Wisconsin farm couple picked for Rose Bowl Parade

Stepping away from the farm to smell the roses, a southwest Wisc. couple will be giving their biggest wave from the Rose Bowl Parade.

Last year, Judy Crotsenberg saw the Rose Parade in person for the first time. Now in 2020, she and her husband, Jerry, will be part of the nationwide event with help from the SCAN Foundation. It is a California-based nonprofit that works to help people live independently as they age.

In August, the foundation asked the Crotsenbergs if they would like to help decorate a float called “Hope’s Heroes” to pay tribute to family caregivers in the United States.

“It only took a little bit of time to think about it,” Jerry said. “A couple of weeks after that, we got a phone call asking if they would like to ride on it too. I said, ‘yes,’ and then I told my wife we said ‘yes.’”

They care for Judy’s 91-year-old mother in one of the three homes located on their farm between Richland Center and Hillsboro.

“It is a family farm,” Judy said. “It is a century farm that was originally my grandfather’s farm, and now we also have a daughter and grandson that lives on the farm.”

Although Judy’s mother is in good health, there are some issues with mobility, so the Crotsenbergs help her with day-to-day tasks such as grocery shopping or doctor visits. They check in on her twice a day. The couple admitted caregiving in a rural setting is much different than urban environments.

“When you are in an urban setting, you have more availability to call somebody and ask them to bring a meal or have a service brought in,” Jerry said. “It is something that we don’t readily have accessible in the rural setting.”

The nearest town of notable size is 20 miles away from the farm.

“From what I’ve seen, the SCAN Foundation’s main goal is to help people as best as they can stay in their own homes as long as they can to be able to live their lives more toward what they are used to and more towards what they like. If you have the ability to be home longer, then you can continue to keep more of your own mind and be able to do stuff, more of the things that you personally want to do.”

They landed in California Friday night, but Jerry joked preparations for the parade began well before this week.

“What we’ve been doing is anytime I get on one of my tractors or skid steer or something like that, we wave,” Jerry said. “My wife and I have come up with a practice that if one of us is anywhere and we wave, the other waves back. We keep practicing that way.”

The Crotzenburgs believed they would be the 56th unit in the parade out of about 86 total, and at the time, they planned on being at the back of the float. That parade starts Jan. 1 at 10 a.m. CST.