Richland celebrates Homecoming

Residents both past and present congregated in Richland this past weekend for the town's Homecoming celebration.

Richland puts on Homecoming once every five years, and has done so ever since the first Homecoming in 1909 (except in 1944 when Homecoming was skipped because of World War II). Korwin Hinshaw, president of the Richland Community Club responsible for organizing the event, said the generosity of the sponsoring businesses and the donations from private individuals made this one of the most successful Homecomings ever.

'When it's all said and done, this is probably the biggest Homecoming money-wise we've ever had,” he said. 'Individuals came up to us and said, ‘I love Richland. Here's $1,000. Merry Christmas.' A town that old and that structured means a lot of people have strong feelings about the community.”

Homecoming festivities began Thursday and lasted four days, featuring a vendor and craft show in the town square, live music, fireworks, an antique car and tractor show, and perhaps the main event of them all, Saturday morning's parade. Hinshaw said the parade had 80 entries, and some of those had multiple vehicles and floats. The winning parade float went to Bennett Ag Research Corporation.

Growing up in Richland

Rita and Dennis Eastman set up a booth during the vendor fair to sell their homemade wooden spoons, ladles and cutting boards. Though the couple lives in Packwood now, Rita grew up in Richland, and has fond memories of the town.

'I grew up on a farm south of town, and I remember that every Wednesday night, we'd go to the high school band concert in the park,” she said. 'My brother and I each got a nickel and we could spent it however we wanted. I spent it on candy.”

When she was in eighth grade, Rita joined the high school band on stage a time or two. She felt very proud of that.

'I was hot stuff,” she joked.

At that time in the 1950s and 1960s, Richland supported three grocery stores.

'This was the place to be,” Rita said. 'You could run all over town and not worry about the neighborhood.”

Richland had a school that went through high school until 1962, when the high school portion closed and those students began attending Pekin. Rita went to grade school in Richland, and graduated from Pekin in 1969.

The school has since closed to all grades, though the building is still used to this day. The newest part of it is a fitness center.

Richland librarian Cindy McCan said noteworthy items from the former school building are kept in the basement of the Richland Public Library. This includes a trophy case of accolades won by Richland High School athletes, and a gallery of senior class pictures.

Moving back to Richland

Nikki Hackert and her father Craig had set up a booth to sell ornamental pieces of cut-metal such as 'welcome” signs and logos for sports teams. Nikki was born and raised in Richland. She said it was so much fun to go to school with the same kids from pre-school through graduation.

Nikki said she liked going to Pekin because she got to meet people from the surrounding towns. One of her best friends grew up near Farson, on the other side of the school district.

After she graduated in 1996, Nikki moved to the Illinois side of St. Louis, where she lived for 10 years. She had a daughter there, but when it was time to enroll her in school, Nikki hesitated. Her daughter would have gone to a school where her graduating class was 500 students, a far cry from the 66 in Nikki's graduating class. Nikki decided her daughter would be better served at Pekin, so she moved back to the area.

'Pekin has changed a lot since then,” she said. 'It's grown, and they've remodeled it a lot to deal with today's world.”

Nikki said her favorite thing about Homecoming is seeing so many people she doesn't normally see, like a friend of hers from the Class of 1996 who now lives in Grimes. She said the best part of Richland is that everybody knows everybody else, or nearly.

'And if they don't know you, they know your parents,” she said.

Saturday's parade was an opportunity for other small towns in the vicinity to show off their floats. JoAnn Long of the Rubio Ladies Club has participated in the parade as long as she can remember. She said the members of the club have reached an age where walking a parade route is no easy task, but they couldn't turn down the opportunity to participate in such a festive occasion.

'It's nice for these little towns to have their own parades,” Long said.

Long said the population of Rubio is much smaller than Richland at 37, and that's counting 'cats, dogs, chickens, goats and horses.”

'Everybody looks out for everybody else,” Long remarked about small-town living. 'Our club fixes funeral lunches for anybody who asks us, and we don't charge them anything.”

First Homecoming

The town of Richland was established in 1838 by Quaker settlers, led by a man named Prior Woodard. Hinshaw said many Quakers arrived in North Carolina initially, and continued to move west, through Tennessee, Indiana and then to Iowa. Hinshaw's ancestors were among the first to settle in Richland, coming in 1844.

Hinshaw explained how the idea was hatched to start a Homecoming tradition more than a century ago.

'The city fathers got together and said, ‘We've been here since 1838, and a lot of people have grown up here and moved away. It's time for us to have a reunion, to give people a chance to return to where they were born and raised,'” Hinshaw said.

Invitations were sent to all veterans of wars up to 1909, most of whom were Civil War veterans in their 60s or older. The first Homecoming was a staggering success, drawing 6,000 visitors to the town of 600.

Hinshaw said the reason so many returned was that Richland played an important role during the Civil War. It was a holding point to establish a regiment for the state of Iowa. The regiment traveled from Richland to Mt. Pleasant and then to Keokuk before reaching the front lines farther east.

Pride

Hinshaw said he could not be prouder of his hometown, and said it is among the most ambitious of any 600-person town in the country.

'Hardly any towns that size have $15 million in valuation, that own their own water system, with a thriving chiropractic clinic, medical clinic, accounting firm and two banks,” he said. 'Not many have a business like Panama [Transfer], which employs 43 people.”

Many famous and influential people have called Richland home. That includes the likes of Paul McCracken, a Richland boy who went to Harvard and eventually became an economic advisor to U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, and served on the economic council for presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. It includes John A. Greenlee, who attended Parsons College and went on to be the president of California State College at Los Angeles from 1966-79. Greenlee was later inducted into the Parsons College Wall of Honor.