.bodytext {float: left; } .floatimg-left-hort { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right: 10px; width:300px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-caption-hort { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:300px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-vert { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right:15px; width:200px;} .floatimg-left-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; font-size: 10px; width:200px;} .floatimg-right-hort { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px;} .floatimg-right-caption-hort { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimg-right-vert { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px;} .floatimg-right-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 315px; border-top-style: double; border-top-color: black; border-bottom-style: double; border-bottom-color: black;} .floatimgright-sidebar p { line-height: 115%; text-indent: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar h4 { font-variant:small-caps; } .pullquote { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 150px; background: url(http://www.dmbusinessdaily.com/DAILY/editorial/extras/closequote.gif) no-repeat bottom right !important ; line-height: 150%; font-size: 125%; border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} .floatvidleft { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatvidright { float:right; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} About 100 of Central Iowa’s most distinguished citizens gathered in the reception area of the Des Moines Art Center last Wednesday, sipping wine or beer and eating fine hors d’oeuvres. The occasion: the release of the book “David and Liz: Dancing Through Love.” It was the last mark David Kruidenier, who passed away in January 2006, would leave on Des Moines.

David “had always wanted to write his memoirs,” said his wife, Elizabeth Stuart Kruidenier. “He had an interesting life. He wanted to tell about it.” She would come along for the ride.

“He uncharacteristically left the rest for Liz and I to complete,” said the book’s author, Beverly Rivera Davis, at the event.

As the crowd retired to the Art Center’s auditorium, a picture of the book’s cover, David and Liz as young adults skipping along, was projected on the stage’s screen and music from the post-World War II era played through the speakers. Kent Sovern and Phyllis Mumford sat at two desks and read passages from the book that marked the beginning of David and Liz’s love relationship from their first impressions of each other as young adults to a disastrous date at Yale University to David’s eventual proposal.

But the passages were only a small glimpse into the famous Des Moines couple’s memoir, which gives an honest look at the successes and challenges in their lives with the exciting last half of the 20th century as the backdrop.

Their relationship is the thread that ties the book together, as David strives to gain a leadership role in the Cowles family’s media empire and then is forced to sell The Des Moines Register, and Elizabeth struggles between her role as a traditional housewife and having a successful career as a civil rights activist and partner at the Parrish Kruidenier Dunn Boles Gribble Cook Parrish Gentry & Fisher LLP law firm. The double memoir touches on the deepest subjects, including their inability to have children, Michael Gartner’s betrayal and their adopted daughter’s depression.

Another writer’s first attempt at the manuscript didn’t meet the Kruideniers’ expectations, so they hired Davis to complete the book. At the time, David was near death, adding pressure to finish his interviews and outline his chapters before he passed away.

“I worked about 12 to almost 18 hours a day,” Davis said. “Some days I didn’t even sleep.” She even moved to Des Moines from upstate New York to be closer to the family.

Davis’ close relationship with the Kruideniers, especially David, helped her pull the stories together and find a strong narrative voice.

The book took more than a year to write and publish. It is Davis’s first published book and has received the iUniverse Inc. Publisher’s Choice award for editorial quality and design excellence.

Davis said her main goal was to bring out the emotional side of the Kruideniers’ lives.

“They’re both very accomplished people,” she said, “but what makes it interesting to me was their inner motivations.”

Much of the story came together from their own words in interviews, but Davis said she also tried to push them with questions about events that “seemed to me very important that they just overlooked,” such as David’s parents’ emotional detachment from their children, which would later influence his career ambitions.

The book begins with Elizabeth and David’s first encounter as young adults at a Wakonda Club party thrown by David’s mother to help her son find a suitable wife. David had returned from serving as a navigator of a B-29 bomber on 34 missions in the Pacific during World War II and was attending Yale University, while Elizabeth was barely passing her classes at Connecticut College.

Eventually David and Elizabeth would marry and live in Minneapolis, where David learned the newspaper business from his uncle, John Cowles, ascending the ranks quickly. The mostly joyous honeymoon period was disrupted a few years later when David was asked to return to Des Moines to help run the Register, eventually becoming publisher, which forced Elizabeth to restart her civil rights work and overcome the presence of her critical mother.

But just as David’s career crumbled with the sale of the Register to Gannett Co. Inc., Elizabeth found her place as a partner in a law firm after going back to law school in her 40s. Eventually David also found his place in charitable work, helping create some of Des Moines’ greatest assets, including the Civic Center of Greater Des Moines, Nollen Plaza and improvements to Gray’s Lake.

One of the hardest chapters to write, Davis said, was about the process of selling the Register, after Gartner, then editor and president and David’s trusted friend, was part of a takeover bid that led to the Register’s sale. Though the two would not talk to each other for decades afterward, the process of writing the book helped heal wounds.

“It was great for me to tell David in a very long phone message about how Michael felt about him and how he felt about Michael in a way that I don’t think David would have,” she said. “He had years to do it and never did. From my point of view, it was a huge resolution in David’s life that he could finally realize near the end of his life.”

Davis said her impressions changed as she learned the details of the couple’s lives.

“It takes awhile to get to know Liz,” she said, “but I think I did and the biggest question for me was learning about her story, because as women, we all have our struggles to become professionals and find our lives and she certainly had to struggle.

“We had a lot of laughs during the whole process and it was very heartwarming – David and Liz singing favorite songs together and arguing over the finer points of half-remembered stories. He had his views, and she had her views, and that’s why they wanted to speak in their own voices.”

Note: Beverly Davis contributes to the Business Record and dsm Magazine