Vets Auditorium: A place in our hearts
Veterans Memorial Auditorium has played a part in countless Iowa moments
By KEN FUSON
REGISTER STAFF WRITER
It’s a strange building to love.
From the outside, Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines, which opened 50 years ago this month, never pretended to be an architectural marvel.
It was practical, efficient, unadorned, like Iowa, and people initially gauged its impressive size according to how many tons of baled hay it could hold (58,400).
The building didn’t call attention to itself. What mattered most were the memories created inside.
Were you there when Elvis swiveled? Or when rocker Ozzy Osbourne snacked on a bat? How about that Saturday night in 1968, four years before Title IX and the eventual rise of women’s sports, when Denise Long of Union-Whitten and Jeanette Olson of Everly showed what two high school girls could do with a basketball?
This is a good time to reflect. Vets – and that’s what people called it, although “the Barn “worked, too – is hosting its last high school wrestling and basketball tournaments.
The old building isn’t going anywhere, but the tournaments and most other marquee events will move to newer parts of the Iowa Events Center, boasting both an arena and exhibition hall.
Anything can happen in the next 50 years. Still, it’s difficult to predict that the new place will capture as much of the state’s history and imagination as Vets has during the past half-century, simply because it has served so many different purposes.
Depending on the event, Vets was an athletic arena, a community center, a school auditorium, a political hall, a church, a three-ring circus, an ice arena, or the state’s largest sock-hop dance floor, which it became in 1959 when fans and players were snowed in during the girls’ basketball tournament.
If you’re older than 30, and you’ve lived in Iowa most of your life, the odds are high that you’ve been in that building at least once. Like the Iowa State Fair, it’s a common point of reference.
It’s funny, though. For a building designed to bring together large groups of Iowans – at full capacity, it would rank as the state’s 25th largest community – Vets elicits such personal memories.
The building means something different to everyone.
When was the first time – the Shrine Circus? Third or fourth grade? “Hang on to the rope, “the teacher reminded us repeatedly as we trudged up the steps, apparently worried that one of us would get lost and run away with the clowns. . . .
There was the night a friend’s father took us to All-Star wrestling. “Rufus R. JONES! “the crowd roared, long before the days of Hulk Hogan and Vince McMahon. “Rufus R. JONES!”
Getting out of school to watch the boys’ basketball tournament, climbing to the top row of seats, then sneaking out and heading to downtown Des Moines, to that bookstore that sold the disappearing ink, black light posters and other novelties they didn’t sell back home. . . .
Johnny Cash and Janis Joplin sang there (but not together). Molly Bolin and Molly Tideback played basketball there in different eras. Willie Wise and Willie McCarter starred there on the greatest basketball team in Drake University history.
Coach Maury John. Belly-button defense. Here we go, Bulldogs, here we go. Remember that March night in 1969, when the Drake student body turned its back and remained silent as Louisville’s starters were introduced because of bad blood from a previous game? The Bulldogs dominated, 101-67.
Alan Sisson was there. But he also remembers a game later that year, the 1969-70 season opener, when almost every male Drake student held a transistor radio during the game and listened to the draft lottery.
The smaller the number, the better the chance that the student might end up in Vietnam.
“Every now and then you’d see somebody put their head in their hands, “says Sisson, now 57, a retired doctor in Clive. “A lot of guys were looking at what their future had to hold that night.”
Sisson’s draft number was 59, but he never was called. Drake won the game, by the way, but Sisson says it was difficult to concentrate on the action.
Sue Jagerson’s mother took us to see Gov. Robert D. Ray’s inaugural address in 1969. We sat in the upper bleachers. . . . Can’t recall a word of it, but remember that feeling of witnessing history. . . .
What was the year -1972? Went to a Chicago concert. The Pointer Sisters, relatively unknown then, were the opening act. Thick clouds of smoke wafted toward the ceiling. Left there knowing what marijuana smelled like. . . .
Sat with Sunday school class and hundreds of other young people to watch a movie, “The Cross and the Switchblade. “Can’t recall the year . . . or much of the plot. Something about a gang leader named Nicky.
Walter Harrison remembers a prayer.
It was June 24, 1972. The Jefferson man and his wife, Ruth, were participating in the National Square Dance Convention. He says more than 15,000 people attended.
“That evening stuck out in my mind because of the fact that there were people there from every state and we stood and prayed, and we were united, “says Harrison, now 80. “It’s something I realized I would only experience once. I felt good about it.”
Linda Spolar of Knoxville remembers a concert.
It was June 27, 1977. She sent for tickets to see Elvis Presley. When the tickets arrived, she was astonished to see that she had seats in the center of the fourth row.
She and her husband, Mike, went with another couple.
“It was wonderful, “she said. “We thoroughly enjoyed him. The building vibrated.”
A few weeks later, the King was dead. Vets had hosted one of Presley’s final concerts.
Kyle Coppess remembers a game.
It was March 17, 2001. His Indianola boys’ basketball team faced Urbandale for the Class 4-A state title.
“When I would warm up for the state games, we would go through layups, and I swear that I could have dunked every time, “says Coppess, a reserve on the team, echoing a common refrain from Iowa youngsters after they had stepped foot on the Vets floor for the first time.
Indianola won the state title on the same night that Chris Street, their hometown hero, was posthumously named to the Iowa High School Athletic Association’s Hall of Fame.
Street, who played for the University of Iowa, had been killed in a car accident eight years earlier.
After the game, says Coppess, 21, now a junior at the University of Missouri, “we wandered back out to the court. The lights had been turned off, and the gym was empty. It was amazing that something that was so alive an hour ago was completely asleep now.”
“We walked around on the court. I laid down at half court. It was almost as if the gym was ours. . . . It was the first time we had a chance to reflect on what had just happened.”
Going with a high school friend to watch Drake basketball games in the 1970s. “Hey, Howard, good luck tonight! “we yelled. The coach, Howard Stacey, flashed a thumbs-up sign at us. Ah, sweet recognition. . . .
Taking the kids to see the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or the Sesame Street characters, or the Disney on Ice show. . . . Promising not to buy an overpriced souvenir, then capitulating as usual. . . .
Feeling goosebumps erupt in 1991, watching as Gov. Terry Branstad presented folded state flags to families of Iowa soldiers killed in the Persian Gulf War. . . .
Oscar Robertson and Larry Bird played there. Joe Gibbons, representing Waterloo Columbus and then Ames, won four state wrestling titles here. Lynne Lorenzen led Ventura to a girls’ basketball championship there.
Up with People performed there. So did Alice Cooper. Promise Keepers gathered there. So did Monster Truck fans.
Cedar Rapids native Kurt Warner fired touchdown passes for the Iowa Barnstormers there. Faith healer Benny Hinn brought his crusade there. Ronald Reagan and several other presidents spoke there.
But Bill Highland of Adel thinks of someone else and another event whenever he drives past Veterans Memorial Auditorium.
In 1979, he escorted his son, Brian, then 11, to a Kiss concert.
Brian was enthralled with the band’s drummer, “and he talked me into going, because he couldn’t go without an adult.”
Bill Highland describes himself as “more into Guy Lombardo, Lawrence Welk and country music, “but he went because it was important to his son.
The concert was so loud, Highland says, it required a week to regain his hearing.
Today, he says, “I wish I could do it all over again.”
In 1986, Brian Highland was killed by a drunken driver. He was 19, a student at Drake.
For his father, Vets is more than a large building in downtown Des Moines. He and his son created a memory there.
It takes a big building to contain 50 years’ worth of memories like that one, multiplied by an entire state. Maybe even big enough to hold 58,400 tons of baled hay.
Vets highlights
“¢ The first event, the Des Moines Policeman’s Ball, is held on Feb. 1, 1955. Tickets are $1.
“¢ Elvis Presley performs at Vets three times, the first time in 1956, the last in 1977, just weeks before his death.
“¢ Frosty Mitchell plays records as snowbound players and fans dance on the gym floor after snow paralyzes travel during the girls basketball tournament in 1959.
“¢ Union-Whitten defeats Everly in overtime, 113-107, in 1968, still considered one of the greatest high school contests in state history. Denise Long leads the winners with 64 points, while Jeanette Olson scores 76 for Everly.
“¢ The 1968-69 Drake basketball team, which plays home games at Vets, finishes third in the NCAA tournament, nearly beating eventual champion UCLA in the semifinals.
“¢ Rock star Ozzy Osbourne bites the head off a dead bat during a 1982 concert.
“¢ Maple Valley of Mapleton requires six overtimes to defeat Northwood-Kensett in 1985, the longest basketball game in Vets history.
“¢ Kurt Warner is stopped inches from the goal line with what would have been the winning touchdown as the Iowa Barnstormers lose ArenaBowl X in 1996.
Veterans Memorial Auditorium, so much a part of Iowans’ lives over the last 50 years, is celebrated in a special section. Your first concert, that exciting game, the big rally – relive the memories.
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