A peace rally in good hands

A young mother, college student and activist from Omaha pulled off a two-day Woodstock-like music festival one weekend this summer at an overlooked park on the outskirts of Wahoo, Neb.

But first she had to go through Mother Nature to clean up the park.

For eight months, 22-year-old Julie Smith, a nonprofit management student at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, organized “Love Fest in the Midwest: A Revolutionary Peace Rally,” or what she called simply, “a conference of good thoughts.”

It was the fourth rally Smith had planned since 2008. With support from her father, Wink Smith, and fiance, Mike Westerholm, 26, who with Julie has a 1-year-old son named Driver, each of the previous rallies drew about 1,000 people to Omaha parks.

For Smith, the rallies are a place where people can come together and spread joy.

“Everybody says I can’t relax, but this is what I love to do,” said Smith, a brunette who stands 5-foot-6, has mountain climber muscles and sports a grin like a smiley face icon.

This time around, Smith wanted to have a longer event with more music that would bring people closer. She had tried planning an overnight rally in Douglas and Sarpy Counties but ran into red tape, she said.

Then she found Wahoo’s Peony Park — about 35 miles west of Omaha, down U.S. Highway 275 then Nebraska 92, left at the gas station shack onto a country road, about half a mile east of the 4,000-resident town — a wooded area adjacent to soybean fields.

Before Smith found it, the park was forgotten, said park co-owner Nils Erickson. In the 1920s and ‘30s, it was a popular recreation area, then known as Wanahoo Park, with a dance hall and an Olympic-size swimming pool.

By the mid-’60s, repeated floods had slowly wiped out the area. In 1978, a fire claimed the dance hall, and the park closed.

When Smith and Westerholm first encountered the park, it was overgrown, untouched for decades. With a crew of volunteers, they spent months carving out three small amphitheaters and a 20-acre campground with chain saws and weed whackers. By June, the stages were cleared for the more than 50 bands scheduled to play, the grounds readied for the 700 aspiring peacemakers who would camp in 150 tents overnight.

At 7 a.m. on June 18, an hour before the rally began, a thunderstorm pushed nearby Sand Creek over a dam into the park. The pathway between the first and second stage was completely flooded, and the gushing water threatened to drown the rest of the woods.

Smith, stage manager Peter Langwith and volunteers brought in two truckloads of hay to soak up the mess. They all had splashes of mud past their ankles and smelled like a wet hay barn, but it worked. The peace workers also found a bit of good fortune. The main stage, on a section of the park once known as “Dance Island,” was protected by a manmade moat. The moat filled and mutated into a swamp, where frogs croaked at night.

“Moments like these when we work together build a lasting community,” said Langwith. “It’s a very accepting atmosphere where we can say, ‘Hey, everybody! Grab a bail of hay!’”

By midafternoon on that first day, with music well under way and people arriving from as far as Indiana and Wyoming, Smith worked ferociously near the festival’s entrance, between the parking lot and ticket booth.

With a Minnie Mouse bow in her hair, a sweaty pink tank top and mud-covered green-painted toes, Smith was trying to be in six places at once. She had just set up a first aid station and was bringing food and water to crew members. She stopped to speak into a walkie-talkie while directing volunteers with hand gestures.

A couple of bands were late, forcing Smith to adjust what was already a tight schedule. Smith expected the stress and powered through it, scratching away mosquitoes.

Suddenly, a young brown-haired man pulled up in an amethyst-coated Dodge Intrepid and asked Smith, “What needs to be done?” That’s how she knew the rally’s message of peace was working. When people ask her how they can help, that is progress. To her, that is what peace looks like, Smith said. Not the overbearing, anti-war, world peace idea of peace. Simply people helping people.

“It’s not about entertainment for me,” Smith said. “It’s about action.” She plans to have another rally next May.

Contact the writer:

joel.fulton@owh.com

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