The We Can Club

While we don’t know what the rest of 2022 will hold, we can only hope that McCook is as successful as it was in 1922. Or even the 1920s in general. What was so great about the 1920s and 1922 specifically?

In 1922, the Keystone Hotel was completed. Now known as the Keystone Business Center, the six-story building came to be because of the can-do spirit of the time. In fact, there was a group called the “We Can Club” which worked together to raise the needed finances, to pull together resources and to overcome obstacles in their way.

On one evening at a booster’s banquet, the “We Can Club” raised nearly $100,000 to build the Keystone Hotel.

In 1919.

By 120 people.

Another $100,000 was soon pledged. In the end, the “We Can Club" raised more than $300,000 to complete a project they thought was vital to a growing, thriving community.

Now, I can’t pass up the opportunity to include this other interesting fact about how the Keystone Hotel came to be.

According to a February 2011 Gazette article celebrating the Keystone’s renovation, there was an obstacle standing in the way of constructing the new Keystone Hotel: the Commercial Hotel, which was still in operation and standing on Main Street in McCook. Coincidentally, that hotel burned down in 1920, allowing fundraising efforts and resources to be directed toward the Keystone Hotel at a greatly accelerated rate.

I do not want to imply that the Commercial Hotel burned down on purpose, but it sure was helpful to making progress.

But I digress…

In June 1922, the Keystone Hotel opened with much fanfare, just in time for an Elks horse-racing event. The community made sacrifices to make it happen, making sure delinquent notes were paid at McCook National Bank and Ford Garage and supplies were provided at cost. The “We Can Club” had set a deadline and achieved their goal, an achievement which stands to this day in downtown McCook.

Of course, things were different in the 1920s. Small towns were popping up along the railroad lines and rural America was growing. Families were much larger than they are today so the population was booming. And people strolled the streets and visited with their neighbors for entertainment rather than staying at home, just staring at a screen.

But they also understood that if they wanted to make something happen, they had to do it themselves. No one was coming in on a white horse to save them or rushing in to do it for them.

Perhaps more importantly, community leaders were not afraid to tackle a difficult project, led by Pat Walsh, founder of McCook National Bank and president of the Keystone Hotel Company; and A. Barnett, of Barnett Lumber who was involved in almost every prominent McCook building from the Fox Theater to the original YMCA.

The “We Can Club” came up with a plan, they gathered their resources, and pulled the community together to get things done.

And 100 years later, the community has proven it can rise to the occasion.

A few weeks ago, Hillcrest Nursing Home raised more than $160,000 in one evening during Night on the Hill. For the past five years, the community has raised $200,000 in 24-hours during Big Give McCook. Community Hospital regularly reaches its’ capital campaign goals because of the generosity in our community. And the McCook Community Foundation Fund is known for its homegrown challenges, where local donors offer up matching funds for other donations. Again and again, the community shows it can step up when it is asked, when there is a plan, when there is a need.

The Keystone continues to be a testament of getting things done, even if it looks impossible. In 2009, the Keystone again looked like an impossible project after sitting unused for a decade. Community leaders came together, overcame what seemed like impossible odds and renovated the Keystone into the beautiful business center it is today.

It is hard to imagine downtown McCook today without the Keystone, yet many don’t realize how close the building was to being demolished.

Former McCook Economic Development Corp. director Rex Nelson was in McCook last week for the EDC’s annual meeting as well as for a ceremonial mortgage burning. During a conversation with him about saving the building, Nelson said engineers told him the building was within months of being condemned because of structural issues. The Keystone was saved at the last minute thanks to a can-do spirit.

McCook is again on the cusp of many large projects, which are vital to a vibrant, thriving community. But it is going to require a community willing to take risks, willing to come together to make things happen, willing to invest in itself to make things happen.

it is going to take each and every one of us to become members of this century’s “We Can Club” if we are going to make McCook into an even better place to call home.