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Library News
oglecountynews.com ShawLocal.com
OFFICE 113-115 Peoria Ave. Dixon, IL 61021 815-732-6166, ext. 2592
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Forreston Journal, Ogle County News and oglecountynews.com are a division of Shaw Media. Ogle County Newspapers also prints the Mt. Morris Times, Oregon Republican Reporter and Polo’s Tri-County Press.
The FORRESTON JOURNAL (USPS No. 205-520) is published weekly by B.F. Shaw Printing Co., Shaw Media. Periodical postage paid at Forreston, Illinois. POSTMASTER Send address changes to FORRESTON JOURNAL, P.O. Box 237, Forreston, IL 61030. Phone 815-732-6166, ext. 2516.
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Tootsie Roll drive set for Sept. 9-10 in Oregon, Mt. Morris
The 53rd annual Knights of Columbus Tootsie Roll drive in Oregon and Mt. Morris will be held Friday, Sept. 9, and Saturday, Sept. 10.
“Last year we raised $5,600 with help of a few businesses and from Knight families and friends,” Tootsie Roll Drive Chairman Dave Starke said. “The funds that were raised help to support the Knights of Columbus programs in Illinois, such as Special Olympics and homes for some intellectually disabled. Local organizations which also split $4740 were Village of Progress, Oregon School district special education program and Stouffer Terrace.
“I want to thank the people in Oregon and Mt Morris for their generous support again this year,” he said.
Polo Chamber of Commerce’s Chili Cookoff is Sept. 24
The Polo Chamber will host its Chili Cookoff Competition again this year on Saturday, Sept. 24, at Louise Quick Park.
Cash prizes will be given for Judges’ Choice, People’s Choice, Non-Traditional, and Showmanship. Please see the flyer for complete details!
Interested teams can visit www.polochamber.com to complete the sign-up packet no later than Sept. 19.
In addition, the Larry Lannen Memorial Blood Drive will be held from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. To schedule an appointment visit RRVBC.org.
FORRESTON LIBRARY
Library Card Sign-up Month
September is National Library Card Sign-up Month! A library card not only gives you access to books, ebooks, dvds, and magazines here in Forreston, but also allows you to check out materials from area libraries and request items from anywhere in the country! Resident cards are free to anyone who lives or owns property within the village limits. Nonresident cards are $50.00 per year. Stop in today and sign up for yours!
Read for a Lifetime
Forreston High School students are encouraged to sign up for the “Read for a Lifetime” program. Participants who read a minimum of four books from the Secretary of State’s annual list by April 5th receive a certificate and are eligible to win a gift card from the library. Stop in to register and pick up a copy of the 2022-2023 booklist and make reading a habit that will last a lifetime!
Holiday Closure
Community Room
Looking for a place to hold an event? Our community room (with a small kitchenette) is available for meetings, parties, showers, family reunions, and more. Please call the library at 815-938-2624 for additional information.
Plastic Recycling
We are collecting film-type plastic for recycling. This includes plastic bags, zipper type baggies (with the zip portion removed), cereal/snack bags, bubble wrap, and other soft plastic . Please make sure bags are free from debris and remove all paper/sticker labels. We cannot accept hard plastic, such as water bottles, milk cartons, etc., for this program. Thank you!
Library Hours
The library is open: Monday 10 a.m. - 1 p.m., 2-7 p.m., Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday 10 a.m. -1 p.m., 2-6 p.m., and Saturday 9 a.m. - 12 p.m. We may be reached by phone at 815-938-2624, email at forrestonpubliclibrary@gmail.com, or through Facebook messaging. Of course, we always love to see you in person, too!
BERTOLET LIBRARY
Drop Box
Our drop box is closed until further notice due to water leaks. Please return library materials during business hours. You may also return materials to other local libraries, and they will send them to us via our interlibrary loan system. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Closed
Story Time: Thursdays at 10 a.m.
Stop in with your Toddlers and Pre-K littles for Story Time each Thursday with Miss Jana. She will have a couple stories and an activity for the kids. Fall session starts September 8th!
Family Night BINGO: Monday, Sept. 19, 5 p.m.
Bring the kids for a fun evening with great prizes!
Big Kids, Big Art: Tuesday, Sept. 20, 4-5:30 p.m.
Calling all 1st through 5th Graders! Miss Jana has a great beginner art program just for you. Each month will focus on a different element of art. Join her on the 3rd Tuesday of each month!
Simple Wills, POA for Health Care or
Property: Saturday, Sept. 24, 10 a.m.
Do you know how to write a simple will or a health care or property power of attorney? Learn about these important documents and what is necessary to get your affairs, or the affairs of someone you love, in order. (Insightful information; does not take the place of legal counsel.) Registration required: 815-738-2742
Adult Book of the Month
The August book of the month is Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann. This is a non-fiction account of the mysterious deaths of members of the Osage Indian Nation in Oklahoma during the 1920’s. Investigators disappeared after looking into the deaths. The FBI was newly formed and corrupt and made errors. Help was called in and an undercover team was sent in to solve the horrendous crime. Stop by the circulation desk and pick up your copy today.
LEGO Club: 1st Monday of the month, 5 p.m.
Create with us on the 1st Monday of each month. We will have the LEGOs waiting for you!
Craft Kits for Adults
The September craft celebrates the transition of seasons from summer to fall with this cute sunflower. Stop by the circulation desk to pick up your kit today.
Create-a-Card: Saturday, Sept. 17, 9:30 a.m.
Design an encouraging note for your bestie, your child’s teacher, or your secret sister. You can even create a work of art to lift your own spirits! All materials are provided.
Plastic Recycling
We ask that you make sure plastic is clean with no debris in the donation. Also please remove any ziploc-type seals and paper/sticker labels. Thank you for your cooperation.
New Releases
Adult Books: Quicksand by Janet Dailey; Tick Tock by Fern Michaels; Settling His Hash by William W Johnstone
Juvenile Books: Paisley by Lisa Mullarkey
Picture Books: Good Rosie! by Kate DiCamillo (VOX Listen & Read book)
Adult DVDs: Family Camp
Earleen Hinton/Shaw Media Pegasus Property Manager Dave Diveley talks to workers at the therapeutic riding center on Monday. A Sunday evening storm caused more damage at the site on Carthage Road just five months after the center’s “hoop” barn was heavily damaged during a March wind event. The center had just started repairs Aug. 22, just six days before the Aug. 28 storm hit.
A nother storm hits Pegasus r iding center, damages buildings
BY EARLEEN HINTON ehinton@shawmedia.com
For the second time in five months, buildings at an Ogle County riding center have been severely damaged by strong winds.
“I received a call at 6:29 p.m. on Sunday that our loafing shed was gone and our entryway, which we had just picked up and moved to the side in order to work on the barn, had been tossed,” said Donna Fellows, Pegasus Special Riders president on Monday. “They just started dismantling the barn on Aug. 22 to repair the damage in March and now six days later we get more damage.”
In March, a strong storm ripped through southern Ogle County and, in a matter of minutes, heavily damaged the main arena building at the therapeutic riding center.
Located on Carthage Road, south of Oregon, just north of the Lee County line, the center was still reeling from that storm, which took the south end of the “hoop” arena barn off its moorings, rattling the 11 horses that were housed under the wooden haymow at the south end of the 62-by-420-foot building. The horses and two cats that resided in the structure were not hurt.
The wind also pushed the north end of the building in, twisting and bending the large garage door.
T h e “ h o o p ” b u i l d i n g w a s c o n structed in 2002. Its roof and sides consisted of a large tarp called a “coverall” that stretched over the steel frame. Sections of the tarp were torn from the frame and deposited nearby, while some sections remained on the frame with large gaping tears.
The large arched entryway that was at the north end of the barn was salvaged from the March storm and moved just a few yards away from the barn while contractors began dismantling the main structure last Monday.
But Sunday’s windstorm changed all that, twisting the entryway and dumping it onto its side while stripping metal siding from the loafing barn and depositing it across the driveway while wrapping some pieces around several trees to the north.
The horses and cats were again rattled by the destruction, but unhurt, Fellows said.
“ T w o h o r s e s d e c i d e d t o g o t o another pasture because the fence was down, but they all get along so that was OK,” she said. “We were again so
Ost fr iesland to G erman Valley, Illinois
40 visitors from Germany stop in German Valley as TV crew documents trip
By KATHY PASCH Special to Shaw Media
Moin!! Not a greeting we’re accustomed to hearing, but it rang out continually Aug. 18 in the halls of Silver Creek Reformed Church. By invite, I had been included in this gathering t h a t h a d n ’ t o c c u r r e d s i n c e 2 0 1 9 because of COVID-19.
Arriving by busload was a group of 40 international visitors from the Oldenburg area of Western Germany. They had been touring locations of early Ostfriesian settlements in Minnesota and Iowa, with German Valley as the last stop, it being known as the “Mother Colony” of the East Frisian settlements.
The trip known as “Route to Roots” was led by Dr. Wolfgang Grams. The group included a German TV crew of N D R / A R D , a N o r t h e r n G e r m an branch of the Public Broadcast System making a documentary of their journey.
I came well prepared to make contacts armed with a copy of an old map of Ostfriesland marked with the locations where my ancestors had lived and my family tree. Although my father could speak fluent Plattdeutsch, a dialect known as Low German, I cannot. I knew that only a few in the group could speak English.
It was refreshing to see two brothers in their 20s that accompanied their grandpa and another of the same age that was there with his mother. I could sense a strong commitment to family. It was humbling to think that I might share DNA with any of these people.
Everyone was more than friendly with familiar last names such as Kruse, Freese, Peters, Reiners, Muller, Hildebrandt and not so common first names such as Helwig, Waltraud, Jutta and Hannelore to name a few.
As the Harms name is part of my family tree, I took a seat at a table next to a couple whose name tag showed their last name as Harms. His name was Otto, and I was lucky he spoke English quite well.
Soon we all were enjoying our delicious food when Otto asked if it was common to have both bread and potatoes at a meal. I noticed many followed a practice of holding a fork in one hand and knife in the other, using both the whole time while eating.
Once the meal was over, Otto suddenly said to myself and two other “locals” seated at our table, “Come with me, I want to take a picture.” We followed him to the table of gifts the group had brought. He handed each of us a linen placemat and said, “This shows the Ostfriesenrose. We want you to have it.” Looks like we had made new friends!
The group had brought a number of gifts to show their appreciation. Norman Osterloo received rohrzucker sticks (sugar sticks for tea) coming from the oldest in their group going to the oldest host.
M a n y m e m o r i e s w e re s h a r e d including a heartfelt story from a man stationed in Germany in the 1950s. In later years he was able to return and find the house where his mother had lived. During the luncheon at one table, a sentiment was expressed that the people in Ostfriesland felt they had been deserted by those that went to America and never talked about them. Another sentiment was “We as a people are one, it’s the governments that set us apart.” The day was a memorable and valuable experience.
The host to these international visitors was Rund De Teepott, a group interested in their Ostfrisian roots.
They meet the first Monday every other month at 1:30 p.m. at Silver Creek Reformed Church, 326 S. Bunker Hill Road, German Valley, with their next meeting to be held Oct. 3. Visitors are always welcome.
The majority of the German Valley, Forreston and Baileyville area early settlers came from Ostfriesland.
I did not realize until recently that m y g r e a t - g r e a t g r a n d f a t h e r t h a t arrived in 1851 had connections to and lived little more than a mile from where the Arends (known as the first settlers of German Valley) lived. But that’s another story.
Photos provided ABOVE LEFT: Otto Harms of Aurich Haxtum, Linda Staska, Kathy Pasch, Helen Ukena Jones, Marianne Harms, also of Aurich Haxtum, pose for a photo. TOP RIGHT: Johann Köster of Leer speaks with Loga and Ron Timm of Baileyville. ABOVE RIGHT: The TV crew films the event. BELOW: Oldest and oldest: Norman Osterloo of German Valley and Luise Huismann of Aurich Egels.
Earleen Hinton/Shaw Media ABOVE LEFT: Pegasus officials Donna Fellows and Dave Diveley examine storm damage at the therapeutic riding center Monday. A Sunday evening storm caused more damage at the site on Carthage Road just five months after the center’s “hoop” barn was heavily damaged during a March wind event. ABOVE RIGHT: Two of the horses graze in a pasture east of the hoop barn.
• PEGASUS
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lucky that the animals were not hurt.”
Fellows, who helped reestablish Pegasus in 1996 by overseeing the therapeutic horseback riding program and the purchase and development of the land on Carthage Road, said it is likely the insurance settlement will not cover the entire price of rebuilding from the first storm, let alone the second.
“We found out that we had a $250,000 ‘cap’ on our insurance so we could be responsible for the rest to just replace what we had,” she said noting that the barn cost $150,000 to construct in 2002.
“Now that has doubled in price,” she said. “And it was $45,000 just to disassemble the barn last week. It all adds up.”
She said officials had looked into many different types of buildings, rather than the hoop (engineered building) but this hoop design was the type of building best suited for the riding area.
Metal buildings are primarily used for storage and don’t have the ventilation or floor suitable for the riding area, she said adding that a softer ground was needed for aging horses used in the facility’s programs.
Sunday’s storm also was selective in its destruction, leaving a cornfield to the west and soybean field to north untouched.
“We’ve been here since 2002 so why pick on us now and then twice,” she said.
Pegasus Special Riders is a nonprofit organization providing therapeutic horseback riding to northern Illinois residents with physical, mental and emotional challenges.
“We do not turn anyone away due to their inability to pay,” their website states.
David Diveley, the property manager, is the organization’s only fulltime employee. Dedicated volunteers step in to help with daily chores and events, Fellows said.
Pegasus is marking its 25th anniversary this year and will be honored as a Unit of Honor at the Harvest Time Parade at Oregon’s Autumn on Parade on Sunday, Oct. 2.
Visit www.PegasusSpecialRiders. org for information or to donate.
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