Love Lives Forever On Barn

As you drive north on North Center Point Road, past Midway toward Center Point, you can't  help but notice the portrait of a woman gazing down over a garden, her dog to her right and a pet squirrel to her left. The words "In Loving Memory" tell you immediately this is a special portrait for a special woman.

When I stopped to learn more, nobody was home. But, after leaving my card in the door with a note asking the owner to call, I hoped the story would come to me.

It did.

John Saatoff graciously called and invited me to the acreage he shared with his wife, Bev. They were together 17 years until she died in late 2002 after a short battle with mesothelioma, a fast-moving and often fatal asbestos cancer. She was 53. (See today's Ramblin' column in The Gazette.)

After meeting on a blind date in 1985, John and Bev became inseparable. And being the kind of guy he is, John wanted to do something special after her passing. When he saw barn quilts throughout Eastern Iowa and a reproduction of Grant Wood's "American Gothic" on a barn, he felt the inspiration to have this 5-by-9-foot portrait painted of his true love.

Now, every day, when John returns home from a trip to Cedar Rapids he sees Bev's beautiful face gazing down on the land they loved, from the old 1914 barn they loved, toward the man who loved her more than anything on earth.

When you think of "eternal love," you think of people like John and Bev.