1966, he helped organize a
livestock equipment distributorship specializing in automated systems of
modern hog production, with an office in Grimes.
Mr. Petersen, an active member of the Republican party, is civic minded,
having served as a member of the Waukee Community School Board and the
Dallas County Board of Education. He has served as director,
vice-president, president and voting delegate of the Dallas County Farm
Bureau and is a member of the Trinity Lutheran Church of Des Moines.
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