Ted Funk not resting after 31 years of service – Globe Gazette

On Sept. 23, during Osage Community School District’s homecoming, Funk was honored as one of four Osage Education Foundation (OEF) distinguished alumni. OEF honors alumni for outstanding success in the arts, business, their profession, community service and humanitarianism.

“I thought it was a mistake,” Funk joked. He is humble about his accomplishments. “It turned out to be a nice day, and I enjoyed it. There were others who deserved it more than I did.”

The scariest part for Funk was giving a public speech.

Before America’s involvement in Vietnam, life was simpler, and Funk took advantage of every opportunity afforded him.

“It was the best era,” Funk said of growing up in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

After living in Postville, Funk’s family moved to Osage when he was in fifth grade.

Growing up on a dairy farm, by the time he was 10 years old, Funk figured out that he did not want to become a dairy farmer. He grew up with his sister surrounded by family.

“Luckily my folks sold the farm and moved to Osage,” he said. “I liked everything but milking cows.”

Funk wrestled and ran track in high school. He was a hurdler.

“The coach needed a hurdler, and I tried it out and it worked,” Funk said. “I stayed with it. I was okay, but I didn’t win any medals.”

Baseball was a temporary sport, because in the summer he was working construction. While baseball was a forethought in his youth, it would come to the forefront as Park and Rec director.

“I made sure if I hired kids for Park and Rec, if they were out for baseball they got off early to get to practice,” he said.

Funk graduated from Osage Community High School in 1967. It was at the height of the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War.

While he was attending college at Iowa State University, Funk was drafted. It was in the middle of a semester. He went to the draft board and asked for an extension until he graduated, which he received. He enlisted in the delayed entry program.

“I was supposed to be able to graduate before I went in, but it turned out they called me up so I ended up with a semester of college left to graduate,” Funk said.

In 1971, Funk left college for active duty, but remained stateside during the war. That year, President Richard Nixon announced American troops had reverted to a defensive role, according to the U.S. Army Center of Military History.

During that time, the military came out with a program where if a soldier had less than a year of college left, and had done his duty in active service, they could get out early and join an Army National Guard unit for three years minimum. In the end, Funk stayed for 15 years.

Before he left active duty, Funk was working supply.

“We were taking a lot of people back from Vietnam and elsewhere in the States,” Funk said. “Taking all of their supplies away from them and getting new stuff.

“Coming back after being in the service in uniform on a plane, at the airport you get spit on by people.”

There were groups of people protesting and spitting on soldiers.

“Not all of them were spitting, but a lot of them were. They were throwing stuff, hollering and screaming and carrying on,” Funk said.

Funk said he has many great stories from his time in the National Guard, but most are not fit for print.

“The military is something everybody should go through,” he said. “You wouldn’t have all the protesting and everything if everybody was tuned in to what was actually going on and how it works.”

Funk said it felt good to serve his country.

“People don’t realize what the military does,” Funk said. “And looking back on it, it was real good to have served, even in the capacity I did.”

To begin with, Funk was in the fish and wildlife management program at ISU, before switching to outdoor recreation and resource management, from the biology department to the forestry department. After his military service, he received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1972.

After college, Funk found little luck with jobs in his field, so for eight years he worked construction.

Afterward, Funk found his calling. He started his job as the Osage Park and Rec director in 1980. Funk held that position for 31 years until his retirement.

“I knew I had to be outside working most of the time, and I was for that job,” Funk said.

Funk was able to employ and work with many young people, some of whom had never worked outside the home before. When considering all the lifeguards, summer workers, and job-training crews, Funk likely worked with 400 to 450 young people throughout the years.

“Working for the public was always interesting,” Funk said. “You’ve got a lot of bosses telling you what to do.”

To begin with, it was a struggle building off the previous administration.

“They didn’t have anyone who was really doing anything new,” he said. “They had a guy that mowed lawns and cleaned the swimming pool. That was about it. Otherwise they hired kids or teachers to do the ball programs and things like that.”

It was not just the public who were his bosses. Funk also worked well with the elected officials on the three-member Park and Rec board. They had his back. They built new baseball and softball fields, started soccer, and built the soccer complex south of town.

They also built a skate park with ramps and jumps for skateboarders. The skateboarders helped initiate the project as well, as they put forth a fundraising effort.

“And we had a park to put it in,” Funk said of the skate park that now sits just south of the middle school. “Everything jelled, and we built it.”

According to Funk, when he was the Park and Rec director, Osage still had an outdoor pool, which was possibly the worst part of the job. The pool had to be cleaned and scrubbed every spring before it was filled. After a winter in Iowa, they never knew what they were going to find. For Funk, it was a sad day when it was removed to build the Cedar River Complex. However, it was in need of many repairs to keep it safe.

“When I took over, it was a bigger job than I thought,” Funk said. “There was always something that needed to be done at the pool. Somebody had to be over there for three to four hours out of the day.”

Funk enjoyed prepping Little League for play, getting the fields ready and the teams organized. He had to find coaches and schedule the games. If it was going to storm, he was the one who called off the game.

“You usually had a couple of teams mad at you,” he said.

In the first year of the soccer program, they had around 350 children out for the sport. They had to set up temporary fields in places like the Mitchell County Fairgrounds. He had help from the public and from the coaches.

Over the years, it was inevitable Funk would collect a few good stories about his years of service. After the Harry Cook Nature Trail was christened, there was a problem with people riding horses on the trail.

“I wanted to keep them off of there,” Funk said. “So we went out to where they were going on the trail, and I sent one of the kids back to the shop – I said to make a sign that read, ‘No horses allowed on the trail.’

“So he comes back with a sign that said, ‘No horses aloud on the trail.’ I said, ‘I don’t care how much noise they make, I just don’t want them on the trail.’”

And with the number of students he worked with over the years, he sees his former employees all of the time.

According to Funk, Park and Rec received a first place award in a nine-county government park improvement contest and established a two-mile trail from Osage to Spring Park following a partial railroad right-of-way. It was even on television. Harry Cook was a longtime Park Board member, and it was his dream to someday have a trail connecting the City with Spring Park. So it was fitting to name it the Harry Cook Nature Trail.

Cook had passed away by the time they held the dedication of the trail. The day of the dedication, his family attended but Mother Nature had different plans – the river was flooding, and they couldn’t even walk the trail.

One of Funk’s favorite parts of being Park and Rec director was simple – keeping everything in shape, from ball fields to hiking trails to the pool. It was a big job, but Funk did not shy away from getting his own hands dirty.

His other favorite duty was working with kids in all capacities. “It was fun,” he said.

Funk has been married to his wife for 53 years. They have three daughters who as children thought their father owned the park and the pool. They thought it was generous Funk let the public use them.

One of his daughters is now a teacher in Colorado Springs, while two of them live in Waverly.

When Funk began his job in 1980, Dutch elm disease had just swept through Osage. Over 200 elm trees had to be removed from Spring Park. After Funk started, stumps had to be ground down, and another 100 elm trees had to be removed.

“When we first moved here, you could stand at the spring and look toward the Cedar River and not see the shelter house, there were so many trees,” Funk said. “Now you could shoot a cannon through there and not hit anything.”

Those who came after Funk now have a similar problem as the emerald ash borer destroys all ash trees in its path.

“When Dutch elm hit, the City of Dubuque had around 90% elm trees,” Funk said. “And they lost almost all of them. They planted back green ash, because they are fast growing, and now they’re going through that again. You always diversify your tree planting, which I tried to do.”

Removing elm trees from Osage was a major expense.

Since he has retired, Funk still helps out at the Osage Cemetery. He also takes time for carpentry work and to fish, from Clear Lake to the Mississippi River, where he fished as a boy.

In the carpentry trade, he learned woodworking, and he has a shop in his garage. Though he took relatively few shop classes in high school, when he was in college he worked with Les Decker, an Osage cabinet maker, who taught him much of what he knows. He built baby cribs for each one of his daughters, to use for their own children.

Funk also built items for Osage City Hall when it moved into the town’s old library.

Therefore while his service officially lasted from 1980 to 2011, Funk still goes above and beyond the call of duty. Now he is running for a seat on the Park and Rec board. It is full circle for the long-time public servant.