What Do You Remember About Rippey?
The Rippey, Iowa, Sesquicentennial will be held on Saturday, August 1, 2020. If you have personal remembrances of Rippey, you are invited and encouraged to share those memorable stories. Just send your remembrance via email and we’ll get it posted on the Rippey News Web site, as well as on Facebook sites of the Friends of Rippey and the Rippey Sesquicentennial. You write down the anecdote or story–a page or two–and we’ll do the rest. Phyllis McElheney Lepke is serving as our volunteer coordinator and stories may be sent to her at Rippey150@gmail.com
This “I Remember Rippey” remembrance is a great follow-up to Robert Huber’s recollections of school baseball in Rippey, which we published recently. He referenced Coach Daugherty, whose comments below were published in the book “Community Treasure,” which Robert donated to the Rippey Library. These are Pat Daugherty’s words:
I, like most kids, wanted to be a big league ball player and once that was out of the picture, I wanted to coach. After graduating from Simpson College in 1958, I started searching for my first teaching/coaching position. I sent my credentials to the Rippey School and within a few days I got a call from Supt. George Roberts, who invited me for an interview. After seeing the school and the town, I was convinced that this would be a great job. It was a great baseball town with a new school and a well-kept, lighted baseball field. After another brief wait, I was offered a contract for the 1958-59 school year. My first contract was for $2,900. I was head basketball, head baseball, junior high basketball, boys P.E., seventh and eighth grade science teacher and high school general Science and Biology teacher.
I also handled the summer baseball program which consisted of a Midget Team, a Babe Ruth Team and the town’s semi-pro team, The Rippey Demons, for which they gave me an additional $200. So I walked away with $3,100 that first year. Our rent was only $45 per month and I was driving a VW, so I thought we were making a pretty good living. While at Rippey, I started commuting to Des Moines to work on my Master’s Degree on Saturdays and during the summer mornings.
Our high school faculty was a close-knit group. Some of them started their teaching careers at the same time I did–George Whaley, Dick Fry, Harold and Rowena Woodward. Of course, the great Jake Peters was the principal and anchor for the staff. Also Mrs. Killam was the English teacher.
I started my second year at Rippey in 1959 and loved every minute of each day during that year. Our first child Mary was born. As I was to begin my fourth year at the school, 1961-62, I was recalled into the service and reported to Fort Carson, Colorado, for a year of active duty with the U.S. Army. While I was serving, the reorganization of school districts was taking place and when I returned for the 1962-63 school year, Rippey was in the East Greene School District with the High School in Grand Junction.
Due to being recalled into the U.S. Army, I was assured a position in the new reorganized school at Grand Junction where I taught biology and was head boys’ basketball and assistant baseball coach for the 1962-63 year. The following year I took a job as Head Baseball Coach at Garrigan High School in Algona, Iowa, in northern Iowa where I stayed two years and finished my Master’s in Education Degree and was ready to find something more challenging than high school coaching.
We now know Mr. Daugherty went on to Indian Hills Community College in Ottumwa, and became a scout for the Montreal Expos and the Colorado Rockies, retiring in 2015. He and his wife JoAnn reside in Centennial, Colorado.
