Sunfield Community Foundation Journal - 7/26/26

Sunfield Community Foundation Journal

Issue #11

(7/26/26)

Notice #1

Here is some background information on Kevin & Lesia Brummette, the 2026 Farmer’s Picnic Grand Marshalls:  Lesia (Peabody) Brummette was raised in Sunfield.  Kevin was raised in Charlotte.  They married in 1980 and have three sons: Matt & Angel, Trent and Eric & Brittni and seven awesome grandkids!  They love watching the grandkids in school activities. Kevin is known for his grilling and helping out neighbors.  As his sons were in baseball, Kevin used to coach little league baseball for the Sunfield SPY’s and has coached Lakewood wrestling.

Lesia is on the Sunfield Farmers Picnic board and works elections for Sunfield Township.  She ran concessions for little league softball and also for the Lakewood High School Baseball program.  Kevin used to drive the bus to Florida for the Lakewood Baseball team and Lesia would go along and do the cooking for the team. 

Sunfield is an all-around great place to live!  Kevin and Lesia welcome you to the 2026 Sunfield Farmers Picnic.  Please join us on Friday, August 14^th. at 7 p.m. for a reception in their honor and for the Grand Parade on Saturday, August 15^th. at noon.  The complete Schedule of Events is available on the Sunfield Farmers Picnic Inc. Facebook page.

Notice #2

Mapes Furniture is having their 32nd. Annual Tent Sale Thursday, August 6^th thru Saturday, August 9^8h.  The hours are 10 AM to 7 PM on Thursday and Friday, and 10 AM to 5 PM on Saturday.

Stop in and join them under the big top on Main Street.  There will be free hot dogs, popcorn, and soda pop starting at Noon each day.

Notice #3

The daily Schedule of Events for this year’s Farmer’s Picnic is attached below.  Please check it out!

Parting Comments

·      Deep Thought of the Week: Why does a woman work ten years to change a man, then complain he's not the man she married?

·      Notable Quote:  In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.”----- Eleanor Roosevelt

·      That's Puny Department:  Geology rocks, but Geography is where it’s at!

·      Bonus Pun-of-the-Week:  A man rubs a lamp and a genie pops out.  “I can grant you just one wish,” says the genie.  I wish that I were you,” says the man.  “That’s a weurd thung to wush,” says the genue, “but uour wush is my command.”  (Think about it!)

·      Did You Know Section:  In 1945, a Japanese Balloon Bomb Killed Six Americans, Five of Them Children, in Oregon. The military kept the true story of their deaths, the only civilians to die at enemy hands on the U.S. mainland, under wraps. 

Elsye Mitchell almost didn’t go on the picnic that sunny day in Bly, Oregon. She had baked a chocolate cake the night before in anticipation of their outing, but the 26-year-old was pregnant with her first child and had been feeling unwell. On the morning of May 5, 1945, she decided she felt decent enough to join her husband, Rev. Archie Mitchell, and a group of Sunday school children from their tight-knit community as they set out for nearby Gearhart Mountain in southern Oregon. Against a scenic backdrop far removed from the war raging across the Pacific, Mitchell and five other children would become the first—and only—civilians to die by enemy weapons on the United States mainland during World War II.

While Archie parked their car, Elsye and the children stumbled upon a strange-looking object in the forest and shouted back to him. The reverend would later describe that tragic moment to local newspapers: “I…hurriedly called a warning to them, but it was too late. Just then there was a big explosion. I ran up – and they were all lying there dead.” Lost in an instant were his wife and unborn child, alongside Eddie Engen, 13, Jay Gifford, 13, Sherman Shoemaker, 11, Dick Patzke, 14, and Joan “Sis” Patzke, 13.

But the eyewitness accounts of Archie Mitchell and others would not be widely known for weeks. In the aftermath of the explosion, the small, lumber milling community would bear the added burden of enforced silence. For Rev. Mitchell and the families of the children lost, the unique circumstances of their devastating loss would be shared by none and known by few.

Military officials began to piece together that a strange new weapon, with markings indicating it had been manufactured in Japan, had reached American shores. They did not yet know the extent or capability or scale of these balloon bombs. Though relatively simple as a concept, these balloons—which aviation expert Robert C. Mikesh describes in Japan’s World War II Balloon Bomb Attacks on North America as the first successful intercontinental weapons, long before that concept was a mainstay in the Cold War vernacular—required more than two years of concerted effort and cutting-edge technology engineering to bring into reality. Japanese scientists carefully studied what would become commonly known as the jet stream, realizing these currents of wind could enable balloons to reach United States shores in just a couple of days. The balloons remained afloat through an elaborate mechanism that triggered a fuse when the balloon dropped in altitude, releasing a sandbag and lightening the weight enough for it to rise back up. This process would repeat until all that remained was the bomb itself. By then, the balloons would be expected to reach the mainland; an estimated 1,000 out of 9,000 launched made the journey. Between the fall of 1944 and summer of 1945, several hundred incidents connected to the balloons had been cataloged.

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