History is seldom as fun as it will be in our nearby towns of Coon Rapids and Perry this Sunday, February 27. An original play “Peace through Corn” will be staged, telling the story of one of the most fascinating incidents in Iowa history – the 1959 visit by Premier Nikita Khrushchev, supreme leader of the Soviet Union, to the farm of seed dealer Roswell Garst at Coon Rapids. Performances are at 2 p.m. at Coon Rapids High School and at 7 p.m. at the McCreary Center in Perry. The play, written by Cynthia Mercati, of Des Moines, made its debut in September 2009 in Coon Rapids, during the 50th anniversary commemoration of the Khrushchev visit. We saw it then, and it is excellent. The production is now touring Iowa, with support from Humanities Iowa and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The picture here, right after the 2009 production, shows Des Moines actors John Earl Robinson (left), who played Khrushchev, and Michael Cornelison (right), who played Garst, meeting Sergei Khrushchev, the son of the former Soviet leader. Sergei Khrushchev, who was in Coon Rapids in 1959 as a young man and returned for the ’09 commemoration, has lived in the U.S. for decades and is a professor at Brown University in Rhode Island. In the play on its new tour, Robinson and Cornelison are still playing Nikita Khrushchev and Garst. To read Chuck Offenburger’s 2009 story previewing the 50-year commemoration in Coon Rapids, click here.