Adventures in Archer, Iowa

The loss of a longtime Archer resident led Ty to recall fond memories of covering the small town in Northwest Iowa.

A photo of a February 2016 Archer City Council meeting. The lady in red at the center of the image is the late Esther Meyer. Photo by Ty Rushing

Something no journalism school in the country adequately prepares you for is how many older people you befriend while doing your job and the grief that comes with eventually losing them.

When you come from out of town or out of state, sometimes the older people you meet in the field become surrogate grandparents or parents who give you life advice or friends who happen to be a few generations older than you. And sometimes, they just provide a breath of fresh air when you see them.

The reason this is on my mind is because I just found out that Esther Meyer died over the summer. For me, Esther would fall in the breath of fresh air category. I always enjoyed our interactions, whether via email or in person, because she was a witty woman with a lot of heart. 

Esther’s name probably won’t ring a bell for any of you reading this, but she was someone I met early in my career and who I wound up spending a lot of time with. Esther died at age 89 on June 27.

Early in my first tenure at The N’West Iowa REVIEW/Sheldon Mail-Sun newspapers, Derrick Vander Waal, our then-managing editor, assigned me to the Archer City Council beat. 

Archer is a Northwest Iowa town of about 130 residents located about 11 miles southeast of Sheldon, where I lived and worked.

As you can surmise from its population, Archer was a small town —  like, really, really small. However, it had a few things going for it despite its size. There were two active churches, two thriving businesses that served as the town’s economic engine, a post office, an active volunteer fire department, and a public library/rec center/city hall/park. 

The sign for the Archer Co-Op Grain Co., one of the two mainstay businesses that support the city of Archer, Iowa. Photo by Ty Rushing

I would also make the case that the Archer City Council was another of those strong points, if not the strongest. 

Now, you probably think Derrick sold me a lemon by having me cover the Archer City Council, but you would be wrong. Derrick told me he often found good stories there and to always check the agenda for their council meetings. 

And with that, the Archer City Council became one of my core beats and that is where I met Esther. She had served on the city council for multiple terms. She also updated the community sign board and wrote and distributed the Archer Clipboard newsletter, the city’s unofficial news source.

For almost two years, I spent anywhere from 30 minutes to three hours every month with Esther and the rest of this dedicated bunch of small-town elected officials who were earnest about their work and did their best to protect the interests of Archer and its taxpayers.

While the council took its job incredibly seriously — as did I with my reporting — Archer also blessed me with some of the funniest and most fun public meetings I ever had the privilege of covering.  

A great example was when the city council voted to turn off the library’s wireless internet when the facility was closed. The reason for this? A councilman caught a teenager hanging out on the library’s roof after hours so that he could use the wi-fi to access adult materials.

I wrote about this for The REVIEW and The Mail-Sun, and both of my leads were gems, if I do say so myself.

For the Mail-Sun, I wrote: “High-speed internet is causing lowbrow problems in Archer.”

In The REVIEW, I wrote: “Archer officials made a change to the public library’s internet policy after one local youth was caught red-handed abusing the policy.” I still can’t believe I got away with that one.

Like I said, some of the funniest moments of my career happened covering meetings in a town whose entire population could comfortably fit into a hotel airport conference room.

For all those jokey-joke moments, Esther was there, as was Bill Engeltjes, another Archer stalwart, who is still with us.

There were also some serious moments. 

I remember covering a meeting in which Esther got into a heated back-and-forth with Tom Farnsworth (another one of my favorite local elected officials) over the response time of Archer’s former volunteer EMS service. Tom was the founder of the team and its long-time director. 

I was also there when Esther and the council decided to terminate a former library director, who had long been a target of council criticism over her job performance, and when another long-time councilman unexpectedly resigned following a few controversial comments about EMS service. 

See, I bet you didn’t expect all that drama from Archer City Council meetings. Also, in case you can’t tell, EMS service was always a big story in Archer before the volunteer team folded in 2018 following mass resignations — it’s a long, long story.

Esther and I weren’t close in a traditional sense, but she was part of my formative journalism years. I knew I could always count on seeing her, Bill, and later Richard Ludeke at those Archer City Council meetings. 

My affection for Archer and its residents ran so deep after covering their council for nearly two years that I continued to subscribe to the Archer Clipboard produced by Esther even after I left The REVIEW/Mail-Sun the first time in November 2016 to work at the Sioux City Journal. 

Part of what made subscribing to the Clipboard special was that Esther wasn’t using Mailchimp, Substack or some other newsletter service. She personally emailed — and mailed people who subscribed physically — copies of the Clipboard as an attachment, often with a little note in the email body. 

Screenshot of the April 2018 copy of the Archer Clipboard.

On more than one occasion, Esther checked in on me to see how I was doing or shared the latest update on her ever-declining health when sending me the latest Clipboard issue. Still, Esther was a fighter. She didn’t leave her home in Archer until June 2023, when “a series of falls and setbacks” forced her to move to an assisted living community.

Rest easy, Esther. You dedicated your life to public service and serving your community, and I want you to know that your legacy lives in the hearts of a lot of people, even those well outside the Archer city limits.