Peasley: Concert season is coming
You are invited to meet the artists who painted the carousel horses you’ve seen throughout Woodstock.
They will attend the first city band concert of the year at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday on the Square.
Main Stay Therapeutic Riding Program will honor artists and donors during intermission. The program will feature the Judith Svalander dance troop before announcing the carousel horses.
Sarah Foszcz, board president, said nine horses were without sponsors. She invites businesses and individuals to become part of this fundraiser. Funds from this parade of horses will be used to insulate the indoor arena, making it more comfortable throughout summer and winter. Main Stay helps 75 riders a week who have physical, social, developmental or emotional disabilities.
Maps showing the location of all 27 horses are available at Woodstock City Hall and Chamber of Commerce. Within a couple of weeks, a brochure will be available containing a scavenger hunt of things hidden on each horse. A Web site will be accessible to vote for your favorite horse.
Foszcz thanks the public for honoring Main Stay’s request of not sitting on the horses, but she encourages taking photos.
“We appreciate people respecting them as pieces of art,” Foszcz said.
The parade of horses will move to Donley’s in Union for an auction Sept. 26.
Harvey Petska Jr., Rabine Paving, Peter Baker & Son, and Super Trucking donated their professional services to pave Main Stay’s 15,500-square-foot parking lot. Petska’s wife, Louise, is one of 100 volunteers at Main Stay, a nonprofit organization in Richmond.
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During the first band concert, another site for filming “Groundhog Day” in 1992 will be plaqued by Groundhog Day Committee members, keeping the groundhog weather prediction tradition alive.
Rick Bellairs, committee member, said a plaque would be unveiled in the Square marking the location of Gobbler’s Knob. The Groundhog Day Committee is sponsoring the ice cream social, a long-standing tradition at the concerts.
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Former Woodstock National Guard members have formed the Woodstock Infantry Club and are creating support groups for families of National Guard men and women on active duty in Afghanistan.
Tim Stewart, club officer, has more than 20 years of service with the Army and National Guard, retiring in 1998.
“The sacrifice by those on active duty is dramatized when you realize four members of our Woodstock National Guard were killed within the past few months,” Stewart said.
“We are creating memorials of each soldier and will plant a tree in each soldier’s honor at the Woodstock Armory building. Our club members keep in contact with unit members’ families so we can help those in need.”
• Don Peasley has been an editor and historian in McHenry County since October 1947. He can be reached at 815-338-1533.
