EP331: The Winner Who Always Finished Last, From Farm Boy to Founder and The Day President Truman Came to Town

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Good to go to. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. Up next, we have another listener's story sent to us from Roger Wrench in Iowa. Today Roger is sharing a story about his stepson, Sage, called The Winner Who Always Finished Last. This is the story of the kid who finished last every time. He ran in the slowest heat with the slowest runners, and he was the slowest of the slow, often coming in several seconds behind the other runners. For three years in track meet after track meet after track meet, he finished last.

It had not always been so. In seventh grade, he was the fastest kid on his cross-country team and competed with the best runners from the other schools. In his last meet, he finished 12th out of 169 runners, and the other 11 ahead of him were all a year older in eighth grade. He loved running and looked forward to getting better and faster.

Then, tragedy struck. A tumor was found in the back of his brain. This after a lifelong genetic disease had limited his physical activity his whole life.

Running was the first athletic thing he was able to do, and now that was being taken away. He endured a year and a half of radiation and chemo. Because of his rare disease, sometimes the doctors weren't sure how to treat him.

There were difficult days, including 17 in a row where he was unconscious for most of it over the Christmas holiday. The tumor was removed quickly after being discovered. He made it through treatment and many months of physical therapy. For four years now, he's been in remission, but cancer left its mark. His radiation and chemo treatment stole much of his physical strength, balance, speed, and endurance.

That seventh grade flyer is long gone. But he ran anyway. He joined his track team and competed as hard as he could. He ran his best every race and improved his personal best time. He cheered on his teammates and inspired them every time he ran. Though the clock said he came in last again and again, those who know him would tell you a much different story. So when his mom and I walked Sage out onto the track on senior night, we couldn't have been prouder.

In the bulletin noting his plans after high school graduation were these words of his own. In this life, you will experience hardship and tribulation, but don't let those life-altering experiences define you as a person. Write your own story. Defy the odds. Sage Helstern Real winners are not the ones with the fastest times. They're the ones who keep running and always give their best. They never give up.

They take their tests and make it their testimony. They turn their tragedies into triumph. They inspire others to make the most of what they have. They believe there is purpose in all of life's challenges.

And they do their best while cheering others on to greatness. The clock may tell one story, but their lives tell another. This is the story of a runner who could have quit when tragedy struck and never set foot on a track again. Instead, he laced up his shoes and endured the humiliation of finishing last every time because he loved to run and inspire others. Sometimes he wonders what could have been. What if he never got cancer? How fast would he be able to run?

Could he have won some medals and gone to state? Those questions will always linger in his head. But he gave us all with what he had.

That's all any of us can do. Sage has developed other skills in life that he's working on. Things like music. He taught himself to play guitar and recorded some of his own songs. He even performed them before his peers. He's worked extremely hard to develop that talent with years of hard work. And he knows that probably wouldn't have happened if it weren't for cancer.

His attitude, faith, and trust in God's purpose for his life has grown by leaps and bounds. And he's still running as fast as his remaining strength and endurance will take him. Clocks don't determine the winners.

People do by the way they choose to live. They're the ones who keep running and never give up, no matter what obstacles they face or what life throws at them. Sage will keep running his race. Let's all follow his example and run our race with perseverance. Let's keep doing our best every day.

Forget about everyone else and stay focused on improving ourselves and getting better each day. Let's take what we've been given and make the most of it. To all the winners who never finish first. Roger. And a special thanks to Madison for her work on the production of that piece. And a special thanks to Roger Wrench in Iowa, a listener and a contributor. Thanks also to Sage for providing his example.

Write your own story, Sage said. Defy the odds. And Roger put it right. Clocks don't determine winners.

People do. And Sage will keep running his race. That's what we all have to do in the end, folks. We have to keep running our race. My favorite quote on all of this comes from one of my heroes, John Wooden, who said about success. Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable. And Sage's life is a living example. Sage's story, so many of us running our own race, maybe not getting the blue ribbon, but running anyway and running for the joy of it.

This is Our American Stories. Soon millions will make Medicare coverage decisions for next year. And UnitedHealthcare can help you feel confident about your choices. For those eligible, Medicare annual enrollment runs from October 15th through December 7th. If you're working past age 65, you might be able to delay Medicare enrollment depending on your employer coverage.

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and conquer any laundry load for all fabric types. And we continue with our American stories. And now we bring you Doug Ryder with his next edition of our Founders Series. A series about how everyday Americans risk it all to follow their dreams. How people, amidst doubts and challenges, become founders of great businesses, enterprises, churches, nonprofits, firms. My goodness, as Tocqueville noted when he visited this great country, Americans start up just about every kind of enterprise imaginable.

Today, on The Founders. Would work on old engines as early as seven years old. In this episode, we bring you an inventive farm boy from Newburgh, Oregon. A boy obsessed with engines and filled with insecurities. I felt very insecure.

No self-confidence. Something happened that really changed my life. I got the flu right at the beginning of school. And I was home in bed with that and the student elections came up for the freshman class and somebody nominated me for student council freshman representative. And I came back to school and got, congratulations, you represent the freshman class on the student council. And I feel that as I tell you now, it was like, wow.

Somebody likes me. This is the story of how a boy would battle these insecurities his entire life. If that hadn't happened, would I withdraw and stay a hermit on the farm in my engines? And would one day build the second largest dental equipment manufacturing company in the world.

On today's episode of The Founders, we bring you the story of Ken Austin. All I knew was a farm wife. I had very few toys. I think I was about nine when my grandmother gave me a calf for a Christmas present.

I was so disappointed. I mean, who wanted a darn calf? And in 1942, my dad sent me a postcard when I was down at summer school. Your heifer had a beautiful little heifer calf. Now I've got two cows. I was getting pretty excited because dad was buying the milk. So I had to pay for the feed, but he would buy the milk for me. And by the time I got to high school, I had over 10 cows.

Sold the cows and bought a car and a welder and started a shop called The Rod Shop and was welding fenders and painting cars and fixing engines. I wanted more than I had. I had this want, want, want, want. And it was like, if you want it, you've got to work for it.

And that want that Ken talks about often came from his need to prove something to himself and to others. As a sophomore, I was building a desk as a class project. And as a teacher, I've learned from him, you were one of the fastest, productive kids I ever had in class, but you were the last one to ever get a project done. In other words, I had my desk cut out and ready to start gluing up. Then I went around the room and was BSing with the other students and telling them how cool. And as one of my high school classmates told me, you have an inferiority complex that you're trying to cover up with a superiority complex.

A psychiatrist told me one time that was probably some of the best advice ever given to me. And I really see that. I was trying to look good. Now, I wasn't building the desk to cut it out fast to look good, but once it was done, I had to tell the world, look what I have done. There was a big I in it. I think that ego is our enemy, and I really have come to believe in the last 30 years of my life that the ego is edging God out.

Edging God out, E-G-O. Ken's thirst for attention carried on through college. Pursuing a degree in industrial engineering at Oregon State University, his academics would often come second to his active social life. The pickup truck and a couple cases of beer, you were dang popular. So popular that his Navy ROTC commitment was in jeopardy. Mr. Austin, we're sorry, but you're going to have to take the freshman year of ROTC over and start next year again.

To heck with you guys. Colonel Morris was our commander. I met him on the Memorial Union steps one day, and he said, how you doing? And I said, I'm going to quit school and join the Air Force to be a cadet there. And he said, do you know you'll be scrubbing sidewalks for a year as an enlisted man because you're too young to get through the officer training? Do you want to scrub sidewalks?

I thought, heck no, I don't want to scrub sidewalks. If that hadn't happened, I might have dropped out of school. But I was determined that I was going to go to Pilesville. With a renewed focus, Ken decided to stay in school and enrolled in the Air Force ROTC program. And despite Ken's mind now being in the clouds, his true love was still on the ground.

Ken continued to work with cars, now not only building them, but racing them too. We went down to the drag races, and I was racing two cars. I picked up a girl that I was dating at Oregon State, making the fourth foursome. And she had my fraternity pin. I had pinned her as the promised thing of, I love you, and we'll go further. We came back from that day at the racetrack, and my girlfriend said, will you give up the idea of being a pilot in the Air Force and racing cars, or are you going to have your pin back? I said, okay.

I put my hand out, and she started to cry and begging, and I said, it won't work. Ken would not let a girl tell him what to do, and so he moved on. Rather quickly, Ken started dating a girl named Joanne, the sister of an Air Force buddy, who's also from his hometown, Newburgh, Oregon.

A year later, they married. Everything seemed to be on the up and up for Ken, but on the verge of graduation, Ken found out the Air Force had another plan for him. He was commissioned as an officer.

Ken rolled with the punches. He went to pilot school to become a mechanic and test pilot, where he finished his degree and earned his diploma. But while starting a family, going from job to job in the Air Force as a test pilot, radar controller, and maintenance officer, Ken wasn't sure if a career in the military was right for him or his family. Colonel Gavruski, World War II ace, was our base commander, and he said, if I can get you a flying assignment, will you stay two more years? And that was a decision point that Joanne and I had to deal with, is we're ready to go home or go on two years with the Air Force. And I had to make that decision overnight, tell the colonel the next morning one way or the other.

And we chose to come home. Ken goes from job to job as a machinist and an engineer, seven jobs in eight years. Needless to say, Ken was ready to be his own boss. After getting fired from a dental equipment manufacturing company in Denver for not completing a complicated project in time, Ken saw an opportunity, and he took it. I saw some guys doing something I could do, no patents, and told Joanne we could go back to Portland and start a little business making dental vacuum systems, selling them to the individual doctors or to distributors, because there's nobody doing that in Oregon, independent maker of vacuum systems. And she said, I'll help you even if we have to live on bread and beans. And took out a piece of paper and started sketching of what I was going to do tomorrow and start making parts tomorrow. And that was the beginning of Ken Austin's very own company, ADEC. That starts a whole new journey and actually a whole bunch of new problems. A whole new journey and a whole new bunch of problems.

And when we come back, more of Ken Austin's story, part of our Founders Series, here on Our American Stories. For those eligible, Medicare annual enrollment runs from October 15th through December 7th. If you're working past age 65, you might be able to delay Medicare enrollment depending on your employer coverage.

It can seem confusing, but it doesn't have to be. Visit UHCmedicarehealthplans.com to learn more. UnitedHealthcare, helping people live healthier lives. I know everything there is to know about running a coffee shop, but for small business insurance, I need my State Farm agent. They make sure my business stays piping hot.

And I stay cool and confident. See, they're small business owners too, so they know how to help you best. State Farm is in your corner and on it. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

Call your local State Farm agent for a quote today. Doing household chores can already be time consuming and tedious. And there's nothing more daunting than facing piles and piles of laundry that need to be done.

I mean, that can be overwhelming for anyone. So, if you want to get those larger laundry loads done right and get back to your life, try All-Free Clear Mega Packs. All-Free Clear Mega Packs are bigger packs with two times the cleaning ingredients compared to a regular pack so that you can tackle any laundry load without the worry. All-Free Clear Mega Packs are also 100% free of perfumes and dyes and they're gentle on skin, which is great for any family's sensitive skin needs.

My family, we definitely have sensitive skin. So, the next time the whole family gets home from long vacation or you get the kids back from summer camp or whatever the situation is that's caused this big pile of dirty clothes, just know that All-Free Clear Mega Packs, they have your back. Purchase All-Free Clear Mega Packs today and conquer any laundry load for all fabric types. And we return to the story of Ken Austin. And let's get back to Doug Ryder. This again, a part of the Founders Series. After getting the go-ahead from his wife, Joanne, Ken was ready to get working on his first ADEC product. The air vacuum system. For years, going to the dentist meant spitting into bowls.

Ken Austin's invention, the air vacuum system, made that a thing of the past. And I went to a little shop that was there in Brumfield, Colorado, where we lived and asked if I could rent their machinery to make a prototype. And it worked. And he got a few sales and improved on his product, eventually getting the attention of what was at the time the largest dental equipment manufacturing company in the United States. They loved his products so much, they placed a $12,000 order, worth almost a hundred grand today. Though Ken did not have the money in the bank to complete such a large order.

So... The company that bought my first product grubstaked me with a $10,000 check on a $12,000 order. And I remember telling the man as he handed me the check, I don't know how you can trust me or how you, why you're doing this after I've had seven jobs. This is my eighth job in eight years after college. And I've been fired on three occasions.

And Mr. Mack said, I trust you. And good thing he did, because Ken would create some of the most innovative equipment in dentistry, including one of the first sit-down dental units. You might not remember this, but dentistry used to be a standing profession.

But thanks to Ken Austin, dentists can now sit while working, avoiding years of chronic back problems. With the growth of ADEC, Ken was consumed by his business and the wealth and status that came with it, leaving what's most important in the rearview mirror. Our social life changed with wealth. When you get invited to be on boards and things that, you know, it's like, wow, this is really cool.

But we were invited to join the Young President's Organization. And now you're with some high rollers around the world, and a good opportunity to drink the best booze in the best places with, you might say, the best people. And Ken liked his booze, maybe a bit too much. And I just made an ass of myself.

And I started searching during that period of time, is there anything you can do about it? And at first, Ken's wife Joanne did not take his problem very seriously. Well, you just drank too much last night.

Don't drink quite so much. But when we'd both been on an alcoholic recovery program and talking about that subject only, she told the audience a question was asked, did you ever think about divorce? We never talked about divorce or separation, and it just surprised me when she said, oh, yes, many times. So she went through a lot of silent pain, which hurts me today to think of what I put her through. The last five years of our life were very, very good together. We were waking up for all of those bad times.

But you can't go back and fix those bad times, especially when somebody's gone. And it has an effect on your kids. Like my son said, Dad, you were never able to play ball with me because you'd say you want to drink a beer, and then it was like one more beer, and then you'd say, well, I can't catch the ball because I can't see it.

Well, I was never a ball player, but that was what was happening. A drink was more important than family. Well, after reading this article about the businessmen in Portland that had this wedding-to-bed problem, I was having that problem.

I thought, maybe I have a problem. Ten years later, Ken learned to manage his insecurities and his ego. Formally filling the hole in his heart with his ambition, accomplishments, and alcohol, Ken now found something more lasting.

January 1, 1982. All I had to do was admit I was powerless over alcohol and that my life had become unmanageable. And I could turn my will and my life over to a power greater than myself. God as we understand Him. And I thought, God is a punishing God for sin. I have been named, signed, sealed, and delivered as a sinner.

This is impossible. I don't know how Hal did it. And I closed my eyes and I was just sitting there by the window of our beach house. I opened my eyes and a seagull went by the window. Who makes seagulls?

Who makes seagulls? Nobody I know. That must be God. And I accepted that there's a God greater than myself, a power greater than myself.

And the God that I understand is the maker and the creator. Because who makes the waves in the ocean? Who makes the tide? I know who raises the level of the Columbia River when they open the Bonneville Dam. That's man. But it isn't somebody over in England that says, shift the wind and pushes a big lever. And that experience of there's a power greater than myself.

And I haven't had a drink since that day, 37 years ago. And thanks so much to Ken Austin, especially for his vulnerability, for his authenticity, and for sharing, well, not just the good in his life, but the unpleasant too. And it takes a lot of guts to do that. And it helps people. And it helps people understand other people. And helps us all understand each other when we're open and honest.

And that's what we try and do here on this show all the time. And special thanks also to Doug Ryder, founder series that we're doing. Well, it's founders of companies like ADEC.

And that's Ken's company that he founded. But in the end it'll be every kind of company, entity, church, nonprofit, you name it. And founders are just different.

They're not better, they're not worse. They've got to go their own way. And starting up something from scratch and building it up, well, my goodness, it's a wonderful thing. And it's an awful thing. Because there's a lot of sacrifices that get made.

And a lot gets lost. And we learn from Ken, my goodness. Well, he said he'd become quite, well, he put it best in ass.

And the wealth and the privileges that came with building a great company, well, his family was squandered. And ultimately he just kept hitting the bottle. Well, you know the story. And let's face it, thank goodness for ADEC. I mean, my goodness, I remember when I would have to spit into a bottle, it would get all over me. And it just made the experience of getting a root canal or anything else, well, even more unpleasant. And it's not pleasant.

It's never going to be. Whoever comes up with that invention, my goodness, that's something. And allowing dentists to sit.

They had always stood before. And what a life-altering accomplishment and achievement that was. And again, through the innovation of free enterprise and the miracle of free enterprise. And what a story. Thanks again to Ken Austin. His story. ADEC's story. Our Founders Series, here on Our American Story. Medical enrollment runs from October 15th through December 7th. If you're working past age 65, you might be able to delay Medicare enrollment depending on your employer coverage.

It can seem confusing, but it doesn't have to be. Visit UHCMedicareHealthPlans.com to learn more. UnitedHealthcare.

Helping people live healthier lives. I know everything there is to know about running a coffee shop. But for small business insurance, I need my State Farm agent. They make sure my business stays piping hot.

And I stay cool and confident. See, they're small business owners too, so they know how to help you best. State Farm is in your corner and on it. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

Call your local State Farm agent for a quote today. Doing household chores can already be time-consuming and tedious. And there's nothing more daunting than facing piles and piles of laundry that need to be done.

I mean, that can be overwhelming for anyone. So if you want to get those larger laundry loads done right and get back to your life, try All-Free Clear Mega Packs. All-Free Clear Mega Packs are bigger packs with two times the cleaning ingredients compared to a regular pack so that you can tackle any laundry load without the worry. All-Free Clear Mega Packs are also 100% free of perfumes and dyes and they're gentle on skin, which is great for any family's sensitive skin needs. Which my family, we definitely have sensitive skin. So the next time the whole family gets home from long vacation or you get the kids back from summer camp or whatever the situation is that's caused this big pile of dirty clothes, just know that All-Free Clear Mega Packs, they have your back.

Purchase All-Free Clear Mega Packs today and conquer any laundry load for all fabric types. And we return to our American stories and up next, a story about when our 33rd president made an all-important visit to a small town in Iowa. Here's our own Monty Montgomery with a story. Dexter, Iowa is a small town with a lot of heart and even though its population has never exceeded a thousand people, there's a lot of history there. The Barrow Gang had a famous shootout there. They hosted an amusement park at one point and it was also once a presidential campaign stop. The presidential campaign stop for that election cycle.

Here's Rod Stanley with more on that. September 1948, President Truman came to Dexter, Iowa for the national plowing match. It was a big deal. The national plowing match was a big, big deal. But what exactly is a plowing match?

Roughly put, it's a competition to see who's the best farmer. They judged him on, I mean they judged him on different things. They brought their tractors and their plows and there were judges that judged how well you plowed the field.

How straight it was, how open it was. They had some other like conservation, like making a pond. They made a pond on my uncle's farm. They blew up, they were using dynamite and they blew up land and they made a waterway to drain water off and stuff. This was a statewide thing so it was a national thing too so you had lots of people coming in from, like there was an airport south of Dexter, southwest of Dexter and that day like 120 airplanes landed and bringing people in.

They estimated the crowd between 75 and 100,000. But how did President Truman even get involved in this whole thing? It boils down to the drive of a radio personality, Truman's opponent, and like a lot of things in politics, poll numbers. The guy he was running against was a fellow by the name of Thomas Dewey from New York and Thomas Dewey was so far ahead in the polls, Herb Plambeck, famous WHO farm personality, was in charge of organizing this whole thing. And Herb Plambeck called or went and talked to Thomas Dewey and asked him, do you want to be the headliner out here in Dexter and talk to these people? And Dewey said in so many words, I'm pretty doing pretty well in the polls.

I don't think I need to come out to Iowa and to talk to these people. Herb Plambeck then called up and scheduled a meeting with Truman and normally, they're on a limited time basis when they talk to the President and so on, but they made an appointment, they talked to Truman and actually went over the time limit because Truman liked talking. I mean, Truman was one of those guys that liked to talk to him.

He was a former farmer too, I mean as far as he was a farming occupation before he got into politics. And he said, well boys, I would really like to come out and to do that, but he says, I don't think the secret service will allow me to do what I want to do and that's to go out and mingle and talk to people and so on. So when Herb Plambeck left that meeting, he thought, well gosh, I don't think Truman's going to come either. And so it kind of sat that way until like three weeks before the event and the White House calls Herb Plambeck up and says Truman's coming.

That threw a whole big wrench because they had to make sure that security had to be better and there's a lot of things they had to do to prepare for the President. Truman started over in eastern Iowa in Davenport on the Rock Island Railroad line, the one that runs through Dexter and goes across the state and he gave a speech there early in the morning and then he gave a speech at Oxford, Iowa, I believe. And then a speech in Grinnell and a speech in Des Moines. Never in the world were the farmers of any republic or any kingdom or any other country as prosperous as the farmers of the United States.

And if they don't do their duty by the Democratic Party, they're the most ungrateful people in the world. And those were just preliminaries and he actually, I believe, picked up his wife Bess and his daughter Margaret in Des Moines and they rode the train out to Dexter. The band, Dexter Band, was there to meet Truman. I believe they played the Missouri waltz for him when he arrived at the depot in Dexter. They had brought his Cadillac, his robin egg blue Cadillac, out according to my uncle Dean Stiles about three days before and everybody was wondering what the heck was that was going on bringing that blue Cadillac out here and eventually they figured it out that it was the President and he was going to be stopping and going out to the plowing match. But he was concerned, still concerned, about the Secret Service blocking his style but he came anyway. People said that we're setting with Truman. When Truman saw the crowd, when Truman saw how big the crowd was, he said he had a smile from ear to ear. He was just loving it. He was saying this is going to give me an opportunity to really get my cam.

I'm so far behind it can't hurt. It's going to give me a chance to hammer home my points. The majority of these farmers that attended were of the Republican persuasion but he got 13 ovations that day and he really hammered on the Republicans the do-nothings he called them, the do-nothing Congress. It was his first major campaign speech of the 1948 election. He used this type of campaign, the whistle stop, using the train, traveling around, stop and talk in small towns to people to actually turn the tide.

It's interesting when Thomas Dewey found out 100,000 people showed up in Dexter, Iowa, he got a little nervous and he actually got the Republicans in Iowa to have a campaign thing for him in Des Moines and they actually got like 15,000 people to hear Thomas Dewey give his speech, which is a pretty good crowd but nothing like Truman. But anyway, when Truman was here, he ate lunch. We have stuff in the museum, the tablecloth actually that was on the table that he ate off of. But anyway, he ate lunch out there.

We had fried chicken dinner, mashed potatoes and corn and relish tray and all, apple pie or had different kinds of pie. And then he went out on a wagon to look at some of the projects, the conservation projects that they were doing that day. It wasn't only a plowing contest but they were making a pond and they were making waterways and they were doing some other stuff, conservation things out there in that area as well. But anyway, he went out and he was on the back of a hay wagon and of course the Secret Service was with him and they were cruising along and the Secret Service looked around and Truman wasn't on the wagon anymore. And he had jumped off the wagon and he was heading down to where they were making this pond and we called it Walker's Pond back when I was growing up. It was on Howard Walker's property. It was Piper's property back then. But anyway, those people that were on the bulldozers had actually been told by the Secret Service earlier that if Truman came down there to turn off the bulldozers and just sit on the bulldozers.

So if the president comes over and wants to ask you questions and that kind of thing. And so that's what they did. They saw this guy coming down. They figured it was Truman or some of them recognized him. So they turned their bulldozers off and Truman got down there and was just chatting with him like, you know, like you normally chat with people. And he said, well, why did you turn off your bulldozers for?

I mean, you guys got work to do. And he said, well, we were told by the Secret Service to do that. And Truman said, well, he says, the next time they ask you to do that, you tell those SOBs that you aren't going to do that.

You just keep right on working. You know, he got everybody got a big laugh out of that. And of course, the Secret Service gets down there and puts him back on the wagon and away they go. But that was Truman. But he did get to talk to some of the people out there.

But like I said, this this was a huge boost to his is it turned the tide as far as his his election. And he was really the only one in the articles I read. He was the only one. Even his wife had given up. He was so far behind that he was going to lose.

And she said, we need to start packing things up to get back to Missouri and and live in Independence where our house there. And Truman said, ah, he doesn't want to give up yet. And the election came in November and he was listening to it and he was holding his own in it and Dewey wasn't blowing him away. And he goes to bed thinking that probably the next morning that, you know, that maybe I won't be president.

But he he was kind of had a quiet confidence. He thought he thought he was going to win. And the next morning, the results are are rolling in and Truman's winning and he's going to he's going to end up winning the election. And it was a huge, huge upset.

I mean, there was no way that he was supposed to win. But they say that win all started right here in the one horse town. Of Dexter, Iowa, in 19 September of 48. And a great job is always on the production and the storytelling by Monty Montgomery and a special thanks to Rod Stanley of the Dexter Museum in Dexter, Iowa. Dexter is a one light town and the small museum is right off the main street running through it. If you're in the neighborhood, I'll drop by and take a visit. We love visiting these really small, small towns and telling stories about them. And the national plowing match of 1948 helps propel Truman to victory. The story of Dexter and Harry Truman's campaign victory here on Our American Stories.