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Margaret Gervich and Janelle Carter

The Optimist Club of Marshalltown will honor 2020 Citizen of the Year Margaret Gervich and 2022 Citizen of the Year Janelle Carter at a combined Roast banquet.

Citizens of the Year 2020 & 2022

The Optimist Club of Marshalltown has announced that it will roast two Citizens of the Year at its traditional banquet on March 31, 2022. Conditions relating to the COVID pandemic resulted in the 2020 Citizen of the Year Roast honoring Margaret Gervich to be postponed. Gervich will share her re-scheduled celebration with Janelle Carter, the 2022 Citizen of the Year, recently selected by previous winners of the award.

Janelle Carter

Carter’s selection was based on her extensive involvement in the Marshalltown community, with her purpose, as she stated, “ to make the community better for everyone, but specifically better for children and quality of life in Marshalltown.” While her own children were young, Carter volunteered her time with after school programs as well as parent-teacher partnerships. As a member of the Friends of the Library Board, she was instrumental in leading local efforts to build a new library. During her 10 years with the Assistance League, she helped to support many high school activities and projects, including the recent Roundhouse renovation. Carter’s support of education also included serving as Vice-President of the Marshalltown School Board for four years.

Carter professes “a passion for new cultures,” which has led her to spending time mentoring immigrant families whom she has helped to bring into the community and then helping them to thrive. She has worked as a placement rep for ISE, which is an international student exchange program that brings foreign students to the local schools as exchange students.

Her other community involvement includes being a member of the Board of Directors for Farmer’s Savings Bank since 2018. She is helping to address housing needs in Marshalltown as the owner and developer of Crosby Park Apartments on 6^th Street, where the final 13 units of the 35 total are being finished. Carter’s interest in upgrading the downtown area has spurred her to lead the development of the Willard and Hopkins buildings on Main Street, with construction to begin in the spring of 2022.

A native Iowan, Carter was born in Spencer, and moved around the Midwest to other cities with her family until she graduated from Burlington High School in 1979. She followed high school with a year in Helsingborg, Sweden as a Rotary exchange student, learning to speak fluent Swedish.

She earned a BS in Industrial Engineering from Iowa State University in 1985. While at ISU, she interned for General Motors at Packard Electric in Warren, Ohio. She also took assignments in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and Wuppertal, Germany. She became part of the first study abroad program through the Iowa State Industrial Engineering program, spending a year studying at the University of Wales in Swansea. The ISU Industrial Engineering staff elected Carter as “Senior Woman Engineer in Industrial Engineering” from her class.

After her college graduation, Carter worked as a planning engineer for R.R. Donnelly and Sons in Chicago. Two years later, she took an engineering position with a tool company called MARSHALLTOWN in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where she spent six years before she, her husband Joe, and family moved to Springfield, Missouri.

The Carter family moved to Marshalltown in 1995 where they raised their three children, including Mike, now 31, a software developer living in Yarmouth, Maine, with his wife Leah and daughter Muriel; Hanna, 27, a graphic designer in Portland, Oregon, soon to be married to her fiancé Chris; and Sam, 26, a construction engineer in Chicago, to be married in 2023 to his fiancée, Keri.

Carter and her selected roasters, Kent Anderson, Kelli Johnson, and Sam Carter will share the dais with Gervich and her roasters in a unique format.

Margaret Gervich

Gervich was selected as the Citizen of the Year in 2020 by a committee of previous Citizen of the Year honorees, based on her extensive involvement in current community activities, as well as her previous volunteer commitments over the past 37 years.

Currently, Gervich serves on the Marshalltown High School/Community Auditorium Board, as a member since 1989 and a Past President. She is also the Treasurer of the Central Iowa Residential Services (CIRSI) Board, which she joined in 1994. In 2018, she was a member of the CIRSI Galaxy Campaign that raised $40,000 to purchase a wheelchair accessible van for residents. She currently serves as the President of the CIRSI Foundation.

Gervich is also a sustaining member of the Marshalltown Assistance League and served as Sustainer Representative in 2019-2020. She was the League’s President in 1989-1990. Her other committee memberships include the Reach Out and Read Committee, Fisher Community Center Complex Committee, and Co-Chair of the Fisher Community Center Masterpiece Restoration Fundraiser. She is currently serving on the Marshalltown Arts and Civic Center Capital Campaign Committee.

Previously, Gervich served on the Iowa River Hospice Board and the Domestic Violence Alternatives Board. She has been strongly involved with the Marshalltown Community School District in several capacities. She served on the Facilities and Children Together Safely (FACTS) Bond Issue Committee that promoted the building of an addition to Franklin School. Her involvement included PTA, School Improvement Teams, the MCSD Volunteer Program, and mentor in the District from 1991 to 2001.

Gervich’s energies also benefited the Marshalltown YMCA-YWCA when she served on the Heritage Club Board and participated in the Partner with Youth Campaign. She and her husband Doug were the recipients of the YMCA-YWCA Ryden Service Award.

When Gervich served on the 13^th Street District Committee, she helped to revive and improve the social, cultural and business opportunities in the historical area of Marshalltown.

She maintains membership in several local organizations including 100 Women Who Care, PEO Chapter NU, Hawthorne Club and St. Francis of Assisi Parish.

As the daughter of the late Maxine and John Croker of Marshalltown, Gervich graduated from Lenihan High School in 1970, earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Speech Pathology from Northeast Missouri State University (now Truman State University) in 1974, and a master’s degree in Speech Pathology in 1975.

She was employed as a speech pathologist in the Fort Madison, Ottumwa, and Marshalltown Community School Districts. She has also worked as a clinical supervisor and instructor at Northeast Missouri State University.

Gervich and her husband Doug have two daughters, Samantha (Nate) Kaeding, and Molly (Kendall) Dammeier, and two sons, John (Claire) Gervich and Aaron Gervich. They claim eight grandchildren as well, including Jack, Wyatt, Tess and Harper Kaeding, Vivian, Maxine and Zuzu Dammeier and Ellis Gervich, with another Gervich to appear in April.

Gervich has chosen Helene Fein, Dave Clark, and John Gervich to be her roasters at the event that will honor both her and Carter.  

The Citizen of the Year Roast banquet will be held at Elmwood Country Club on Thursday, March 31, with the social hour beginning at 5:30 and the dinner at 6:00. Tickets are $45 each and can be reserved by emailing Linda Moore at linmoore1996@gmail.com with the number of tickets desired, names of  attendees, and requests for table mates. Payment may be made at the event.