Starting at 11am we will be joined by the Jarosh Family—Sue, Joe, and Jon. For the past 34 years, The Jacksonport Polar Bear Club has celebrated the New Year by going for an icy dip into Lake Michigan at Lakeside Park in Jacksonport. The club first started in 1986 with one swimmer, 14 year old J.R. Jarosh, and now attracts between 500—800 swimmers annually, making it the largest in the country. The program will show the development of the club from one swimmer to the hundreds that now participate each year. The Jacksonport Polar Bear Club was featured in a movie called “Feed the Fish” and has a website that reaches swimmers around the country and the world.

The Jarosh Family have been a part of the Jacksonport Polar Bear Club since its inception over 34 years ago and continue to this day, to plan, organize, and implement the New Year’s Day swim that remains a popular annual event.

After lunch at 12 noon, TaraDawn Knull will present Cold Hard Cash. In the course of recorded history there have only been three things that revolutionized how humans relate to food—fire, salt, and ice. During the latter half of the 19th century, the ice industry boomed throughout the frozen north. Or ice would eventually find its way from the pristine spring fed lakes of Kenosha County to as far away as Salt Lake City, Utah and St. Augustine’s, FL. To these cities and all in between, ice brought food previously unavailable—fresh fish and seafoods went to Utah, beef and pork from the southside stockyards of Chicago were now enjoyed coast to coast. We sent St. Augustine steak and they sent us citrus fruit. In Wisconsin, Milwaukee could now brew beer in the summer and legends were born. This industry banked on a few short, cold weeks of winter and manpower (some horses were in there too) and Wisconsin answered with “Challenge accepted!”

TaraDawn began her undergrad internship with the Kenosha History Center around the same time the museum acquired a collection of ice harvesting tools. She “did all the things” with it—from cleaning to establishing a permanent exhibit. Two years later, ice harvesting had revealed itself to have a worldwide importance and Kenosha County was the South East Wisconsin center for all that cold hard cash.

The menu for this luncheon program is lasagna, chicken cordon bleu pasta, garlic bread, mixed green salad, green bean salad, soup, and dessert.

The deadline to register is March 18.