(The following story by Chuck Hackenmiller appeared on The Tribune website on December 15.)
BOONE, Iowa — Treasures come in many forms — money, friendships, something of immense value.
For David Lahner of Boone, his late father Dale was a treasure, “one of many redwood trees in my life.”
“Once you see a redwood tree that can live up to 3,500 years and grow more than 300 feet tall, you will always admire and have respect for the redwood monuments,” Lahner said recently. “The redwoods in my life have taught me to work hard, never give up and you will be rewarded.”
Lahner’s father died in the spring of 1997. He had lost a treasure. But about five years later, Lahner discovered another treasure at his mother’s place in Sheffield.
Lahner began writing a story before his father’s death. He brought it to his parents in 1993. They read it and then there it stayed.
“The spring of 2002 I was cleaning my mother’s basement and found my story,” he said. “I realized then that I needed to finish it. I thought of all the people in my life whom I needed to finish it for, and that has motivated me to this point.”
Lahner, a locomotive engineer with Union Pacific, considered the story “one of life’s challenges that needed to be conquered.”
The result is “A Sirius Christmas” and an end to a 10-year project that has brought satisfaction and joy to Lahner this holiday season.
“It took me all of those 10 years,” he said. “I’d get an idea, write it down, use the right words to make it sound good, keep redoing it and redoing it.”
The story takes place around a family of avid hunters and has magical twists and turns as a young boy delights in Christmas traditions and basks in the warmth of the woodlands beneath a star-studded sky.
The book is dedicated to his late father, his mother Luella, James Cuvelier, Richard Heimer and Hank Stoffer Jr.
Heimer is a former Sheffield principal and English teacher. Cuvelier is from Parkersburg and a former Sheffield football coach and motivator. Stoffer Jr. was a former postmaster general and Lahner’s long-time friend.
Lahner feels well rewarded for his efforts.
“Everyone should have at least one book published in their life,” he said.
One thousand copies of the children’s story and coloring book, with illustrations by Sara Kudron of Boone, were published by Sunstrom-Miller Press Inc., also of Boone.
Lahner didn’t write the story for the money. He’s donating all book-sale profits to the Boone Community School District and the school districts serving Sheffield, Chapin, Meservey and Thornton in northern Iowa “in honor of the people that motivated me to finish it.”
The books will be available for sale in Boone elementary school libraries. The books are $3.
Lahner said he is looking for more distribution outlets.
Lahner said two law firms, Rathmann Holland & Stolze of St. Louis and Hoey, Farina and Downs of Chicago, legal counsel of the union he belongs to, have offered to match the book’s donations to the Boone and Sheffield-area communities.
The story will also be featured in the December 2003 issue of “Permission to Hunt” magazine, published by Heartland Communication Group of Fort Dodge.
Lahner said his wife Nancy and children Amy, Holly and Nathan “loved the book.”
And, he said with a smile last week, “Today I get to read the story to my granddaughter’s nursery school class.”