The example of Larry Larson’s life reminds me of why I chose to title this newsletter “Main Street.”
We live in a world of distraction where sometimes it feels difficult to stay in touch with our neighbors—arguably a paradox considering the endless menu of digital apps claiming to help us do that very thing (while monetizing our data). These digital streams also are handy for distorting our view of the world as all political polarization, no commonality.
Larry spent his entire life overseeing a more old-fashioned arena of civil discourse: the grocery store aisle.
Larry, 89, who died Oct. 22 at Mary Greeley Medical Center in Ames due to the complications of various forms of cancer, was a small-town grocer who dedicated his life to serving his entire community and bringing people together.
He was so staunchly grassroots and local he never used a credit card or carried a cell phone.
“I gave him (a phone) years ago, but he never really wanted to activate it, so he didn’t,” said his younger brother, Ken, who also lives in Ames.
I got to know Larry as the owner for half a century of Town & Country Market at 308 Main Street in Slater, just south of Ames on the edge of Story County. My family and I lived in Slater for 17 years, until 2022. The beloved store was referred to as “Larry’s” more often by locals than by its official name. At one point, shoppers even had to be instructed to stop writing checks to “Larry’s” because the bank would no longer honor the nickname for transactions. (Yes, the store did eventually and begrudgingly accept credit cards.)
That was just one of many signs of how deeply Larry and his five-aisle grocery—where you could buy a gallon of milk from the local dairy, fresh ground beef, or Norwegian kringla cookies—were embedded into everyday life.
Larry was born in Spring Valley, Minnesota, to a fully Norwegian family and raised in rural northern Iowa. He was a student in a one-room schoolhouse in Humboldt County, then moved to Hampton in 1943, then in 1952 to Ames, where the family’s West Street Grocery stood just a couple block from the Iowa State University (ISU) campus.
Larry graduated from Ames High in 1954 and ISU in 1959. His father’s death in 1957 prompted older brother Cliff to sell his own grocery store in the town of Alden and return to Ames to run West Street.
Larry, meanwhile, enlisted in the Army, at first stationed in Turkey on the shore of the Black Sea, where as part of the Security Agency he helped monitor Soviet communications. After the famous May 1960 incident in which the Soviets shot down the American U-2 spy plane and captured pilot Francis Gary Powers, part of the fallout included the transfer of Larry and his unit to Harrogate, England.
Also in 1960, Larry married his wife, RoDean, and they went on to have two children.
Larry’s employers included the Iowa League of Municipalities (now Cities), but it was the grocery business that came to define his career.
“I never went to meat school,” Larry, the son of a butcher, told the Ames Tribune in 2015, the same year he was honored as grand marshal in Slater’s July Fourth parade. “One day back in 1964 at our store in Ames, my brother decided to move out of state, and I had to take over. So, I learned one day, and he left the next.”
Larry also entered local politics—as a Democrat, like his brother, Cliff, who served as state party chair and also was a staffer for legendary U.S. Rep. Neal Smith.
Larry ran unsuccessfully for the Iowa House in 1968 but won in 1970. His ads that year touted “increased financial support for the three state universities, strong measures to protect our environment, property tax relief, streamlining of state government, and aid to cities and towns.” He was elected to a supervisor seat in Story County in 1976 and lost an Iowa Senate race in 1978.
He established his own grocery store in the town of Huxley in 1971, but in 1976 he relocated to Slater, where his business and sprit of service blossomed.
The store became renowned for its outdoor garden department in the spring and summer—including offering more than a dozen varieties of Buck Roses named after the ISU professor who developed them.
“Now I am employing grandchildren of some of my original employees,” Larry told the Tribune in 2015.
Larson’s wife, RoDean, died in 2009. In recent years he spent time with longtime friend Jeri Prescott, whose husband died in 2012. The two couples first became friends in the 1960s.
“He was a people person,” Jeri said. Larry never wanted to eat at a chain restaurant, she added—always a locally owned business. I would sometimes spot Larry engaged in conversation at the bar of Cafe Beaudelaire. Larry would’ve been content to dine nightly at Mucky Duck Pub in Ames, Jeri said—harkening back to his time in the Army when he fell in love with British pub culture.
Larry entered the hospital on a Tuesday morning and died the next day. His maternal Norwegian grandmother, who arrived in 1899 at Ellis Island, long ago gave her grandson the following poem:
Lord, keep me working; keep me fit
At windows I don’t want to sit
watching my fellows hurrying by.
Let me stay busy till I die.
Grant me the strength, and breath, and will
Some useful niche in life to fill
This is my prayer as time goes by,
Lord, keep me busy till I die.
That seems to encapsulate the life of a grocer—forever busy fulfilling an essential community niche.
Larry’s grocery store remains open under the management of Mandy Weeks and longtime staff.
Larry’s memorial from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 15, will be held in the Ballard West Elementary gym just a couple blocks east on Main Street from his store. It takes the largest venue in town to hold all the people who circulated through Larry’s five aisles and found community there.
The memorials for Larry reflect some of his ideals at a time when many Iowans need this assistance more than ever:
Food at First food bank
The Bridge Home shelter
Story County Democrats
After he was elected to the Statehouse in November 1970, Larry sent a letter to the editor of the Ames Tribune, and it was published under the headline “seeks ideas”:
“Thanks very much to the voters for electing me State Representative to the 34th District. I’m humbled by this new responsibility and will need a great deal of help from everyone in my efforts to improve the performance of the General Assembly and to properly represent my constituency.
“I’d greatly appreciate hearing ideas about the issues the upcoming Legislature should address itself to and the voters’ positions on these issues.
“I’m specially interested in hearing from the many experts in this district as to their concerns about legislation involving their areas of interest.
“Please feel free to write or see me if you have any ideas. Thanks again.”
And then he listed his home mailing address.
Humility. Gratitude. Curiosity. Open-mindedness.
A politician who ran on a platform that found room for environmental protection as well as the streamlining of government.
A grocer who as a Democrat likely served a majority Republican clientele and brought everybody together with his spirit of servant leadership and fellowship.
Larry was a man of Main Street in every sense. R.I.P. to a legendary grocer and Iowan.
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What a beautiful tribute. Thank you, Kyle.