Darcy Maulsby, presenter, has found that there were 20 people on the Titanic with ties to Iowa, including one farmer.

She will present her findings at a free event Saturday at 1 p.m. at Mulberry Center Church, Wilson Brewer Park, 220 Ohio St., Webster City.

There were a surprising number of first-, second- and third-class passengers with Iowa connections, although many of their haunting, poignant and sometimes shocking tales have nearly faded away. 

Join Maulsby on a remarkable journey as she brings these unforgettable stories from the “ship of dreams” back to life once more.

Through masterful storytelling, she weaves together a fascinating look at the maritime disaster from a totally different perspective than most people are accustomed to or have any knowledge of.

During this spellbinding voyage, delve into the human drama intertwined with the Titanic epic, find out who survived and explore the aftershocks that continue to fascinate us more than a century after the Titanic sank.

Mulberry Center Church is air conditioned.

This event is free.

About the presenter

Darcy Maulsby has dual bachelor’s degrees in journalism/mass communication and history and a master’s in business administration from Iowa State University.

Today, Maulsby helps her brother, Jason, on the family farm. She’s branched out from her farming roots through reams of books and articles she’s written under the mantle of Iowa’s storyteller.

“It’s an honor to preserve our history and tell these stories of rural America,” she says.

“I grew up on a Century Farm in Calhoun County where we grew corn and soybeans and had a farrow-to-finish hog operation. I was a child of the 1980s farm crisis and was floundering about what to do,” she says.

“I started at Central College with a general communications major. My dad told me I might want to consider going to Iowa State and study agriculture to fine-tune a journalism major because there aren’t many kids who still grow up on farms. He had also just won a pork production award, and a journalist from one of the ag magazines featured him. That was my first introduction to people who did that type of work.”

“I transferred to Iowa State, and that’s what set me on my path.”

She adds, “I thought I had found my niche as an agricultural online editor, but this was in the days of the dot.com crash (the early 2000s), and I was laid off. I’d always had the idea that I should go back to the farm and hang out my own shingle. I was featured several years ago in a book called The Well-Fed Writer: Back for Seconds by Peter Bowerman. He called me a writer in ‘the land of drive-by tractors.’ I live just a mile from our family farm, so I’m surrounded by farming and can also lend a hand to my brother when he needs it.”

“On a given day, I might be writing a newsletter for a client or helping with an ad campaign. On other days, I could be working on my next book or writing for a farm newspaper. People would just mainly see my name in farm newspapers, so there was the perception I was only a newspaper writer. At that time, the business world realized that strategic storytelling is a valuable marketing tool.”

“I thought, ‘Why not call myself Iowa’s Storyteller’?”