MORAN — As area residents prepare today to celebrate the 70th Moran Day festival, a gathering of 4-H’ers will help celebrate their club’s 70th year of existence as well.
The Prairie Rose 4-H Club, organized in 1946, will feature a special float in today’s 11 a.m. parade, with current and past members on board.
Brenda Armstrong and Kim Schomaker, co-leaders, are uncertain how many will participate.
“Hopefully, we can get the current 4-H members who can ride, but aren’t in volleyball, aren’t in band and aren’t at the State Fair,” Armstrong joked.
Armstrong, Schomaker and two former 4-H siblings, Cheryl Welch of Moran and Darrell Thompson of Iola, gathered Thursday to talk about the club’s history, as well as its parallels with the Moran Day festival.
Meanwhile, work on the float should wrap up today (rainy weather this week has delayed some of the decorations), with a nod to Prairie Rose’s genesis.
“It’s going to look like a school room with a chalkboard,” Armstrong said.
That’s because Prairie Rose, like so many other 4-H clubs, got its start in a schoolhouse.
“In fact, it’s one of the few one-room schoolhouses still standing in Allen County,” Thompson said.
BACK IN 1946, a group of boys and girls who attended Prairie Rose School, about 4 miles southwest of Moran, got together to discuss the possibility of organizing a 4-H Club.
“The way it worked then was the 4-H districts were based on where the kids went to school,” Armstrong explained.
The club quickly took root.
For many, such as Welch and Thompson, 4-H became a way of life.
Their best opportunities to meet up with friends outside of school were at the monthly 4-H meetings.
Welch and Thompson noted they were two of seven Thompson kids. All were involved in 4-H.
