Great Lakes Congress History - Part Two

(Great Lakes Congress is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year and I volunteered to research and write the club's history. This is part two of a series of five sections. Shared here with the permission of Great Lakes Congress. )

Later Years - Great Lakes Congress
The club just kept getting bigger and bigger. Finally, the decision was made to incorporate, so in 2004 and with the help of Liz Isham Cory, a strong supporter of Great Lakes Congress for many years, the club was incorporated. Liz says about that time,

“We incorporated to create an educational not-for-profit that was designed to bring kids into the hobby by teaching kids about horses and horsemanship using model horses. We incorporated to reduce our personal and tax liability as a board, and to create a separate, legal entity that would outlast any one individual and hopefully continue for many, many years. To my knowledge, NAMHSA and GLC are the only two such organizations within the hobby.”

In 2006, GLC held a Breyer Bonanza show in Huntley, the current location of GLC shows, and one final Great Lakes Congress live show was held on April 6, 2008 at Kerri’s school. Since then, the shows have been located at the Huntley location and follow the No Frills format.

An undated photo of GLBR. (Contributed by Liz Cory.)

The No Frills Series

After the 2005 GLC show, the club was left with an unexpected hotel bill of $1200. The board had to raise membership fees and then decided to make the No Frills shows, shows that had been held a couple of times a year by the club, their official, regularly scheduled show series. Held six times a year or so, the No Frills shows not only raised enough money to pay off that hotel bill, but they were also extremely popular.

Much easier to plan and execute, these smaller shows were more manageable for volunteers with the added bonus of providing hobbyists more frequent opportunities to gather together with each other. And, as Liz Cory points out, GLC is not just about the shows. There are vendors at the shows, swap meets, educational seminars, and other get togethers, too.

2001 GLC Show, Bolingbrook, IL. Standing left to right: Mary Anselmo, unknown, Melanie Nelson, Cindy Ellis, Heather McCurdy, Carolyn Bailey, Sande Schneider. Seated: Tawny Koziol, Eileen Hayman, Nanci Pulver Thompson, Lisa Esping (kneeling), Chris Wallbruch, unknown, and Kerri Johnson. (Photo courtesy Sande Schneider.)

Having said that, there was some experimentation as GLC worked to follow its mission of education about horses via the model horse hobby. Sande Schneider remembers shows

hosted by Sandy Bloom in 2007 and 2008 in the Peoria area, with those shows having ties to GLC. Jamie Rott shared, “These shows were loosely affiliated with GLC... the club did not do any of the planning nor did we receive any of the proceeds. It was a marketing experiment to increase our outreach... I don’t remember them being called GLC shows. They were held in Tremont and were always in November.”

Now incorporated and with a longstanding reputation as an excellent show, GLC had become a hobby staple. Its shows were on many hobbyists’ annual calendars when they planned out their show seasons, and had become must-attend shows for many people.

But it was getting to be too much for Kerri, now married, and with two children and a full time teaching position. In Kerri’s opinion, it was time to hand the reins of GLC to someone else. Kerri said, “I had a Hamilton moment. In the musical, George Washington realizes that he could have been president repeatedly, but he knew that he needed to help the nation move on so that it could continue and outlive him.” 

And so it was for Kerri. She felt badly stepping aside, but she also felt that it was for the good of the club itself. She pointed out that, when she left, people stepped up with new ideas, ideas that would keep the club running for many more years. Her beloved club continued on.

Jamie Rott, Kerri Johnson, Chris Walbruch, and Lisa Esping at a GLC show in Huntley, IL. (Photo contributed by Kerri Johnson)

Kerri was correct in thinking that people would step up and run the club without her. “GLBR/GLC has been fortunate in that it has had willing volunteers to staff it over the years. Some volunteers have faded away but others stepped up to take their places,”

recalls Sande Schneider. Volunteers such as Lisa Esping edited and published a regional newsletter for the club, while people of the caliber of Heather McCurdy, Chris Walbruch, Stefanie Bodamer, Liz LaRose, and Tiffany Purdy became frequent judges at the No Frills shows. Behind the scenes, Yvonne Rott and Sam Cory came to every No Fills show, working at the show table recording results and doing set up/take down. And these folks were just the tip of the volunteer iceberg!

Part three will be posted tomorrow.

Great Lakes Congress History - Part One

(Great Lakes Congress is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year and I volunteered to research and write the club's history. This is part one of a series of five sections. Shared with the permission of Great Lakes Congress. )


“It was an accident! I never set out to do that!”  Kerri Johnson on founding what became the longest running model horse show and club, Great Lakes Congress.

Kerri Johnson and her daughter, Morgan. (Photo contributed by Kerri)

In 1984, a horse crazy sixth grader decided to form a model horse club, one that would become a legend in the model horse world. She didn’t know that at the time; she simply loved model horses and wanted to start a club, one that reflected that love. So, with a cigar box for dues and a desk in the basement, Kerri Gehrmann Johnson set up the Great Lakes Breyer Registry at her parents’ home in St. Charles, Illinois.

Early Years - the Great Lakes Breyer Registry
The Great Lakes Breyer Registry began as a club for photo showing with horses receiving registration numbers that were used to tabulate points for their placings at live and photo shows (all recorded faithfully by Kerri). Year end awards were given out for the horses earning the highest number of points each show season.

Through some ads in Breyer’s magazine, Just About Horses, Kerri came to the attention of Marney Walerius. Marney enjoyed mentoring new hobbyists, and took Kerri under her wing. As a result, a strong friendship grew up between the two. They corresponded through phone calls and mail, and even visited one another. Marney allowed a very young Kerri to judge at Model Horse Congress, and Kerri remembers that Marney took some heat over that from some of the showers who were in attendance that year. Marney, though, stood by her decision to allow Kerri to judge and as a result, Great Lakes Congress’s youth mentoring programs are an acknowledgment by Kerri to her dear friend.

In 1987, Marney helped Kerri and her best friend, Tawney Denn (Tricia Steinmetz), plan the very first GLBR live show. The show was a success and Kerri began holding it annually, first at her church in St. Charles, and then, from 1991 to 1995, in Dekalb, Illinois on the campus of Northern Illinois University which Kerri was attending as a student.

 Early GLBRA (above) and GLC ribbons (below.)

In addition to the location change, it was sometime during the mid 1990s that Kerri changed the name of the club to Great Lakes Congress. This allowed the new Stone horses to be included in the club’s activities and the word “Congress” was another nod from Kerri to Marney in recognition of her earlier guidance.

Upon graduation from college, the shows were moved back to Kerri’s church in St. Charles, and then, as the number of entrants grew, to the school where Kerri was teaching. The show soon outgrew the school, too, so in 2000 GLC was moved to the Bolingbrook Holiday Inn. It also became a two day show to handle the multitude of classes offered.

2003 brought some changes to the nearly twenty year old show. Due to rising interest in the club and attendance at the show, Liz Cory found another venue: the Marriott in Hoffman Estates. By this time, people were coming from beyond the Chicago metro area and the surrounding states, with some traveling all the way from Texas, Canada, and California!

Lisa Esping and Melanie Nelson in 1988. (Photo by Great Lakes Congress.)

The show’s format was changed yet again in 2004 when GLC became a three day show. Sande Schneider recalls that the two and three day shows “...were exhausting, but the fellowship at those shows was phenomenal.” At this point, the GLC show was on the same scale and scope of NAN, but run by far fewer people. “There were hundreds of classes and many divisions, run by a handful of people,” commented Kerri.

Part two will be posted tomorrow.

Great Lakes Congress History - The New Logo

Great Lakes Congress is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year. What a milestone! I volunteered to research and write its history, and the process took me four months to do - there was so much  to write about!

With kind permission from Jamie Rott and Liz Cory, president and treasurer respectively of the club, I will be posting the history here. It's an amazing story.

The 35th anniversary logo was designed by my daughter-in-love, Vanessa Isenbarger.  (The horse head in the center has long been the club's logo.)

Starting tomorrow and running for about a week I will post the history of the club in segments. Stay tuned!

Model Horse Trading Cards

Model horse advertising freebies are always fun to receive, whether they come in a model horse box or are slipped into an envelope and mailed.  Breyer and Hartland models have all made it onto trading cards from time to time, and currently, Hagen Renaker Tennessee is offering stickers of HR models to members of the Hagen Renaker Collectors Club.

 These Breyer trading cards are from The West Coast Model Horse Collector's Jamboree.

On the back is information about the exclusive model being offered at the annual event.

Sometimes the cards were not necessarily related to the model that you bought, but were randomly handed out when you placed an order. I've never owned a Breyer Pronghorn or Bighorn Ram, but I received their trading cards when I placed orders with The Equine Center.

Their cards have the name of the Breyer distributor on the back along with information about the model. These are from the mid 1990s or so.

Hartland also distributed cards like these from the Stevens Manufacturing era in the 1990s.

 They were included in the box with the models when I bought them.

Even the Grand Champion company handed out cards, although these were actually a part of the box. This model was a gift to my daughter, Lisa, so I would date the card to the late 1980s/very early 1990s.

Two sided like the Breyer cards, they had information about the model that was inside the box.

Tomorrow, if I can dig them out (I think I know where they are!), I will show some other freebies that were handed out around the same time as these.

Marney - What's the Story Behind the Two Stones?

Recently I have been writing the history of Great Lakes Breyer Registry/Great Lakes Congress,  the longest running model horse club and show series in the world. During a phone interview, Kerri Johnson, the club's founder, credited Marney Walerius with a lot of mentoring in the early days of the club.

As I continued researching, I came across some old materials in my files about Marney's tree and memorial stone that were placed near the Man o' War statue at Kentucky Horse Park in August, 1992.

A tribute to Marney was handed out to those of us in attendance at that BreyerFest.

 On the back was a map of the park with directions for finding the site.

This is the stone that was originally placed under the tree. (Photo retrieved from Google Images, but Sue Sudekum took the photo and then gave Nancy Kelly permission to put it on her web site. Go here to Nancy's web site to read more information about Marney.)

Kerri also sent me a photo that she had recently taken of Marney's memorial stone so that I could include it the finished history.

It is not the same stone. And clearly it has had a tangle or two with the mowers at the horse park.

What happened? Where is the original stone? Why was it changed? Was it, too, damaged by the park's mowers thus needing to be replaced? And while I like this stone better than the first, the word "hobby" has been left off, making Marney's contribution to the early hobby muddled and unclear to those who may not have known her. 

I have moved on to another writing project so I am going to have to put this mystery on the back burner until that is finished. But I do plan to dig into this and see if I can find out the story behind the two stones.

B Stamp Pacer

 Despite having collected since 1963, I did not have any B stamp Breyers until very recently. During the brief time (1979-1983 or so) that Breyer was adding the B stamp, I was home full time caring for four little children. With only one income, there was absolutely no money to spend on new models.

 I found my first B stamp piece, a Proud Arabian Stallion in alabaster only a year ago at an antique shop.

He was not in the best of shape and his price reflected that. But I purchased him and brought him home due to the very prominent B that he had on his inner leg.

 I just added my second B stamp model to my collection - this lovely Pacer with black halter.

The Pacer mold is having a resurgence in popularity due to the 2018 BreyerFest Foiled Again and the 2019 Vintage Club Rockford, so I was a little surprised that I won this auction.

 The B stamp can be found on the inner left hind leg.

The Breyer Molding Company stamp is on the other hind leg.

He is in great shape for his age and, regardless of B stamp or not, is a welcome addition to my Pacer conga. 

Before the Luck

Those Hartlands and the woodgrain Brahma bull that I found yesterday were good finds. More than one person commented to me that I seem to be lucky when it comes to unearthing good pieces while out antiquing. (I felt very lucky, too!)

But, for all the so-called luck, there are a lot of things that I find that I never tell anyone about, those pieces that remain behind for someone else to buy. I find far more "leave behinds" than those "lucky finds" that come home and go on my shelves.

For example, take a look at these, all found yesterday before I came across the Hartlands and the bull.

 A chalkware rearing horse.

 A super cute vintage kids' lamp (but not the Breyer or Hartland lamp I would have loved to find!)

 Some well-loved plastic models by a variety of manufacturers.

 A very expensive Made in Japan.

 Horses with chain leashes.

 A stoneware zebra with a giraffe-like neck tucked in behind an elephant.

 A resin clock - I wish it were a Breyer or Hartland clock!

 An assortment that merited a look but which were priced way too high for their condition.

 A Metlox Poppytrail stagecoach and buggy - I thought real hard about them, but left them behind.

The Hartlands were found at the end of an afternoon of antiquing. Happy with my discovery, I almost went home but decided I would continue on and finish the last rows of dealer booths. I didn't really expect to find anything more. And then, in the second to the last booth of all, there was the Brahma. Had I not persevered and seen the antique mall to the end, I would have missed him.

So, what about that luck? I really don't believe in luck, but I do believe in doing your due diligence by being thorough and keeping my eyes and ears open. Or going back to the same shops every few weeks to see if anything new and interesting has been put out for sale. (Tip: see a bit or a pair of cowboy boots in a booth? Often there will be other horsey items nearby, including model horses! Always check it out!)

I have learned that if I do my homework "before the luck," that once in a while I have a "lucky" day like I had yesterday and bring home some great finds.

It's Friday and the weekend is ahead. Good "luck" to all who are heading out to search out new pieces for their collections this weekend!

Glad I Went!

I have been working on two other writing projects that have kept me at the computer most of the day for several weeks.  Today I decided to take a break from writing and do a little antiquing. Sure am glad that I did -  look what I found!

 I rarely see the Hartland horse and rider sets or the gunfighters, and when I do, the asking price is way too high for my wallet.

But these were affordable, and so I bought them all. I do not plan to keep them - I bought them so that I could get them into the hands of collectors. (I also switched Dale to the correct horse.)

I am a little tempted to keep the Appaloosa as he is hard to find and I love that color, but I don't need him. Besides, I put him on the Hartland collectors' page on Facebook and already have someone who wants to buy him!

I also found this semi-glossy woodgrain Brahma bull!

I have another one in matte woodgrain (and found at the same store) so I am not sure if I will be selling him or not. He really is lovely.

You never know how your luck will run when you head out to poke around in antique and thrift shops. Today was a lucky day!

"Let's Keep This Rolling!"

I was an avid reader of Horse and Rider magazine for many years, from high school and on into adulthood. A lot of my early knowledge about horses and horsemanship came from that magazine.

In the late 1960s/early 1970s, the magazine carried a column for pen pals. You could send Horse and Rider your name and address and request that it be added to the numerous others in the column, most of whom were young girls like me looking to find like-minded friends.

My address appeared twice, and at one point, I had around 100 people with whom I was regularly corresponding! Two of them became life long friends, Sue Seese and Beth Dickinson. Both were part of the early days of the hobby, and Beth is still very active in it. Sue moved on to high end quarter horses and showed on the Quarter Horse circuit. I am still in touch with both women.

Shortly after we began writing to each other, Sue and I got our first horses.

  Sue and Stormy, Reseda, California, 1972.

Amy and me, West Lafayette, Indiana, 1972.

Sue's mare, Stormy, had a lot of Thoroughbred in her - perfect for Sue who loved the breed. She also founded a hobby club and registry for model Thoroughbreds that ran for many years.

Stormy and her filly, Stormy's Santana.

Our letters flew back and forth, with a letter being received in the afternoon mail, responded to that evening, and then mailed out the next morning. We knew when to expect each other's letters, and it was a real thrill to see Sue's distinctive handwriting when I opened the mailbox after I got off the school bus.

Sue and I became best friends despite the distance between us. After nearly five years of weekly letters, our parents allowed us to get together. I flew out to California in June after I graduated from high school.

Sue and me at the Jaws exhibit at Universal Studios, 1975.

There was no awkwardness between us when we first met face to face. After all, we knew each other so well from the hundreds of letters that we had mailed each other!

Sue made arrangements for us to ride while I was there, borrowing horses for me to use. One of them had been owned by Bob Denver, the actor who played Gilligan on the popular TV show, Gilligan's Island. That was a big thrill for me - I mean, how many people can say that they rode Gilligan's horse? I can!

We also competed in a horse show during my visit, with me riding another borrowed horse. I took home a ribbon which still hangs here in my office where I can see it.

Sue and I each went off to college, got married, and she went right into the work force upon college graduation while I started raising my big family. Through the years we continued to correspond, although the letters slowed down to just a couple of times a year due to the busy-ness of our lives.

Adulthood for both of us had its ups and downs, but Sue really took some hard knocks - her husband died of brain cancer and then, after remarrying many years later, she developed breast cancer.

And through it all, the letters continued.

I got one from her in the mail yesterday.

Typical Sue, it was a three pager, single spaced!

I waited until I had a quiet moment to read it, wondering especially about her cancer treatment and if things were still going as well as they had been at Christmas. To my delight, she is healthy and nearing the end of two long years of treatment. Yay, Sue!

Sue (middle) with her niece (left) and sister (right) last Christmas.

Sue's words at the end of the letter were touching. Referring to the fact that I was now retired and had more time to write her, she said, "Let's keep this rolling," referring to the more frequent correspondence that we had begun again and which was so, so similar to our teen years when the letters came weekly.

There is a real joy in a long term friendship, a friendship with someone who has known you even longer than your husband. We've been friends since 1971, just shy of fifty years.

You can bet that I am going to "keep this rolling!"

The Purdue Pollinator Protection Project

Barn owner Tim is also known as Dr. Tim Gibb, a Purdue University entomology professor. About two years ago, he received a significant grant from the National Science Foundation to create a free curriculum for all high schools in Indiana. Called the Purdue Pollinator Protection Project, it is designed to raise awareness and educate students about the need to protect our state's pollinators.

The high school curriculum was introduced yesterday at the annual conference for HASTI (the Hoosier Association of Science teachers, Inc.) in Indianapolis.

Since I am writing the elementary curriculum which will be rolled out next, I went along to watch. I also wanted to see how the high school lessons compared to mine. (Elementary teacher that I am, of course I wore a flowered shirt to go along with the theme of pollination!)

Craig came with me - I had had a migraine headache that morning so he drove, just in case I got sick on the road.

 There was good attendance and a lot of interest- I felt the presentation went well.

The high school lessons were outlined and a brief explanation given about each one.

Purdue's Envision Center had created some games to go along with the lessons. I though the one titled "The Plight of the Foraging Bumblebee" would work well for elementary kids - it was an interactive game where you could fly the honeybee all over the countryside with the goal to make it back to the hive with pollen.

Tim had prepared flyers about the project and some upcoming summer seminars teachers can attend for training.

Everything is being made available to teachers for free, including the seminars and software.

I have been splitting my time between working on the elementary curriculum and writing the history of Great Lakes Congress, the longest running model horse club in the world, which is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year. I will polish the final draft of that today and send it to the printer, and then begin devoting all my writing time to the Pollinator Project.

It's a good thing I like to write!