Enjoy this 1st edition of the Walcott Community News with the slogan “Devoted to the Best Interest of Walcott and Community”. This is the first newspaper that was published in Walcott. We have been told there was an earlier one published around the turn of the century, but no copies or records of it have been found. The Walcott Community News was published on October 18, 1933 by Victor Bluedorn.
Victor Bluedorn, the youngest of six sons (Herbert, Rudolph F., Carl, Harvey, Edgar, and Victor) was born in Walcott, Iowa to Rudolph O. and Rosa Bluedorn on June 25, 1916. He graduated from Davenport High School in 1934, where during his senior year he was a seldom-used end on the football team. During the fall of his senior year he founded and published the Walcott Community News, which became the Scott County Tribune in 1937, and the Scott County Tribune and Bettendorf News in 1942. In 1937 he purchased the old Walcott Bank building as the facility to house the paper and its staff of 12 full-time employees who relied on 31 correspondents and the news they provided to serve 3,000 subscribers (Walcott’s population at the time was 398). Victor, a member of the Greatest Generation who attained the rank of captain, entered the U.S. Army in May 1942, and the paper ceased publication in 1943. Prior to entering the Army, Victor attended Iowa State University in Ames, and in 1941 he married Elizabeth Garlock. Daughter Karen was born in 1944, followed four years later by son Bruce in 1948. After the war, the family moved to Wheaton, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, where Victor served as executive director for Sigma Delta Chi, a national professional journalism fraternity, and where he also produced safety-focused publications marketed to manufacturing firms. The family lived in Wheaton until Victor’s death on March 31,1972, followed by Elizabeth’s in 1975. Both are buried near Victor’s parents in the Walcott Cemetery.