Lillie, Beulah, and Lulah: A Gift Out of Nowhere to the Hampton (Iowa) Carnegie Library

I still get that “what’s the prize inside?” feeling whenever I walk into a Carnegie; I just don’t know what I’m going to find. I usually have poked around online for background information before I arrive, and sometimes that info is fairly detailed. The Hampton Public (Carnegie) Library, for instance, has a full page on the library’s history, written by the library’s director Suzy Knipfel. This history was missing most of the details I was most interested in, as it said little about the role of women in the library’s history. The only mention of a woman in this history was that at the library’s grand opening, “A short address [was given] by Miss Alice S. Tyler, the Secretary of the State Library Board…” 

The library building was not especially enticing to me from the outside and I almost got back in Goldfinger and drove away, except that my bathroom needs were pressing hard on my mind and bladder. As I walked up the front steps I saw several plaques on either side of the tall glass entrance doors. They read “Lillian, Lulah and Beulah Alert Estate Gift, 2003” “Ruth E. Wolf Estate Gift, 2004” “Maribel Kratochvil Estate Gift 1996” and “Nellie G. Christensen Estate Gift, 2005.” I had to learn more about who these women were and why they included the Hampton library in their estates. Suzy, the library’s director, was excited to hear about my project, and she gave me a trove of information that I would not have been able to gather had I not met her. 

Lulah and Beulah were the only children of William Henry Alert and Lillian (“Lillie”) Maria Carolina Schermer Alert, who owned a farm in Franklin County, where Hampton is located. Beuhlah was born just months before the stock market crashed in 1929, and her Lulah followed in 1933 then Iowa was in the grip of a deep economic depression. Corn prices had crashed and “Some farm families began burning corn rather than coal in their stoves because corn was cheaper. Sometimes the countryside smelled like popcorn from all the corn burning in the kitchen stoves.” Although half of Iowa farms faced foreclosure during the Great Depression, the Alberts, who owned 120 acres, of which 90 were tillable, kept on plowing, sewing, and reaping. When William died in 1960 his obituary noted that he was a “well known” Franklin County farmer. The three Alert women remained on the farm. Lillian died in 1979 and Lulah followed in 1994. At Lulah’s small funeral, Beulah told one of her few farming contacts, Jim Jorgenson, that, even though she was perfectly healthy, she wanted to move into a nursing home. Jim asked ‘When?’ and Beulah responded ‘at 2 o’clock this afternoon.’ When Jim went to pick her up, she was waiting with all the belongings she wanted in a plastic bag. Beulah died in 2001. The Alerts are buried side by side, with Beulah and Lillian on one flank of their simple headstone, their parents on the other.

Suzy recalled that Lulah and Beulah lived a reclusive life on their farm outside the town. She told me they rarely came into Hampton, and then only to buy supplies for their farm. They had never set foot inside the library, to the best of her knowledge. They had no heirs and, it seems, few if any friends: 

Even in a small community where everyone knows one another, there are times when no one has a clue…There are pictures from when the girls were very young, that indicate that they were a really happy family. But something happened sometime that separated them from the outside world...

Farming is hard, and being isolated makes it no easier. Their separation from the community made them targets. Jim related that the family

brought in their mailbox every night. That's because kids would drive by and put cherry bombs in it and blow the door off. One time Mrs. Alert said to me, "I suppose you think this is ridiculous, but mailboxes are expensive."

She also told me once. You don't know what it's like for three women to live out here all alone.When a car stops on the road after dark and a group of men get out...you're never sure what's going to happen next."

Those quotes came from a clipping that Suzy showed me. (Good news: the Hampton library kept a binder of newspaper articles about the library. Bad news: the clippings typically didn’t contain the date or source. Good news: When I wrote to Suzy to ask for help in identifying the source, she immediately responded that she would help, and then within hours sent me the details. All the quotes in this section come from the story noted below.) Although the Alert women did not make news when they were alive, they certainly did after they died: “[T]he women who lived their lives so frugally, perhaps to the point of denigration by some, have provided three gifts that will benefit thousands in the years to come.” The front page, above the fold, headline in the Hampton Gazette, March 5, 2003 : “Surprise Benefactor Leaves $855 Thousand.”

At their farm home on Mallory Drive, the Alerts had neither running water nor electricity, even though Iowa farms had begun receiving electric power in the 1930s through the Rural Electrification Act. This did not mean they were backwards. Lulah was the valedictorian of her Hampton High School class and majored in chemistry at the Iowa State University in Ames. She was working at a lab in Minneapolis when her father became sick, so she “came home to help and never left.” The Alerts were eager to improve their farming yields and so adopted modern farming practices. Lulah, who managed the family’s accounts, was also a savvy investor. 

Very savvy. The Alert family, who lacked toilets that they could flush, were rich. With no heirs, no family members could lay claim to their estate. The Alberts split their bequest three ways, with $285,000 going to each of three institutions: The Franklin General Hospital Foundation, the Franklin County Historical Society, and the Franklin Public Library Foundation. These gifts would enhance the health, the historical memory, and through the library the educational and recreational opportunities of the community that they themselves were seemingly distant from. 

The gift, more than a lifeline to the library, was a rescue boat. The library had been running a deficit and spending down its foundation’s money simply to operate. The gift allowed it to put its books – figuratively and literally – back in order and to create an endowment for the future. Farmers understand that planting need be done every year, but that the long-term care of the soil is what will make the farm sustainable. Jorgensen, the executor of the will, said, "people who criticized them for their lifestyle are going to benefit to the tune of 800-some thousand dollars because they gave back to the community, despite what people said or did to them."