The Bell Family Tragedy: The Blackest Hour of Valley Junction

For most, that meant an outsider— Valley Junction sounds like a village out of a Hallmark story. For most people, it would seem very quaint in that it doesn't have real stories—real dark ones, anyhow.

The name of John Stanley Bell once held an aura of respect in Valley Junction; it is the center of a tragedy that rocked this little town. Let’s peel back the layers, shall we?

Born near Keosauqua in 1874, his life seemed to epitomize the pattern of many Midwestern stories: hard work, service to the community, and close family ties. Thirty-one years with the Rock Island Railway Company, retiring and moving into civic obligations. Justice of the peace. School board member. Masonic lodges. On the face of it, Bell’s was a life that held true to Midwestern ideals.

Yet underneath that facade, there existed many fault lines. Allegations emerged surrounding his behavior as a justice of the peace. Then there were his two sons: Byron and Jess, both unemployed during the lengthy years of the Great Depression. The world seemed to weigh down on Bell.

That date, April 3, 1933, is thus etched in the memory of Valley Junction. Two young lives snuffed out by two gunshots and Bell having turned the shotgun on himself. Mrs. Bell is here to tell that story as she narrates her ordeal at the hands of her husband, a man surely pushed beyond the brink by whatever demons had latched onto him.

Byron Lyle Bell, 1911-1934, and Jess Rodney Bell, 1913-1934, were more than statistics in an historical tragedy. Valley Junction was their home, their education local, and involvement in community activities prevalent. Byron with his affiliations to the Order of the De Molay and Jess, who had aspirations taking him to the State University of Iowa, truly represented hopes for a new generation. It was a signal for a generation that, with each nudge down the economic ladder, more and more felt alienated from the world that grew both its materialistic appetite and moral intensity. As Valley Junction struggled to form any comprehensions of the event, the questions started to percolate up.

Were there any early signs of Bell’s deteriorating mental health? Any chances to intervene before it was too late? More nefarious forces at work—perhaps those still detached from reality, but clearly assisting in guiding these events to such horrific ends?

John Stanley Bell, once a tapestry woven from community service and familial ties, has become so entangled with the questions that they may never be answered. His obituary fills in the portrait for those who knew of a man deeply intertwined in his community, leaving an immensity of unanswerable questions.

The Bell tragedy is a grimly justified example that so very graphically described the complex human psyche, layers of mental health, after-effects of life trials rippling into social context. As we look back with this part of history from Valley Junction to take a step down memory lane, let it not be so of Byron or Jess, whose lives are now never really to live in this community again.