If you build it, they will come -- and pray
Rural Jesup farm couple builds large outdoor Stations of the Cross walkway on acreage
JESUP — Dyersville has the Field of Dreams. Lee and Deb Rottinghaus have the Field of Prayers.
The farm couple have constructed a large outdoor Roman Catholic Stations of the Cross walkway at their acreage home at Young Road and County Road V-51 just north of the Dunkerton exit on U.S. Highway 20 between Jesup and Waterloo.
It can be seen from the highway “if you know where to look,” Lee Rottinghaus said.
Visitors are welcome. “We didn’t want to keep it to ourselves,” Lee said. “It’s too nice.”
”We just enjoy it, We really, really think it turned out nice and we just want people to enjoy it,” Deb said.
Since they completed the project in late 2022 they have attracted visitors from the around the local area and beyond, who come to see the structure up close, and to pray.
Lee said he got the idea from his youth years ago, on a field trip from Don Bosco High School in nearby Gilbertville to American Martyrs Retreat House west and north of Cedar Falls. An outdoor Stations of the Cross was behind the retreat house. Operated by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of the Dubuque, the retreat house was closed in 2019 after 60 years of operation after repairs and upkeep became prohibitively expensive.
“I went there one time when I was a junior in high school and always remembered that,” Lee said. “We had some wasted ground here, couldn’t do anything with it,” down a hill and across a creek from their home, “so we thought we’d clean it up and put this out here.
“I had to ask my wife if it’d be crazy to put the Stations of the Cross out here,” Lee said a little sheepishly, ‘And she said, ‘No, that’d look nice,’ Deb said, ‘Go for it.’
The site is an outdoor hands-on catechism lesson as well as a place for prayer.
The Stations of the Cross, found inside many if not most Catholic churches, outline the passion and death of Jesus Christ in 14 steps or stations, each with a statue or image of Christ’s persecution enroute to crucifixion. A prayer of reflection is said at each of the 14 steps.
The Rottinghauses’ Stations of the Cross structure consist of the 14 stations situated around a large paved concrete walkway in the shape of a Christian cross.
The stations are most often said during the season of Lent, a time of Christian repentance and preparation for Easter, which this year is Sunday, March 31. The week before Easter is Holy Week, when the passion and death of Christ is observed.
A bridge Lee built between their home and the land where the stations are located is lined by a railing containing the mysteries of the Catholic Rosary. The mysteries are reflections on the life and death of Christ observed during recitation of the Rosary, a set of rote prayers for the intercession of Mary, the mother of Jesus, with God on behalf of the faithful.
”I was just going to put up old hog barn gating (along the bridge) and my wife said, ‘No, we need something better than that,’ Lee said as he and Deb laughed.
Lee also put out a church-shaped metal mailbox containing written prayer guides and a guest sign in book. It’s on a spiral metal sculpture structure on which his father’s rural mailbox once sat, containing his and his siblings’ names.
Construction began in April 2022. Ackerson Masonry of Cedar Falls did much of the work. The statues for the stations were supplied by a company from Wheaton, Ill. It was finished in October 2022. The bridge had been constructed in 2015 to provide access to the land.
Neighbors visited at first, then word spread, with very little attention other than word of mouth. A local pastor came out and blessed it with a small group of neighbors in attendance.
|“We haven’t really advertised it,” Deb said. “There’s been a prayer group from Jesup, and there’s been talk about a confirmation class from Gilbertville coming out this spring. Some come out, and then they’ll bring family out.”
The stations also have motion lights that serve as luminaries around the various stations later in the day. Deb suggested the lights may have also served to ward away deer who might come up to rub their antlers on the stone monuments.
Lee and Deb were parents to six adopted children. Some family memorials are on the site as well — a bench memorial to Lee’s late mother and he and Deb’s son Ben, whom they lost to suicide in 2015. That’s when they started clearing the land where the Stations of the Cross is now located.
The project is a memorial of sorts to departed family as well — a project of love, and faith, for which they have gone the distance.
Pat Kinney is a freelance writer and former longtime news staffer with the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier and, prior to that, several years at the Ames Tribune. He is currently an oral historian with the Grout Museum District in Waterloo. His “View from the Cedar Valley” column is part of “Iowa Writers Collaborative,” a collection of news and opinion writers from around the state who previously and currently work with a host of Iowa newspapers, news organizations and other publications. Click on their links below to sample their work.
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Thanks Pat! Very cool.