The wealth of this community embodies the richness of her soil, the integrity, frugality and diligence of her people. — Inscription above the Ladora Savings Bank

The Ladora Savings Bank stands alone in western Iowa County, in the middle of town but with vacant lots to either side of it. It was included in a Des Moines Register Web feature about U.S. Highway 6, a road superseded in importance by Interstate 80, passing through towns superseded in importance by everything else.

About 170 miles away, two brick school buildings in Ayrshire with dozens of broken windows silently wait for something, anything, to happen to them as weeds grow through the sidewalk and the doors’ locks rust.

The bank and the schools were built to stand the test of time. However, the builders could not have foreseen the Great Depression (when the bank failed), the farm crisis of the 1980s and school mergers of the past half-century (Ruthven-Ayrshire is the current district). The bank’s inscription has gone from inspirational proverb to Depression-era irony to sad epitaph.

There is another structure, similar to that of these buildings, of even more concern. In the next 10 to 20 years, the personal support infrastructure that built small-town Iowa is going to collapse. One day, someone is going to die, no one who coordinated funeral potlucks for the past 25 years will be able to help, and there won’t be any younger people to take their place.

Census statistics released April 9 indicate 68 of Iowa’s 99 counties lost population between 2000 and 2003. Audubon, Calhoun, Ida, Kossuth, Montgomery, Palo Alto, Pocahontas and Wright counties all lost 4 percent or more, with Sac County the worst at 5.7 percent.

Iowa is hemorrhaging people. The only state with a worse retention rate is North Dakota. The “brain drain” of young adults leaving rural areas — and the state entirely — is all too evident.

It’s in the Wall Street Journal’s front-page article from Nov. 12, 2002, on a student in the rural Union school district of La Porte City. The headline: “An Iowa boy goes against the grain — he wants to farm.” It’s in the part of Gov. Vilsack’s speech directed at the Ackley-Geneva-Wellsburg-Steamboat Rock band at the opening ceremony for new U.S. Highway 20 on Aug. 22, 2003. “Be proud of where you’re from,” he said, and you could tell he was hoping they would see the freeway as something to bring new business instead of as a conduit for them to flee the state. It’s in the Oct. 31, 2003, Register photograph of Fredericksburg football players reflected in a display of trophies belonging to a school district that next year will no longer exist. It’s in collapsing barns along county roads and empty storefronts in towns that have fewer than 10 businesses — even if you count the post office.

It’s not that migration away from rural areas is a new phenomenon. Even in the early 20th century, young adults wanted to leave the farm and go to town. But now they’re leaving the towns, and the cities (what we call cities, anyway), and swaths of the entire Midwest.

They need jobs. Today’s rural Iowa can’t provide the kind or the number they need. Even the cities are having problems. Burlington — so synonymous with the railroad its name is in one, the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe — is suing that railroad to stop it from moving jobs to Topeka, Kan.

They also want entertainment, diversions and “culture,” unwilling to accept the few things small-town Iowa can offer. Living 400 miles away from those venues won’t cut it. It’s hard to go out when there are only two places in town or even the county to eat pizza — and one of them is Casey’s. And so they leave for Chicago, Minneapolis and St. Louis.

There’s no escaping it — Iowa is built on hundreds of Podunks (to use the polite derogatory term). It takes the lower two-thirds of Iowa’s towns by population — everything from Manilla, pop. 839, down to Beaconsfield, pop. 11 — to equal Des Moines. Only 127 communities are larger than 2,500, only 20 larger than 25,000. It’s the collision of those numbers and many others — larger farms, fewer small businesses, fewer opportunities — that make it a perfect Greek tragedy.

That’s not to say all hope is lost. Hope was evident when Gladbrook, pop. 1,015, built a movie theater and museum to showcase a local artist’s work with matchsticks. Hope was evident when I saw a sign in Rembrandt, pop. 228, asking for support for a new fire station. They may only be small items, but Iowa’s people are trying, and that alone speaks volumes. Their friendliness and sense of community still stand strong in the face of adversity.

Despite so many sad indicators, my choice remains clear. If at all possible, I will cast my lot with these people, my people, Iowans. I can’t willingly contribute to helping my state die. But I am in a small minority. Too many young adults cannot and will never see this state as a place to live in; for them it is only a place to escape from.