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Mt. Pleasant’s Easter Egg Hunt hops on
Candy-filled eggs help continue a Technicolor tradition in Central Park on a gray Easter-weekend morning
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MT. PLEASANT — Children zipped their jackets, gripped their baskets, and dashed across Central Park Saturday morning as Mt. Pleasant’s annual Easter Egg Hunt brought the square to life with laughter, color, and candy.
The April 19 event — annually held the Saturday before Easter — drew many families who refused to allow a little chilly weather to dampen their excitement. Although gray skies lingered, rain stayed away, allowing children to storm the park lawn to nab plenty of eggs.
Parents of 15-month-old Camdyn Stone say the Mt. Pleasant Easter Egg Hunt was the perfect warm-up for the rest of the Easter activities they had planned for the weekend. Despite Camdyn following in his mother Taylor’s footsteps and crying around the Easter Bunny, the Stone family enjoyed their time at the community event.
“It’s a tradition to be able to spend time with family and friends that you don’t get to see all the time, and everybody around the town that gets together” his dad Chris Stone said. “Because let’s be honest, nowadays, we’re all about the go, go, go, and this community event slows us down to see people.”
Main Street Mt. Pleasant, Mt. Pleasant Parks and Recreation, and the Mt. Pleasant Optimist Club come together each year to organize this event. Additionally, community donations of candy and the efforts of volunteers from the sponsor groups and Mt. Pleasant Walmart’s Distribution Center, who set up and clean up the whole event, make the event possible.
“We want to be more involved in the community,” Walmart Distribution Operations Manager Andrew Pocking said.
“It’s the right thing to do,” Assistant General Manager Lynn Washburn followed up.
Many families appreciate the efforts, especially as they attend year after year. One parent, Kelsey Bolin, says she has seen the event grow each year her family has attended.
“We have three kids, and we come out every year,” Bolin said. “I like how they split up the age groups and stagger them.”
With families attending every year, many bring along older siblings that can no longer participate in gathering eggs but still find the event fun.
“It’s fun to hear the other kids go, but it is also kind of sad that we’re too old, too,” Jacob Galvan said.
Galvan and his friends insisted it was OK, though, because they had other friends that shared candy with them.
For many, the tradition of attending the Mt. Pleasant Easter Egg Hunt starts earlier in the morning as they stop by the Mt. Pleasant Fire Department’s annual pancake breakfast. Surprisingly, this has not always been how the events lined up.
According to Optimist Club President Paul Katison, the events used to be on different weekends until, “One year, rain pushed the hunt back to the same weekend,” he said. “We had record turnout. Since then, we’ve kept them together.”
With each grassy section lined with excited participants eagerly waiting, a countdown rang out before each age group took their much-anticipated turns filling their baskets and bags with goodies.
As the countdown for one of the groups began, 7-year-old Catalina Villagomez got ready to go. Three, two, one, and she was off to pick up as many eggs as her basket could hold while her grandparents cheered her on from the sidelines.
“It’s fun to see everybody out,” Villagomez’s grandma Patricia Rod said. “We get to keep the connections of our town. Iowa Wesleyan closing left such a missing tooth in our smile that, you know, things like this keep us together and keep our businesses going. There really is nothing like Mt. Pleasant!”
Comments: AnnaMarie.Kruse@southeastiowaunion.com
