One more Strassenfest
Adrienne Luegers loved the Strassenfest.
“I don’t think she missed a single one since she turned 21,” Andrea Hedinger said about her friend. “She had this black, red and yellow dress that she had handmade. She would have to wash it every night when she’d get home from the beer garden because it would be all sweaty from her dancing all day.”
She loved the Strassenfest so much that her potential boyfriends were judged by how much they appreciated the fest. “It was an honest to goodness test,” Andrea joked about how Adrienne had brought home some guys over the years and when they were less than lackluster about the street fest, they had been left on the wayside.
Adrienne loved the Strassenfest so much that the day it ended, she began a countdown to the next one. It was the highlight of her year, and she returned annually to find her friends.
Those friends that couldn’t make it back to the fest for whatever reason were soundly chastised by Adrienne for their absence. There was no excuse for missing her favorite event of the year.
“And she always wanted to win the polka contest,” Hannah (Brescher) Vorsilak said. “This year she came the closest. She got second place.”
Second place was as close as she would get. Adrienne died Saturday evening in Nashville, Tenn. She collapsed during dinner and never regained consciousness.
Adrienne’s friends loved her so much, they threw one more Strassenfest for her.
Adrienne was diagnosed with a heart defect when she was eight years old. Discovered when she was unable to keep up with the other players of her soccer team, the condition — ventricular tachycardia — caused her heart to race and the extra exertion would make her winded very quickly.
Her older sisters, Janelle Stratman and Michelle Luegers, joked that the sporting world had not lost any great talent when Adrienne was diagnosed. “She was not an athlete at all,” Janelle said. “People would be like ‘look at the six-foot girl coming, she is going to be an amazing athlete.'”
“Ugh.” she finished with a headshake.
Over the years, Adrienne was on medication to help with the condition and after a few fainting spells, she decided to attempt surgery to correct it. She had to be awake during the procedure. “It was terrible and painful,” Janelle said. “And it didn’t work as we had anticipated.
So Adrienne continued to monitor her condition and remained vigilant of her health.
But, as she always had, she was going to continue living life to its fullest. She had finally found a boyfriend who could keep up with her at Strassenfest. She was living in Nashville — a lifelong dream — and had a job she loved.
Her friends agreed that over the past two months, she had been the most content, the happiest, they had ever seen her.
Maybe the joy was too much for her heart.
On Thursday, her friends and family were able to pull in a few favors to create a miniature Strassenfest between St. Joe and Kundeck Hall. Mike Ackerman with the help of some Strassenfest Committee members and friends and family put up a booth and hung streamers Wednesday night.
During the funeral Thursday, while her closest friends and family went to the cemetery, several of their spouses and friends began grilling brats and putting out trays of sauerkraut and chocolate chip cookies.
Those who returned to the church were met with the smells of Strassenfest and then the first Polka played — Adrienne’s favorite, “Roll Out the Barrel”.
Her friends in their dirndls danced in her memory.
For her essence, they gathered together.
The nine friends largely agreed that Adrienne had been a connecting piece to their friendship.
They gathered at Andrea Hedinger’s home the day before the funeral, and as they had done since finding out their friend had died, they swapped well-worn stories of their friendship and those moments they had with Adrienne.
Kelsey Tucker joked about her friend’s passion and commitment to whatever she put her mind to.
“Anything she cared about, it wasn’t like a little bit. It was 100 percent,” she said. “Like, I am not going to eat one vegetable, I am going to eat a million vegetables to the point where my hands and feet turn orange because I ate so many carrots.”
The carrot story is funny, but commitment is a hard attribute to foster. Adrienne’s life, her essence, shaped her friends, her family and those who met her.
There is a photo taken of Adrienne on a beach that many of her friends are sharing. Her head is tilted back, her skin is glowing and she is joyous.
She said the photo captured her essence
For her essence, they gathered together.
