SOLON– If there’s something going on in Solon, odds are Marv Stastny is in the thick of it.
Stastny, one of two men honored this year as Solon’s Seniors of the Year, has made a career of volunteering to serve the community. A native of Ely, Stastny spent 20 years there, including two years on the Ely Volunteer Fire Department.
After marrying the Solon Fire Chief’s daughter (Bernita) and moving to Solon, he accepted his father-in-law’s offer to join the Solon crew in 1962. Fifty years later he turned in his pager and hung up his helmet for the last time. But his community involvement goes farther than firefighting and rescue calls.
“I’ve always been involved in the community,” he said. “I’m kind of a joiner.”
In addition to the fire department, he has been a part of the Solon Optimist Club and the Solon Beef Days Committee. “I’m retired, but I don’t like to just sit around,” he said.
Stastny has even taken it upon himself to help keep the town neat and orderly. To that end, he can be seen throughout the week driving around Solon on a golf cart, picking up trash.
“I make the circuit,” he said. “I go down to the rec. park (Solon Recreation and Nature Area), go down through there and pick up water bottles and whatever’s left after a ball game. I kind of do the same down around the library.”
It’s a patrol he’s maintained steadfastly for about two years. It started three years ago, when “Our Iowa Magazine” did a piece on the famous Burma Shave signs that used to stand alongside rural highways with witty safety messages. The magazine held a contest to award a new set of signs to a community in each county. Stastny applied for Solon and won. The signs were placed along Highway 382 west of town. After the signs were installed, he made frequent trips to keep weeds and tall grass trimmed around them.
The in-town trash patrol was a natural expansion of his mission.
Along with eradicating trash, Stastny found another menace, one not born of man but of Mother Nature: the Canadian Thistle. He found some growing unchecked at the recreation area and added its ultimate destruction to his to-do list.
“They’re quite noxious and they spread by the roots. You can kill one here and it pops up again over there,” he said. It’s an ongoing battle. “Eventually it just wears itself out, I think. So, hopefully, I can get that taken care of.”
Although the weed is his nemesis, it also gives him something to do.
“If I sit for more than two days, I start to feel it. I’m getting to the age where I don’t want that to happen,” Stastny said.
Stastny will be 78 in September and although he’s fit and trim, he’s come to acknowledge the changes that come with getting older.
After 50 years with the Solon Fire Department, he resigned in 2012.
“I wasn’t able to climb roofs and stuff. You lose some of your mobility and dexterity, things like that. So? pass it on to the next guy!” he said, although Stastny maintains contact with the all-volunteer department by performing janitorial duties on a monthly basis.
He is still quite active with the Solon Optimist Club, which holds several programs throughout the year for local children, including the Tri-Star basketball program in January and an Easter Egg Hunt each spring. Stastny said they use over 2,500 plastic eggs, which takes the group over an hour and a half to fill.
“And they’re gone in three minutes!” he said with a laugh.
The Optimists also sponsor a Bike Rodeo in June, as well as a Fishing Derby- a part of Solon Beef Days- in July, and the Avenue of Flags project throughout the year on patriotic holidays.
Stastny served as president of the Optimist Club 15 or 20 years ago.
“I must’ve forgot how bad it was, because I’m going to do it again next year,” Stastny laughed.
Already on his new to-do list is trying to increase membership, which has been on the decline nationally, as well as locally. One way to do that and build a better sense of community, he thinks, is by having family-friendly block parties where people can meet their neighbors.
“People moving into town don’t always have an idea of what activities are available,” he said. Also, if neighbors are better acquainted, Stastny feels Solon can, “get a little home-townism back.”
One touch of “home-townism” continues to be Beef Days. Stastny’s involvement started in the 1970s when the fire department’s water ball fights were held on Main Street. He also was instrumental in organizing the tug-of-war contests for about five years; he recalled an ongoing rivalry between “Rudy’s Tuggers” (a group of farm boys from northeast Iowa) and a team from Sadler Machine Co. in Cedar Rapids. The Sadler team, he said, had installed a weight training room in their machine shop and developed uniforms. Sadler became so proficient in the sport they went on to international competition.
“Who knew that our piece of rope out here would precipitate to an international team?” Stastny asked.
Never one to seek the limelight, Stastny took his Senior of the Year honor in stride.
“I was in the (Beef Days) parade, tried to get out of that,” he said with a chuckle, saying he’d purchased 12 gallons of candy for what he described as “a 24-gallon parade! I ran out halfway through!”
This year, after riding in the 10 a.m. parade, Stastny managed the beef dinner crowd beginning at 11:30 a.m., followed by hosting the Fishing Derby at noon and then working in the Bingo tent from 2-4 p.m.
“I had a pretty full day,” said Stastny.
When RAGBRAI came to town, he once again answered the call by helping with some of the preparations for the thousands of bicyclists passing through. Marv and Bernita agreed it was likely he would be drawn into preparations for the city’s upcoming 175th birthday celebration. He already plans to tidy up some of the downtown plantings and rake mulch that was displaced during Beef Days.
“I guess I’m getting to the age where I’m going to have to start cutting back on some of this,” he said, while his wife of 55 years and mother of three grown kids (Mark, Kimberly and Jackie) smiled and shook her head, not buying a word of it.