Hueberts chosen as Heritage Park Heroes
Henderson News Reprint
Written by Kerri Pankratz
HENDERSON – The Henderson Heritage & Tourism Committee has named John and Adeline Huebert as their 2025 Heritage Park Heroes.
According to Heritage Committee president Suzanne Ratzlaff, anyone on the committee can nominate someone for the award. The group, as a whole, then discusses what the nominees have contributed to Heritage Park.
“We feel it is time for John and Adeline to be recognized for their contributions over the years helping to make Heritage Park what it is today,” explained Ratzlaff.
Once the plaque is finished being updated and back from the engravers, the “born and raised” Henderson residents’ names will appear in good company.
Harvey Smith, Alfred Epp, and Carl Siebert were named the first Heritage Park Heroes in 2021. In 2022, LaVonne Thiessen was named a Hero posthumously; the Hueberts will be only the fifth award recipients and the first couple.
Which seems fitting. But though they are being honored as a couple, their involvement didn’t start out that way.
“He was actually involved before I was,” explained Adeline.
“We had a community meeting in the gym,” said John, “and I thought it was a meeting about bringing industry into town, and I was interested in that.”
“Actually, it was the University of Nebraska that kind of set up the meeting,” added Adeline.
That meeting then turned into a tourism situation, according to John, and when the question came up about what makes Henderson unique… the town’s heritage was the answer and thus Heritage Park was born.
John then became one of the founding fathers of the Heritage Park Committee. And who else, you may wonder, was on that committee?
“LaVonne Thiessen,” said Adeline.
“No, I don’t know if LaVonne was,” interjected John.
“I think she was,” responded Adeline in a definitive tone of voice.
“Bill Bamesberger, Randy Ratzlaff and I and I think maybe Norm Yoder could have been on the original committee,” said John.
You can also add Dr. Carl Friesen, Deb Friesen (Keith), Bill’s wife Fran, Shannon Siebert, Suzanne Ratzlaff, Ray Siebert, Gerald and Vernell Friesen, Vern Friesen, Don Huebert, Nancy Friesen (Curt), and yes, LaVonne Thiessen to that list.
The group originally started out by meeting monthly at Town Hall.
“We’ve gone to every committee meeting for 10 or 15 years,” said Adeline, “We meet once a month, the first Monday evening of the month.”
When asked if they all speak low German at their committee meetings, they both chuckled.
“Huh no,” Adeline laughed, “Less than 50% of the committee can speak low German.”
“If we talk low German it’s just for ‘spross’.” said John. (Not sure what that word means, and I’m sure I didn’t spell it correctly.)
“We can’t talk low German fluently because we put all the English words in there. And a lot of things in English don’t mean anything but in low German it’s funny,” said John.
Boy, if I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that sentence…
The committee was early to the “merch” game back in those days and created a Henderson Heritage & Tourism coffee mug and throw, or as John referred to them “a cup and a blanket”, in order to start raising funds toward a future park.
But it wasn’t until Allen M. Friesen donated the 22 acres of land he had inherited to the committee that things really got serious. Then Tina Dick donated her house to be used at the park. According to the Huebert’s it was the first building on the property, that they both agreed on.
John did construction and land upkeep at the park in the early years. He did a bit of shingling and helped tear the front porch off of the Dick house in order to move it from its location on South Main Street in Henderson out to the park.
“I kept the ground black for years,” said John, “There was alfalfa on there, and I tried to kill the alfalfa, but it kept coming back. Finally, we had Don Peters make hay of it, but we couldn’t sell the hay because then we would have to pay taxes.”
Adeline didn’t really get involved until after the farmhouse was moved.
“We painted the inside of the farmhouse and redecorated, that’s when I really started working out there,” she explained.
Because you know, if there’s a job to do, Adeline will get it done and she’ll provide the cookies for “coffee”.
“Oh yes, with all of her baking,” exclaimed Ratzlaff, “Whenever we had a work day, you can be sure we all got Adeline’s cookies.”
“John and Adeline are totally involved in everything we do,” emphasized Ratzlaff.
“Adeline has been wonderful at giving tours and sharing the history, not only of the Henderson Mennonites here but the Mennonite history starting from the Anabaptist movement.”
“I volunteer there every Friday afternoon when the park is open for the summer,” explained Adeline, “Julie Goertzen and I have worked every Friday afternoon for years, I don’t know how many years.”
According to Ratzlaff, Adeline has always been the committee’s “go to” for Mennonite history. She’s also always reading books on Mennonite history and shares all she has learned with the committee.
Often, they would welcome tour groups as a couple.
“John is always so willing to share stories of agriculture and irrigation so they were both always so knowledgeable when we would call them out to give a tour,” said Ratzlaff.
According to John, if people set up a tour of the park, they often want to see the Bethesda Mennonite Church as well.
“They want to see the stained glass windows,” explained Adeline, “And if a tour group would come through, we would sometimes have Laura (Steingard) come in and give a 15 to 20 minute concert for them on the organ.”
They will also take groups to Vern Friesen’s Art Gallery downtown or for lunch at The Dutch Kitchen, basically promoting the entire community.
But back to that farmhouse, in those early days, the group was working toward making the two-story wood-frame house look original to the park.
And this is where John interjected a warning.
“By the way, whatever you write, there might be some rebuttal. Because we may say this is the way it was or that was the way it was, and we could be wrong. Nothing we tell you is in stone.”
And speaking of stone, and still on the topic of the park’s current farmhouse…
“I just know there was a house in Northern Kansas,” said John.
“ON the way to Kansas.” said Adeline.
“On the way to Kansas.” John amended. “And they tore the house down and it had that fancy brick…”
“It’s stone,” Adeline remarked.
“It’s stone, yeah. It’s not smooth,” said John, “The stone had a design on it. Well, Lee Thiessen stopped in there and asked if he could have all that stone and we took a couple of trailers down there, loaded up the stone and hauled it back here. That’s where the farmhouse foundation comes from.”
“We had to have old stuff to make it look original,” said Adeline.
And speaking of Lee Thiessen, the couple both gave a lot of credit for the parks progress in those early years to Lee’s late wife LaVonne Thiessen who was responsible for finding many of the items now on display out at the park.
“LaVonne was a big pusher in those beginning years,” explained John.
“LaVonne was probably the biggest promoter of the park,” said Adeline, “Yeah, she was always on the committee though.” (Point Adeline.)
“Yeah, she always was,” agreed John.
The couple has not only volunteered their time over the years, and they have both put in a lot of time, but they have contributed in other ways.
Some very interesting ways.
“Well, there’s two outhouses at the park.” said John. “Lee Thiessen bought one of them in Utica and we restored it here in my shop and moved it over there. The South outhouse came from our farm and the North one came from Utica. And then the chicken house was ours, which we donated.”
And then there’s the past 19 years, where they were in charge of the rendering demonstration during Heritage Day. Arguably not the flashiest of the demonstrations, more of a “workhorse” situation.
“That first year, at 5:00 in the morning, I cut the lard for the rendering.” explained John, “The lard was frozen and I ground it all up for people to see but no one was there that early to see it so I said ‘Forget that!’ and we started doing that part at home ahead of time but we still stirred it up there at the park.”
Rendering, if you didn’t know, is a lot of work, I think you might call it labor intensive and the meat they used over the years was always donated by the couple and what didn’t sell they got back. Just the rendering alone could bring in up to $500 for the park each year on Heritage Day. (Can I get a fact check on that? You know John said there may be some rebuttal.)
“Last year we made sausage but nobody wanted to watch us make sausage so this year we gave it up.” said John.
I guess that’s another accomplishment to be added to their long list, proving the common idiom, “You don’t want to know how the sausage is made,” to be true.
So why do they choose to volunteer so much of their time?
“Well, you know we’re still members of the original families that settled the town and after our generation of people are gone it’s going to make a big difference,” said Adeline.
“We always are thinking about how do we sell our heritage?” added John, “How do we tell people about what and who we came from? And for us the park has been a way to do that.”
Spoken like a true hero.