Fire Destroys Iowa Bowling Alley, Tenpin Players Recall 300 Games

DES MOINES, IA — One month ago, Plaza Lanes celebrated its 60th anniversary as a Des Moines landmark known as the home of the neon "bowling man on the roof." Today, Randy Thompson watched his family's business — built by his father, staffed for years by his mother and where he, his siblings and children grew up — perish in flames.

As firefighters attacked the blaze, Thompson stood across the street and watched the smoke and flames. A steady stream of people stopped to hug him, shake his hand and tell him how saddened they were to see the building disappear. They huddled in the morning cold telling stories of family outings there, and remembering the Canopy Lounge that preceded Trophy's Sports Bar & Grill as the place they would celebrate after a good game.

But some couldn't bring themselves to drive to north Des Moines and watch the business burn.

Melody Felton, who operated KO's Pro Shop inside Plaza Lanes with her husband, Keith, knew the bowling center as more than a place to work the past five years. Felton has coached the men's and women's bowling teams at Grand View University for eight years and her husband is the assistant coach. The team practiced at Plaza Lanes three days a week in a season that lasts from the middle of August to the middle of May.

>> Related story: Fire Destroys Des Moines' Plaza Lanes

Plaza Lanes is also the place where Melody Felton bowled two perfect games, racking up a score of 300 without missing a pin in ten frames. Her husband had two perfect games there as well, she told Patch.

“Five or six days a week we’re there, except when I travel on the weekends and we bowl," she said. “We bowl there, we coach there and we had our pro shop there. I don’t know what to do with myself today. It's devastating."

Plaza Lanes has been the Feltons’ home away from home for years, she said, and the best thing about it was "its great family atmosphere," she said. "The environment’s very welcoming. That’s one of the things we like so much about Plaza Lanes. I’ll miss the people.”

Randy Thompson already has said he will rebuild on the property and hopes to have a new Plaza Lanes open by next fall. For Larry Moore, who began bowling there at age 6 and still is a regular league bowler more than 50 years later, that's good news.

"There’s a lot of memories in that place over the years," Moore said. "Where do you even start? That's where I started bowling at, in youth bowling, and where I started in adult leagues after that. Back then Randy’s mom was running the place, and the family was always there."

Moore, who lives in east Des Moines, would have been at Plaza Lanes Monday afternoon, enjoying a holiday potluck with the Highland Park Businessmen's senior league team he bowls on every Monday afternoon and Wednesday night.

The third 300 game he rolled occurred at Plaza Lanes last summer, he said, adding that at Plaza Lanes a perfect game was always a big deal.

"Every 300 you get nervous," he said. "But that was in the senior league and I had a lot of my friends around when I shot it — people I've been bowling with for 40-plus years. That made it nicer."

Moore said Plaza Lanes kept a board acknowledging 300 games and 800 series for its bowlers. Back when he was just starting to bowl, he recalled, they also had a bowler of the week and he was selected once. A television crew came to film his achievement, and he said he laughs thinking about how he couldn't make a strike with the camera rolling and the reporting team was frustrated.

"There are so many good bowlers here in town that bowled at that place as a youth and grew up there, it’s just amazing," he said. "Everybody knows Plaza Lanes. It's been around forever. It's an icon."

Main photo: Plaza Lanes, 2016, via Polk County Assessor's website.

Video: Larry Moore bowls a perfect game on lanes 1 and 2 at Plaza Lanes on June 13, 2016, in the Monday Summer Seniors league, sanctioned by the U.S. Bowling Congress./Video by Paul Rowe, used with permission