Oberloh: An American story

• Oberloh

Ana Anthony/Daily Globe Mayor Alan Oberloh sits in his chair in the Worthington City Hall council chambers during a September 2011 meeting.

Talk about it

WORTHINGTON — For Worthington Mayor Alan Oberloh, public service is all about giving back to his community.

Looking back on a childhood that saw few luxuries, Oberloh said he resolved at a young age to help others in need “if I ever did amount to anything.” He’s done that in various ways, serving on various boards and committees as well as in the capacity of mayor since 2003.

“I’ve been doing all that because of a love of where I live, and as a service back to the community,” Oberloh said.

Oberloh’s story is, in some ways, the quintessential American tale, and part of the reason why he makes an ideal fit to represent the U.S. in the first installment of the Daily Globe’s “Our Diverse Community” series.

An individual from each of the more than 60 nationalities that comprise Worthington’s Peace Avenue of Flags will be profiled in this newspaper over the course of the next several weeks. Profiles will appear daily through Friday of this week, then on Tuesdays in subsequent weeks.

German on his

father’s side

Oberloh’s parents, Irvin (now deceased) and Delia Gerdes Oberloh, called Fulda home as youths and moved into Worthington following their marriage. Irvin Oberloh’s grandfather — who later helped found a rural Fulda church — and his wife had made the trip from Germany to the U.S. many years earlier.

“I have a cousin in Marshall that is doing a very good job of tracking down our relatives,” Oberloh said. “She is making great strides. I believe my great-grandpa had three brothers … there were four of them total, and they came into Illinois and settled there and dispersed across the U.S. from there. We still have distant relatives from Illinois and Washington state today.”

Oberloh had the opportunity to travel with a Worthington contingent to Crailsheim, Germany, one year, and he was able to get a first-hand appreciation of his heritage.

“One sister, one brother, my mother and cousins were on a trip to Crailsheim one year (with me) when Worthington sent a group over,” Oberloh said. “My brother was staying in this town … and he said, ‘There’s an Oberloh Field right outside of town, and it’s spelled the same way.’ I thought, we’d been trying to find where exactly the Oberloh family came from.

“There’s also Oberloh Sportsplatz — that’s located in another town in Germany,” added the mayor, comparing the facility to the National Sports Center in Blaine.

Life in a small town

Oberloh’s family outgrew its home when Alan was 5 years old, and his parents bought a house in Reading.

“I went to school there until I was in eighth grade, then went to junior high and high school in Worthington,” Oberloh said. “In Reading, everybody knew everybody. If I did something wrong, my parents knew about it before I was done doing it. Everybody looked out for everybody.

“I went from a class of 21 kids in Reading to having 300 in my graduating class in Worthington. When I got into ninth grade, it was quite a different dynamic.”

Oberloh also grew up in a home that he described as far from wealthy.

“We lived in a house that by today’s standards would be condemned,” he said. “There were seven kids, my mother and father both worked, and I think the house — I only think they paid $7,000 for it when we moved there in 1959. They did whatever they could to provide for us kids, but we never went on a trip when I was a kid. Our trip was every third year, going to St. Paul to an aunt and uncle’s for Christmas.”

From school

to business

Oberloh graduated at 17 and was already enrolled at that time in the auto body program at the-then Jackson Area Vocational Technical Institute. He attended the school for two years.

“At the time I was there, the majority of the students were veterans coming back from Vietnam studying there on the G.I. bill,” Oberloh remembered. “There were probably a half-dozen of us that weren’t veterans in a class of 25.”

Oberloh then went on to a job in Marshalltown, Iowa, shortly before getting married to wife Joan in December 1974. The couple moved to Worthington the following July, and Oberloh began working at Koppy Motors.

The Oberlohs later moved to Lakefield, where Alan worked at a Ford dealership for about two years. They then returned to Worthington.

“I was kind of a gypsy in those years, maybe,” he joked. “I’ve lived in 11 homes in Worthington.

“The first place I lived coming to Worthington was a trailer in Sungold Heights Trailer Court — that would have been the fall of ’75,” he added.

Oberloh would work for eight years at John’s Body Shop in Worthington. In 1983, he opened his own business, and he has continued to own and operate Quality Auto Body.

“I opened my business on the same exact day my daughter was born.” Oberloh said. “Believe me, that’s not how it was planned.”

Obelroh’s business moved to its current location along Oxford Street in either 1998 or 1999, he said. Another major change would come a few years later, when cancer claimed wife Joan in June 2002.

Six months later, Oberloh was elected to his first four-year term as mayor; he’s now in the midst of his third. In 2004, he married current wife Janice.

Reflecting on diversity

Oberloh has experienced the increased diversity in Worthington as both a resident and business owner. He’s quick to point out, though, that diversity is not a new phenomenon here.

“When I was in high school, it was about the same time that Armour’s was getting rolling and they started bringing in more of the black families that came from St. Joe’s (St. Joseph, Mo.) or Kansas City. I got to know as classmates Kirkwoods and McFarlanes ... they were just several families; I could go up and down the line. We had diversity already in the mid- to late 1960s.”

Oberloh noted that another wave of new residents came in 1974, when churches began sponsoring Vietnamese and Lao residents entering the community.

“My early years in business in the community, I was dealing with first-generation Southeast Asian residents who were trying to come in and make a life for themselves. Now, I probably have third-generation southeast Asian customers.”

An extra shift at what is now known as JBS (and formerly Armour) brought an influx of people from Central American nations into Worthington, added Oberloh, who also pointed out his invitation to a welcoming ceremony for a new group of residents from Burma.

Though Worthington’s residents hail from several different countries and have varying cultural heritage, Oberloh believes many of them have at least one thing in common — particularly folks who are newer to town.

“I think all of them are looking for a better way of life,” he said. “They’re trying to provide for their families just like we are.”

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