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Washington Evening Journal
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Washington, IA 52353
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Local history comes to life with award-winning Fairfield History Series
Southeast Iowa Union offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
Almost ten years ago, people from all parts of Fairfield and Jefferson County got together and planned out a fun and interesting series of movies about our community’s mostly forgotten history.
Dick DeAngelis got together with Jason Strong from Fairfield Media Center and started a non-profit organization called Fair Field Productions (a nod to Susan Fulton Welty’s book “A Fair Field”). He gathered some like-minded Fairfielders and they committed to develop and a series of deeply-researched documentary movies highlighting stories of what happened here, everything from dinosaurs and the earliest native tribes to agriculture and secrets of Fairfield’s Underground Railroad.
“We are losing our sense of home, of place. With the internet, we can know any fact about almost anything. But we have fallen back in our understanding of home, or what’s known as ‘place-based education’. What is the history of what happened here, where we live, where we work.” says DeAngelis.
Each film takes over a year to produce and culminates in three premiere showings played to packed house at the Fairfield Arts & Conventions Center Theater.
“The people who live in this area have always been receptive from the start,” says DeAngelis. “They come to the premieres, buy the DVDs and stream it online. And they have helped us when we needed financial support.”
Over the years, Fair Field Productions has worked with over 600 volunteers from throughout Southeast Iowa who have combined their knowledge, resources, and talents to produce the award-winning Fairfield History Series. So far, the six “docs” have garnered awards from all over Iowa and the U.S., including an Mid-America Emmy Award for Best Historical Documentary for the film “Parsons”.
The sixth film in the highly popular Fairfield History Series, “When Maharishi Came to Town”, has already been selected to show at film festivals throughout the Midwest. Now they are working on the final chapter about the importance of Art and music in Fairfield’s history, with eyes on a November 2026 premiere.
Clips from past films are already being used in both public and private classrooms.
For details on how to view the Fairfield History Series documentaries online or on DVD, visit www.fairfieldhistoryseries. com.
