Who's Who of Iowa

Notable Families, Companies & People of Central Iowa

The families, companies, and famous figures of central Iowa — from Maytag and Vermeer to John Wayne, Bob Feller, and Jack Trice.

The Maytag FamilyThe Newton family behind America's washing machines — and Maytag Blue Cheese.Read profile →The Vermeer FamilyThe Pella family that reinvented haymaking with the round baler.Read profile →The Kuyper Family (Pella Corporation)The Pella family that turned a roll-up window screen into one of the country's best-known window and door makers.Read profile →The Beckwith Family (Fareway)The Boone family behind Fareway — the closed-on-Sundays, full-service Iowa grocery chain.Read profile →Musco LightingThe Oskaloosa company that lights the world's stadiums — and Olympic Games.Read profile →Josiah B. GrinnellThe abolitionist minister who founded a town and a college — and to whom Horace Greeley reputedly said, “Go West, young man.”Read profile →John Wayne“The Duke” — the Winterset-born actor who became the face of the American Western.Read profile →George GallupThe Jefferson-born University of Iowa graduate who invented modern public-opinion polling.Read profile →Mamie EisenhowerThe Boone-born First Lady at Dwight Eisenhower's side through World War II and the White House.Read profile →Bob FellerThe flame-throwing farm boy from Van Meter who went straight from an Iowa cornfield to baseball's Hall of Fame.Read profile →John L. LewisThe coal miner's son from Lucas County who became the most powerful labor leader in America.Read profile →Billy SundayThe Story County orphan who went from professional baseball to become America's most famous evangelist.Read profile →Jack TriceIowa State's first Black athlete, whose courage and sacrifice made him the namesake of the only major college stadium named for a Black man.Read profile →MacKinlay KantorThe Webster City novelist whose Civil War epic Andersonville won the Pulitzer Prize.Read profile →John Vincent AtanasoffThe Iowa State physicist who, with Clifford Berry, built the first electronic digital computer in Ames.Read profile →Kate ShelleyThe fifteen-year-old who crawled across a storm-wrecked railroad bridge to stop a passenger train — and became an Iowa legend.Read profile →Jean SebergThe Marshalltown teenager plucked from Iowa to Hollywood who became a face of the French New Wave.Read profile →James “Tama Jim” WilsonThe Tama County farmer who ran the U.S. Department of Agriculture for sixteen years — still the longest cabinet tenure in history.Read profile →George Washington CarverThe renowned agricultural scientist who earned his degrees — and broke barriers — at Iowa State in Ames.Read profile →Ada HaydenThe Ames botanist — Iowa State's first woman PhD — who fought to save Iowa's vanishing prairie.Read profile →Tom ArnoldThe Ottumwa-born comedian and actor of “True Lies” and “Roseanne.”Read profile →Simon EstesThe Centerville-born bass-baritone who broke barriers on the world's great opera stages.Read profile →
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