Happy 90th birthday, Frank Mitchell

Frank Mitchell, a long-time friend of the Lucas County Historical Society as well as a retired board member, observed his 90th birthday on Sept. 20 --- so Sunday's celebratory late afternoon supper in the dining room of the museum's A.J. Stephens House was a little belated, but no less heartfelt.

The organizing began early last week with a call from  Frank's son, John, who was in Chile at the time and couldn't make it to Iowa on the day itself. He wanted to arrange something memorable for Frank and decided that a birthday meal for a party of four on the museum campus would be appropriate. 

He thought the barn --- but office manager Kathleen and I thought otherwise. That's an appropriate venue for 50 people, but not for four at a time of the year that could turn chilly. After quite a bit of discussion, we decided  on the Stephens House dining room, equipped with a fine table and four chairs from the estate of the late Charlene Meyer.

Kathleen provided the linen and John made all of the other arrangements for a catered meal from a considerable distance (this is an early 20th century museum house, keep in mind, with no amenities for dealing with food and drink whatsoever).

It turned out, from my point of view at least, beautifully. Kathleen and Kylie did the onsite prep, I opened the house at mid-afternoon so that John (who had arrived in Chariton very early in the morning via Panama, Miami and Des Moines) could do the setup, then the food arrived and then the guests --- Frank (at right) and his brother and sister-in-law, Richard and Mary Mitchell, at left.

I went back later to make sure everything had been closed and secured properly and, had the linen not still been on the table, wouldn't have known an event had been held there.

Frank is a native of Lucas County who served for many years as a professor of history at the University of Southern California Los Angeles, then returned to Chariton to live after retirement. Among his retirement projects is  a county history, "Locale and Universe: The Shared Story of the Heartland's Lucas County, Iowa," published in 2016.