History meets modern day: Video footage of special Threshing Days event hits YouTube(TM)

A once annual event in the Waukon area aimed at celebrating history and heritage has recently met up with modern day online technology for all to have a chance at reminiscing or learning. Video-taped footage of the famous Sparrow 40-Horse Hitch from the 1993 Threshing Days Parade held in Waukon has recently been uploaded to the YouTubeTM website.
Videographer Helen Gunderson, a Rolfe native currently living in Ames, uploaded a pair of videos she captured from the event, one a five-minute video featuring the 40-horse spectacle at various points along the parade route and a longer, 25-minute video featuring the grooming and preparation of the horses prior to the parade, as well as events following the parade.
The video footage can be accessed at the following links:
http://youtu.be/6dnlkr2nsBA for the five-minute version; or
http://youtu.be/waWT7FEMURA for the longer version.
Gunderson said that the 1993 Threshing Days event was the first and only time that she's visited Waukon, and it was the 40-horse hitch that drew her to the event. With videography being what she called "an avocation" for her, Gunderson visited Waukon on that summer day in 1993 with the purpose of filming the famous hitch run by the Dick Sparrow family of Zearing.
"My grandfather raised horses on the home farm, and it was based on those childhood memories that I started to pursue filming horse shows and other events that reflected Iowa farm life and heritage," she said. "In going through my collection, I was so caught up in the footage I had gotten from that Threshing Days event that I knew I had to share it with as many people as I could. YouTubeTM provides artists and videographers a way to do just that in a mass forum."
As it turns out, Gunderson's video footage was more historical than first thought, as the 1993 parade was the final time the Sparrow 40-Horse Hitch appeared in the 25-year history of the Threshing Days event as organized under the Ray Sweeney family. With Threshing Days started as a one-day event by the late Ray Sweeney in the early 1970s, Ray's son, Joe, says that the Sparrow hitch appeared once in the parade in the early 1970s and again in 1993. The Sweeney family discontinued organizing the event after its 25th anniversary in 1997, three years after Ray's passing.
The Super VHS video tapes that the Threshing Days footage originally appears on are part of Gunderson’s collection now housed within the Iowa State University Special Collections Department in the Parks Library. She hopes the YouTubeTM links bring back fond memories for many and give others a sense of the proud heritage and tradition that once centered around the annual Threshing Days event.