All paths seem to cross at Saints Rest, a downtown coffee shop that opened in 1999. In the early morning, retirees amble over for kaffeeklatsch; later, professors from the college here meet students, who hunker down with laptops. Teenagers come by after school.

The shop’s name stems from a term of derision for the teetotaling, lecture-friendly Congregationalists who settled the town in the 1850s. Those days are long over. Grinnellians now tend to keep any impulse to hector one of their neighbors under wraps.

Pete Brownell, a well-known and well-liked local philanthropist, sometimes stops by Saints Rest for coffee on his way to work. He and his wife, Helen Redmond, have supported many projects in town, including a public library renovation and a residency program run by a local artists’ collective.

He is also the third-generation C.E.O. of Brownells, a major firearms company whose headquarters are here, which calls itself the country’s “leading supplier of firearm accessories, gun parts, and gunsmithing tools.” Brownells sells and manufactures guns and ammunition. For much of the last year, Mr. Brownell also served as chairman of the board of the National Rifle Association.