‘Yesterdays’: Telling your own stories

You'll find charm and humanity aplenty in 'Yesterdays: Memoirs from the Gray Hawk Writers” (CreateSpace, 319 pages, $14.95).

Many of the 24 authors in this collection are well-known names in Iowa City and Cedar Rapids. Their 82 stories, though, offer surprises about these people you think you know.

You'll learn, for example, how Pat Davis ended up with wedding china she didn't like and had to wait decades before pawning it off on her kids. David Jepsen recounts a humbling childhood softball game against a girl. He also draws a tone-perfect picture of two bachelor Iowa farmers who helped save a life during a blizzard.

The late Sam Becker has a wonderful story about growing up above his immigrant parents' shoe store.

Jeanne Liston writes movingly about her nursing career and a terminal cancer patient whose death has never left her memory. Sandra Hudson tells us about her colorful, one-of-a-kind father, Ted Chermak. John Hudson offers a fascinating essay about learning to type on a keyboard that makes a lot more sense than the 'qwerty” one we're stuck with.

Bob Wachal provides an entertaining, curmudgeonly essay on things he doesn't understand. Joseph Dobrian writes about being the one kid who doesn't get invited to a classmate's birthday party.

Several strong essays concern World War II service.

Gordon Strayer writes about standing in uniform in a gentle snow in France in April 1945, listening to the radio broadcast of President Roosevelt's funeral. 'Men, including our handful of tough warriors who had survived the Battle of the Bulge scarcely 100 days earlier, bowed and shook their heads, and tears were clearly in evidence,” he writes.

The late Dean Andersen tells of sleeping amid the rats in the jungles of New Guinea during the war, and the late Hal Mulford writes about abandoning ship during a battle in the Pacific.

The late Ocie Trimble entertains with a story about growing up in Cedar Rapids and racing around on horses as recklessly as any teenager in a car. He also tells how a new superintendent wanted 'Spring Flowers” played at high school graduation instead of the 'Pomp and Circumstance.” Ocie organized his fellow seniors, and they refused to set foot in Veterans Memorial Coliseum for the ceremony until the organist played the traditional march. He also has great stories about a Viking 'funeral” on the Iowa River and an impromptu modern sculpture he and his sons put in place near Hancher Auditorium on the University of Iowa campus.

I came away wishing I'd known Mr. Trimble. It's a good bet you'll feel that way, too, after reading glimpses from these two dozen lives. The stories are ripe with detail and description - the kind that might just nudge you toward finally writing down the stories of your own life.