Ramblin': Home building all in the family

LISBON - Just a couple of miles away from today's Field of Dreams, Lawrence Schwers grew up on the family farm in rural New Vienna and dreamed of following in his father's and grandfather's footsteps.

Instead, Lawrence grabbed a hammer rather than a tractor's steering wheel and began a journey that would form the foundation for not only his career, but that of his brothers as well.

“I liked it on the farm,” says Lawrence, now 74, relaxing in the kitchen of the house he just finished for granddaughter, Niki Davis, in Lisbon. “Then I went into the service. I always swore I'd go back to the farm.”

But, in 1957, after three years in the Army, much of it in Germany, Lawrence couldn't find a farm to buy. He wasn't sure he wanted that responsibility, anyway. So, at the employment office in Cedar Rapids, he applied for a construction job. He always enjoyed helping his father build a chicken house, a hog house, a garage, a machine shed ...

Soon, Lawrence was measuring twice and cutting once with Gene Stark, who was building houses near Grant Wood Elementary School in southeast Cedar Rapids.

One day, as they installed siding, Gene turned to Lawrence and asked “How's it fit?”

“Good enough,” Lawrence replied.

“No,” Gene responded with a loud, firm voice. “It's not good enough. It's either right or it's wrong. Which is it?”

Lawrence made it right. And, despite losing the job a year later when Gene took a hiatus, he knew this was what he was cut out to do.

“You work with your hands,” he says today, “and every day you see what you've done.”

After constructing portable buildings for a while at a Marion lumberyard, then working for Warren Read Construction, Lawrence hung up his own shingle - Lawrence Schwers Construction.

“I just knew the future would be to have ... well, I'm not one to punch a time clock. I like to work in the open. I wanted to have my own company.”

Often working around the clock, he shook enough hands (that's all it took to seal a building contract in those days) to see he needed help.

Chuck, 72, of Colorado Springs, Colo., joined him in 1961 and worked for a couple of years before starting his own Dubuque company, Chuck Schwers Construction, which he moved to Colorado.

Elmer, 71, of Dubuque, came aboard about 1963 and worked a decade for Lawrence before starting Elmer Schwers Construction.

Merlin, 69, and mostly retired from farming near Luxemburg, worked for Lawrence less than a year before returning to his roots.

Jim, 66, of Tulsa, Okla., spent a year with Lawrence and now has his own Tulsa company, Jim Schwers Construction.

Since the boys (they also have five sisters) enjoyed farming as youngsters, Lawrence doubts they would have become home builders if not for his lead.

In the last half century, since building his own home in Anamosa in 1959, Lawrence figures to have built more than 400 homes and apartments from Dubuque to Sabula, from Greeley to Atkins, and many points between.

He's built houses for his parents, two sisters, Merlin, four children and now, with this one, a grandchild.

“I just do the finish work any more,” he says, stifling a grin. “I shingled. My kids don't like it when I get up on the roof.

“Next to food,” he adds, “housing is the most important thing. It's been real good to all of us.”