Survey says... hometown fun

A’ROR’N Days fills community with positive energy, feel-good vibe! Aurora rolled out the red carpet for a festive weekend of games and activities which were all part of this year’s A’ROR’N Days celebration. 
After months of planning, organizers said the feedback was positive from start to finish.
“A’ROR’N Days was a big success this year,” said committee chairman Jenny Wyatt. “Leading up to the week we were really worried about the weather, but the weather turned out perfect each day. We were really pleased with the crowds each day. Like always, it was great seeing Aurorans young and old out celebrating our town and enjoying each other’s company.”
Indeed the crowds were strong throughout the weekend, with people of all ages taking in activities on the downtown square as well as at the airport, Bremer Center, Plainsman Museum and alumni gatherings at various venues. 
Hoping to capture some of the reaction and impact of this year’s celebration, the News-Register staff interviewed a number of attendees at random. To a person, they gave A’ROR’N Days two thumbs up.
David Salmon was among the many former Huskies back in town for a class reunion. Though he has been back many times over the years since graduating in 1984, this was his first ever A’ROR’N Days experience.
“No matter where I live, this is always home,” said Salmon, who works as a personal trainer in Arizona. “I live in Phoenix and when people ask me where I’m from I say Aurora, Nebraska. I love it. I love the people  here. I brag about this town, the sense of community. You know, people here help each other, and I love that.”
Asked about his impression of A’ROR’N Days, Salmon said he enjoyed the vibe, as well as the focus of activities around the downtown square.
“This is the first time I’ve ever been to A’ROR’N Days and it’s pretty special,” he observed. “It reminds me of Prescott, Arizona, with this downtown square. I like seeing that. I went into the courthouse and took pictures of the woodwork and sent those back to my friends back home. It’s just really cool. It’s just a great experience being back here.”
‘It’s great to be back’
Carter Wasem, a 2007 AHS grad who now works with an international FBI counterterrorism response team based in the Washington D.C. area, arrived back in his hometown just in time for Saturday’s parade. He said seeing Aurora during the annual summer celebration was a familiar, welcome sight.
“When you come back and see this you definitely gain a better appreciation for coming from a community that’s close knit, that comes together like this,” Wasem observed. “After you’ve lived in large cities that don’t have this kind of cohesion, it just makes you appreciate where you come from.  
“I can pick up the phone and call you or call Pinnacle Bank, I say who I am and they actually know me, and there’s actually a live person on the other side of that phone,” he continued. “When you’ve never grown up with that, or when you’ve moved away from it and don’t have it anymore, it makes you further appreciate being able to come back to something like this.”
Having arrived back in Aurora just as the parade began, Wasem said he was thoroughly enjoying a heavy dose of home.
“It almost feels like you pick up right where you left off because you see everybody, people point at you out on the street,” he said. “Especially in this case during the parade on the floats, people immediately recognize you and it kind of creates that sense of belonging. No matter how long you’ve been gone, you can come right back into things, like I said, starting right where you left off.”
In the first couple hours Wasem had bumped into several classmates, as well as a former teacher, Dick Binfield, and was looking forward to seeking out other familiar faces in the crowd.
“I have plenty more catching up to do, but right now kind of the sole emphasis is family since I haven’t seen them for about six months,” he added. “It’s great to be back.”

Family reunions
Just before the parade on Saturday a couple could be seen sitting in lawn chairs on the north lawn of the courthouse who looked like they could have been waiting around for a Husker tailgater to start. Decked out in red Nebraska Cornhusker t-shirts and matching caps, they turned out to be Californians in town for a family reunion. 
Greg and Sally Harris are from Coarsegold, Calif., (20 miles from Yosemite National Park) and were making a visit to Aurora for a reunion with her family. (Sally is related to the Dick and Dunham families locally.) They brought with them her mother, Ruth (Dick) Jacoby, who was born in Hamilton County but moved away nearly 70 years ago. 
“We love it!” Sally said. “We love the town; it’s so old-fashioned. Mom wants to move back.”  
When asked for their overall impressions of A’ROR’N Days, Greg responded: “It’s beautiful. It’s like something you’d see in a movie or on a show. It’s definitely a small-town atmosphere, that’s for sure.” 
“We have little celebrations where we live, but nothing like this.” Sally added.
Coming from the dry Mediterranean climate of northern California, however, Greg did mention the Nebraska humidity at least a couple of times. 
During Saturday’s parade, an ambush of sorts occurred as the Boy Scout/Cub Scouts float was passing by the bleachers north of the courthouse. Suddenly, children armed with cans of silly string began spraying streams of the foamy substance at the Cub Scouts on the float. The boys reacted by putting their hands up in front of their faces to fend off the multicolored webs being shot at them. 
The silly string bushwhacking was organized by Jessica Weeks, the wife of Cubmaster John Weeks. “I tried to convince my husband to let me give the Cub Scouts silly string to ambush the crowd,” she said. “But he said that was probably not okay so we decided to get him instead.”
In addition to her husband, John, Weeks’s son Elijah was also on the float along with several other scouts. The ambush gang was made up of her daughter, a niece and several of their friends Weeks had recruited.  
Weeks said the stunt was all in fun in the spirit of A’ROR’N Days.
“We’ve lived here, this is our fifth summer, so we’ve been coming every summer,” Weeks said, adding that she has become a big fan of A’ROR’N Days. “Honestly it kind of gives you everything of what makes small-town Midwest America amazing. You know, it’s fun, it’s community, it’s safe for families and it lets you support small business and just have a lot of fun and everybody gets to get together and it’s awesome.” 
Phil Oswald, a 1973 AHS graduate, travelled to Nebraska with his family from California for what turned into a bit of an Oswald family reunion. Brother Bill, sister Becky and niece Tiffany all rode on their respective alumni class floats, which made for a memorable weekend.
“My own family, my boys and my wife, moved a fair amount, at one point living outside the United States for an extended time, so my boys didn’t have a sense of place, you know, a place that they come from,” said Phil, a pastor in Sacramento. “So this year we brought my son and his wife and a couple of grandkids so that they could fall in love with it. It just lived up to all our expectations, from the parade to the kiddie train ride around the square to the bubble machine, really just start to finish it was superb.”
Phil’s grandson, 7-year-old James Oswald, gave a ringing endorsement as well.
“My grandson said, ‘Man, I want to live in Aurora since they have A’ROR’N Days,” he shared.
Asked about his favorite memory from the weekend, Phil recalled a special dessert entree which has kicked off A’ROR’N Days for many years.
“Cindy (McDaniels, a classmate of Phil’s) was kind of the queen of pies so my wife Lee Ann and I had pie together on the town square with Preston and Cindy and that was just a hoot,” he said. “It doesn’t get any better than that.”

‘Threads that bind us’
Chris Schwieger had been working at an open house in York as part of her work as a real estate agent at Wood Bros Realty in Grand Island. With Aurora on her route, she stopped to see the quilts put together for the A’ROR’N Day Quilt Show at the Plainsmen Museum Saturday afternoon.
“I was on my way back to Grand Island and it worked in my schedule to stop by,” Schwieger said.
Schwieger is an active member of the Prairie Pioneer Quilt Guild in Grand Island. While not a showcased quilter at the Quilt Show, she wanted to support her friend Missy Girard-Lemons of Grand Island and Girard-Lemons’ mother, Deb Girard of Osceola, who brought and displayed their quilts based on the Quilt Show’s theme, “The Threads that Bind Us.” The show focused on an intergenerational tie between quilters and their mothers and grandmothers who have quilted and passed it on to their children.
“I wanted to come and especially see it with her and her mom being featured quilters,” Schwieger said. “There’s a lot of beautiful work to be shown.”
In addition to the displays brought together by quilters across Nebraska, Schwieger was amazed by the established displays of the Plainsmen and saw it as an equal opportunity to view the exhibits that she otherwise wouldn’t have been able to visit.
“It’s a fun chance to come to the museum and walk through here and see all the beautiful displays that the museum has,” she commented. “So it kills two birds with one stone. It’s a neat museum.”
Tessa Francis returned to her hometown after living in Hastings for three years. A’ROR’N Days had always been an anticipated event for her and friends from high school and as of last year she has since been seeing all that A’ROR’N Days has to offer.
“It was really nice, just to have a little community fun outside,” Francis stated. “I absolutely adore the food trucks, especially the one with the funnel cakes. The strawberry lemonade is absolutely divine.”
Along with trying out new food and witnessing events such as Saturday’s pole vaulting, which she once did with friends in high school, it provided the Aurora grad a chance to meet with high school classmates for the first time since graduation.
“It’s amazing how everyone is so comfortable around each other,” she commented. “Everyone seems to have grown up pretty nicely and they all seem as though their lives are happy, so that makes me happy. I enjoyed seeing some familiar faces.”

Parade results
There were a total of 70 entries during Saturday’s A’ROR’N Days parade. Results were as follows:
Antique Division: 1st, Plainsman Museum; 2nd, 1929 replica Model A Chemical Fire Truck. 
Commercial Division: 1st, McEnderfer Tree Service; 2nd, Jensen Ag Precision Aerial Application and Services.
Theme entries: 1st, MCHI; 2nd, Barrels of Fun. 
Organization Division: 1st, Hamilton County Inclusive Playground; 2nd, Urban Chic Boutique. 
Animal Division: 1st, Rough Riders. 
Alumni Float Division: 1st, Class of 2004; 2nd, Class of 1974.

Amazing Race results
1st place — Team Spark Plugs, Cooper Hudson, Sam Jones and Dylan Ronnau; 2nd, Kalyn Wiarda and Brandon Meyer.

Tractor pull results
Ages 4-5: Remy Hoegh, 1st; Annabelle Fencil, 2nd; Jase Yockey, 3rd.
Ages 6-7: Gracelyn Cramer, 1st; Hazel Wishart, 2nd; Lee Olson, 3rd.
Ages 8-9: Archer Bates, 1st; Graiden Campbell, 2nd; Nora Wishart, 3rd.
Ages 10-11: Owen Morris, 1st; Wesley Gibson, 2nd; Jack Lyons, 3rd.\

Hundreds of photos taken during A’ROR’N Days can be viewed under special events at auroranewsregister.com. Also, see this week's print or e-editions for all the class reunion photos!