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Thursday, May 3, 1990 / University Daily Kansan
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Small town preserves link between past, present
By Leslie Reynard Special to the Kansan
RAMONA — The Ramona cemetery is two miles northeast of town in the middle of a soft green field. There, "the beautiful and elaborate
tombstone of its own, is the tall white steeple and silver bell from the old Lutheran church that had stood nearby and was torn down in 1867. Bannion's centennial year.
WAY OF LIFE
In Ramona, as in many other small Kansas communities with dwindling populations and resources, the tie for best in this category is strong for the people who remain
With the departure of many young people from Ramona and a population of only 110 in 1986, the congregation had declined to a point that it could no longer maintain the deteriorating building. Because in Ramona, as in so many other Kansas towns, the church was the center of community life and because its bell had rung at so many weddings, christenings, and funerals, it had become a part of the town. Those who were left cannot be beared the thought of it being bought at auction to hang in a barroom or to graze the patio of a city-dwelling antique bound.
On Memorial Day 1988, before the town's annual Memorial Day picnic in the park, the people of Ramona hauled the bell and its steeple to the old graveyard where 200 citizens, almost a hundred of whom were former citizens home for the holiday, gathered under the cloudy Kansas sky for the formal dedication of the bell and its $2,000 memorial stone.
The cemetery at Ramona holds memories of people and places alike. The bell and steppe were laid to rest here in 1988.
as the attendance at the ceremony would attest, people leave places such as Ramona. But these communities are not becoming ghost towns as quickly as many economists and rural sociologists suggest.
...
Declining populations have caused many towns to be called economically unstable by the experts. Many communities face problems with housing development, but people who remain deny that their homes are dying.
pride in our little town, and we're a long way from dying."
"No way is this town dying," said Gentie Schubert, who has lived in Ramona for nearly half a century. "We still have a grocery store. We have those two little restaurants. We have the garage. We really do manage the attitude we have in our small towns are dying, because they aren't." We really don't like it very well at all. I am pretty strong on that. We have a lot of
Despite the challenges facing them with an aging population and loss of manpower and financial resources, the people in towns such as Ramona continue to go about their daily activities and community ties. The ties run even deeper emotionally and spiritually. Although the closely knit circle of family and neighbors has grown smaller with the passing generations, the bond has grown stronger, ironically, the shrinking marriage, which caused economic hardship has intensified the closeness of the residents.
towns such as Ramona, with populations less than 2,500, compose 83 percent of Kansas communities. Many of these are unlikely to be targeted as prospects for economic redevelopment. The attachment of these towns' citizens to the preservation of their way of life notwithstanding, many economists and rural sociologists believe that probably no more than half of these towns will exist long after the year 2000.
"The smaller communities in our state are facing a severe test," said Charles Krider, economist and director of Kansas University's institute for Public Policy and Business Research. "Growth will probably not be uniform. There may be a bias inherent toward urban counties; rural counties have to get a strategy organized and set a focus for the future. The family farm is on its way to being a relic of the past."
Rick Scheidt has reached similar conclusions.
"We're seeing the end of an American way of life. Many of these towns were supported by agriculture, and the most recent farm crisis sounded the death knell for many that had just been maintained from home," said development specialist and Kansas State University professor who has been studying Kansas' rural communities for twelve years.
In many of Kansas' declining towns, the deteriorating buildings are venerable relics of the past, and they hold great importance for the people who remain. Many of these people can trace their family history back three or four generations. Many families have lived on the same several acres of Kansas land that they do now.
"The people in these little towns are actively grieving for place, holding on to their memories of what was on in those places." Schmidt said.
"We didn't want to turn the church into a hay barn," said Gertie Schubert, formerly Ramona's grade school teacher. She moved from Ramona to tola when she married Henry "Hank" Schubert nearly 50 years ago. Her husband is a third-generation Ramona citizen, now in his 70s, who serves as town clerk and who still works part-time in the small Ramona factory housed in the old school building, where飞-fighters and back-scrappers for cattle are now manufactured.
saw.
The ceremony of the Ramona bell is telling.
"We kept the bell and tower to keep the church alive in a way," Gertie Schubert said. "A boy who is a retired minister has the responsibility that was one of the first ministers of our church came back to give the dedication.
"With your ancestors being so close by, you just don't lose touch with them. Hank's grandparents, parents, brothers and sisters are here, and when our grandchildren come from Colorado, they want to come out to the cemetery. They know where their great-grandparents are, and it kind of keeps them alive for them."
Life goes on in Ramona, as it has for 103 years.
Main Street is clean but empty. Almost a third of the buildings are vacant, though most of the empty structures seem capable of rehabilitation. The bank had been moved to Hillsboro in the early 1980s, but last year it was reopened as a branch of the bank in nearby Tampa. Gertie Schubert said that federal revenue-sharing ended several years ago, but that some recent federal assistance helped the volunteer fire department to upgrade its equipment. Marion County funds have provided an ambulance service that operates out of Tampa.
Despite these indicators of growth, there are only two cars on Main Street, both parked. The only signs of life are postmaster Paula Fife's red desk in the office window, and Sader making her way from the post office to her cafe.
It's almost lunchtime at Sader's, a warm and bright place on this cold, damp day. There are thick slices of red ham, two kinds of potatoes, some creamed peas, good bread and coffee. And you can buy candy and store cookies because it's Monday, and Sader hasn't yet baked for the week.
backed for the 74, came to Ramona from Wisconsin when she was six.
"Dad wanted to move to Kansas.
He'd always heard about Kansas,
even though some said it ain't worth a damn," she said.
Sader's father, George Albright, worked for the railroad and became the town's watchman in its early days when young Ramona had a wildness about it, and train passengers occasionally needed an escort between the depot and the hotel. Sader and her husband lived on a farm and fell at home in the establishment where they've been serving meals since 1852.
Though a person would probably never visit Ramona unless deliberately aimed there, it is just the kind of place one can find the abstract and comfortable quality of rural life that many city dwellers seemed to be looking for during the so-called "rural renaissance" of the 1970s.
"It's like a little happy family here," Sader said, "with everyone pitching in and helping each other."
cerned about each other. You know who's in the hospital, how they're doing. You know who your neighbors are, knew their parents and grandparents, some of them. You don't get that in the city."
"We are more or less a family," Gertie Schubert agreed. "We're con-
And like 'many small towns, Ramona cherishes the memories of its people. During the 1987 centennial celebration, Ramona published "A Century of Memories," edited by long-time resident Dale Sondergard, to which each family submitted a family history and a memoir of people and places rcalled. Aba Lincoln Beltz, born in 1905 is still remembered among a "man of few words" years kind and thoughtful of his family, who loved his neighbor as himself." Years later, in 1987, his ancestor Martin Beltz stored the church bell in his barn while the stone was carved.
Several families recalled Alex
Brunner's skill as a baseball player in the 1920s and 1930s. Alex Brunner was 92 years old in the centennial year and was honored as Ramona's oldest resident. The Daewil family is remembered for the good fishing at its farm on Lyons Creek, and its generosity in permitting the townsfolk to fish there. The team at Ramona is an agent and an avid short-wave radio fan who built a tall antenna power with an amputated right arm.
All of these people are dead now. But the part they played in the life of the town, and the part that these memories play in 1960 Ramona, may be the key to what keeps these little towns going in spite of the odds.
"People do move in," Gerlie Schubert said. "Some are moving out, but Ramona isn't dying. I think if those people would just even be here for a month or two they would see that. Ramona is typical of a lot of the towns in this area - Tampa, Durham, Lost Springs. Though Lost Springs isn't as up-and-coming as Ramona, even though it has the school."
The centennial memory book refers repeatedly to a family or person choosing to move away. To Sader and Gertie and Hank Schubert, and the others who have stayed in Ramona, staying has never been a question to be decided. It is the moving away that is a matter of choice and that takes conscious effort. To ask them why they stay is much like asking the trees why they're there. "You have roots here." Gertie Schubert said. "You have people with roots."
History tells Ramona and other small-town Kansas citizens that their ancestors' ability to withstand the hardships of the past can give them faith in themselves and their own futures.
"History relates that it has always been a struggle for the farmers and the rural people." Sondergard wrote in the centennial book. He recalls the droughts, the grasshoppers and the lack of settlement in 1889, all of which caused Kansas to lose nearly 50,000 people at the turn of the last century.
The experts and forecasters who are writing these towns off as nonvailable may be overlooking the factors that create small town life. People who stayed are covered, Schedl said. "They won't give up."
"The present-day agricultural economic conditions can be resolved and rural people can become more prosperous," Sondergard wrote. "We believe that there will always be a Ramona."
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