On December 6th, two CCCHS teachers will release their book, Behind the Facade: Clay Center’s Fifth and Lincoln. The 72-page book is meant to be educational and entertaining, they said.
“It’s not overly long, that’s part of it being accurate and approachable,” said co-writer Laura Pollman. “It’s short and sweet, but ultimately we want the average person to sit down and find out something about Clay Center they didn’t know.”
The title covers the history of the now-Union State Bank and its two connected buildings, starting in frontier days, through the 1920s when the bank began. (A separate book by Elby Adamson shares the bank’s history.)
The project began when co-author Dawn Murphy suggested the pair start a podcast.
“We are very funny and obviously humble as well,” Murphy said. “Even if we only have 12 followers – who cares? We could hang out and talk about whatever. And Pollman countered with, ‘We should write a book.’”
Pollman, who is in her 45th year of teaching at CCCHS, had already been researching downtown, so the pair said it made sense to cover that topic. In addition, the building is the topic of a CCCHS mock trial, which focuses on a historic case in Clay County.
“We did a lot of climbing around the Union building last spring and this summer,” Murphy said. “Sometimes we just come rolling out with dust on a Saturday morning and people are like, ‘What are you doing?’ but we like to tromp around the upper floors and think that’s really cool.”
Murphy, who’s in her 27th year at CCCHS and 31st teaching overall, said most of their research was done in the summer so it wouldn’t take away from the school year.
Through their research. Murphy said there was an interesting family behind one of the buildings, and their actions kept her interest. Meanwhile, Pollman said in a different time, there are struggles we don’t think about in a modern world.
“There are challenges we don’t think about, and there were people who were willing to accept the challenge, and they were just so smart at it,” she said.
Murphy added, “Those risk takers are amazing to me; they put everything on the line. It was very visionary.”
And despite men having the advantage at seemingly every turn, the women still found a way to find success, all of which is included in their book.
“One of the most difficult parts was considering what to include,” Pollman said. “There’s not one book with a complete history on Clay Center, so we branched out and looked in a lot of places.”
Pollman received information from the late Cathy Haney, who was the director of the Clay County Museum. In more recent years, the pair got information from Irene Jensen, Mike Ryan, current Clay County Museum employees, and Courthouse employees, who showed them old records and journals.
“They helped out tremendously,” Pollman said. She also made graphics to include in the book. From there, the pair learned how to format the pages, which they said was the hardest part of the process.
“We love to research and talk to people, then narrowing it all down with the technical portion has been the most challenging,” Murphy said. “I think the older we get, we appreciate the history more and wonder about the stories behind people, events, and all of that. It’s fun to get to be the people who uncover.”
The pair is considering additional topics to cover in book form, while Murphy continues to push for a podcast, including historic women of Clay County.
“I think they’re going to be surprised about a few things,” Pollman said, who joked that she is still teaching history to her former students. “But the goal really was to give back to the people of Clay Center. It could be a great stocking stuffer.”
More information can be found on their Facebook page, Clay County Interpreneurs.
