Susan Harman

Your Prep Sports

WEST BRANCH – Papa Bear wasn’t at the West Branch home football opener last week. And yet his influence, his persona, his heart, his life’s work was there.

Butch Pedersen died last spring leaving a legacy not just with the football team but in his town.

He was there in the swarm of youth football players introduced before kickoff.

His name is etched on the Bears helmets.

His influence was clear in the standing room only crowd that surrounded the Little Rose Bowl.

He was there in the person of his family: wife Jenny, daughter Kari, son Kip and son Lance’s daughter Dakota.

The Pedersens accompanied the captains to midfield for the coin toss.

While those are all more subtle reminders of his impact, the painted portrait of Butch in his coaching visor at the middle of the field, Butch Pedersen field, was a statement in his honor.

It all came about spontaneously.

Toni Senio, a former Bear who is in charge of all the grounds for the Iowa athletic department, told the coach he would help the district re-do the field.

Pedersen had raised as much as $15,000 for an irrigation system.

“There wasn’t a blade of grass on it this summer,” Jenny Pedersen said.

Senio promised it would be there for the fall season.

“Lo and behold, it was beautiful,” Jenny said.

After it was clear they would have a field, Kip called Senio and wondered what they could do for the field.

“He wanted something special this year,” Senio said.

Kip had the idea of putting the script “Butch” at midfield in addition to putting it on the helmets.

“We kicked it around,” Senio said. “To me the script “Butch” was fine, but if you lay it down on a field, I’ve done enough logos to know that unless you know what it said it’s just going to look like we moved ‘Bears’ from the end zone. I wanted to something that the family would want, but I also wanted something that would work. I wanted it to be something that stood apart.”

Senio knew he was running out of time before the opener, and Wednesday night was the only time he could get a group together.

He had some ideas, but Andy (Eiffert) said, ‘I think I can do a silhouette.’ All he had to work with was a drawing by Steve Barry, a neighbor of Kari’s, that has been used on Bears booster stickers and in connection with the Butch Pedersen Legacy Foundation.

Senio called, Kip and asked, ‘Do you trust me to put something on the field?”

Kip said ‘Sure’, and Senio’s group went to work at 8:30 p.m.

At 10 p.m. the field lights timed out.

A neighbor came over with a lantern, but they said they’d wait for the lights to cool and turn them on again.

“Kari came to my house 10 or 10:30 and said, ‘You’ve got to come and look at the field,’” Jenny recalled. “We went down there, and they’re just doing it like it’s nothing. And that was the night we had that beautiful moon out shining down.

“Butch would have loved it,” Jenny said.

Under the silhouette are the words Strength, Love and Family, a Butch Pedersen mantra.

Thursday night the entire Pedersen family made a pilgrimage to the field.

“We sprinkled some of Butch’s ashes there on the 50-yard line,” Jenny said. “Pastor Chad Whaley said a prayer. We told the local cops so they knew what we were doing. There was a hawk that’s been hanging around the field, and as Lance was sprinkling the ashes, I thought ‘how ironic.’”

Kip brought some white balloons and everyone wrote something on the balloons and released them at the same time.

Kari’s son, Kooper Zuniga, wrote, ‘I miss you grandpa,” and on the other side, ‘Carlos O’Kelly’s really misses you.’

When the crowd arrived for the games Friday the intense visage of Butch Pedersen greeted them at midfield.

He’d never left.

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