Vilsack: Tragedy Three Decades Ago Emphasized Faith, Challenges

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The December 1986 murder of Mount Pleasant’s mayor at a City Council meeting taught his successor, former Iowa Secretary of Agriculture and former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, the value of faith and confidence to confront challenges, Vilsack said in a new IowaWatch Connection radio interview. A disgruntled resident shot and killed Edward King and wounded two City Council members, shouting obscenities about a dispute the resident had with the city. “That experience indicated to me that the community was willing to come together,” Vilsack said in the interview. “It also taught me the important role in public life of being willing to listen, and being close to people, and giving them the opportunity to share with you their hopes, their aspirations, their concerns, their irritations.” Vilsack established “mayor’s hours” after King’s death in the city’s public library after a failed attempt at City Hall — people were reticent to go to where the murder happened, Vilsack said — to talk with people about municipal concerns in Mount Pleasant.

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Former IowaWatch Reporter, Eastern Iowa Business Leaders Join IowaWatch Board

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The Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism, or IowaWatch, is pleased to announce three new members to the Board of Directors. Rose Rennekamp, Alan Swanson and Linh Ta join a group of volunteers that guides the nonpartisan news nonprofit that works with students to develop investigative and explanatory news stories provided for free to Iowa news outlets. Linh Ta, who joined the board in March 2019, is a business reporter specializing in retail at the Des Moines Register. She was born and raised in West Des Moines and graduated from Valley High School in 2011. She moved north to attend school and study political science at the University of Northern Iowa and work as the executive editor of the student paper, the Northern Iowan.