The Freeborn Frisbee got it’s name because founder Bonnie Schuster wasn’t sure if the small town newspaper would fly to people’s waste baskets or if it’d fly beyond that.

“I thought this is either going to make it or it isn’t going to make it. Are they going to throw it in the basket like a Frisbee?” she said.

About 11 years and 46 issues later, the Frisbee is still flying strong.

Schuster has lived in rural Freeborn over 40 years, and she’s always had a love for local history and the Freeborn Frisbee gave her a way to share that history.

Schuster, a former history major, said people in the community gave her clippings or scrapbooks they found.

“When you’ve lived in a community as long as I have, people know your interests. If they see something or knew of something, they’d tell me about it. So I accumulated quite a collection,” she said.

Even when she was young, Schuster said she liked to ask her grandmother about the family. As she got older and began to have more free time, Schuster said she wanted to do something with the historical material and information she’d obtained.

“You can publish history books, but nobody buys them. But if you give it to them in small doses, they can handle it,” Shuster said.

Publishing a small town paper gave her a chance to share her collection and share what she knew about Freeborn’s history.

“Freeborn’s history has never been written,” Schuster said. “There’s nowhere where you can pick it up and read the history of Freeborn. There’s people who have lived here for years who had no idea some of the things they should take pride in.”

Since Freeborn is situated between larger towns, there isn’t one paper that serves the community, and Schuster saw it as a chance to publicize local events along with the history.

Shuster described herself and her husband, Lowell, as a retired farm family, and she said the Frisbee still prints on a farm schedule four times a year: after the harvest in November, during the winter in February, after the corn is planted in May, and before the harvest in August.

The 10-page paper does not include photographs. Schuster said publishing photographs would force her to choose between the ones she receives. The text is in two columns and is bolded so people can read it easier.

There are currently 650 people on the mailing list, and Schuster said it publishes locally and by donation: “To get on the mailing list, all I need is an address and a donation; things are pretty simple here,” she said.

Much of her historical insight comes from gleaning old newspaper articles, though she said she has to be careful with copyright laws. She does much of this at the Freeborn County Historical Museum.

In the next issue, Shuster wants to write about Oakwood Golf Course, which she said was opened by three people who took a risk starting the club in a community where few people golfed. Yet, the course is still open today.

Freeborn Lake is also another topic Schuster said she plans to write on. Another potential article is about Freeborn area residents who served in World War I. Schuster also would like to write on abandoned farm sites.

In her last issue, she wrote about farmers and the summer of 1936, a unique season of summer weather for farmers: “If you’ve ever heard much about farmers talking about weather, they’ll tell you how hot the summer of ’36 was,” she said.

Freeborn is about 150 years old, and she said it was settled by people of Scotch-English decent who had been in the U.S. for a few generations. That meant the Freeborn settlers were familiar with the English language and were able to write, so they left behind a great deal of written material. Many other settlers couldn’t write in English for a few generations due to language barriers.

Aside from the history, Schuster includes local events like births, deaths, marriages and class reunions. She usually interviews a senior member of the community for each issue. Letters to the editors are also published frequently.

When she writes about a class reunion, she often puts in information like who attended the reunion and where the people currently live and their occupations. She said people also like to know what class members are deceased.

“It’s just those little things that they maybe heard, but it escaped them and now it’s back in paper. They can hold it in their hands and they can read it,” Schuster said.

She doesn’t put out the Frisbee alone. Gail Savick helps with personal items like births and deaths. Shuster said she’s “no guru,” and said one of her children help her when she needs help with the computer when laying out the Frisbee. Schuster has four children: Christine, Peter, Mary, and Mark, plus Mark’s wife, Shana. 

For Shuster, publishing the history of Freeborn was something she’d had a desire to do for a number of years, and she finally just decided to do it.

“When you have a desire, there comes a time in life when you realize if you’re going to do it, you better get your butt in gear and do it,” Schuster said. “The thing that held me back was grammar and the writing skills. Then I got thinking: ‘You’re getting old enough that if you wait much longer it isn’t going to get off the ground.’ I just dove in.”

Privacy is a key concern. She also follows the golden rule: She said she doesn’t print anything about others that she wouldn’t want printed about herself.

People often approach Schuster to ask her if she knows anything about their families, and she said she gladly shares with people. The Frisbee also gives the people of the Freeborn area a chance to share their own historical items and hand-me-downs.

“They wouldn’t have known where to go with what they had or what they knew,” she said. “They can talk about it, but what would ever be done with it?”