The Great Depression of the 1930s and disruptions of World War Two caused Baca County, Colo. and its seat of Springfield to suffer a population decline of 45 percent. Census data reveal that Springfield had 1,800 residents in 1948, when Tillotson Construction Co. built a massive 250,000-bushel, twin-leg elevator of reinforced concrete.
As observed in a previous post, the mighty elevator followed the standard plan implemented in 1947 at Satanta, Kan.
Since then, we’ve learned that Tillotson formed a rounded cupola in Satanta, possibly the first demonstration of the style that became a Tillotson signature.
A note in the construction record says a primary difference was that Springfield had two radial distributors up high instead of the Gerber Roto -Flo system installed at Satanta.
Integrated into the main house were no fewer than 20 internal bins and a dustbin.
Another note says the job included construction of the office building seen to the right of the elevator. Photos from our June 8 visit show the building little-changed.
If only I’d possessed an aerial drone to take the same shot from the northwest.
What’s particularly revealing about the 1948 aerial photo is the sparsely populated village, as seen on a day when light snow covers the nearby fields. The new elevator dwarfs two neighboring wood elevators. The water tower, previously the tallest structure, is no longer so impressive.
And why were there no trees? Springfield was founded by Windsor Town Company in 1887. The tree-planting trend evidently took hold after 1948.
Springfield’s population has continued to dwindle. The town’s website claims 1,375 souls in 2020. It’s part of a general decline of population in towns and villages of the Great Plains.
The elevator and storage annex now rise from a leafy setting. With its cupola, the elevator reaches 160.25 feet, far higher than any tree that will endure the gales. Springfield is 139 years old, but at the current pace, I wonder if the bicentennial in 2087 will find just the elevator outlasting the people and their trees.
As described in an earlier post, we visited the Tillotson elevator in Satanta, Kan. at sundown on June 8 and found our subject jubilantly aglow with a cloak of soft pink against the sky’s fading cobalt.
Tillotson Construction Co. built the twin-leg elevator as part of its Class of 1947. It was a 250,000-bushel undertaking in the same year they built elevators in Minneapolis, Kan.; Dalhart, Tex.; Rushville, Nebr.; and Helena and Eva, Okla. It was only exceeded in capacity by the 265,000-bushel classmate 100 miles away in Gruver, Tex. Tillotson had already built a 350,000-bushel elevator in Farnsworth, Tex. in 1945. The Class of ’47 nonetheless comprised the latest and greatest achievements for the Omaha company that had formed only nine years and one World War earlier.
It’s worth keeping in mind, as contributor Brad Perry informs me, there was need for greater storage capacity as elevators were situated farther and farther from shipping terminals to the east.
To see Satanta from a distance, while a locomotive scruffed and chuffed along the tracks on a local mission, was a revelation. A rising arpeggio from a string orchestra would have fit the moment.
There was another epiphany to come. After returning home to California in mid-June, I opened the photo file and found a portrait of the brawny new elevator, a gleaming 166.75-foot-tall class president of an elevator.
Windows high in the sky brighten the interior of the substantial, curvaceous cupola.
A note in the construction record says “Round end on cupola not per plans.” The way the story was transmitted by my late-uncle Charles J. Tillotson, the rounded cupola was an improvisation as Grandfather Reginald Tillotson found 90-degree corners unsatisfactory and determined it was easier to bend the formwork around the structure.
Did Satanta provide that moment of innovation?
Triumphant letters spelled out Satanta Co-Op Grain Co. then. Traces of a succeeding label are seen now. It’s a different style, and there’s racy red-and-blue striping on a tank.
The 1947 photo shows the elevator already at work. The 10.5-inch load-out spout is connected to a boxcar. The driveway door is up, allowing access to the 50-ton truck scale that measured 50 x 10 feet. We see snow melting around the lot on a fair day. In the lower left, a 1939 Ford Tudor sedan stands by for action. To the immediate right of the elevator, an arrangement of steel tanks is outfitted with a ladder and crude bridgework for access.
And to the far right, the old wood elevator looks on with awe.
A storage annex came along later, helping to complete the scene we found on that June evening at the start of another harvest. After nearly eighty years, the Tillotson elevator was still proving its worth by serving the Satanta community.
For the final stop on our Utah-Colorado-Kansas road trip leading to Omaha, Neb., my wife and I arrived in Minneapolis, Kan. at 12.00 noon on June 9 expecting to find the 100,000-bushel elevator that Tillotson Construction Co. built in 1947.
Seeking something obvious, we drove right up to the elevator complex at West 2nd Street and Markley Avenue. A friendly gent stepped out of the office and said Chalmers & Borton built the entire complex. Indeed, there were Chalmers & Borton manhole covers on the tanks of the annex. The main house featured a rectilinear cupola that was definitely not in the Tillotson style. We didn’t see any manhole covers on the sides of the tanks.
Then the gent told the tale of a massive fire in the 1990s that started in a feed mill, spread to a large lumber pile, and damaged an elevator next door. The fire department spent three days fully extinguishing the blaze and its last embers. The elevator had to be demolished.
We went to the site he indicated but saw nothing to suggest a former elevator.
Then we had lunch at Papa’s Burger Mill, nursing hopes of being able to track down details of the fire through newspaper records.
Minneapolis, a town of about 2,000 people, is situated just west of U.S. 81 some twenty minutes north of Salina, Kan. An AI overview offers:
“The area became a focal point for European-American settlement after the Civil War. In 1866, Israel Markley built a grist mill on the banks of the Solomon River and laid out the town. Originally called Markley’s Mills, the city was renamed Minneapolis around 1871—a name locals adopted from Minneapolis, Minnesota.”
None other than George Washington Carver attended high school here.
We had met apparent defeat in Minneapolis, though, and left the site without any proof of the elevator that’s in the Tillotson records. Or so we thought. It turned out to be a good thing that I took one establishing shot (top of post) showing the elevator complex from a southeastern vantage point.
To start work on this post, I searched unavailingly through newspaper archives. I called the Minneapolis village office and was referred to the Ottawa County Historical Museum. A woman named Beth revealed that the Minneapolis Messenger has never been digitized. She referred me to a museum advisory board member. I called up Jim Kay, a farmer, who said he’s 85 years old and a lifelong Ottawa County resident. He recalled a bit about the catastrophic fire but said there was never a second concrete elevator in Minneapolis. I sent him a photo from my desktop.
What was all the data from the construction record trying to tell me?
My investigation was heading nowhere until I thought to look through the recently acquired collection of photos from the Tillotson archive. Ta-da! There was a picture of Tillotson’s job. Inscribed on the back is “Minneapolis, Kan. 1947. The photographer’s stamp is B&M Photo Shop, “Everything Photographic,” Minneapolis, Kansas.
I called Jim Kay again. He said the whole question had been discussed at morning coffee. He agreed the photo depicts the same main house that stands today.
“It’s taken from the west side,” he said.
It’s an unusual elevator in the Tillotson catalog. A note on the record says it followed the plan established at Pond Creek, Okla,, but this one went up with “drawform walls thru cupola.” The single-leg elevator has four tanks measuring 15.5 feet in diameter and reaching 125 feet in height. The job consumed 906 cubic yards of concrete and 40.87 tons of reinforcing steel. Another 10 yards of concrete went for the hopper.
Fully loaded, the elevator was rated at 5,000 tons.
I have no idea about the rectangular tower. Nothing indicates it was part of the job. The only other note of significance says “Transfer spout to mill.”
The way we figure it, Chalmers & Borton, came along and modified the elevator, adding a new cupola in addition to building the storage annex.
The main house built by Tillotson still stands on its 41×41-foot slab doing the work it was designed for nearly eighty years ago. Thanks to help from others and a bit of luck, I’m satisfied it survived the inferno and we found what we were looking for.
As the evening sky turned to warm pastels and a train slugged along the track on terra firma, we approached Satanta, Kan. in search of the Tillotson elevator built in 1947.
Tillotson Construction Co. records led us to expect a 250,000-bushel, twin-leg main house with eight tanks (silos) measuring 18 feet in diameter and rising 120 feet. The cupola measures 21.5 x 48.5 x 40.25 feet, and tops out the elevator at 166.75 feet in height.
We hadn’t even considered it, but the harvest was just starting and trucks were expected to rumble up any moment. Everybody was prepared to work into the night. An employee saw me prowling around and came out of the office to caution me. Meanwhile, I’d already taken advantage of the opportunity to snap a couple of interior photos.
To allay questions about my legitimacy, inasmuch as possible, I said, “My grandfather built this elevator.”
The Tillotson elevator is 79 years old and has the scars and scabs and prostheses to prove it, but remains in operation for Skyland Grain LLC.
Complete specs for the elevator are found below in this post.
The elevator followed a plan established at Dike, Iowa and included eight internal bins. I looked for evidence of them along with the other marvels inside.
A remark on the records says, “Loading spout out bet. 2 tracks. Roto Flo dist. equipped 1 leg.”
U.S. Route 160 had led us from Springfield, Colo. into Kansas near a town called Johnson City. Continuing on this highway to its junction with Kansas Route 190, we covered the 50 miles to Satanta.
Tillotson built elevators in other southwestern Kansas towns: Moscow, Elkhart, Rolla, Montezuma, and Ensign. We lacked the time to wander to the first three and would only make it to Montezuma in the dark.
There is no record of Tillotson building the storage annex.
After Montezuma, we passed through Ensign on the way to our hotel at Dodge City, checking in at 11.00 p.m., exhausted after a 600-mile drive from Durango, Colo. with stops at several elevators. Then the clerk surprised us with the news that our room was on the third floor and neither of the elevators was working. They still weren’t working in the morning, either, so it came to hundreds of steps with all our stuff up and down and up in the night, down and up and down again in the morning.
On the side trip to Satanta, I should have asked to test the man lift. Despite the age, it probably works just fine.
Pages 3 and 3A of the Tillotson Construction Company’s construction record duplicate pages 2 and 2A from a previous post, but these are the complete scans of full long pages. The extra information concerns Cavalier, N.D.; Richland, Nebr.; and Montezuma, Kan.
Here at last we present a digitized page of the Tillotson Construction Co. record the late Tim Tillotson duplicated in 2012. Kristen Cart took the whole load of dupes to a copy center, and her effort leads to a batch of pages to be shared over the next few weeks. In that service, we’ve created a new subcategory of the blog for the records’ easy location.
Tillotson Construction Co. was formed in Omaha by Reginald and Joe Tillotson in 1938. Their first concrete elevator, listed on this page, was a 60,000-bushel job in Goltry, Okla. We visited that location in 2018.
Rose A. Tillotson was widow of Charles H. Tillotson and mother to Joe and Reginald.
The reader will note the company got off to a fast start until 1941 when World War Two intervened. There is a three-year gap until the next job in 1944. The page lists more from then until 1946. The jobs got much bigger–up to 350,000 bushels at Farnsworth, Tex. (Good luck squeezing “Farnsworth” into a narrow column heading!
We visited some of these locations on our 2018 Texas-Oklahoma road trip.
Job sites are written atop the page with the year of construction. Most note which plan the elevator follows and extra information such as location of the driveway or diameters of the tanks. Zooming in splendidly reveals meticulously written entries. Uncle Tim told us the name of the employee who started this record. Maybe it’s in one of our early posts.
A key to reading this table: The left-hand column headed by “Item” lists various specifications such as gross capacity of the elevator and amount of rebar used per cubic yard of concrete in varying locations throughout the structure.
The middle section is devoted to costs (less commission) for labor and materials and even includes a line for state taxes. Only a few of Tillotson’s subsequent records include costs.
The bottom block has more info about total dollars and labor rates. At the very bottom, the notes are ad-libbed. They elaborate mundane points. One, for example, indicates total cost included a scale and office.
All in all, it’s a direct connection to answers on a great many points of Tillotson elevators.
The elevator in Gordon, Nebr. was built by Mayer-Osborn, as attested by its manhole covers. It was built in their iconic style.
Story and photos by Kristen Cart
When someone reaches their middle eighties intact and in good health, they can do whatever they want. It’s a reward that comes along with advanced age. Okay–it has to be within reason–say, within the budget, but there shouldn’t be any major obstacles, unless care-giving is in the picture. With my dad, Gerry Osborn, no such obstacle existed in 2019, before Covid-19 made its debut.
Gerry Osborn at the courthouse in Rushville, Nebr.
Dad and I had taken a western driving tour in 2018 to visit the house where I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, which he had architecturally restored from a sadly worn and altered state. It was a foursquare brick farmhouse with historic ties to early Mormon settlers. The current and longtime owner, Gundi Jones, kindly gave us a tour. We admired her finishing touches, which updated the mid-seventies decor as we had left it, to a European country style. It was beautiful.
We also took in Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park, before heading east for a stop at Mesa Verde, a marvelous place that captured Dad’s imagination. He was especially taken with its large collection of pre-Columbian artifacts.
Then, on our way home, we stopped at the Nuckolls County courthouse in Nelson, Nebr. The place brought back old memories. Dad explained that when he was a young student, he and his friends would play a game where they collected sightings of Nebraska license plates, each identified by a number designating its county of origin, 1 to 93. Each county was assigned a number, to be displayed on the license plate, in the order of the number of automobile registrations extant in each county as of 1922. So the most populous county was assigned the number 1, and plates with the number 93 were quite scarce.
Dad and his friends raced to try to find a plate from every county. The hardest ones to collect were from small counties at the other end of the state from Dad’s hometown of Fremont, Nebr.
Now he said that he would like to find them all by visiting every county courthouse in the state. He also wanted to see each courthouse out of curiosity–he loved the old architecture.
At the far left, the Mayer-Osborn elevator at Gordon, Nebr. displays the stepped, rounded head house typical of the company.
I said, “Sure, why not?” It made perfect sense to me, since I was a collector of all sorts of things, with an irresistible impulse to complete the set, whatever it happened to be. License plates sounded like a great excuse to spend time with my dad, while setting the world in order by collecting them all.
Beginning in early 2019, we started our project. We decided to photograph Dad in front of each courthouse, while surreptitiously snapping a shot of a local license plate. He had great fun Google-mapping our routes and itineraries, and over the course of the year, we completed our mission, taking several day trips and a couple of overnighters. We didn’t research any of the courthouses before we visited the county seats. Instead, we saved our first impressions for later, so each courthouse would be a surprise. Sometimes we would gasp in awe as a magnificent courthouse came into view; other times, we would sigh in disappointment.
The grain elevator in Merriman shares the characteristics of its predecessor in McCook, Nebr. and other Mayer-Osborn elevators, including its neighbor in Gordon, but we have not confirmed its builder.
Dad and I covered the entire state during our courthouse expedition, and incidentally, we crossed paths with his father Bill Osborn’s travels when we stumbled upon some of his grain elevators. Bill Osborn was based in Denver for a good part of his career as a builder, but he got back to Nebraska a few times while building elevators for Joe Tillotson and later for himself as partner in Mayer-Osborn.
Dad recognized the name of one of the elevators we encountered shortly after we visited the courthouse in Rushville, the seat of Sheridan County.
The elevator at Gordon, Nebr. (a town along Hwy. 20) had the trademark Mayer-Osborn rounded and stepped headhouse, and it followed the plan of their other larger elevators. It also sported manhole covers embossed with the name of the builder, which confirmed Dad’s thought that his father had built it. What a happy find!
Another view of the beautiful grain storage facility in Merriman, Nebr.
Its twin in neighboring Merriman, a town further east along Hwy. 20, had the same headhouse as the Gordon elevator and the same general plan as seen from the outside, but we couldn’t corroborate its origin, either by manhole cover, local attribution, or Dad’s memory. Yet we put it down as a strong maybe.
The elevator at Limon, Colo. had confounded us for a long time because of its resemblance to other Mayer-Osborn’s elevators, until we found that it was built after Bill Osborn had left the business. So there’s also a question mark over the elevator at Merriman until we can learn more.
Unfortunately our itinerary was pretty tightly planned, or we would have tried to track down someone who knew the history of the two elevators. We set the locations aside for a future visit. Now, years later, we haven’t been back, but we still have some photos to share here.
David Herbert Hatch is senior pastor at Our Savior Lutheran Church in Green Bay, Wisc. He worked slip-form construction on elevators throughout Iowa in the early to mid-1970s.
I would like to tell you a story.
Word is that one fall, after a grain elevator had serviced the community harvest, a federal inspector came for a look at the facility.
Unable to find the elevator manager, he took the liberty to climb a ladder outside a tank, all the way to the top. He opened a manhole cover, stepped through with his flashlight, and walked over the grain.
Using a re-rod, he probed around, checking the grain. Its high level in the tank at this time of year was a surprise.
“It should have gone to market by now,” he thought.
When he returned to the bottom the manager had arrived.
“Why is it that you have so much grain in the elevator?” the inspector asked.
“There’s no grain in it whatsoever,” the manager said.
He opened a steel door.
The inspector peered into an empty tank.
They shone the flashlight beam to the top and, even to the manager’s shock, saw a frozen ring of grain.
If the inspector had fallen through, with his probe, it would have been the end of his life.
David Hatch was born and raised in Ames, Iowa. Prior to college studies, Pastor Dave worked construction and had hopes of serving in law enforcement until his partial color-blindness prevented that. He did not know what to do with his life. Through God’s Providence and a phone call from his sister, who was a kindergarten teacher in Milwaukee, he enrolled in a college where, unknown to him, many of his future classmates were studying to be pastors. He received his education at Concordia College in Milwaukee; Concordia Teacher’s College, River Forest, Ill.; and Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Ind. His pastoral career began in 1982, following seminary, when he served as an admissions counselor at Concordia College in Bronxville, N.Y. and parish pastor at Love Lutheran Church outside of Albany, N.Y.
David Herbert Hatch is senior pastor at Our Savior Lutheran Church in Green Bay, Wisc. He worked slip-form construction on elevators throughout Iowa in the early to mid-1970s.
Our operations back in the1970s had many vulnerabilities. That is, there were a lot of, “What ifs?”
The whole operation depended on a constant pour. If we had to shut down, we would have, what I remember them calling, a cold seam. That’s when the whole jacking system stopped. The concrete sat in the forms and dried, and everything had to be restarted again at a later time.
One absolutely ugly seam would be left around the perimeter of an otherwise beautiful structure. Not only that, but the drying concrete might hang up and attach itself to the forms, and they would not go up. So that’s what we tried to avoid.
Remember, I just ran a winch, and I only had hearsay. I was 18 or 19 and trying to gather information. I can only speak from what I know, and that’s not much.
What things could happen to cause such a shutdown?
What if an electrical storm lasted several hours and we had to get off the decks because we were a giant lightning rod?
What if the power went out in the city? There would be no electricity to run the jack pumps or the lights around the perimeter of the deck or to operate the electric-powered concrete vibrators!
What if only a bare-bones part of the crew showed up for work one day? Would there be enough manpower to lay the steel and push the concrete in ratio to how fast the forms had to be jacked?
What if the engine on the winch died? There was no back-up winch. (Setting the winch in place was no small matter. It had to be anchored into the ground just right, and angled perfectly so that the cable would wind properly on the spool. If the cable didn’t wrap right, it would rub against itself during wrapping and begin to fray, and then it would not be reliable.
Up on the deck was the jack house, where the jack pumps were kept. If I remember right, there were two of them, a primary and a back-up. The chance of going down, it seems, was low.
There were 1,000 other possible troubleshooting challenges. For example, concrete setting up too fast, hanging up in the form during normal operation and “pulling a hole” that would appear below as the forms began to rise. That would not stop the operation, but it sure would be a problem requiring later patching. If I remember right, the forms were oiled down prior to the start to help prevent this.
David Hatch was born and raised in Ames, Iowa. Prior to college studies, Pastor Dave worked construction and had hopes of serving in law enforcement until his partial color-blindness prevented that. He did not know what to do with his life. Through God’s Providence and a phone call from his sister, who was a kindergarten teacher in Milwaukee, he enrolled in a college where, unknown to him, many of his future classmates were studying to be pastors. He received his education at Concordia College in Milwaukee; Concordia Teacher’s College, River Forest, Ill.; and Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Ind. His pastoral career began in 1982, following seminary, when he served as an admissions counselor at Concordia College in Bronxville, N.Y. and parish pastor at Love Lutheran Church outside of Albany, N.Y.
During the slip operation, the ground was an exciting place to be. The viewing experience would be a little like watching Devil’s Tower rise out of the earth to its finished height in seven days–or the lights going on at the Field of Dreams. “If you build it they will come.” Especially at night, the farmers came. They stood, they watched. Without trying, we stepped out of their cornfields, and they beheld a sight they would never forget.
David Herbert Hatch is senior pastor at Our Savior Lutheran Church in Green Bay, Wisc. He worked slip-form construction on elevators throughout Iowa in the early to mid-1970s.
At night, the gatherers saw lights, heard a roaring winch engine, and saw concrete trucks lined up. They heard shouts from the deck to the ground: “More vertical rebar!” They could see concrete finishers go around and around the structure, lit with strings of incandescent bulbs. But silent to them were the jacks, lifting the whole unit several inches a minute.
Out in the flatlands, night travelers who were miles away could see a slip going up.
Ground support was by means of various components.
The Steel Pile–There was a steel pile on the ground. The guy running the steel gin pole called down for vertical or horizontal re-rod. He also called down for jack rods or a large drinking-water container with cups. Perhaps he sent up parts or hydraulic oil. Mostly, he sent up steel using a cable choker.
The Concrete Truck and Driver–Here is an important guy, the concrete-truck driver. He filled the concrete bucket as fast as he could, got out of the way, and watched it go up. As the gin pole operator pulled the bucket in for dumping, it went out of sight of the driver below. Then it reappeared in free fall to the ground and the cycle repeated.
I believe concrete-truck drivers had a dangerous job for many reasons. What if the winch operator did not stop the free fall in time? What if a pulley failed or snapped at its axle? What if someone dropped something from above, like the finisher’s bucket or brush? What if a Georgia buggy driver overfilled the form just above the concrete truck?
There were always one or two trucks lined up when the current one was out of mud. Sometimes we had to ask the driver to add more water to the mix as it was too thick. Sometimes we asked them for more calcium to have it set quicker, perhaps if the mud was too thin. Tricky business. They have come out with trucks that unload the concrete from the front. I believe that it is easier for the driver to control his parking and dumping. Those were not legal in Iowa back then as they were too heavy. No clue about the law today.
The Boom Truck–What a cool old truck! Resembling a tow truck, this cob-job lifter moved things around the job site. It was as fun to drive as it was deadly. Every driver was warned, “Don’t drive under low hanging power lines, you will snag them, and it will kill you!”
The Job Superintendent’s Office–This was often a large mobile home. There were blueprints everywhere and concrete dust all over. It couldn’t be helped. That is where you got your new hardhat if you needed one.
The Townspeople–Putting up an elevator in a small town made for a big gathering. This would be their elevator. Their grain would go into it. Their bread and butter depended on this concrete and steel. And so they came and watched. Seeing a slip-form operation working at night is better than visiting the midway at the state fair. The sights, the sounds, the whole event–wow!
The Winch–The winch that lifted the concrete bucket was powered by a Ford industrial engine. I had always thought it was a six-cylinder inline engine, but it may have been a four. The winch was anchored into the ground, several hundred feet away from the base of the elevator. I never studied the anchoring into the earth, but it must’ve been substantial.
The engine shroud was red. The operator stood up while running the winch. The throttle was a small wire with a piece of wood as the handle running through the shroud to the carburetor. There was a large foot-brake for the operator’s right foot. It had a hand clutch for the right arm. The hand clutch was tall, like a walking cane or taller, bent over to the right at the top. There were no gears, just single speed. There was no tachometer visible. It would’ve been fun to have a tachometer.
The winch operator had to be alert at all times. He had to have good eyesight for distance. The goal was to get the concrete bucket filled with mud and send it up to the gin-pole operator at the hopper. That gin pole operator would swing the bucket in, dump it as fast as he could into the hopper, and push it back out in the open air. Then the winch operator would begin to free fall the bucket to the ground. Obviously everything I just described cannot be done from at 10 feet off the ground. Once you hit 20 feet and up, things got exciting.
The winch operator had a lot of responsibility, because if he wasn’t being careful, he could run the bucket up into the top gin pole at full speed, knocking the hopper guy off. If he wasn’t careful, when free-falling the bucket to ground and braking late, he could injure folks on the ground–especially the concrete truck driver.
The winch operator had to keep an eye on the cable winding (spool wrap) so that it did not overlap and pinch itself, causing a frayed cable.
For myself, this job was so intense that when I was not working, I would sit up in bed and run the winch in my sleep. The guys working with me got the biggest kick out of that. We were all piled up in motel rooms as we moved from town to town.
In conclusion, it was a blast! I absolutely loved this job–especially the roar of that engine at full speed under load.
David Hatch was born and raised in Ames, Iowa. Prior to college studies, Pastor Dave worked construction and had hopes of serving in law enforcement until his partial color-blindness prevented that. He did not know what to do with his life. Through God’s Providence and a phone call from his sister, who was a kindergarten teacher in Milwaukee, he enrolled in a college where, unknown to him, many of his future classmates were studying to be pastors. He received his education at Concordia College in Milwaukee; Concordia Teacher’s College, River Forest, Ill.; and Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Ind. His pastoral career began in 1982, following seminary, when he served as an admissions counselor at Concordia College in Bronxville, N.Y. and parish pastor at Love Lutheran Church outside of Albany, N.Y.
