Iowarish Girl: Thank you Mr. Kinnick

There is a place where all of us long to go when we're feeling lost or in need of that familiar homey comfort that seems to leave a gaping hole with its absence. ... Miranda Lambert sings about it in "The House That Built Me," I thought if I could touch this place or feel it, this brokenness inside me might start healing. John Denver sings, Country roads, take me home, to the place I belong... Eddie Money sings, Take Me Home Tonight...Ok, maybe that's not relevant, but you get the picture, there's a lot of songs out there about the longing to go home. (You can thank me for not including the Eddie Money music video... I really wanted too because the song is obviously awesome and I adore low budget 80s videos, but the video is so pathetically disappointing that its an insult to the song itself. Such expectation... such disappointment.)

There was a time in my life that I felt this comfort. The place where I once found serenity, security, and felt so surely that I belonged. The place where I spent that awkward late teens to early 20s where you grow from a child into an adult and learn all on your own the responsibilities of finances, friendships, work, relationships, education, etc. (P.S. No one can ever say for sure if I actually ever fully became a real adult even with these responsibilities.) A place where, for the first time, your decisions are your own and the consequences are yours to deal with. Some of the scariest and some of the absolute best times of your life... A place where you became the person you are... A place where dressing for the day was throwing on a pair of sweatpants and your favorite hooded sweatshirt, where you were praised for being creative and being yourself, where you only had enough money to buy eggs and coffee for groceries but it didn't bother you because money wasn't important, where good friends were plentiful, where classic rock never got old and Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" was your theme to live by, and where the magnificence of being a Hawkeye and walking into Kinnick Stadium on game day was comparable to being there as an Israelite when Moses parted the Red Sea.

This place for me is Iowa City.

I came for the day, just to visit my old refuge, like a boat to the harbor after years of being lost at sea. Some people, when they are feeling a bit lost or directionless, turn to the hometown they were raised in for comfort, good ol'Greenfield, Iowa, I love ya!... But Iowa City is where I really did my growing up.

I sit cross-legged on the ground at the entrance of empty Kinnick Stadium to marvel at the majestic statue of the great Nile Kinnick who stands as if a king proudly representing his empire. - For those who don't know (shame on you), Nile Kinnick attended the University of Iowa, won the 1939 Heisman Trophy, and was a consensus All-American, then died a few short years later while serving his country in World War II. Kinnick, born and raised in the small town of Adel, Iowa, was a gentleman, a man of faith and courage, and an iconic legend not only as an athlete but as a man. There are few greater representations of an American hero. After Kinnick's Heisman acceptance speech, Bill Cunningham of the Boston Post wrote, "This country's okay as long as it produces Nile Kinnicks. The football part is incidental."

It's huge bronze majesty staring down at me as I sit, so small, in its righteous glory and stare at the reflection of myself in the engraved shiny granite that holds the great man's captured memory several feet off the ground.

"...give me the courage and ability to so conduct myself in every situation that my country, my family and my friends will be proud of me."
Nile Kinnick, Jr.
Excerpted from an entry in his personal diary
December 3, 1941

I looked through the words at the mirrored reflection of myself sitting there, kind of pitiful, as if a baby kitten looking up at a lion. But, I wasn't really thinking about anything except how freaking awesome this place was, forgetting the real reason I had longed to go back to Iowa City in the first place and maybe find something that I had lost.

A place, that for a awhile in my life, I actually felt I belonged. Then I look around and see a not so familiar look on the buildings and streets. Some places that I knew and loved were gone, replaced by something different that I no longer recognized. The people that I, at one time, so much related with now looked like children, staring at me thinking, "What is that crazy lady doing here, sitting on the ground in front of an empty stadium like a weirdo."

In a second, it's years later. And in my reflection of the stone, I see someone different. The me that once lived there would've never taken the time to sit and appreciate a moment like this. She would've looked at me and wondered "What is that crazy lady doing here, sitting on the ground in front of an empty stadium like a weirdo." That's when I realized the town hadn't changed all that much, but maybe I had.

Then, ironically, a van full of, what I assumed to be by their look and wear, visiting recruits and coaches, pulled up where there was no road and stopped the short distance directly between me and the statue. Their choice of words I found interesting. "We're lost, how do you get out of here?" The question indicated that I not only didn't look lost, but looked as though I maybe belonged. But, my choice of words equally as honest, "I don't know." Then, without thinking, I see myself pointing in the direction I came from... They thank me and drive away and I realize I had just answered the question that brought me here... I look up at the statue and smile.

Touché Mr. Kinnick... Thank you.