St. Ansgar to celebrate Town and Country Daze

Published 12:00 am Thursday, June 28, 2001

ST.

Thursday, June 28, 2001

ST. ANSGAR, Iowa – Saturday’s Town & Country Daze celebration is not just your ordinary small-town festival.

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It’s all that and more.

For instance, the 1997 parade was canceled in mid-stride when a severe thunderstorm swept through the community.

A year later, the celebration was canceled by a tornado that tore through the city.

In 1999 and 2000, the St. Ansgar Chamber of Commerce decided against holding a summertime celebration.

This year, Chuck Peterson, editor and publisher of the weekly St. Ansgar Enterprise newspaper, convinced fellow Chamber of Commerce members to hold a celebration.

When Saturday dawns, the town will be in a celebratory mode culminating with a 7 p.m. parade through the downtown area.

But one constant has existed for the last six years in the community that even Mother Nature couldn’t interrupt, and that’s the John Peterson 5K Walk for Leukemia.

It has become so popular, the sponsors have ordered extra commemorative shirts more than 200 this year, in anticipation of the huge demand.

"I think it has been so successful because Collette Peterson-Johnson, John’s wife, distributed one-half of the proceeds to cancer victims," said Joyce (Nieman) Crowley. "Cancer victims and their families get checks in the mail. Whenever Collette learns about a special need, she writes out a check to the needy party. I know a woman, who is a cancer victim, who got a check for $200 in the mail. She was overwhelmed. She said she needed the money for gas and meals to go to the hospital at Rochester."

"And," Crowley said, "This is done with as little fanfare as possible. A friend or a relative of a victim lets someone know and they let Collette know and she sends a check."

John Peterson, a third-generation lumberyard owner in St. Ansgar, died of leukemia. When the first benefit was to be held, he insisted half the proceeds go to the American Cancer Society for use by victims and their families in Mitchell County.

Tom and Joyce Crowley have been friends of John and Collette Peterson. Now, the Crowleys, who own and operate St. Ansgar Greenhouse, are organizers of the John Peterson 5K walk each summer.

From 20 walkers in the first year, the annual fund-raiser has grown to this year’s anticipated record number of more than 200 participants.

Registration begins at 7:30 a.m. Saturday at St. Ansgar Greenhouse and the walk gets under way at 8 a.m. The cost is $15 per participant.

But it’s not enough to support the John Peterson memorial fund. The memory of the beloved businessman has spawned other gestures of sympathy for others.

The Crowleys’ daughter, Kristy, a junior at St. Ansgar Community High School, will have her Mitchell County 4-H award-winning display, retracing the creation of the Peterson memorial walk.

"She does it in memory of her grandmother, Amanda Thrasher, who died in 1997 on her 91st birthday," Crowley said. "She always said, ‘That’s what grandma would have wanted.’"

The jump in participants this year is because of a special effort among St. Ansgar Middle School students, faculty and coaches on behalf of Luke Fossey, a teen-ager being treated for cancer at a Rochester hospital.

At least 40 "friends of Luke Fossey" will participate by walking, biking and roller-blading the route. They also are making a video to show their friend, who cannot leave the hospital.

"The walk means so much to so many people and it’s a nice way to see what a great town we have in St. Ansgar," Crowley said.

Call Lee Bonorden at 434-2232 or e-mail him at lee.bonorden@austindailyherald.com.