I've been asked a couple of times during these troublesome days if I'd ever detected instances of antisemitism while reading local news in the back files of Chariton newspapers --- or otherwise. And the short answer is "no."
There's plenty of racism embedded in Lucas County's paper trail --- and homophobia, too, courtesy of a recent publisher, now retired. But no antisemitism that I've been able to document.
Lucas County has always had a small Jewish population --- Henry Kubitshek among the earliest and most prominent; the Oppenheimers, thoroughly integrated into the community; the Gendlers --- and others.
Since the population here was never large enough to support a synagogue, most were affiliated with congregations in Des Moines or Ottumwa.
Which brings me in a slightly round-about way to a column by Julie Gammack, published Monday at Iowa Capital Dispatch under the headline, "Antisemitism isn’t far from home, yesterday and today."
Some will remember Gammack's father, Gordon Gammack, longtime reporter and columnist for the Des Moines Register and the Des Moines Tribune. Some will be familiar with the Wakonda Club, long the most exclusive golf and country club in our capital city.
The story that Julie Gammack tells dates back to the 1960s when her father and other prominent Wakonda Club members were struggling to convince the membership as a whole to admit Jewish applicants --- heretofore barred. That bar remained in place until 1964, the year I graduated from high school.
If you read the piece, be sure to read the letter it contains from Dr. Sidney Sands, namesake of the Sands Wing of Broadlawns Medical Center.
Personally, I'm still meditating on a social media conversation I monitored the other day involving, among others, Lucas countyans, as it edged closer and closer to outright antisemitism. Yesterday, and today, it's never far from home.
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