Berkley Bedell State Pier: 'There could not have been a more fitting tribute to dad'

OKOBOJI, Iowa -- Sue Richter was one of many Iowa Great Lakes-area residents who was heartbroken at the loss of Berkley Bedell. 

Bedell and Richter were co-chairs of the "Save the Park" campaign to retain the historic Arnolds Park Amusement Park, beginning around 1999. They worked together on the Okoboji Foundation and other special projects to improve the Iowa Great Lakes. 

"Oh my gosh, he was a one-of-a-kind guy. His personality was just magnanimous," said Richter, who referred to Bedell by his oft-repeated nickname, "Berk."

Richter ventured a guess that Bedell wore size 7 1/2 or 8 shoes, but nobody, she said, could fill his shoes in the Okoboji area. His death left a gaping hole in the heart of the Iowa Great Lakes. 

"He had the ability to see in each individual person, what their potential was, and then give them an opportunity, and he would mentor them and provide experiences for people to be successful," she said. 

Bedell, a longtime entrepreneur, fisherman, politician and all-around leader of the Iowa Great Lakes, died in Naples, Florida, at age 98 in December 2019, following a stroke. He remained active up unto the end. 

In the year following his death, a movement began in support of renaming the old State Pier -- an iconic attraction adjacent to Arnolds Park on West Lake Okoboji, dating back to 1930 -- after him.

"There could not have been a more fitting tribute to dad," said Tom Bedell, son of Berkley Bedell. "There's not a project around the Iowa Great Lakes that doesn't have dad's fingerprint on it somewhere. When he was here, there were very few mornings when he didn't get up early and wade out on one of the points or go out in his fishing boat. It was common for people to get up and have their morning coffee and see Berk out on their lake shore casting his fly-rod." 

The Pier at the time was in the middle of a $1 million-plus renovation and enhancement, the work of the group Imagine Iowa Great Lakes and donors. A new decorative fountain with mosaic tiles and three stainless steel sails was added to the Pier, along with a new stainless steel railing with LED lighting and new decorative granite pavers with the names of people who gave money to the preservation efforts at Arnolds Park. 

A flurry of letters, written by the likes of Sen. Chuck Grassley, retired Sen. Tom Harkin, Richter and others, were sent to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources in support of the renaming. 

"In his 98 years on God's green earth Berkley strived to set a good example for everyone who crosses his path. I encourage the state of Iowa to make this Pier an example of servant leadership and conservation by naming it after Berkley Bedell," Sen. Grassley's letter read in part. 

"Those of us who have spent summer vacations at Okoboji and enjoy the clear water owe a debt to Berkley Bedell," former Sen. Harkin wrote in his letter. 

The state agreed to the renaming. Around Labor Day weekend of 2020, the new Berkley Bedell State Pier was ceremonially opened. 

More statues

Another new, but familiar, sight at the Pier was Berkley Bedell himself, clad in a fishing hat and vest, in a bronze, roughly life-sized likeness that was given by Bedell's son, Tom Bedell. Not far away from the Bedell bronze is the life-sized bronze statue of the late Capt. Steve Kennedy, who piloted the Queen II riverboat. 

The statue, oddly enough, did not begin its life as Berkley Bedell, though it bears a strong resemblance to the thin, older gentleman in his fishing days. 

Roughly 15 or 18 years ago, Mike Hoein, a lifelong friend of Tom Bedell's who said he considered Berkley Bedell to be something of a father figure, saw the bronze in a gallery in the Jackson Hole, Wyoming area.

He acquired it and sent it to Tom Bedell's ranch outside Aspen, Colorado, where it stood adjacent to a trout pond at the ranch. Berkley Bedell had seen the statue himself and had fished at the pond where it stood. 

The over-six-foot-tall bronze, by artist Jim Demetro, was originally a statue of an older fisherman, not specifically Bedell. 

"It just happened to look like Tom's dad," Hoein said. "It was a bronze of a fly-fisherman. It just happened to have all of Berkley's physical characteristics. Very slender, a guy that loved to fish -- even the face was similar." 

Tom Bedell later sold the Colorado ranch. 

"So then I got a phone call from the Imagine (Iowa Great Lakes) group, saying they wanted to put a statue of Berk fishing. I said, 'I've got one!'" Tom Bedell recalled. 

Berk's legacy

In 1937, the teenage Berkley Bedell used money saved from a paper route to launch Bedell & Co., a Spirit Lake manufacturer of fishing tackle. The business was eventually a huge success, employing 800 people by the mid-1970s. He was named "Small Businessman of the Year" by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. 

He sold the multi-million business to his children in 1984, and the company later took on the name Pure Fishing. Jarden Corp. acquired the Spirit Lake-based company for $400 million in 2007.

A 1972 effort by Bedell to capture Iowa's 6th congressional seat was unsuccessful. But by the midterms of 1974, the Watergate scandal had rocked the Republican Party and Bedell, a Democrat, was able to unseat Wiley Mayne, the Republican incumbent and an ally of President Richard Nixon. 

In the 1980s, Bedell was bitten by a tick and contracted Lyme disease, a major factor in his 1986 retirement from Congress. Republican Fred Grandy, who had previously been an actor on the sitcom "The Love Boat," won Bedell's seat in that election. The Northwest Iowa territory once represented by Bedell was never again held by a Democrat in Congress. 

Bedell's eventual recovery from Lyme disease was attributed to alternative medicines, and he was thereafter an energetic ambassador for unconventional medical therapies. 

At the same time as Bedell was focusing on recovering his health, Arnolds Park, a major lakes-area leisure destination on dating back to the 19th century, was declining rapidly. The park's Majestic Roller Rink stopped operating in 1987. The following year, the beloved Roof Garden venue was burned, the Fun House was torn down and Arnolds Park closed. It was purchased by a group of investors in 1989 and reopened that summer. 

By the late 1990s, developers had their sights set on Arnolds Park, intending to demolish the park and turn the property into condominiums, a hotel and stores.

Okoboji-area residents were less-than-pleased with this turn of events, and during a six-week period in 1999, managed to raise $7.25 million to prevent the park's demolition. Bedell helped lead the "Save the Park" group during the fundraising campaign. 

In 1998, the year before the Save the Park campaign, Berkley and wife Elinor Bedell donated 80 acres of lakeshore property, one of the few remaining undeveloped tracts of land in the Iowa Great Lakes region, to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. In 2001, this became Elinor Bedell State Park. 

"People can visit an area that's like when the settlers first came," Berkley Bedell said of the donated property in 2000.