SNYDER, Neb. (AP) - Alex Meyer is a library on two legs.
Stored within the Snyder man’s brain are hundreds of stories of people who’ve lived in his hometown and nearby Dodge.
When Meyer worried that stories about these residents would be lost, he began compiling them into what would become four large books.
In 2015, he started assembling and displaying artifacts and information about area people - dividing their histories into separate exhibits - housed in the former Immanuel Lutheran Church in Snyder.
Inside the Pebble Valley Heritage Project museum, Meyer has recreated part of an old log cabin. Individual exhibit areas give visitors a glimpse of the Spanish-American War era, along with World War I, World War II and the Korean War.
Why would someone go to all this work?
Meyer’s answer is fairly simple.
“Every time a person passes away, a library of information has been destroyed,” said Meyer, 76. “So I thought it was an important thing to interview people who were able to tell their stories. … Or you’d go to some source where you could rebuild part of their biography with other people’s comments, but you could never rebuild the biography as much as the person who lived it.”
Meyer’s own biography begins with an early interest in history.
His great-grandfather, Conrad Snyder, founded the town and opened a flour mill on the Pebble Creek. The town was incorporated in 1890.
Meyer was about 7 years old when his grandma, Matilda, started showing him family albums of when the Snyder family came to the area.
“She was always very happy for me to look at her old pictures,” he told the Fremont Tribune .
His great aunt, Elizabeth (Meyer) Mead - the youngest of about 12 children - was a historian who traveled to other states to become acquainted with older half siblings who’d grown up and moved away before she was born.
At one point, Meyer even thought he’d like to write a book called, “Travels of My Aunt Betty.”
Despite a family inspired interest in history, Meyer chose to major in different subjects - math and physics - at what’s now Midland University.
“I didn’t think I was meant to be a history teacher,” he said.
Meyer graduated in 1964 with a bachelor’s degree in education.
He and his wife, Marlys, married on Aug. 18, 1964. They have five of their own children, including a daughter Taunya, who was 2 ½ years old when she died of leukemia. The Meyers adopted three brothers in 1982.
Alex Meyer taught for a year in Salt Lake City, Utah, and then for two years in Decatur before teaching for 30 in Dodge.
He’d also started farming in 1968 with his dad, Alvin, who would farm until he was about 85 years old.
One day while Meyer was teaching, his father was combining corn when he fell out of the big machine to the ground.
“I decided I was not going to teach anymore, because if he was doing my work and took a chance on being killed, I couldn’t let him do that anymore,” Meyer said.
So Meyer quit teaching in 1997.
He was a part-time mail carrier for a year, then in 1998 taught for a semester at Leigh High School.
“It was really a wonderful situation. I went back and substituted now and then until 2003,” he said.
Meyer would walk about 8,000 miles on different trails across the country.
And he’d compile histories for books.
“There were people who lived in our communities who were willing to go to war to protect our country or there are a lot of people who were very service-oriented in their towns and villages,” he said.
Meyer didn’t want their stories to be lost.
“It’s like they disappear and never existed if we don’t try to record their accomplishments and their concerns for their villages and their sacrifices,” he said.
Meyer’s first book, which has a white cover, tells the stories of 135 or more World War II veterans from the Snyder area and about 60 or more from Dodge. That book came out in about 2005.
Meyer’s second book, which is blue, tells the stories of those involved in wars after World War II. This book was published in 2007.
The last two volumes, which are red, tell about the era of Native Americans and settlers in the Dodge and Colfax counties. Those books came out in 2013.
Meyer would spend about a decade putting the books together.
In the meantime, Immanuel Lutheran Church in Snyder closed in 2004.
Meyer was baptized and confirmed in that church. He had good memories of devoted pastors who’d served there. His grandfather, Carl Snyder, who had the town’s grocery store, supplied the candy and fruit used to fill the small brown paper sacks given to children (and some adults) on Christmas Eve.
When the church closed, Meyer contacted officials from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and asked if he could buy the church and turn it into a museum.
“They charged me a dollar for it,” he said.
Because he was working on the books, Meyer wasn’t able to concentrate on the museum until later. He contacted the Orphan Grain Train organization which took church pews and a pulpit for a congregation.
Today, the building has a 40-foot map made from the original federal survey of Nebraska.
It houses a replica of part of a log cabin with pioneer-era tools.
Cubicles on the main floor depict different time periods.
For instance, one cubicle features items from the Spanish-American War era. The cubicle includes photos of the Kounovsky family who lived in Snyder. Joe Kounovsky’s dad had the town’s livery stable.
During the Spanish-American war, which took place in 1898, Joe Kounovsky was sent to the Philippines, where he learned that flour made in Conrad Snyder’s mill was being used in the mess halls in Manila.
The World War I cubicle has items from the Havel family. Antoine Havel was a World War I veteran injured by mustard gas.
“He could never work most of the rest of his life,” Meyer said.
This display includes an old cookstove and Tony Havel’s World War I overcoat.
The World War II exhibit has an old crank telephone and furniture from that era. It has photos from the Pruss, Parr and Eikmeier families who had several sons in the military. One son, Harold Eikmeier, carried a bazooka and died in 1944 near St. Lo in France.
Thirteen Snyder men died in uniform during the World War II era and three from Dodge, Meyer said.
The Korean War cubicle has an old, stuffed chair from that era and booklet biographies of men from Snyder who were in that war.
Besides the cubicles, the museum houses an old-style pump organ used in a church. It has busts of Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Students from the classes of 1911 and 1913 gave those busts to Dodge High School. There are windows from the train depot in Snyder.
Recently, Meyer has displayed the available photos from Snyder High School graduates from 1915 to 1987.
Meyer said he has worked on the museum for those interested in the communities’ histories, “to see the people who made the towns prosper.”
___
Information from: Fremont Tribune, http://www.fremontneb.com
Please read our comment policy before commenting.