Our Favorite Stories of 2007: Seeds of Love

We re remembering our favorite stories of 2007 - and tonight we ve asked Debbie Kuehn to choose her favorites Her first choice takes us to October when she met a woman who turned a family tragedy into something memorable Jennifer Rose loved to visit her grandmother s pumpkin patch She marveled a their increasing size add shapes and creamy colors It was like watching a miracle unfold right in the backyard Robin Proell Garrison She loved Halloween She loved dressing up and she loved growing the pumpkins And I guess that s where this all originated was the pumpkins she d been growing with my mother in their flower garden together And then one day Jennifer Rose stopped coming to the pumpkin patch She and her twin sister Amy had gone out to the highway near their grandmother s farm to get the mail when Jennifer was struck by a car She was 7 her mother was understandable grief-stricken But in her anguish she hit on an idea Robin We started a small halloween party that we had about ten children the first year And we met in the lobby of the library and had a small pumpkin contest and that s where we started because my little girl had been growing pumpkin and so we saved the seeds and we shared them with the other children so they could grow pumpkins to have them in our pumpkin contest Not only did Jennifer s pumpkins continue to grow but so did the ideas surrounding them Each year Robin and other community volunteers here in Garrison come together on Halloween and throw a big party for the kids Nancy Leidholm Garrison Little kids on up to the high schoolers get prizes and then when all of these games I think last year we had about ten games And there are prizes for every game Robin Well the first kids that came when had such a small little party are now making sure the other kids enjoy it And they re like This is such a great party So what do you think Jennifer would think of all of this I know she s looking down from heaven and smiling at all the children It s been eleven years since Jennifer Rose wandered through the pumpkin patch Robin We re sill passing around some of the seeds from her original one because people keep giving them back to us We give them out and they come back But her memory lives on in the seeds her mother so generously shared so many years ago Near Garrison Debbie Kuehn KX News