Populations where you've lived

[Rooney]

I have always lived in small towns as I have always lived in Iowa. I have stayed out of Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Sioux City and Davenport except for job interviews and even when I was offered a teaching position in one of the school districts I turned it down. The Davenport School System is terrible and Des Moines, while the schools work well, is simply a confusing mass of people and not at all appealing to the eye.

I was born in Walcott, Iowa, with a population of less than 2,000. I lived in Durant, Iowa, for my first twelve years of life, and that town has less than 2,000 people. When I was twelve I had to move to Washington, Iowa, a town of a little over 7,000 people, and attended college in Cedar Falls, Iowa, a town with a population of about 40,000 folks.

My first job in special education was in Oelwein, Iowa, a little meth addicted town of 6,400. Needless to say I moved away from that town after the school year ended and wound up in an even more drug addicted town: Creston, Iowa, population 7,500. The principal at the middle school was a cool, former truck driver with a PhD. who loved guns, women and coming his handlebar mustache. I would have stayed in that town for the rest of my life had the BD department not been eliminated.

From Creston I applied for a job in Des Moines and was hired to teach at an alternative school. I decided to say no to that job and wound up in my new home town. Mason City, Iowa, is the home of big band man and musical maestro Meredith Wilson and also to 28,700 Iowans. Well, there is nothing half way about the Iowa way we treat you because I have chosen to stay in this town.