Two months after the Bank of Verdigre closed, dozens of farmers found themselves unable to feed family members and their livestock because the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was garnishing their revenue sources.

A homily by Battiato, then pastor of St. Wenceslaus Catholic Church in Verdigre, so moved Carolee Kment that the 10-year-old handed him a dollar following an ecumenical pre-Thanksgiving service at the church.

Carolee said Battiato had spoken of “how Verdigre was going into debt, that the bank had closed and that people needed money for food.”

Reached Tuesday night at her home in the San Francisco Bay area, Carolee — now Carolee Rodrigo — said she remembers that church service and the stream of print and broadcast media from across the nation that descended on her hometown in the coming months. A photographer and reporter from LIFE Magazine spent 58 days in the community.

Her parents, Carolyn and the late Bob Kment, operated the Verdigre Bakery.  

“Verdigre is a wonderful town,” said Rodrigo, who is a recreational therapist and  mother of a 2-year-old girl. “I’m always excited about coming home.”

The 1992 Verdigre High School graduate said she keeps up with hometown happenings through the Verdigre Eagle newspaper. Rodrigo said she finds it amazing to regularly read about the town’s new residents and new businesses.

In phone conversations Tuesday, Gompert and Battiato shared their thoughts of the dire times 25 years ago when the food and feed pantries were formed.

Gompert, in his current post since 1983, said the 1980s would long be remembered as “the farm crisis years.”

“Farm sales were all over Northeast Nebraska,” he said., recalling one edition of an advertising shopper that had so many farm sale bills that seven had to be listed on the front page.

But, in the subsequent years, “amazingly, a lot of (ag producers) survived,” Gompert said. “It was a ‘pull-together’ attitude. We’ll be tight and pull together, and we’ll survive and, for the most part, I think they did.”

Battiato, a senior associate pastor at St. Patrick’s Parish in Fremont since 2006, was pastor of the St. Wenceslaus Parish from 1978 to 1994. He emerged as a vocal spokesman for the community in crisis.

“I got most of the credit, but it was really an ecumenical endeavor,” he said. “There were five churches involved that worked together very well. We set aside our religious differences and did the work of the Lord.”

Over about a nine-month period, Battiato said, “We helped approximately 65 families with food and clothing and grain and hay for their livestock. We had many great volunteers.

“We also had magnificent help from the professional community, psychiatrists, counselors, lawyers, psychologists and the medical field. Many of them donated their hours of service. We needed professional help to survive the legal challenges, medical problems, emotional upheavals.”

Food and supplies came from across Nebraska, as well as South Dakota, Iowa and Missouri. Financial donations totaling more than $100,000 poured in from 29 states, he said.

“People as far away as Alaska heard about our plight and the difficulty of surviving with the closing of five banks in the county,” Battiato said.

“I never kept track of how many bankruptcies we had. Rather than look at the negative, we looked at the positive.

“We served people of all faiths or without any religious affiliation. One of the glories of being a priest is you can respond to people’s needs as they occur, materially and spiritually.”

 Gompert said, “It was interesting to see the leadership that came out of the community. Different people stepped up to the plate.” Gompert singled out Battiato and Arden Uhlir, a lifelong Verdigre rancher-farmer. 

Uhlir, now 70, continues to farm and raise Simmental cattle.

“It was tough to get through the ’80s,” Uhlir said. “We lost a number of farmers in the Verdigre area. Times are probably a little better now.”

Uhlir assumed the chairmanship of the Verdigre Farm Crisis Steering Committee after its formation in late November 1984, his FFA leadership training serving him in good stead. He served as a state FFA president in the late 1950s and also earned both the Star Farmer of Nebraska and America titles.

Of his decision to take a leadership role during the ag crisis in Verdigre, Uhlir said at the time that he saw “critical problems, which needed quick answers. This community can’t lose 30 families this year and 30 next year without killing the entire community.”

Uhlir maintains the belief that he’s held since his FFA years, that “to maintain the family farm, we have to get involved and work together. All farm groups have to work together.”

Yet today, Uhlir said he feels gratification when thinking back to when the food and feed pantries were opened in Verdigre.

“The cooperation in this community was amazing as you think back,” he said. “There wasn’t anybody who didn’t get involved, but it doesn’t seem like it’s been 25 years already.”

While Verdigre was cast in the national news front in the 1980s, Uhlir said “a vast share of the Midwest could (also) relate.”