(Seguin) – The Big Red Barn will be opening its doors this Thursday in celebration of two decades of service. For the past 20 years, the Big Red Barn, the flagship of the Texas Agricultural Education and Heritage Center, has continued to preserve the heritage of this area by providing education and awareness of the agriculture industry. In celebration, the organization will be hosting The Big Red Barn Gala: Celebrating 20 Years of Service this Thursday night.
Helping to promote the event is Gala Chairwoman Nicole Thibodeaux and her mother Susan Thibodeaux, a TAEHC board of director.
Nicole says the Big Red Barn is an important organization and one that folks should be lucky to have in their community. She says this is a one-time event to celebrate not only how far the organization has come but to also honor Founders, Wilfred and Betty Bartowskewitz.
“Wilfred actually came up with this idea. He told us at 2 a.m., he came up (with the idea), shot out of bed and wrote all of this down on a napkin and then he took it in, I think, to Guadalupe Grain the next day and just said, what do ya’ll think? And, I’m sure that they had no idea where this came from and probably thought that he was a little bit crazy but it only took a couple of people for him to call to get this rolling and he always says that Charla Bading was one of the main people who helped him and they started gathering people and funding and they went ahead and started building this foundation. Now, the crazy thing to me is when you look at the early sketches of what they wanted to do of the Heritage Village in the back and also the main barn and all the different wings, the ag education wing and the equipment wing in the back and the pecan museum — now that drawing that they did back then is almost identical to how it actually turned out,” said Nicole.
She says the Ag center and what it is able to do is a rare and unique organization serving families especially the school children of this area. Each year, she says the center welcomes thousands of kids and sends them home with a whole new outlook on the world of agriculture.
“So, for us to see how far we’ve come from that paper napkin to where we are now and to see that we have had over 70,000 kids, I think, come through. We had 2,100 kids last fall and we are about to start our April Spring Tours. We’ve seen kids from over 13 different counties.
We’ve had countless volunteers donate their time usually real farmers and ranchers that are out here teaching the kids about agriculture and about this heritage. A lot of the family members of the buildings that have been donated, they know the house, they know the items that are in it and they can describe all of it and the fact that we have older volunteers that are from that generation that have firsthand knowledge and can speak to these kids about what that time felt like I think is so unique and so important,” said Nicole.
Like Nicole, Susan has also been helping to piece together all the fun details for the western style gala.
She says the attire is western cocktail and includes plenty of fun, food and live entertainment featuring music by the William Beckmann Band.
“Most of the kids in the area know the Big Red Barn and know what’s out there. But we want to show everyone what we do. It’s our chance to kind of brag on ourselves a little bit, have everything open. Then, we will have a catered meal from Black Tie Affairs out of San Antonio. We will have a live auction and a silent auction. We’ve got some very good items for the auction and starting about 9 o’clock, we will have entertainment. So, it’s going to be a full evening. It is a school night so we will end early maybe 10 or a little later. We’ve had good participation from the community, the area. Our table sales are pretty much sold out right now which is great. This being a one time event, we really appreciate that and we appreciate the support of the community for the Red Barn,” said Susan.
The celebration will also highlight the importance of heritage and tradition. Nicole says the gala has become personal as her family sets out to recognize her late grandmother Marilyn Altwein, who for most of the 20 years was an active volunteer and member of the board. Nicole, who has been involved with the Ag center since 2006, says the education instilled in her by her grandmother helped her to quickly realize the importance of forwarding the educational information from one generation to the next.
“The reason that me and my mother Susan, really took on this gala is it is a love project for my grandmother Marilyn Altwein who passed away two years ago and mom took over her board position when my grandmother had gotten sick so she took over the board position and took on the Red Barn project as her love project so this is our way of honoring my grandmother Marilyn. She always wanted to have a big party, a fancy party, a nice party and a way to honor her best friend Wilfred Bartoskewitz and his wife Betty. So that’s kind of how this all of this really started. I just wanted to brag on her a little bit. The community knew her as just a force and we ended up getting to go around to the different businesses that saw her face twice year, every year to sponsor our different events and we got take on that project ourselves and remind them that Marilyn would have wanted them to be a part of this,” said Nicole.
The gala will be held from 6 to 10:30 p.m. Thursday. Tickets are $100 each. Only an extremely limited number of tickets are available and can be purchased by contacting Nicole at 210-441-8575 or via email Nicole.zta@gmail.com.
Sponsors for the event and donations for the live and silent auctions are also still encouraged.
The Big Red Barn is located at 390 Cordova Rd.