There were 99-plus reasons to celebrate an important birthday at Seaman Stadium last week.
That’s because one of the individuals responsible for bringing the Okotoks Dawgs to town, Ed Poffenroth, was celebrated on Aug. 6 at Seaman Stadium for his upcoming 100th birthday.
The Dawgs were without a home in 2007 after being kicked out of Foothills Stadium in Calgary in 2005. Ed wanted to find a place for his fire-ball throwing right-hander grandson Ryan Poffenroth to play.
“Ryan wanted to play for them (the then Calgary Dawgs) and they told him they didn’t have a place to play,” Ed said from his Okotoks home. “Larry (Ed’s son, Ryan’s dad) told me: ‘Look you know a lot of people in Okotoks, why don’t you promote bringing them here.’
“Mayor Bill McAlpine, (Western Wheel editor) John Barlow and myself sat right here at this table and decided we have to get the Dawgs in Okotoks.”
The Dawgs came to Okotoks in 2007 and promptly won three consecutive league titles, the first two with Ryan Poffenroth as a closer.
Ryan threw out the opening pitch prior to the Dawgs Black’s game against the Edmonton Prospects on Aug. 6.
“It’s amazing to see the amount of pull that he had to help co-ordinate getting the team here,” said Ryan, in an interview prior to the game. “What he has done for Okotoks as well as for the team.”
Ed, who turns 100 on Aug. 22, has been a lot more to the Foothills community than the person who helped to bring the class of the Western Canadian Baseball League to town.
He grew up in the DeWinton/Red Deer Lake area on a three-quarter section farm. You had to be tough back then.
“What I remember most is we grew up in a mixed farm about eight miles west of DeWinton, and we never had a car it was a horse and buggy,” Poffenroth said. “They took me over to the DeWinton Hall because a doctor was going to examine the kids.
“They put us up on the stage and they give us ether and they took our tonsils out.
“I remember being in the buggy and being sick. I needed my tonsils out no more than I needed my finger off."
Poffenroth went to the one-room Alexandra School from Grade 1 to 8. Farm life beckoned and he didn’t go to high school.
“I couldn’t afford to go back to high school,” Poffenroth said. “I would say I have seen every end of the livestock industry. I had a cow-calf operation, had a feedlot operation, had a partnership in a slaughter plant and I had a small part-retail meat shop.
“So, I went right from the little calf to the table.”
The meat shop is now Red Deer Lake Meats.
Through it all he helped the community, a gift he inherited from his mom Amy.
“She was always very kind,” Ed said. “I always felt very sorry for my mother. When I was little, she had no electricity, she carried water in and out, and when I was little, she wasn’t allowed to vote,” Poffenroth said.
Getting an education wasn’t all he got from Alexandra School. His wife of 62 years, Mary, was a former teacher at Alexandra, having taught Ed’s younger siblings.
“We met when we ended up going to different functions in the community, “ Ed said.
The Poffenroths would raise two sets of twins. They were also prominent volunteers and contributors to the Red Deer Lake United Church.
Ed still lives in his Okotoks home on the Crystal Shores Lake where he moved in 2005. He receives housekeeping assistance from his daughter Carol.
Ryan admitted living on the lake back in 2007 and ‘08 was sweet.
“You would play a day game, come home, have a cooked dinner and then go in the lake,” said Ryan, now an engineer in Houston. “Then in the morning we would go fishing.... I loved it, they were the best summers of my life.”
He said a highlight of life on the lake was prior to him becoming a Dawg.
“It wasn’t too long after they (Ed and Mary) had moved in here and I was still in college and my wife and I - she wasn’t my wife at the time - we got the two of them out in the paddleboats,” Ryan said. “Just seeing them together on the paddleboats...”
Clean living and helping community played a major part in Ed’s longevity.
”I think one of the biggest things is I never smoked, I think that helped me a lot,” Poffenroth said. “And I have never been drunk.”
Surely, he must rest?
“So do you nap every day, Mr. Poffenroth?”
“I try to if I get the chance,” Ryan quipped.
