(This is how I submitted one of my favorite recent stories for West Newsmagazine back in mid-September. Photos are a courtesy of MICDS graduate Michael Kerber, whose brother Kevin starred in water polo and other brother Chris does the radio play-by-play of the St. Louis Blues, including back before we won the Stanley Cup on June 12, 2019!)
In marriage, the 50th anniversary is a golden
one. Back in 1974, the cost of that precious metal was well below $200 an
ounce. It has since skyrocketed well over the $2,500 mark. That is precisely
how a Ballwin neighborhood has grown in memories since that time.
On Sept. 14, Whispering Oakwood, a neighborhood of about
165 houses, hosted its annual WO500 event in honor of 50 years of existence!
WO stands for Whispering Oakwood. In the event’s
tradition, dads of the neighborhood plan and run a soapbox derby. According to
the event’s current president, Michael Kerber, the ‘500’ could be in reference
to the Daytona 500 or Indy 500.
“That’s what we all believed,” Kerber said. “But this
year, as I connected with more people, I started hearing a rumor that if you
measure the distance of the race hill from start to finish in some of the years
we’ve run it, the distance was 500 feet.
But that is totally unconfirmed.”
Photo Credit: Scott Blackwell
With a rock ‘n roll theme, a guitar-playing dad performed
The National Anthem in the Jimmy Hendrix style to kick off this year’s
festivities. As usual, the neighborhood scouts were in their classy outfits
hoisting the American flag.
As customary, Metro West brings a fire truck and an
ambulance to lead the parade throughout the area. But the proceedings were
slightly altered this year.
“Metro West helped start the parade, but about 15 seconds
into it, they got an emergency call,” Kerber said. “So, they threw their lights
on and bolted out like lightning! But one neighbor joined the parade with an
old classic convertible car from the ‘70s. Also, a brother of one of the neighborhood
moms is a Shriner. So, they loaded up a couple of their cars on trailers and
joined our parade. That made it extra
special as did some of the 1970’s outfits.”
The race was the next big event. There were 31 kids
racing this year; all from the WO neighborhood. One group is third graders
racing just half the hill in their first year of the event, trying to get used
to the ride that Kerber described as ‘being bouncy and noisy in a
manually-driven car.’ The remainder are
from grades four through eight.
Those grade levels are also how the racers are divided
into their two race brackets a la college basketball’s March Madness. But in
this case, the two different groups are placed randomly into double elimination
tournaments. So, each kid gets to race downhill at least twice.
“We don’t really have anyone who builds cars because we
have to keep to our budget,” Kerber said. “So, what we do is refurbish the cars
and reuse them every year. The week before, we size up every kid in the car
that fits them, and if you take a car home and store it for a year, you get to
paint it to look however you want.
“By the time the race is over, the winners have probably
raced down the hill seven or eight times. We do trophies for the winners, and
for every racer, we have a medal engraved with their name. It’s daunting going
down that hill in a car made or wood or plastic with a brake made out of a
four-inch square tire and a foot pedal made out of wood. So, the fact that they went down the hill is
pretty valiant. The first, second, and third place winners of the overall race
bring home a trophy made up the street at Crown Trophy.”
The dads this year, referred to as ‘The Pit Crew,’ ran
the activities during the day after loading bales of hay and setting them on
the street the night before the race.
Kerber added that one means of reenacting the mid-1970s
look was having wives secretly purchase shorter-than-usual white shorts to
wear. It was a secret until the week before, and as Kerber added, ‘that’s when
some of the dads realized they were going to expose some of their tan lines.’
The extravaganza also included a big-time block party
chock full of a variety of food options. There were some different things this
year like the playing of a mariachi band, loved by adults and kids alike.
This year’s dads (aka: Pit Crew) for the 50th WO 500 dressed in Retro Dad Pit Crew attire. Photo Credit: Sue Kerber
Also, during the previous week, Kerber and his wife Sue started
a Where’s Waldo hunt. They created a bunch of Waldo characters plus race-related
items like keys, race cars, race flags and bales of hay. About 33 neighbors put
colored copies of those images in their windows for families to enjoy while walking
around the neighborhood. The challenge
was to find all the characters and all the lost items.
Whispering Oakwood is a unique neighborhood without an
official neighborhood association. So, Kerber teamed with a vice-president, a
secretary, and a treasurer to create the event.
“When we all moved to the subdivision and started getting
involved with the race day, we all kind of volunteered,” Kerber said. “‘I’ll be
the one to set up the race flags,’ or someone else will make sure we have all
the plates and food for the family party, ‘I’ll take care of this tennis ball
or frisbee throw event.’ As president, I was in charge of scheduling the
meetings and putting things together. When
tough decisions have to be made, you’re required to make those decisions and be
the president of the day itself.”
There’s one meeting a month for four of five months prior
to the event and the group is responsible for the safety of the kids and pulling
permits from the City of Ballwin to enable them to close the street down.
Kerber added that it’s a very special neighborhood that’s
had mainly a natural amount of turnover where retirement-aged people leave in
bunches about very five years. But every year there are about eight to 20
kindergartners who attend Kehrs Mill Elementary, which is right down the
street. Also, the moms have a Mah Jong group, a book club, and there are progressive
dinners each year in the neighborhood.
Part of the history stays alive with the help of an ‘I
Grew Up in Whispering Oakwood’ public Facebook group page. With a scroll
through it over the past 5-7 years, you’ll see people photos of people’s
childhood in the neighborhood. Someone
in Virginia posted, ‘I grew up there from the time I was five until I was 12,
and I’m still friends with all of my neighbors.’ There’s an old photo from the
mid-70s showing the top of the race hill with a bunch of dads in blue shirts,
white tennis shorts, and painters’ hats.
Kerber pointed out that one of the dads has a real
classic mustache, and the trees in the subdivision were tiny at that time. One of the moms was wearing a green skirt or
dress in 1970s attire. One is a married couple that still lives in the neighborhood,
and their son is also in the photo wearing a football helmet in the car. Their
daughter enjoyed growing up in the neighborhood so much that she moved back and
still lives there.
“That photo was kind of like, that’s the attitude we want
to bring back,” Kerber said. “So, a group of us grew beards and shaved them
into mustaches this year.”
Returning Original Homeowners & creators of the first WO500 - photo credit: Julie Roesler
One of the major features of the event was the emotional
responses it created.
As word started to spread that they were putting this on
for the 50th year, there was a group of people on that Facebook page
who were eager to ask, ‘Hey! Can we
come? I grew up in the neighborhood.’
“It meant so much for the original homeowners or the
previous homeowners I spoke with, who were crying when they were telling me
their stories of the family memories they made in the subdivision and in the race.
So, I have a photo of five or six original homeowners who came back. One of
them flew in from Virginia Beach. We had another who was one of the original
dads who started the race. He was
wearing sunglasses with race flags printed on them. There was also a
90-year-old husband and wife came back. Their daughter still lives in the
neighborhood.
“The comment they made to us was how warm it made them
feel. They had just started it as a reason to have a little barbecue and for
dads to do something with their kids. They were surprised that 50 years later,
the neighborhood would still be doing it, and we’ve never missed a year. Every
year, we vote in someone into our Hall of Fame like a lifetime achievement
award for a dad that everyone feels put a lot into creating it and making it
fun every year. So, one of the original dads and homeowners, Jerry Disper was
voted that this year. Some of them coming back and reliving the lifetime
memories was probably the coolest thing for me!”
