La Center library marks 10th anniversary

The public gets a chance to thank the Colf family for one of its many contributions to North Clark County when La Center Community Library staff members celebrate the facility’s 10th birthday on Wed., June 25.

The building housing the library is owned by the Colfs, and was saved from demolition in 2001 when it appeared firemen would use the structure for a practice burn. That’s when family matriarch Margaret Colf Heppola stepped in and suggested a more useful future for the former La Center hospital.

“I’m great at saving old buildings,” she said during an interview last week.

Originally, the house was La Center’s hospital on East Fourth Street and Cedar Avenue. Dr. Carl J. Hoffmann began his long career there in 1908, and Margaret recalls him as a wonderful doctor and friend.

“He delivered some of my babies,” she said. “I always loved him.”

Known as the “saddle bag doctor,” Hoffmann sometimes rode a horse to patients’ homes and other times slept while a driver drove him in a buggy, Margaret said. Saving the house was a personal goal for her, both because of Hoffmann and because her own mother worked there when it was a hospital.

Margaret said she was “thrilled” to see the house pulled intact down the road by a single truck in August 2001 to its current site on East Lockwood Creek Road on land purchased by the Colf Family Foundation. The foundation arranged for renovation of the former hospital and the library opened to the public on May 8, 2004.

The family allows La Center to use the building as its community library free of charge, and the Colfs also pay for upkeep.

“We just want to do this,” Margaret said. “As long as they want it as a library they can have it. We left it historically accurate as much as possible.”

Justin Keeler, who serves both as community librarian for the La Center library and director of the Woodland Community Library, said such generosity is typical of Margaret Colf and her family.

“She’s done an awful lot for the community of La Center,” Keeler said.

And not just in La Center. She and her family have helped many students in Amboy, Woodland and other North Clark County communities with scholarships to pursue their education. Partially, Margaret said, her interest in helping others stems from her upbringing in a family that struggled financially.

“I was poor when I was young, and I’ve always fought for the underdog,” she said.

Margaret said her mother only had a third-grade education because she had to start working when Margaret’s grandmother died early. Margaret felt ashamed of the family’s poverty and having to take government food supplements. She emphasized the family didn’t sit idly by as they received the food. “We worked for it,” Margaret said.

She doesn’t always see the same work ethic today, especially among youths. She wondered aloud last week why people seem to be changing from a time when helping others was taken for granted.

“There’s no compassion now, no caring,” she said.

Born on her parents’ homestead near Lake Merwin, Margaret was 12 years old when the valley was flooded and the family lost its home.

“I used to cry myself to sleep thinking about losing my home,” she said. “After that, the past meant a lot to me.”

Colf Heppola will turn 97 on Tue., May 27. Margaret still maintains a schedule that would tire someone half her age. She’s a board member of the Amboy Museum and has served on the Hayes Cemetery Commission for 51 years. She is continually on the lookout for historic articles about North Clark County and has written many herself. Margaret has hundreds of notebooks filled with information about the county’s history and says, “I save anything I can find.”

One of her current activities is researching information about Ella Wright Myr, a friend who was a member of the Women’s Army Corps, a branch of the U.S. Army formed during World War II. With newspaper articles and photos scattered on tables in her home, it was clear to a recent visitor that Myr is just one of many topics Margaret has been working on recently.

“Oh, I have projects galore,” she said with a chuckle. “I don’t have time to pass away.”