For six years now, retired Clinton doctor Brian Tugana has spearheaded an effort to print a colorful wall calendar featuring photos taken in the Quad-City region to benefit an area nonprofit group.
Valley Bank pays for the printing and hosts a reception at its Kimberly Road location in Davenport to thank those involved: the photographers, graphic artists, the printer and others.
Knowing that 2013 was going to be “our bountiful fields,” I was looking forward to the debut because I have an interest in farms.
I wasn’t disappointed. The calendar includes the corn and bean harvesting images you’d expect, as well as some more unusual endeavors. There are images of the Timberline Christmas Tree Farm in Fulton, Ill., Ardon Creek Winery near Letts, Iowa, and Neumiller Farms of Savanna, Ill., which provides potatoes for Lay’s potato chips and snap beans for Birds Eye.
But it was a remark by Tugana — an avid photographer who took many of the calendar’s pictures — that was really unexpected.
“I was amazed,” he said, “at how much of our agriculture work is done by brown hands.”
Most Quad-Citians likely are aware that immigrants from Mexico and Central America are essential to the produce-type agriculture practiced in Florida and California.
But to know that immigrants work in substantial numbers in the Quad-City region as well — doing manual labor in dairies, in the potato and bean fields, in hog and beef operations — probably comes as a surprise.
It did to me. It’s another piece of our changing America, and I thank Tugana for bringing it to our attention.
The 2013 calendar benefits the University of Iowa Children’s Hospital Foundation. The hospital’s name is printed on every page, and tucked inside is a flier explaining its mission and how it helps children by providing specialized care not available elsewhere in the state. The flier also has a spot for making donations.
Featured among the beneficiaries is Lauren Ballard of Bettendorf, who was diagnosed with a form of cancer — Wilms’ tumor — in her kidney when she was 3 years old. The daughter of Sarah and James Ballard, Lauren has undergone surgery, chemotherapy, radiation and a bone marrow transplant, and now she is an active, healthy 6-year-old attending Paul Norton Elementary School.
The theme for the 2014 calendar will be “Midwestern Skies,” featuring the weather. And it will benefit a new foundation established by “Happy Joe” Whitty’s children called Happy Joe’s Kids Foundation to help children with special needs.
By sponsoring the calendar with a $20,000 donation for 20,000 calendars, Valley Bank gets exposure, too. And the photos are meant to encourage people to slow down, “smell the roses” and realize that the place where they live — the Quad-City region — “is kind of neat,” as Tugana said.
Copies of the calendar are available while supplies last at any of the Valley Bank locations in the Quad-Cities.
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