Dawn Rudolph will share her hometown’s stories in a program set Friday, Nov. 6
The Greene County Historical Society will bring its regular monthly meeting to Scranton on Friday, Nov. 6, with one of the town’s best-known citizens of today, Dawn Rudolph, doing a program she is calling “Scranton Memories.”
The 1 pm program at the United Methodist Church will be free and open to the public. There’s also a lunch for $8 at noon at the church, and members should make reservations for the meal by Wednesday, Nov. 4, with the Historical Society’s community contacts. Others can RSVP for lunch to programs chairperson Mary Weaver at 515-360-8046.
“This will be the first time I’ve ever done this program, so thank gosh we decided to have a ‘Memory Room’ in our Community Building,” said Rudolph. “It’s a place where people are able to donate books and other items that help tell the history of Scranton and our people. I’ve been spending a lot of time in there going through the old Centennial books and other things to remind myself of a lot of the old stories.”
She has deep roots in the community, which now has a population of just more than 500.
Her great-great grandfather Gibson was the first of her clan to settle in the area in the second half of the 1800s. She graduated from Scranton High School in 1984. “Our class was the 100th to graduate in Scranton, so we did kind of a neat thing,” she recalled. “There were 25 of us in the class, and we all did a search back to find out how many of our relatives had also graduated in Scranton, and I think there were only a couple of us who didn’t have anybody earlier. We made the earlier graduates part of our ceremony.”
Dawn later married Jeff Rudolph and today they have Rudy’s Service & Detail in Scranton. In addition, she is in her second term as a member of the Greene County board of supervisors. Earlier, she served five years as mayor of Scranton and was on the city council before that.
She is an avid equestrian and for at least 20 years served as the Greene County Fair’s 4H and FFA horse superintendent, retiring from that position last summer.
She also has a hobby of raising and showing Dexter miniature cattle, and has had them in the Iowa State Fair the last five years. “My youngest son showed cattle as he was growing up,” she said. “After he got out of that, after a couple of years, I kind of missed having the animals around. So I had a birthday coming up, and my husband surprised me with a couple of the Irish Dexter calves,” which are a dairy breed, although Dawn doesn’t milk them. She says “if you feed them out, they’re a darned good steak and, since it’s a little smaller, it’s probably about the portion we all really should be eating.”
She also serves on the board of directors of the newly-completed, very nice Scranton Community Center, which was renovated from the old school’s gymnasium, cafeteria and other areas. She said if people attending the Nov. 6 program want to see the community center, she’ll be happy to open-up the building afterward.
